20

by John Edgar Wideman

  Sticks broke across Emiliano's back. Rocks and boots tore at his clothing and bruised his skin. Emiliano rolled back and forth, squealing like a rabbit caught in the talons of an owl. For a moment he thought he was going to lose consciousness and felt a pleasant murky numbness spreading over him. But then a violent kick to his chest brought alertness back with a blinding flare of pain.

  “Aiyeeeeee!” Emiliano screamed, and without knowing where the strength to do so came from, sprang to his feet. His scream was a wild, inhuman scream, the kind of shriek that could arise only from the festering depths of hell. Astonished and frightened, Emiliano's tormentors fell back. Blindly he plunged forward, arm over his face, and broke free of them. A sharp command from Argentina Neruda brought the women back to their senses, and they chased after him, cursing and bellowing.

  Shielded in darkness, Emiliano ran without knowing what lay ahead. Rocks and sticks whizzed by his head. He tucked his neck into his shoulders and sprinted blindly, desperately. Within a matter of seconds he heard a difference in their voices, a rise of anger and a diminishment of power, and he knew that he had outdistanced them.

  Settling into a comfortable trot, Emiliano ran for another fifty yards. Warm liquid trickled into his mouth and he tasted his own blood. His hand, broken at the wrist, dangled like the clapper of a bell. His spine felt twisted, cracked, wrenched into an impossible position. And yet, despite his discomfort, Emiliano felt exhilarated; he had beaten Death again. His luck still held.

  Smiling through his pain, Emiliano slowed to a walk. The thought that he should stop advancing through the darkness and orient himself had just occurred to him when, with the next step, the earth fell away and he tumbled headfirst into a ravine.

  ————

  When Emiliano Fortunato regained consciousness, he felt himself to be lying on his side. His arm was tied behind his back to a rope that tightly encircled his waist. His broken wrist had been set and was immobilized by a splint wrapped heavily with cloth. His feet were bound at the ankles, and when he tried to stretch his legs he discovered some obstacle that would not permit full extension. A silky strip of cloth had been pulled between his lips and tied at the back of his head so that he could not speak. Everything was dark. Although he felt nothing covering his eyes, he could only assume, from the profundity of darkness, that his eyes had been masked.

  By drawing his legs up beneath him, then leaning heavily on his shoulder and elbow and then jerking himself up, Emiliano worked himself into a sitting position. With his feet and head he determined the approximate perimeter of his cell. If he sat leaning slightly forward with his hips pushed against the rear wall he could stretch his legs out completely, the front wall then a mere two inches from the soles of his feet. His cell seemed to taper toward a point at the top, so that if he leaned too far forward or backward from the waist, he banged his head.

  A bat, it seemed, had somehow gotten into his darkened cell. Every now and then Emiliano felt the flutter of its wings against the top of his head. He even felt the animal perch on his shoulder for a moment and take a bite out of his ear. He felt the sliminess of bat shit dripping onto his hand, and by the stench of his cell assumed that a good supply of that commodity had already accumulated on the floor.

  Only one name came to mind when Emiliano considered whom his captor might be. Apparently Argentina Neruda had dragged him from the ravine, had salvaged him from certain death for some devious and evil purpose all her own. Maybe she planned to publicly sacrifice him, or maybe to torture him by slow, excruciating degrees. Only she, that vile bag of bones, would be capable of such a thing.

  Hearing noises coming from far away Emiliano sat very still, straining to hear. He recognized, or thought he did, the slow rhythmic cadence of a funeral drum. That, of course, would be for Rosarita Calderón. It meant also that night had passed, that it was probably mid-morning of the following day.

  Picturing in his mind the funeral procession, Emiliano envisioned it proceeding solemnly down the street toward the cemetery behind the Mother of the Holy Infant church. Rosarita would not be allowed interment in consecrated ground, so a place would be made for her just outside the low cemetery fence. Father Vallarte would be standing at the graveside, mumbling an apology for Rosarita ‘s wasted life. He would lose his place and leaf haphazardly through the moth-eaten Bible, find his place, begin again, and then become distracted by the movements of a cloud or the spiraling flight of a hawk gliding on updrafts.

  Emiliano even imagined that he could recognize his mother's weeping. After a long time he heard the villagers returning back up the street, muttering and sighing.

  From not far away came several recognizable voices. The most important was that of Dr. Sevilla, who announced that in a week or two he would return to look in on the remaining mothers-to-be. But something in Sevilla's voice told Emiliano that the doctor would not be returning to Torrentino, that he fully intended now to turn his back on the village forever. What, he wondered, had they told the doctor about Emiliano's disappearance? That he had run off, unable to bear the guilt of Rosarita's sacrificial suicide? Or that Emiliano was a demon, an evil spirit who himself had thrown the hapless girl off the ledge and had then slithered back to his dark master?

  Emiliano kicked at his cell. He rattled the walls and groaned through his gag in an attempt to be heard. But all he accomplished was to stir up his cellmate, who squawked and flew frantically from side to side, its wings lashing Emiliano's face and frightening him so thoroughly that he ceased his kicking and fell silent again.

  Now the sounds Emiliano heard told him that the crowd was dispersing. He heard a door open and close, the latch click. Footsteps shuffled toward him. He heard the soft scrapings as someone knelt outside his cell. He heard excited breathing.

  Emiliano wished the gag were not in his mouth so that he could spit in Argentina Neruda's face when she first showed herself.

  ————

  After Rosarita's funeral, María Fortunato watched Dr. Sevilla riding away with tears in his eyes. Then she returned alone to her house. Once inside, she locked the front door, then crossed the room to the bedroom and the huge wrought-iron birdcage that sat now in the far corner. Lately Alissa Márquez had been asking to have her birdcage returned, but María would never part with it now. No, never. She would fight Alissa tooth and nail if necessary, but she would never give up the birdcage.

  Kneeling in front of the enormous cage, María lifted off the heavy cover and smiled warmly at her two birds. The green and white parrot did not look very happy; it perched on a swinging bar near the top of the cage and stubbornly refused to face her. The newer bird, however, stared at her with wide hazel eyes. María laughed to herself: how Alissa Márquez would love to get her hands on this bird! In fact every woman in town would covet it if they learned of its existence. María would have to be very careful and discreet if she wished to keep this bird for herself. It was the kind of bird that would fly away forever if you did not clip its wings.

  But what a handsome, valuable bird it was! María would have been content just to sit there in front of the cage, to sit for hours at a time with her demented catlike patience and merely stare at the bird's pretty face. Gingerly she stuck her hand through the wrought-iron bars and with her long ragged claws stroked the huge bird between its legs. The bird seemed to like that. Anyway, it was smart enough not to resist.

  1985

  THE MAN WHO LOVED LEVITTOWN

  WD. Wetherell

  You realize what I had to do to get this place? It was thirty-odd years ago come July. I'm just out of the Army. Two kids, twins on their way, a wife who's younger than I am, just as naive, just as crazy hopeful. We're living in the old neighborhood with my folks four to a room. All along I've got this idea. Airplanes. P-40s, these great big 20s. We're slogging through Saipan, they're flying over it. DiMaria, I tell myself, this war is going to end, when it does that's where you want to be, up there in the blue not down here in the brown. Ever since I'm a kid I'm
good with machines, what I do is figure I'll get a job making them. Grumman. Republic. Airborne. They're all out there on Long Island. I tell Kathy to watch the kids, I'll be back tonight, wish me luck. I borrow the old man's Ford, out I go. Brooklyn Bridge, Jamaica Avenue, Southern State, and I'm there.

  Potato fields. Nothing but. French-fried heaven, not another car in sight. I stop at a diner for coffee. Farmers inside look me over like I'm the tax man come to collect. Bitter. Talking about how they were being run off their places by these new housing developments you saw advertised in the paper, which made me mad because here I am a young guy just trying to get started, what were we supposed to do…live on East Thirteenth Street the rest of our lives? The being run off part was pure phooey anyhow, because they were making plenty on it, they never had it so good. But hearing them talk made me curious enough to drive around a little exploring.

  Sure enough, here's this farmhouse all boarded up. Out in front is an ancient Chevy piled to the gunwales with old spring beds, pots and pans. Dust Bowl, Okies, Grapes of Wrath…just like that. I drive up to ask directions half expecting Marjorie Main. Instead there's this old man climbing up to the top of the pile. He's having a hell of a time getting up there. Once he does he stands with his hand shielding his eyes looking around the horizon like someone saying good-bye.

  Maybe I'm just imagining it now but it seems to me it was so flat and smooth those days even from where I stood on the ground I could see just as far as he could…see the entire Island, right across the entire thing. Out to Montauk with waves breaking atop the rocks so green and bright they made me squint. Back this way over acres of pine trees, maybe one, maybe two lonely railroad tracks, nothing else except lots of ospreys which were still around those days. Then he turns, I turn, we look over to where the Jones Beach water tower is jutting up like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Just this side of it the Great South Bay is wall-to-wall scallops and clams. You look left up the other way toward the North Shore there's these old ivy-covered mansions being torn down, pieces of confetti, broken champagne bottles all over the lawn. I have to squint a little now…I can just make out the shore of the Sound with all these sandy beaches that had “No Trespassing” signs on them, only a man in a yellow vest is walking along now ripping them down…not two seconds later the beach is crowded with little kids splashing in the waves. Then after that we both look the other way back toward New York…the old man tottering up there in the breeze…over these abandoned hangars at Roosevelt Field where everybody took off to Europe alone from back in the twenties, then out toward where the skyscrapers are in the distance. I see the Empire State Building…for some crazy reason I wave. Then in a little closer over one or two small villages, acres of potato fields, and no matter which way you look…Sound side, Bay side, South Shore, North Shore…there's the sound of hammers, the smell of sawdust, little houses going up in clusters, carpenters working bare-chested in the sun. The old man is looking all this over, then looks right at me, you know what he says? “I hope it poisons you!” With that he fell off the bundle, his son had to prop him back up, they drove away in a cloud of dust.

  Fine. I drive down the road a little farther, here are these new houses up close. Small ones. Lots of mud. Old potatoes sticking out of it like dried-up turds. Broken blocks off two-by-fours. Nails, bits of shingle. In front of each house or half house or quarter house is a little lawn. Fuzzy green grass. Baby grass. At every corner is an empty post waiting for a street name to be fitted in the slot on top. A man comes along in a jeep, shuffles through the signs, scratches his head, sticks in one says LINDBERGH, drives off. Down the street is a Quonset hut with a long line of men waiting out in front, half of them still in uniform. Waiting for jobs I figure, like in the Depression…here we go again. But here's what happens. A truck comes along, stops in front of the house, half a dozen men pile out…in fifteen minutes they've put in a bathroom. Pop! Off they go to the next house, just in time, too, because here comes another truck with the kitchen. Pop! In goes the kitchen. They move on one house, here comes the electricians. Pop! Pop! Pop! the house goes up.

  There's no one around except this guy in overalls planting sticks in the little brown patches stamped out of the grass. “My name's DiMaria,” I tell him. “What's yours?” “Bill Levitt,” he says. “And what's the name of this place anyhow?” “Levittown.” And then it finally dawns on me. What these men are lined up for isn't work, it's homes!

  “How much does one of these babies cost?” I ask him casually.

  He picks at his nose, leans his shovel against the tree. “Seven thousand,” he says, looking right at me. “One hundred dollars down.” “Oh yeah?” I say, still casual. But I kind of half turn, take out my wallet, take a peek inside. “I only have eighty-three.” He looks me over. “You a veteran?” “You bet. Four years' worth, I don't miss it at all either.” He calls over to a man helping with the sinks. “Hey, Johnson!” he yells. “Take this guy's money and let him pick out whichever one he wants. Mr. DiMaria,” he says, shaking my hand. “You've just bought yourself a house.”

  I will never until the day I die forget the expression on Kathy's face when I got back that night. Not only have I bought a house but that same afternoon Grumman hires me at three bucks an hour plus overtime. “Honey,” I said, “get your things together, let's go, hubba, hubba, we're on our way home!”

  ————

  I'm not saying it wasn't tough those first years. It was plenty tough. I worked to six most nights, sometimes seven. When I got home I fixed hamburgers for the kids since Kathy was out working herself. Minute she gets home, out I go pumping gas on the turnpike for mortgage money. Ten years we did that. But what made it seem easier was that everyone else on Lindbergh was more or less in the same boat. Young GIs from old parts of the city somewhere working at the big plants farther out. There were some pretty good men on that block. Scotty. Mike. Hank Zimmer. There wasn't anything we couldn't build or fix between us. I once figured out just among the guys on Lindbergh, let alone Hillcrest, we had enough talent to make ourselves an F-14. You know how complicated an F-14 is? Cabin cruisers, porches, garages…you name it, we built it. That's why this little boxes stuff was pure phooey. Sure they were little boxes when we first started. But what did we do? The minute we got our mitts on them we started remodeling them, adding stuff, changing them around.

  There wasn't anything we wouldn't do for each other. Babysit, drive someone somewhere, maybe help out with a mortgage payment someone couldn't meet. You talk about Little League. Me and Mike are the ones invented it. We got the field for it, organized teams, umpired, managed, coached. Both my boys played; we once had a team to the national finals, we would have won if O'Brien's kid hadn't booted a grounder. But it was nice on summer nights to see dads knocking out flies to their kids, hearing the ball plop into gloves, see the wives sitting there on the lawns talking, maybe watering the lawn. The swimming pool up the block, the shops, the schools. It was nice all those things. People take them for granted nowadays, they had to start somewhere, right?

  I'll never forget those years. The fifties. The early sixties. We were all going the same direction…thanks to Big Bill Levitt we all had a chance. You talk about dreams. Hell, we had ours. We had ours like nobody before or since ever had theirs. SEVEN THOUSAND BUCKS! ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS DOWN! We were cowboys out there. We were the pioneers.

  ————

  I'll be damned if I know where the end came from. It was a little after the time I finished putting the sun roof over the porch. Kathy was in the living room yelling, trying to get my attention. “Tommy, come over here quick! Look out the window on Scotty's front lawn!” There planted right smack in the middle is a sign. FOR SALE! You know what my first reaction was? I was scared. Honest to God. I can't tell you why, but seeing that sign scared me. It scared me so much I ran into the bathroom, felt like being sick. Steady, DiMaria, I said. It's a joke like the time he put flounders under the hubcaps. Ginger needed a walk anyway, I snap a collar on her, out we
go.

  “So, Scotty, you kidding or what?” I say. Scotty just smiles. “We're pulling up, moving to Florida.” “You mean you're taking a vacation down there? Whereabouts, Vero Beach?” He shakes his head. “Nope, Tommy. For good. I'm retiring. Twenty-five years of this is enough for anyone. The kids are on their own now. The house is too big for just the two of us. Carol and I are heading south. Thirty-nine thousand we're asking. Thirty-nine thousand! Whoever thought when we bought these shacks they would someday go for that?”

  The twenty-five years part stunned me because it was like we'd all started yesterday as far as I was concerned. But the Florida part, that really killed me. Florida was someplace you got oranges from, where the Yanks spent March. But to actually move there?

  “Come on, Scotty,” I laugh. “You're kidding me, right?” “Nope. This guy is coming to look at the house this afternoon.”

  ————

  A guy named Mapes bought Scotty's place. A young kid worked for the county. I went over and introduced myself. “I've been here twenty-nine years,” I said. “I knew Bill Levitt personally.” “Who?” he asks. “Big Bill Levitt, the guy this town is named after.” “Oh,” he says, looking stupid. “I always thought that was an Indian name.”

  I should have known right there. But being the idiot I am, I take him out behind the house, show him the electricity meter. “Tell you a little secret,” I whisper. “Got a screwdriver?”

  I'd been helping myself to some surplus voltage ever since I got out there. Everyone on Lindbergh did. We were all practically engineers; when we moved in we couldn't believe it, all this electricity up there, all those phone lines going to waste. It was the land of milk and honey as far as we were concerned; all we had to do was plug in and help ourselves. I'm telling Mapes this but he's standing there looking dubious. “Uh, you sure this is okay?” “You kidding? There's plenty more where that came from. They'll never miss it. Twist that, jig this, weld that there, you're in business.” “Oh yeah,” he says, but you can tell he doesn't get it because when I hand him the screwdriver he drops it. “Oops!” he giggles. Meantime his bride comes along. Beads. Sandals. No, repeat, NO bra. “Jennifer,” he says, “this is Mr. DiMaria from next door.” “Call me Tommy, how are you?” The first words out of her mouth, you know what they are? “How many live in your house?” “Uh, two. My wife, myself.” She looks me over, puffs on something I don't swear was a Winston. “That's not many for a whole house. If you ever decide to sell my kid sister's getting married. They need a place bad. Let me know next week, will yah?”