The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

by Wilson, F. Paul

  Jack took another swallow of beer and forced himself to pause. He had a sudden urge to tell her everything, to open up his whole past to her. It frightened him. He never opened up to anyone except Abe. Why Kolabati? Perhaps it was because she already knew something about him; perhaps because she was so effusive in her gratitude for achieving the "impossible" and returning her grandmother's necklace.

  Telling all was out of the question, but pieces of the truth wouldn't hurt. The question was: What to tell, what to edit?

  "It just sort of happened."

  "There had to be a first time. Start there. Tell me about it. "

  He settled into the cushions, adjusting his position until the lump of the holstered Glock sat comfortably in the small of his back, and began telling her about Mr. Canelli, his first fix-it customer.

  4

  Summer was drawing to a close. He was 17, still living in Johnson, New Jersey, a small, semirural town in Burlington Country. His father was working as a CPA then, and his mother was still alive. His sister Kate was in the New Jersey State College of Medicine and his brother Tom had just earned his law degree from Seton Hall.

  On the corner down the street from his house lived Mr. Vito Canelli, a retired widower. From the time the ground thawed until it froze again, he worked in his yard. Especially on his lawn. He seeded and fertilized every couple of weeks, watered it daily. Mr. Canelli had the greenest lawn in the county. It was usually flawless. The only times it wasn't was when someone cut the corner turning right off 541 onto Jack's street. The first few times were probably accidents, but then some of the more vandalism-prone kids in the area started making a habit of it. Driving across “the old wop's" lawn became a Friday and Saturday night ritual. Finally, old Mr. Canelli put up a three-foot white picket fence and that seemed to put an end to it. Or so he thought.

  It was early. Jack was walking up to the highway towing the family Toro behind him. For the past few summers he’d made his money doing gardening chores and cutting grass around town. He liked the work and liked even better the fact that he could adjust his hours almost any way he wished.

  When he came into view of Mr. Canelli's yard he stopped and gaped.

  The picket fence was down—smashed and scattered all over the lawn in countless white splinters. The small flowering ornamental trees that blossomed in varied colors each spring—dwarf crabapples, dogwoods—had been broken off a foot above the ground. Yews and junipers were flattened and ground into the dirt. The plaster pink flamingos that everybody laughed about were shattered and crushed to powder. And the lawn...not just tire tracks across it—long, wide gouges up to six inches deep. Whoever had done it hadn't been satisfied with simply driving across the lawn and flattening some grass; they’d skidded and slewed their car or cars around until the turf had been ripped to pieces.

  As Jack approached for a closer look, he saw a figure standing at the corner of the house looking out at the ruins. It was Mr. Canelli. His shoulders were slumped and quaking. Sunlight glistened off the tears on his cheeks. Jack knew little about Mr. Canelli. He was a quiet man who bothered no one. He had no wife, no children or grandchildren around. All he had was his yard: his hobby, his work of art, the focus of what was left of his life. Jack knew from his own small-time landscaping jobs around town how much sweat was invested in a yard like that. No man should have to see that kind of effort wantonly destroyed. No man that age should be reduced to standing in his own yard and crying.

  Mr. Canelli's helplessness unleashed something inside Jack. He’d lost his temper before, but the rage he felt within him at that moment bordered on insanity. His jaw was clamped so tightly his teeth ached; his entire body trembled as his muscles bunched into knots. He had a good idea of who’d done it and could confirm his suspicions with little difficulty. He had to fight off a wild urge to find them and run the Toro over their faces a few times.

  Reason won out. No sense landing himself in jail while they got to play the roles of unfortunate victims.

  Jack needed another way. And then, as he stood there, it leaped full-blown into his head. For years he’d done fix-its around town, but never anything formal. This would be different.

  He walked over to Mr. Canelli and said, "I can fix it for you."

  The old man blotted his face with a handkerchief and glared at him. "Fix it. Why? So you an a-you friends can destroy it again?"

  "I'll fix it so it never happens again."

  Mr. Canelli looked at him a long time without speaking, then said, "Come inside. You tell me how you do this."

  Jack didn't give him all the details, just a list of the materials he would need. He added fifty dollars for labor. Mr. Canelli agreed but said he'd hold the fifty until he saw results. They shook hands and had a small glass of homemade red wine to seal the deal.

  Jack began the following day. He brought in three dozen small spreading yews and planted them three and a half feet apart along the perimeter of the comer lot while Mr. Canelli started restorative work on his lawn.

  They talked while they worked. Jack learned that the damage had been done by a smallish, low-riding, light-colored car and a dark van. Mr. Canelli hadn't been able to get the license plate numbers. He’d called the police, but the vandals were long gone by the time one of the local cops came by. The police had been called before, but the incidents were so random and, until now, of such little consequence, that they hadn't taken the complaints too seriously.

  The next step was to secure three dozen four-foot lengths of six-inch pipe and hide them in Mr. Canelli's garage. They used a posthole digger to open a three-foot hole directly behind each yew. Late one night, Jack and Mr. Canelli mixed up a couple of bags of cement in the garage and filled each of the four-foot iron pipes. Three days later, again under cover of darkness, the cement-filled pipes were inserted into the holes behind the yews and the dirt packed tight around them. Each bush now had twelve to fifteen inches of makeshift lolly column hidden within its branches.

  The white picket fence was rebuilt around the yard and Mr. Canelli continued to work at getting his lawn back into shape. The only thing left for Jack to do was sit back and wait.

  It took a while. August ended. Labor Day passed, school began again. By the third week of September, Mr. Canelli had the yard graded again. The new grass had sprouted and was filling in nicely.

  And that, apparently, was what they’d been waiting for.

  The sounds of sirens awoke Jack at 1:30 on a Sunday morning. Red lights were flashing up at the comer by Mr. Canelli's house. Jack pulled on his jeans and ran to the scene.

  Two first-aid rigs were pulling away as he approached the top of the block. Straight ahead a black van lay on its side by the curb. The smell of gasoline filled the air. In the wash of light from a street lamp overheard, he saw that the undercarriage was damaged beyond repair: The left front lower control arm was torn loose; the floor pan was ripped open exposing a bent drive shaft; the differential was knocked out of line, and the gas tank was leaking. A fire truck stood by, readying to hose down the area.

  He walked on toward the front of Mr. Canelli's house where a yellow Camaro had stopped nose-on to the yard. The windshield was spiderwebbed with cracks and steam seeped around the edges of the sprung hood. A quick glance under the hood revealed a ruptured radiator, bent front axle, and cracked engine block.

  Mr. Canelli stood on his front steps. He waved Jack over and stuck a fifty-dollar bill into his hand.

  Jack stood beside him and watched until both vehicles were towed away, until the street had been hosed down, until the fire truck and police cars were gone. He was bursting inside. He felt he could leap off the steps and fly around the yard if he wished. He could not remember ever feeling so good. Nothing smokable, ingestible, or injectable would ever give him a high like this.

  He was hooked.

  5

  One hour, three Coronas, and two kirs later, it dawned upon Jack that he’d told much more than he’d intended. He’d gone on from Mr. Canelli to d
escribe some of his more interesting fix-it jobs. Kolabati seemed to enjoy them all, especially the ones where he’d taken special pains to make the punishment fit the crime.

  A combination of factors had loosened his tongue. First of all was a feeling of privacy. He and Kolabati seemed to have the far end of this wing of Peacock Alley to themselves. The dozens of ongoing conversations in the wing blended into a susurrant undertone that wound around them, masking their words and making them indistinguishable from the rest.

  But most of all…Kolabati…so interested, so intent upon what he had to say that he kept talking, saying anything to keep that fascinated look in her eyes. He talked to her as he’d talked to no one else he could remember—except perhaps Abe, who’d learned about him over a period of years and had seen much of it happen. Kolabati was getting a big helping in one sitting.

  Throughout his narrative, Jack watched for her reaction, fearing she might turn away like Gia had. But Kolabati was obviously not like Gia. Her eyes fairly glowed with enthusiasm and...admiration.

  The time came, however, to shut up. He’d said enough. They sat for a quiet moment, toying with their empty glasses. Jack was about to ask her if she wanted a refill when she turned to him.

  "You don't pay taxes, do you.”

  The statement startled him. Uneasy, he wondered how she knew.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I sense you are a self-made outcast. Am I right?"

  " 'Self-made outcast.' I like that."

  "Liking it is not the same as answering the question."

  "I consider myself a sort of sovereign state. I don't recognize other governments within my borders."

  "But you've exiled yourself from more than the government. You live and work completely outside society. Why?"

  "I'm not an intellectual. I can't give you a carefully reasoned manifesto. It's just the way I want to live."

  Her eyes bored into him. "I don't accept that. Something cut you off. What was it?"

  This woman was uncanny. It seemed she could look into his mind and read all his secrets. Yes—an incident had caused him to withdraw from the rest of "civilized" society. But he couldn't tell her about it. He felt at ease with Kolabati, but wasn't about to confess to murder.

  "I'd rather not say."

  She studied him. "Are your parents alive?"

  Jack felt his insides tighten. "Only my father."

  "I see. Did your mother die of natural causes?"

  She can read minds! That's the only explanation!

  "No. And I don't want to say any more."

  "Very well. But however you came to be what you are, I'm sure it was by honorable means."

  Her confidence in him simultaneously warmed and discomfited him. He wanted to change the subject.

  "Hungry?"

  "Famished!"

  "Any place in particular you'd like to go? Know some Indian restaurants—"

  Her eyebrows arched. "If I were Chinese, would you offer me egg rolls? Am I dressed in a sari?"

  No. That clinging white dress looked like it came straight from a designer's shop in Paris.

  "French, then?"

  "I lived in France a while. Please: I live in America now. I want American food. I want shrimp."

  "I know a great seafood place up on West 86th. I go there all the time. Mainly because when it comes to food I tend to be impressed more by quantity than by quality."

  "Good. Then you know the way?"

  "I do," Jack said, rising and presenting his arm. “Then let's go.”

  She slipped into her shoes and was up and close beside him in a single liquid motion. Jack threw some bills on the table and started to walk away.

  "No receipt?" Kolabati asked with a sly smile. "I'm sure you can make tonight deductible."

  “I use the short form."

  She laughed. A delightful sound.

  On their way toward the front of Peacock Alley, Jack was very much aware of the warm pressure of Kolabati's hand on the inside of his arm and around his biceps, just as he was aware of the veiled attention they drew from all sides as they passed.

  From Peacock Alley in the Waldorf on Park Avenue to Finn’a on the West Side—culture shock. But Kolabati moved from one stratum to the other as easily as she moved from garnish to garnish at the crowded salad bar where the attention she attracted was much more openly admiring than at the Waldorf. She seemed infinitely adaptable, and Jack found that fascinating. In fact, he found everything about her fascinating.

  He’d begun probing her past during the cab ride uptown, learning that she and her brother were from a wealthy family in the Bengal region of India, that Kusum had lost his arm as a boy in a train wreck that had killed both of their parents, after which they’d been raised by the grandmother Jack had met the night before. That explained their devotion to her. Kolabati was currently teaching in Washington at the Georgetown University School of Linguistic and now and again consulting for the School of Foreign Service.

  At Finn’s Jack watched her eat the cold shrimp piled before her. She didn’t peel them. Instead she dipped them shell and all into either cocktail sauce or the little plate of Russian dressing she’d ordered, then bit them down to the tail with a solid crunch. She ate with a gusto he found exciting. So rare these days to find a woman who relished a big meal. He was sick to death of talk about calories and pounds and waistlines. Calorie counting was for during the week. When he was out with a woman, he wanted to see her enjoy the food as much as he did. A big meal became a shared vice. It linked them in the sin of enjoying a full belly and reveling in the tasting, chewing, swallowing, and washing down that led to it. They became partners in crime. It was erotic as all hell.

  The meal was over.

  Kolabati leaned back in her chair and stared at him. Between them lay the empty pot of Jack’s bouillabaisse, an empty pitcher of beer, and the tails of dozens of shrimp.

  "We have met the enemy," Jack said, "and he is in us. That was as good as a big steak."

  "I don’t eat beef. It’s supposed to be bad for your karma."

  As she spoke her hand crept across the table and found his. Her touch was electrifying—a shock ran up his arm. Jack swallowed and tried to keep the conversation going. No point in letting her see how she was getting to him.

  "Karma. There's a word you hear an awful lot. What's it mean, really? It's like fate, isn't it?"

  Kolabati's eyebrows drew together. "Not exactly. It's not easy to explain. It starts with the idea of the transmigration of the soul—what we call the atman—and how it undergoes many successive incarnations or lives."

  "Reincarnation."

  Kolabati turned his hand over and began lightly running her fingernails over his palm. Gooseflesh sprang up all over his body.

  "Correct" she said. "Karma is the burden of good or evil your atman carries with it from one life to the next. It's not fate, because you are free to determine how much good or evil you do in each of your lives, but then again, the weight of good or evil on your karma determines the kind of life you will be born into—high born or low born."

  “And that goes on forever?" He wished what she was doing to his hand would go on forever.

  "No. Your atman can be liberated from the karmic wheel by achieving a state of perfection in life. This is moksha. It frees the atman from further incarnations. It is the ultimate goal of every atman."

  "And eating beef would hold you back from moksha?" It sounded silly.

  Kolabati seemed to read his mind again. "Not so odd, really. Jews and Moslems have a similar sanction against pork. For us, beef pollutes the karma."

  " 'Pollutes.' "

  "That's the word."

  "Do you worry that much about your karma?"

  "Not as much as I should. Certainly not as much as Kusum does." Her eyes clouded. "He's become obsessed with his karma...his karma and Kali."

  That struck a dissonant chord in Jack. "Kali? Wasn't she worshipped by a bunch of stranglers?" His unimpeachable source was Gung
a Din.

  Kolabati's eyes cleared and flashed as she dug her fingernails into his palm, turning pleasure to pain.

  "That wasn't Kali but a diminished avatar of her called Bhavani who was worshipped by Thugges—low-caste criminals! Kali is the Supreme Goddess!"

  "Whoops! Sorry."

  She smiled. "Where do you live?"

  "Not far."

  "Take me there."

  Jack hesitated, knowing it was his firm personal rule never to let people know where he lived unless he’d known them for a good long while. But she was stroking his palm again.

  "Now?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay."

  6

  For certain is death for the born

  And certain is birth for the dead;

  Therefore over the inevitable

  Thou shouldst not grieve.

  Kusum lifted his head from his study of the Bhagavad Gita. There it was again. That sound from below. It came to him over the dull roar of the city beyond the dock, the city that never slept, over the nocturnal harbor sounds, and the creaks and rattles of the ship as the tide caressed its iron hull and stretched the ropes and cables that moored it.

  Kusum closed the Gita and went to his cabin door. It was too soon. The Mother could not have caught the Scent yet.

  He went out and stood on the small deck that ran around the aft superstructure. The officers' and crew's quarters, galley, wheelhouse and funnel were all clustered here at the stern. He looked forward along the entire length of the main deck, a flat surface broken only by the two hatches to the main cargo holds and the four cranes leaning out from the kingpost set between them.

  His ship. A good ship, but an old one. Small as freighters go—2,500 tons, running 200 feet prow to stem, 30 feet across her main deck. Rusted and dented, but she rode high and true in the water. Her registry was Liberian.

  Kusum had had her sailed here six months ago. No cargo at that time, only a sixty-foot enclosed barge towed 300 feet behind the ship as it made its way across the Atlantic from London. The cable securing the barge came loose the night the ship entered New York Harbor. The next morning the barge was found drifting two miles off shore. Empty. Kusum sold it to a garbage-hauling outfit. US.