The Orion Plan

by Mark Alpert

  After a minute she stopped and surveyed the hillside, which was studded with boulders and outcrops. Because these rock formations provided some shelter from the rain, the homeless usually camped beside them. She looked for the wrinkled tarps and plastic shopping bags that marked their sleeping spots but didn’t see anyone nearby. She was probably too early. Her friends were still panhandling or buying booze or scoring drugs. They’d come trudging up the hill over the next few hours, but Dorothy felt too sick today to wait for them. She’d just have to leave her cans and packages on the ground and hope someone would find them.

  She was about to start emptying her bag when she caught a glimpse of a cardboard box. It was in sad shape, crushed almost flat, and it sat in the middle of a big mud hole on the hillside. At first Dorothy thought the box had been abandoned, but when she looked closer she saw a pair of legs and filthy sneakers sticking out of the open end. What’s more, she actually recognized the sneakers from the loops of duct tape wrapped around their toes. The man inside the flattened box was named Joe Graham. He was one of Dorothy’s favorites, one of her best friends on Inwood Hill.

  All of the homeless in the park were wary of strangers, so she called out “Hey, Joe?” before going any closer. He didn’t answer. She waited a few seconds, then called out to him again. “Hey, it’s me, Dorothy. What the heck happened to your box?”

  Again, no answer. His legs and sneakers remained perfectly still.

  She was a little worried because she’d never seen Joe asleep during her previous visits. He was a newcomer to Inwood—he’d lived in the park for only the past four months—and though his clothes and health were getting steadily worse, he still kept a regular schedule. Every day he ate lunch at the soup kitchen on Dyckman Street, and instead of panhandling he did odd jobs for some of the neighborhood stores. And he was always polite to Dorothy, even when he was blitzed. She credited his good behavior to the fact that he was a Southerner. During their very first conversation he’d mentioned that he was born in Alabama, specifically in the small town of Union Springs. Dorothy knew the place well—it was just twenty miles from her own hometown. She and this unfortunate white man came from the same county.

  “Joe?” She raised her voice. “Are you all right?” Dorothy stepped toward the mud hole, her slip-on shoes sinking into the ooze. She was probably getting worried over nothing. In all likelihood, he’d simply passed out a bit earlier than usual today. But she approached the collapsed box anyway and listened carefully for the sound of his breathing. She heard nothing and got even more nervous.

  Bending over, she gripped the crumpled edge of the box and pulled it up so she could look inside. Joe lay on his back but it was hard to see his face in there. He still didn’t move. On the front of his Yankees jacket was a footprint of dried mud. Did somebody step on him? Or kick him?

  “Joe, wake up!” She shook the box, rocking him. “Talk to me!”

  He shuddered and began to cough. Her first reaction was relief: Thank the Lord, he’s alive! But then he winced and clutched the sides of his chest and she saw how much pain he was in. He’d clearly taken a beating. He needed a doctor. Could she convince him to see one, though? That was the tricky part. She’d seen homeless people suffer unimaginable agonies rather than go to the hospital. Many of them were terrified of doctors. Others simply didn’t want to be forced to do anything. They hated any infringements on their freedom, which in most cases was their last remaining possession.

  Dorothy’s mind was racing. She took a deep breath and muttered a prayer to calm herself. “Tell me, where does it hurt? Is it your ribs?”

  Joe nodded. Then his eyes opened wide, as if he’d just remembered something important. “I have to … let me…” His hands trembled in distress. He clawed at the box, struggling to wriggle out of it.

  “What are you doing? You’re gonna make it worse.”

  She tried to stop him but he was too determined. Grimacing, he slid out of the box and rose to his feet. He glanced up and down the hillside, squinting in the evening light. Then he cocked his head and stared at the ground under the box, which rested on a foot-high mound at the center of the mud hole. It looked like a giant mud pie, shaped by hand to make a soft platform for the box. He studied the mound closely for several seconds, wincing and clutching his chest all the while. Then he turned back to Dorothy.

  “It’s okay … I’m all right.” He spoke in short rasps, wheezing in the intervals. “Thank you … for checking on me.”

  “What happened? Was it that gang you told me about? The teenagers who were bothering you a few days ago?”

  “I’m fine … really.”

  “Don’t try to play me, Joe. Those kids kicked the crap out of you. You need to go to the emergency room.”

  He attempted to smile, but instead he grimaced again. “It’s not … so bad. The rib’s cracked … not broken.”

  “You’re being foolish. You need X-rays.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve had cracked ribs … before. There’s nothing you can do … except give it time to heal.”

  Dorothy frowned. This was just plain stubbornness. Joe was a smart man, but he was also an alcoholic, which meant that the most important thing in the world to him was finding his next drink. And he knew there was no malt liquor for sale in the emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian.

  “What are you gonna do until it heals?” she asked. “You think the booze is gonna take away the pain?”

  This came out a little meaner than she’d intended. Her frustration was making her snap at him. But Joe didn’t get upset. He tried to smile again, and this time he succeeded. “I’ll just get … some aspirin. That’s the best medicine … in the world, you know.”

  She kept frowning. The problem was that she cared too much about this man. Because of a stupid coincidence—the fact that both of them were born in Bullock County, Alabama—she’d grown fond of him. What made it even stupider was that she knew very little else about him. He’d told her that he was forty-two years old and that he’d graduated from the University of Alabama, but he’d said nothing at all about the past twenty years of his life. She had no idea why he’d come to New York, what he did for a living after he got there, or how he became an alcoholic. And yet somehow she felt like she understood him.

  To hide her emotions, Dorothy reached into her bag and pulled out a can of peanuts. “Here, take this. I got you the unsalted kind.”

  “Thank you … so much.” He took the can from her. “And how are you? Are the chemo drugs … still making you dizzy?”

  She’d told him about her pancreatic cancer a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t a secret—the parishioners at Holy Trinity knew why she’d had to leave her job—and when Joe had politely asked how she was doing she’d told him the hard truth. Now, though, she felt awkward about it.

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind the dizziness if the drugs were helping me some. But I don’t think they’re working. The pain is as bad as ever.”

  Joe stepped a little closer and looked at her eyes. Then he turned away. “Well, I hope … you feel better. Maybe you just need … to give it some more time.”

  There was something familiar about the look he’d just given her. Dorothy puzzled it over for a few seconds, wondering where she’d seen it before. Then she figured it out.

  She pointed at Joe. “I get it now. You’re a doctor, right?” She didn’t wait for him to confirm it. She knew she was right. “You were looking at the whites of my eyes, trying to see if the cancer is giving me jaundice. My doctor at Sloan Kettering does the same thing. He says you have to look at the eyes of African Americans because it’s hard to see the change in their skin color.”

  He seemed embarrassed. “I’m sorry.” He took a step backward, avoiding her gaze. “Old habits … die hard, I guess.”

  “Hey, I don’t mind.” She chuckled, not because anything was funny but just to make him feel better. “I could always use a second opinion.”

  “I’m not a doctor … anymore
.” He shook his head. “I lost … that privilege. Along with everything else.”

  He fell silent. Dorothy gave him a few seconds, hoping he’d say more, but he just lowered his head and looked at the ground. She could guess, though, what he meant by “everything else.” He must’ve had a family. A wife, maybe children.

  She closed the distance between them and rested her hand on his shoulder. She knew this was a dangerous thing to do. Many homeless people were victims of abuse, and sometimes they’d been brutalized so badly they became violent if you touched them. But she sensed that Joe was different. He wasn’t so far gone. He could come back to life if given half a chance.

  She squeezed his shoulder. “Come to the church with me, Joe. We have so many good programs. We can help you.”

  He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either. He just kept staring at the ground. Dorothy waited beside him, exercising her patience, which was the most useful tool in the world when you were working with troubled people. Joe smelled awful, like a putrid mix of sweat and malt liquor, but she ignored it and tried to look him in the eye. He was one of God’s children. Although Dorothy had no children of her own—no living relatives at all, actually—she had a family nonetheless, and this sad, broken man was a part of it.

  “Come on, Joe. We’ll start with something simple. I’ll get you a proper meal and a bed in one of the shelters.”

  He didn’t look up. If anything, he stared at the ground more intently. She followed his gaze and noticed that he was looking again at the mound of damp earth that his crushed box sat upon. He clenched and unclenched his hands as he focused on the big, flattened pile of mud. He seemed so agitated that Dorothy started to wonder. What the heck is he staring at? Did he bury something there?

  She let go of his shoulder. The ache in her belly subsided and she felt a twinge of fear instead. She started backing away from Joe and his mud pile. He could’ve buried something fairly large under that mound. Like a bag full of valuables. Or a dead animal.

  She took another step backward. I’ve made a mistake. I don’t really know this man. I have no idea what he’s capable of.

  Then she felt a stabbing pain in the heel of her right foot. At first she thought she’d stepped on a tack or a rusty nail, but the pain quickly intensified and spread, shooting up her leg like an electric shock. Her foot went numb and her knee buckled. She fell sideways, flailing, and her right hip smacked hard against the ground.

  “Dorothy!”

  Joe crouched beside her but she squirmed away from him, her hands clawing the mud. His mouth was open and his eyes were darting, and maybe he was just examining her, just trying to see what was wrong, but how could she trust him? I know nothing about this man!

  “Stay back!” she screamed. “Get away from me!”

  He gaped at her for a second, looking confused. Then he stood up and stepped backward. “Dorothy, are you … what happened to—”

  “Just stay away!” Keeping one eye on him, she reached for her numb right foot and removed the slip-on shoe. There was a puncture in its thin rubber sole. Then she looked at the bottom of her foot and saw a bead of blood on the heel. It was tiny, smaller than a seed pearl. How could such a puny little cut hurt so much? How could it knock her to the ground like that?

  Joe looked at her foot too, and his face changed. He furrowed his brow and bit his lip. It was a look of apprehension, Dorothy realized. He’s worried. Something funny is going on, and he’s afraid I’ll find out. He turned away from her and looked at the ground again, staring hard at the mud.

  And now Dorothy looked too. She stared at the patch of mud where she’d stood just a few seconds ago, and after a moment she spotted her footprints. She got on her hands and knees—her pants were already splattered with mud, so it didn’t matter—and lowered her head so she could search for the nail or tack she’d stepped on.

  For half a second she thought she saw something sticking out of the mud, something black and slender and sharp. Then it disappeared, sucked back into the ooze.

  She shook her head. She was going crazy. The chemo drugs had finally pushed her over the edge.

  She gave up searching and sat in the mud for the next half minute, trying to catch her breath. Some feeling was coming back to her right foot now, and the pain was ebbing. She flexed the leg a few times to make sure her knee was all right. Joe stood a couple of yards away, keeping his distance. He was hiding something from her, that was for sure, but Dorothy didn’t want to know about it. She just wanted to go home.

  Somehow she managed to stand up. Her pants were filthy but that was the least of her worries. She picked up her canvas bag and turned it upside-down, spilling the cans of peanuts and packages of string cheese on the ground. “You can do whatever you want with this stuff,” she said, not looking at Joe. “Eat it or trade it for booze or throw it away. I don’t really care.”

  He took a step toward her. “Dorothy, I—”

  “No, you stay right there.” She pointed a quivering finger at him. “Don’t you dare follow me.”

  Then she tucked the empty bag under her arm and headed out of the park.

  SIX

  Joe saw the spike that hurt Dorothy. It glinted in the twilight like a black needle, its tip less than an inch above the mud. Then he blinked and it was gone.

  He also saw the puncture wound on her heel. She wouldn’t let him come close, but from a distance it looked like the wound he’d seen the night before, on the palm of the teenager who’d tried to lift the black sphere.

  As Dorothy sat there on the ground, massaging her foot, he stared at the patch of mud where the spike had appeared. It was at least six feet away from where he’d buried the satellite. He’d spent nearly an hour piling dirt on the thing early that morning, after the gang of teenagers decided to leave him alone. Despite the pain in his chest he’d built a wide, muddy mound that covered the sphere and filled in most of the crater. As a final touch, he’d dragged his cardboard box up the hillside and dropped it on top of the mound. He didn’t go to sleep until he was sure the black ball was thoroughly hidden. But he must’ve missed something.

  Had Dorothy stepped on another piece of the satellite? Maybe its severed antenna? That was the most likely explanation. But why did the spike vanish after she stepped on it? Did it really exist, or did Joe just imagine it?

  Before he could apologize to Dorothy or try to explain, she was back on her feet and walking away. She left the clearing as fast as she could, limping and scared. And Joe was scared too. For several seconds he just stood there, staring at the footprints in the mud and the scattered packages of food that Dorothy had left behind. Then, stepping slowly and carefully, he moved away from the mud pile. He didn’t stop until he was under the trees at the edge of the clearing. His heart hammered inside his aching chest.

  He needed a drink. Eighteen hours had passed since he’d downed his last bottle of malt liquor, and that was way too long. He was already experiencing withdrawal symptoms: tremors, headache, nausea. Back when Joe was in medical school at the University of Alabama, he’d learned about alcohol’s long-term effects and how heavy drinking transforms the brain cells. Over time it eliminated the crucial pieces of the cells that calm their activity. So when a drunk stops drinking, his brain can’t steady itself. Joe’s brain cells, deprived of the soothing balm of malt liquor, were firing wildly, making him shake and sweat. He understood the biochemistry and even remembered the names of the chemicals involved: gamma-aminobutyric acid, ligand-gated ion channels. But knowing the cause of his symptoms didn’t make him any less miserable.

  Joe leaned against an oak tree and closed his eyes. He took deep breaths and tried to quiet the storm in his head. But in his mind’s eye he still saw the black spike. It was as shiny and polished as the sphere he’d hidden.

  No, the spike wasn’t real. It was a hallucination. It was an illusion created by my screwed-up brain.

  After a while he opened his eyes. The sun had descended almost to the horizon. He felt a st
rong urge to simply walk away from the clearing and out of the park. He had nothing in his pockets, not even loose change, but inside his left sock was a ten dollar bill, which he’d earned yesterday afternoon by mopping the floor of a Chinese takeout place on West 207th Street. For ten dollars he could buy four bottles of Olde English 800. That would be enough to calm his nerves and help him forget about the satellite. The damn thing had given him nothing but trouble.

  But then he remembered the happiness he’d felt last night, after he’d found the sphere but before the teenagers showed up. That was real, that feeling of hope. Joe stared again at the mud underneath his crushed box, but instead of thinking about the satellite he pictured his reward for finding it, a fat stack of hundred dollar bills. He deserved that money. And if he left the park now, someone else might grab the sphere and get the reward. Those teenagers knew where it was, and they’d probably told all their friends about it. There was a good chance they’d come back tonight.

  Joe turned away from the clearing and scanned the ground under the oak trees. If you looked carefully you could find all kinds of useful junk in the weeds. After half a minute he found a pile of half-charred wooden planks. Someone had tried to make a bonfire on the hillside, but the wood hadn’t burned so well, probably because it was too damp. Most of the planks were charred at only one end. Joe picked up four of them and returned to the clearing. Then he threw one of the planks on the ground and stepped on it. He wasn’t going to risk what happened to Dorothy. Although the spike might’ve been just a hallucination, he was determined to keep his feet off the mud.