by EJ Knapp
I looked for Jaz but couldn’t see her amongst the crowd. I was about to wade in and look for her, when there was a loud explosion. I headed for the sound, cut through a small park and came out on Gratiot, just down from the Coney Island place. A Cushman cart was burning fiercely in the middle of the street. A news truck squealed to a halt. People were gathering on the front steps of the admin building. I heard glass shatter. Angry shouts. I turned and headed back toward Walnut Street.
I heard sirens as I passed through the park. The cavalry was on its way. Though, from the size of the crowds and the amount of anger present, I had a feeling the cops would have their hands full subduing the uprising. I continued my search for Jaz but gave it up when my cell phone rang. Felice.
“Teller.”
“I’m at the office,” Felice said. “We’re running a special edition. I’ve got everyone out on the streets. Give me what you have.”
“You okay? How’s HL?”
“The story, Teller.”
There was an edge to her voice I didn’t like, but I knew calling her on it wouldn’t get me anywhere. I started walking through the riot, talking to people who would give me a minute and a thought. As Jaz had suspected, the time change hadn’t been limited to Walnut or Pine Street. It had been made on every commute street in town and there were disturbances on every one of those streets. I came across several burning carts and more than one abandoned tow-truck.
The humidity was high and the breeze strong. Dark smoke roiled knee high down the street, blowing up to the tops of the lampposts where a cross breeze blew it back down in an unending swirl of angry grey.
Ticket books had been snatched from the overturned carts, torn to shreds and scattered to the wind. It looked like the aftermath of some bizarre New Year’s Eve party. People were moving up and down the street, through the smoke, holding rags to their faces, looking like wraiths in a B-grade horror flick. I removed my shirt, slipped off my T-shirt and wrapped it around my face like a bandana and put my shirt back on.
As I moved about, filling in Felice with what I was seeing, she filled me in on what the other reporters were phoning in. Several tow-trucks had been overturned. One was burning. Talk about anger, I thought. Not an easy thing to turn over a tow-truck.
I could hear sirens and occasionally see a bluish glow pulsing through the smoke, either stationary or moving across my line of limited vision. As more cops hit the street, the number of people present seemed to diminish. When I made my way back to Gratiot Avenue, I discovered where all the people had gone.
The size of the crowd outside the admin building had more than quadrupled from what it had been the last time I’d been here, and people were streaming in from all directions, adding to its bulk. A line of cops in full riot gear barred the door. Another line blocked the entrance to the parking lot. There were at least a half dozen carts burning on Gratiot now. Only one that I could see had anyone trying to fight the blaze.
I walked and talked, giving it all to Felice until the sun was up and my cell phone started beeping, telling me the battery was giving up the ghost.
“Cell’s dying,” I said.
“I’ve got enough for now.”
“Good. I’m going to head home, shower and find some clean clothes.”
“Check in when you’re back on the street.”
“Will do.”
I folded up the phone and headed home. I smelled of smoke and sweat. Sleep was out of the question but a hot shower would be nice. I noticed several people putting posters on telephone poles. A couple of them waved as I passed. Someone pointed. Someone else called out my name, but I was too tired to stop and give them a look. I just wanted to go home, take that shower and get back on the street.
Find out what was going on at the admin building.
Anonymity No More
By the time I made it back downtown, clean clothes, smelling fresh, the crowd had grown to enormous size. It spilled out across the lawn to either side of the admin entrance and across Gratiot Avenue, filling the street. The cops were trying to contain them as more people arrived alone and in small groups. I tried to do a size estimate, but that sort of thing has never been my strong suit so I gave it up. Half the town, maybe. Maybe more.
The cops looked nervous. The crowd looked angry. It was, at best, an uneasy standoff. Off in the distance I could see small curls of smoke. Sirens continued to scream, meaning some part of the earlier riot was continuing elsewhere.
The special edition of the paper had hit the stands with my article taking up the entire space above the fold, pictures and the observations of the other reporters filling out the page. The radio was still broadcasting the news. In a moment of magnanimous charity they had credited me and the Call-Register for breaking the story. People were coming up to me, shaking my hand, thanking me, patting me on the back. I had no idea what was going on or why so many people recognized me. Unlike a lot of columnists, I’ve never used a photograph alongside my columns. I prefer the aura of anonymity. When I stopped long enough to examine one of the posters plastered to nearly every flat surface, I understood why that anonymity had morphed into notoriety.
Somebody had been busy at the old Xerox machine. There was a black and white picture of me which had to have been taken earlier this morning, before I had wrapped my T-shirt around my face. My hair was disheveled, my face streaked with soot. I had the cell to my ear and there was a Cushman cart burning in the background. ‘Viva La Mangler! Viva Teller!’ was printed below the picture in vivid red lettering. Below that was a copy of the article I’d written for the special edition.
As I walked down Gratiot, many of the shopkeepers standing in their doorways, watching the action, waved at me. One came out and handed me a cup of coffee. I thanked him and turned and there stood a young woman with a bag full of fresh pastries.
“Here,” she said, handing me the bag. She smiled and ran off.
I stood there, watching her until she disappeared into the donut shop. The smell coming from the bag reminded me of how hungry I was.
I considered returning home, locking myself in my room. I wasn’t used to this kind of recognition and it was making me feel uneasy. It also reinforced my belief that the DPE hadn’t just been screwing the car owner. It was damaging small business as well.
I scanned the police presence but didn’t see anyone who looked important enough to try wading through the crowd to reach them. What big shots were left would be off somewhere planning strategy and it was the big shots I wanted to talk to. I could head over to the police department but I doubted anyone would be there. From the looks of things, every cop on the payroll was out on the streets. The best thing to do at this point was to go back to the paper, find out what I could from Felice.
Thoughts of HL colored my mood as I turned toward the newspaper office. I took a sip of the coffee. A little too much sugar but I could tolerate it. Though I knew I shouldn’t eat the donuts, risk the sugar rush they would bring, I dug into the bag anyway.
I managed to get through one of them by the time I passed through the front door of the paper. It was a cheese Danish, very sweet, and I could already feel the skin tightening around my eyes. I have such a weird reaction to sugar, especially pastry. Too many of these things and I’d be crawling around on the ceiling screaming.
I handed the bag to the first person I passed and headed for the stairs.
The Two Foot Drop
“Feeling better?” Felice asked when I walked into her office.
“A little,” I said, still shaken by all the attention on the street. Her office had been straightened up, I noticed. I had no intention of checking out HL’s office. I didn’t think I could bear that at the moment. I pulled one of the chairs from along the wall and sat across from her at her desk.
“But I think my cover’s blown. Everyone down there seems to know me. They’re waving at me, saying hi, giving me stuff.”
She laughed.
“Teller, when are you going to learn?” she s
aid. “You’ve never had a cover. You like to think you hide, walk the streets unnoticed, but the hair, the way you dress, the way you conduct yourself, you stand out like a neon sign.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Something else to add to my list of things to be paranoid about. Maybe I should cut the hair and buy a suit.”
“It wouldn’t help,” she said. “It isn’t about the length of your hair or what you wear. You could look and dress as everyone else and still you would stand out.”
“You think? The homeless are hidden. Few see them and they all but litter the streets. I always figured on the same reaction; seen yet unseen.”
“People don’t see the homeless because they are afraid. Afraid of them, afraid they may become them. The homeless are a harsh reminder of the tenuous hold we all have on stability. You, on the other hand, they see. Perhaps even envy to one degree or another.”
“Envy? Me? What do I have that’s worth being envious about?”
“A great deal, actually. All people have enemies, enemies they can’t fight and that can be very frustrating. Frightening. You fight those enemies for them: go over the walls of opposition they have no idea how to climb. You move outside their narrow, predefined worlds and often get results they could never hope to achieve. You fight the battles they cannot. People can’t help but notice you. It’s your fear of letting them close that keeps them away, not their inability to see you.”
“How’s HL?” I was feeling even more uncomfortable than I had out on the street. I needed to turn the topic of conversation away from me. Felice smiled, cocked her head. I could tell she wasn’t going to let it go that easy. Something was up.
“Are you aware the other reporters admire you? Respect you? All they’ve talked about of late is how well you manage things. The directions. The encouragement. Could someone hidden have done that? Do you remember talking to Wesley? He told me how much he wanted to be a reporter like you someday.”
“Felice!” I said, squirming in my seat. “This conversation is really making me uncomfortable, okay? Can we drop it? I should get back to what’s going on outside.”
“No,” she said, the smile gone now. “We can’t drop it. And what is going on outside is well in hand, well covered. This is more important at the moment.”
She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes.
“I had a teacher, many years ago now, who believed that knowledge of Self resided in two places; the head and the heart. That knowledge, though valuable, was diminished if it remained only in the head. It had to descend to the heart to truly gain strength.”
“The two-foot drop,” I said.
“You’ve heard of this?” She leaned forward.
“There was a counselor in that spin-dry I went to in Washington. He was always talking about the two-foot drop. You could know in your head that you were a drunk but until you knew it in your heart, you would remain a drunk.”
“A wise man. And the same is true of all self-knowledge. Knowing it up here,” she said, pointing to her head, “is not the same as knowing it here, in your heart, where the true knowledge of Self resides. This is something you must come to, this two-foot drop. And soon.”
Something clicked then. I wasn’t sure yet what it was, but it had something to do with HL.
“Yes,” she said, before I could ask the question. She held up her hand, holding off further inquiry.
“Do you remember our earlier conversation, when I asked you why you had returned?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you found your answer?”
I started to give her the same old refrain, that I didn’t know, but I wasn’t so sure now it was true. I turned my head and looked out the window, surprised to see it was raining.
“I got tired of being alone,” I said, my voice cracking more than I felt comfortable with. I could feel tears welling up behind my eyelids, threatening to breach the edge and roll down my cheeks like the rain that rolled down the window.
“And?”
“And tired of chasing ghosts.”
“Robyn’s ghost.”
“Chasing hers. Running from others. My parents. My past. And running from the few friends I have. You. Albert. HL. Even Marion, for Christ’s sake. All those things. But, yeah, tired of chasing Robyn’s ghost. I want it to end. I want to let her go but I don’t know how. When HL asked me back that last time, my first reaction was to say thanks, but no thanks. But I found myself saying yes and the more I thought about it, the more the idea ... excited me. Woke up something inside. Something I hadn’t felt in a long time. As beautiful as Washington is, I never felt like I belonged there.”
“It’s been hard on you being back.”
I brushed the tears from my eyes and looked back at her. “Next to losing Robyn and quitting drinking, the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
“There may be harder things yet to endure.”
I closed my eyes. “HL,” I whispered. “He’s not going to make it out of the ICU, is he?”
“No, Teller. I’m afraid he won’t. But there is more you need to know.”
I opened my eyes. She leaned forward, a deep sigh escaping her lips. Clasping her hands about her head, she began to massage her forehead with the tips of her fingers, wincing when she came too close to the spot where Keller had struck her.
“Are you okay, Felice?” I realized for the first time how tired she looked, the pain she must be in.
“As well as I can be,” she said. “There are moments when all I long for is silence, but the silence never comes.” She whispered this last and I wasn’t sure the words were meant for me.
She looked up. Her eyes were dark ringed, her eyelids moist.
“After Hector died, HL went into a long decline. Of course, I was the only one aware of it. He never let it show outside this office. He was a strong man, then as now, but I knew. Just as I knew that Lawrence was a disappointment to him. They had never been close and despite his efforts to draw Lawrence closer, the gap between them just grew wider. In the end, it was to you he turned.”
“Me?”
“Yes. He admired you, admired your skills as a reporter, your perseverance in uncovering the truth and the faith you had in believing that the truth would, in the end, mean something. His admiration, I believe – I know – turned to love.
“You became, not the son who died or the one who ran from him, but a third son, different from either of them but one he could be equally as proud of. Make no mistake, distance or no, he was proud of Lawrence even as he disagreed with Lawrence’s decisions but he didn’t feel toward Lawrence what he felt toward you. Did you know he had copies of everything you wrote sent to him?”
“No,” I said, surprised. “I had no idea.”
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
“Several years ago, before you agreed to return, HL changed his will. I know because I typed it up and witnessed its signing. Hector was dead. Lawrence had no interest in the paper other than what the sale of it would bring him. The paper was HL’s whole life and the idea of it falling into the hands of an uncaring, all-for-profit media conglomerate appalled him. He needed someone with the same feeling for it as his; the same love and respect. You, Teller. He needed you.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to tell me here, Felice?”
“HL owns the paper outright. The land, the building, the presses. Upon his death, it, and his private fortune, will all belong to you.”
New Uses For A Keyboard
I don’t remember leaving Felice’s office. One minute I was sitting there, stunned at the news she’d delivered and the next I was standing on the front steps of the newspaper office trying to reconnect with time and space.
As the world began to refocus itself, I saw that the morning mist had become a drizzle. The cracking thunder was closer now, the turbulent clouds rolling in overhead. This drizzle would soon turn into a driving rain.
Chaos continued its reign over the streets. P
eople running to and fro. A pall of dark smoke hung head high, the smell of burnt rubber and plastic thick enough to make my stomach turn. Three burly men were doing their best to yank a parking meter free of the sidewalk. Two cops passed them by without a glance, leading a meter maid in cuffs between them.
I scanned the moving crowd, searching for Jaz, figuring that bright blue hair of hers would stand out despite the limited visibility. Most of the crowd was still on the Admin steps, a good view of which I couldn’t get from where I stood. Cutting through the people in the street, I made my way to the weird clock tower and climbed it, nicking my hand twice on its sharp edges.
It took a moment but I spotted her. She was being accosted by a man in a hoody. When she managed to knock back the hood, I nearly impaled myself in an effort to get off the clock and over to her as quickly as I could. The man she was arguing with was Keller.
I struggled through the surging crowd, losing precious minutes. By the time I reached the admin steps, they were gone. I searched the crowd and caught a blur of blue as it disappeared around the corner of the building. Fighting my way back down the stairs, I chased after them.
Compared with the front lawn of the Admin building, the parking lot along the side was an island of gravel-coated calm. I ran along the side of the building, being as quiet as possible. As I turned the corner at the rear of the building, I found myself just in time to see the rear door shut with an ominous thunk.
I raced over to it, hoping against hope and having that hope dashed when I found the door locked. Searching my pockets, I retrieved my cell phone and flipped it open. It bleeped once and died. Damn battery. One of these days I really need to crawl into the twenty-first century with all this technological crap and learn to RTFM and plug in my cell phone.
I hurried back around to the front of the building, wended my way through the crowd and up the steps, ducking behind three cops who were trying to subdue an angry civilian.
Inside the Admin building, the lobby was empty, the lights dim. It appeared the riot outside had forced an evacuation. I was crossing the lobby when someone called out to me. I turned. It was one of the Mutts who had escorted me from the building the last time I was here.
