The Donzerly Light

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “What the hell...” Jay whispered, but the whisper seemed to be enough. Or maybe it hadn’t mattered at all.

  “Peace, brother,” Sign Guy said, never looking up or away from his task. His casting of money into the night.

  Jay stepped from the shadows, the headlights of oncoming cars splashing upon him like gusts of white wind that came and went as each passed. “What are you doing?”

  Now the bum did look to him, smiling that smile. That smile that was his alone—or his to loan. That smile that right then seemed closer to mad than glad. “Making a deposit. What else?”

  “Those are hundred dollar bills,” Jay observed incredulously, stepping closer.

  “‘Tis better to give,” Sign Guy sermoned, a car passing close behind sending a wash of night air by him as he loosed another handful of bills, thousands of dollars that fluttered down and away from the bridge like a swarm of gigantic green moths.

  “Throwing money off a bridge is giving?” Jay’s head shook in slight denouncement of that. “No, giving is what those people did who slipped that money into your can. Only, is it really giving if they don’t choose to give?”

  “Choice is a relative term.” And more money still floated down toward the water.

  “Relative to what?”

  “To what I want.”

  A chill spread upon Jay like a skim of icy rain. “You’re a pickpocket. That’s what you are. That’s all you are.”

  “I didn’t pick yours...”

  “I didn’t have anything worth giving,” Jay reminded the bum. “I wasn’t rich.”

  Sign Guy nodded, the last of the his take from that day slipping from his grip and drifting down, down, down to be swept away. “But you are now.”

  Yes, yes he was. His proverbial pockets were full now. Bursting, in actuality. He had money to burn. Money to buy sleek apartments, and fast cars if he wanted. Money to beckon women, to draw them to him—to it. Money, money, money. Green as far as he could see. And it all came from what? From a few coins. A dollar fifty five that he’d given the bum. Change that was now at the bottom of the East River with everyone else’s offering to Sign Guy.

  And there the difference lay. In the offering. In what was offered—or taken. “They don’t even know. You just make it happen.” He swept a shaky hand at the surreal drama that that night on the bridge had become. “Like you’re making this happen.”

  “Making things happen is no trouble at all,” Sign Guy said, his smile pulling back at the corners, his face seeming mostly a curving hole now, a fence of white teeth inside, and darkness beyond them. “Making them happen with a bit of panache is where the fun lies.”

  “It was you,” Jay said, the accusation mostly breath. The chill upon him sizzled, goosebumps sprouting from head to toe.

  “The fat man?” Sign Guy asked, coy as a child. “Or should I say ‘the splat man.” He grimaced mockingly. “You know, I might stroll by sometime and see where the girth met the earth.”

  Jay shook his head. “Why? Why did you do it?”

  “Because your friend was right—the fat bastard could have ruined you. He would have, too, you know. You have to know that.” Sign Guy surveyed Jay then, seeming to puzzle over him. Over his inability to ‘get it’. Or...was it unwillingness? “You seem shocked.”

  “You killed him,” Jay said. He hadn’t bargained on this. Would never have bargained on this. “Murdered him.”

  “He killed himself,” Sign Guy countered.

  “You made him do it!” Jay shouted. He gestured at the traffic sliding unnaturally by. “Like you’re making this happen!”

  Sign Guy shrugged, his smiling lips pursing a bit. “Not all that different from what you’re capable of.”

  “Me? Coins come up heads and I see a little piece of the fucking future, fella! That’s all! That’s nothing close to what you did!”

  Again the bum demurred, his shoulders rising and falling once. “Are you sure about that?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A...theory,” the bum began. “If your mind’s eye envisions something, and it comes to pass, then is it not possible you made it happen?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Does the vision cast a coming reality in stone?” Sign Guy asked, hugging his empty Yuban can close. An empty vessel that would fill with the new sunrise.

  Jay swallowed, the possibility, the suggestion of the possibility, troubling him. “I didn’t see Mitchell jumping.”

  “No, I do have to take credit for that. But you do see things.”

  “See!” Jay yelled, hitting that point, that difference. “I know what stocks to pick. I don’t make them perform.”

  Sign Guy shrugged. “Maybe it is just one of those queer conundrums. A chicken or the egg kind of thing. Let it be what you want.”

  Air whooshed in and out through Jay’s nose, fast and frantic. This guy was insane. Out of the world fucking INSANE! Murderous and INSANE! And he hadn’t wished for this. Not this. Riches, yes. But some protective bum with the power to divert bridge traffic, or make old men dive off their balconies? No. No, he hadn’t bargained on that at—

  “Are you changing your mind, Jay Grady?” Sign Guy asked, puzzling over his young friend. “Are you ready to throw it away?”

  Jay stared at him, trembling inside. The bum was reading him. Knowing him.

  “Fate crossed our paths, but if you would rather your dream go away...” Sign Guy offered, his smile changing, half of it drooping crazily as if some part of the mechanism that worked it had come unhinged. “Is that what you wish? To be free of what I’ve given you?”

  Jay looked fast right and saw a pair of headlights swing his way.

  “To be free of me?”

  The car came at him, the driver beyond the glare of the lights grinning madly, and Jay jumped back toward the lopsided lace of steel at the road’s edge. Just short of impacting the bridge’s tangled skeleton and crushing Jay, the hands on the wheel jerked hard left and took the car (weapon? instrument of persuasion?) back into its lane of travel.

  “Is that what you want, Jay Grady?”

  Jay hesitated, frozen by the question, and the threat so obviously attached to it. The threat just demonstrated. It mixed with all the possibilities the bum had just suggested, all the sinister implications of the reality just presented him. Gripping the cold iron girder at his back still, he thought on the choice given him, and thought, and thought, mulling on it for so long a time that he realized that not responding quickly, and with a resounding ‘YES!’, facing whatever consequences might come with such a response, spoke far more to his state of mind, to what he’d become, to the truth of Carrie’s appraisal of him than any simple ‘no’ ever would.

  “I thought not,” Sign Guy said, pleased. With himself. With the whole wide world right then. “You’ve chosen wisely, my young friend.”

  “I’m not your friend,” Jay said, coming away from the steely mesh and taking a step back from the bum.

  “You’re welcome,” Sign Guy replied obliquely, but by then Jay was already a good distance down the bridge, running for all he was worth as traffic zigged toward him, horns blaring and brake lights flaring.

  Sixth Interrogation

  August 15...2:28 a.m.

  Jay stopped, lost in the memories’ foul wake.

  Mr. Wright studied him briefly. “I know what’s got you: you’re wondering what would have happened if you’d told him to fuck off right there on the bridge.”

  Jay sneered at his captor. “What are you—psychic?”

  Mr. Wright ignored the insolence. His prisoner was talking, and that was half the battle, so a little attitude now and then had become inconsequential. What was quite consequential was the unspoken second half of this battle, because from the tale Mr. Wright would have to mine the truth. The truth to what he had witnessed, and to what the man across the table from him truly was.

  “Why didn’t you tell him to fuck off, Grady?” Mr. Wright asked again
.

  “Maybe I was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of getting run down by one of those cars, or of taking a leap into the East River with a crazy smile on my face. Is that a good enough reason?”

  “It didn’t bother you?” Mr. Wright asked, his eyes slitting with disdain. “What he’d done?”

  “What was I going to do? Who was I going to tell? And what would I tell them?”

  “So you just accepted it?”

  Jay thought on that very briefly. “I convinced myself it didn’t matter. I told myself lots of things. That Mitchell was old. That he was going to kick someday soon anyway. That maybe he did it on his own, and Sign Guy just knew about it. I told myself those things, and when believing them got hard I told myself that he was a ruthless bastard who got what he had coming.”

  “What humanity,” Mr. Wright observed with cold judgment. “Did your parents teach you that, or did you just pick it up along the way?”

  Jay glared at him. “Do you think I wouldn’t give anything to change all that happened? Maybe things would have been different if I’d done like you said and told him to fuck off, but I don’t think so. I think this fate was cast in stone from the minute I gave him that buck fifty five. No—from the second I remembered the donzerly light. That was when this fate was cast.”

  “You mean your fate.”

  Jay shook his head. “There were more lives than mine weaved into this fate. I understand that now. My destiny was not my own. My life was not my own. I’m not sure anyone’s is completely their own. Not even Sign Guy’s. I really believe now that life is a...well...a random collaboration.” He eyed Mr. Wright, waiting for a reaction. None came. “I don’t expect you to understand that. Not yet.”

  “Then make me understand,” Mr. Wright said, using a variation of his ‘how’ or ‘tell me’ mantra once more.

  Jay still wasn’t sure that was possible. He hadn’t been when starting to tell the tale, and he wasn’t now.

  Yet, he had started, and he had come to this point. He could speak of things past. Could let them out again.

  But all ‘til now had been only...odd. Fantastic. Weird. Even troubling. What came next, what began next, were the first blind steps toward a precipice shrouded in darkness. Not a darkness born of night, or mere absence of light, but one that was birthed in the human soul. In tainted corners of the human soul.

  He’d waded into that darkness, not feeling cautiously ahead, not testing the next step with his toes, and he had gone over that precipice. Had fallen.

  Could he travel that black path again, in memory this time? He believed so now. It was only memory, he told himself, and memory couldn’t hurt you.

  It could only drive you mad.

  Hot breath hissed in and out his nose.

  “It was the best of times after Mitchell died,” Jay said with a quiet but obvious shame.

  “How so?”

  “It rained money. That’s the way it seemed. We were unstoppable. In the two months after he died we pulled in two million in commissions. Two million. Not bad for four young turks loose on the Street.”

  “So times were good. They obviously didn’t stay that way.”

  “No,” Jay concurred, “they didn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone got wise,” Jay said with soft, uncertain reverence for the moment still. “I still don’t know why, or how, but someone got wise to him.”

  “To the bum.”

  Jay nodded.

  “Go on.”

  Nineteen

  Give And Take

  It was a Wednesday, a hot August Wednesday morning, the twenty third of that month in nineteen eighty nine, and Jay Grady was beginning to think as he walked to work through Manhattan’s thick warmth that both Christine and Jude were right. She had made her feelings known that morning, a full month after Jude had suggested that, uh, buddy, you can afford not to take the subway now, and had further informed him of amazing things called limousines that came with drivers, and phones, and built-in bars. And, oh yeah, air conditioning.

  Jay glanced at the yellowing sky above the spire of Trinity Church, the sky that, at eight o’clock in the fucking morning, was already spilling wet heat into the city, and thought that, yeah, a climatically-controlled seventy degree ride would have been nice right about then.

  But what would he have to give up to have that? To travel about the city in a style his new status and its accompanying bankroll could provide? Some green, sure, but there was green to burn (though he had actually only done that once, for real, just a few weeks back when Christine said it would get her hot to see him light up a cigar with a C-note). Yeah, some money and little else. The only other thing was...

  ...he might not see Sign Guy.

  Sure, maybe in a glimpse through the deep tint of auto glass, but that, Jay felt, would not be enough. Strange as it was even to him, he felt drawn to the (what was he? really? what?) bum, though he had not spoken to him since the night on the bridge, a night he had come to terms with through heavy doses of rationalization, and the comfort of his two best friends—Jack Daniels and Christine (and sometimes her little white buddy)—when the former wasn’t holding strong. Yes, each day he came this way, subway to station, station to street, street to work. Feet to the pavement, a solitary stroll down Broadway to the crosswalk, the same pair of white lines that bridged the street every minute out of three. The same crosswalk that began a whisper’s distance from where his mystical benefactor had staked his claim. And not a word would Jay speak. Not a syllable, not a peep, though the bum still looked up every morning when Jay stopped to wait for the light to change and flashed him the V and uttered the familiar, ‘Peace, brother.’ And to that Jay would nod, and nod only, because, the truth be told, there was menace deep in the twinkle of the bum’s smiling eyes. A menace Jay had come to know the night he scrambled off the bridge with dozens of grinning drivers playing chicken with his backside.

  A menace Old Man Mitchell had felt for a split second when the hard and dark street had popped him like a zit.

  Yet still he traveled this road, subway, street, crosswalk, and the reverse on his way home in the evening, and with each brief encounter Jay began to feel more and more like a moth that had figured out too late that candle flame was more than a bright and special light. Something more hurtful and dangerous than that special kind of light.

  And like the moth, he did not turn away. Could not turn away from that special kind of light. And, God, why was that?

  It was that question these days that troubled him most.

  So this Wednesday, like all the other days of the week since Mitchell had done his grand exit, and since Jay had watched the bum make his deposit into the East River while traffic parted for him like the red sea, Jay had every intention of nodding to the greeting that would come as soon as he reached the crosswalk and then be wordlessly on his way. But intent was never translated into action this steamy summer morn, because a few yards or so from the place where Jay would pause and wait to safely traverse Broadway he stopped altogether. Stopped and looked ahead to the strangest sight he could recall since the night on the bridge. Just up the street, right in front of the church, some old fellow was yelling at Sign Guy.

  “I want it back, fella,” the man demanded, his face flushed from the viperous mix of heat and anger, his fist balled tight and thumping the air between him and the bum.

  And to this, Sign Guy smiled. Smiled as the stares of passers-by danced over him and the balding gent voicing some dispute.

  “It was a fuckin’ mistake!” the man shouted. Beads of sweat bloomed on his ample forehead and dragged glistening streaks down his face. “I’m not crazy! Why would I give you a hundred bucks on purpose?!” He gestured derisively at Sign Guy. “Why would I give you any money?”

  Jay drew closer now, near to the crosswalk, more heads turning toward the tempest. The suits and the skirts taking in a sight quite opposite a perceived norm—a businessman (suit, t
ie, briefcase, and a Journal tucked under his arm, of course) was berating a bum, something reminiscent of the man bites dog cliché. And though cliché it might be, Jay thought as he reached the curb by the crosswalk proper, there was something wrong with this scene. Wrong because this man was biting a dog that he somehow knew had bit him first, picked his pocket, wronged him. And this man looked not to be afraid of the dog at all, which was not a good thing, Jay knew, because the very real possibility existed that this dog was mad.

  But this man would not know that. He already knew too much, namely that he was light in the wallet—and knowing that was miracle enough, Jay thought. What was in the bum’s head he could not be aware of. What the smiling fellow with the sign was capable of was something he could not know, and that could be a dangerous thing. A very dangerous thing, Jay knew all too well. And for that reason he was damn glad that there was a good number of witnesses around, and the angry man still shouting at the bum should be thanking his lucky stars for that one as well.

  “I want it back! Now, dammit!”

  Sign Guy kept his look straight on the man as he reached up and took his hat off, dragging the sleeve of his white cotton shirt over his forehead to mop up the sweat that had gathered there. All the while smiling that smile. While he put his hat back on there was that smile, and as he picked his Yuban can off the ground and set it on his knees behind the shield of his sign there was that smile, lips parting a bit now over pickets of clenched teeth, and as he peeled the plastic lid partly back from the top of the can and slipped one hand into it there was that smile, teeth and the curl of his lips and cheeks puffed taut above the expression, and when his hand came out with a single hundred dollar bill between the fingers there was that smile, tight and chiseled now like a stamp of permanent happiness upon his face, a happiness that might have been true were it not for the pale fires of malevolence blazing in his eyes.