Brothers Keepers

by Donald E. Westlake

  Now, here was a question about Travel to be considered. Our attention in the monastery had been devoted almost exclusively to the sacred uses of Travel, but might there not be distinctions as well between various forms of Mundane Travel? If a person limits himself to Travel by car or no Travel at all, can there be any virtue in his staying home? If enslavement to the automobile is a simple habit, a tic, isn’t the choice of lifestyle—living where it is necessary to drive to work, or to school, or to the supermarket—a part of that habit as well? A person who chooses a place to live which makes it necessary for him constantly to Travel by automobile might be said to be undergoing Travel even when inside his own house. His existence then is Transitory, consisting of Latent Travel (at home) and Kinetic Travel (on the road again). If Travel is too profound to be undertaken lightly—as we firmly believe it is—such a person could be said to be a Travel Junkie, as unquestioningly tied to his habit as any drug addict, and surely feeling many of the same debilitating effects.

  The physical first: the man who alternates sitting at home with sitting at the wheel of his car is destroying himself as surely, and possibly as messily, as if he took heroin. Emotional: buffeted by the tensions of piloting his vehicle day after day, his emotions must become either rubbed raw or anesthetized, either of which must make him less than he might be. Cultural: the Transitory existence, alternating Latent and Kinetic Travel, is the existence of the nomad, and must eventually render its victim rootless and without a viable sense of community, without a tribal or cultural heritage to be called upon in the hour of need. And finally, the moral aspect: a physically disabled man with anesthetized emotions and no strong sense of community is an unlikely candidate for a strong moral awareness.

  I was becoming excited; I could hardly wait to get back home and present this to the others, get their feelings on the subject. Did I have further indications leading to the conclusions I seemed to be drawing? Well, there was the growing trend among these people, when they reached retirement age, to buy a mobile home and spend their declining years rolling from one trailer court to the next; the ultimate Transitoriness, combining Latent and Kinetic Travel, forcing one’s home to Travel with one!

  And then there was Los Angeles.

  And here there was 131st Street. Was that right? Under a streetlight I consulted Brother Eli’s perfectly formed miniature lettering, and saw I’d overshot by a block. Turn right at 130th Street. Caught up in my meditations, I’d lost my bearings for a minute.

  So I retraced my steps to 130th Street. Turn right. Well, coming from the other direction I should turn left. After facing in various directions, pointing this way and that, rechecking Brother Eli’s directions, and attracting the (Transitory) attention of several passing drivers, I decided which way I was to go on 130th Street, and set off once more.

  I was back in a residential section now, the houses being slightly newer, slightly smaller, and set just a bit farther apart. But I was also getting closer to the airport; a monster jet plane suddenly came coasting down an invisible wire in the sky, passing over my head no farther away than the top of an eight-story building, and I couldn’t believe the painful intensity of its noise. It shrieked, it screamed, it sounded like a fingernail on a blackboard amplified a thousand times. And the thing moved so slowly! How could it move that slowly and not just fall to the ground like a television set dropped out a window? I cringed my head down into my neck, I pulled my cowl up around my ears, but the screaming went on and on until the plane finished sailing by, receding diagonally downward beyond the houses on the far side of the street.

  And no one appeared. These houses should have emptied, shirt-sleeved people should have run screaming out of every door, clutching their ears, staring around in terror and astonishment, yelling at one another, “What is it? Is it the end of the world?”

  But no one came out. Lights were on in various windows, television sets were running, surely human beings were inside all these imitation-brick structures, but nobody at all came out.

  I continued walking, all thoughts of Transitory Travel and enslavement by the automobile vanishing from my head, and meditated instead on the adaptability of Man. Twice more jet airplanes followed that same invisible roadway down the sky, shrieking in the same blood-chilling manner, confirming the subject of my meditation, and then I walked over a smallish bridge over some major highway. Brother Eli had referred to it, in his directions; here it was: “Cross the Belt Parkway.”

  Belt Parkway. Three lanes of rushing automobiles coming this way, three lanes of rushing automobiles going that way. There was a momentary prettiness to it by night, the ribbon of white headlights next to the ribbon of red taillights, but the rush-rush-rush sound of the cars disappearing under the bridge distracted from the view and I didn’t pause, but walked on.

  Turn left at 150th Avenue. There proved to be a Department of Sanitation garage here, plus an open area filled with white-painted garbage trucks that looked like giant cockroaches dressed as ski troopers. There was no longer any traffic, there were still no pedestrians, there were few streetlights, and after the Department of Sanitation building there was no sidewalk. More highways were somewhere ahead of me, fitfully seen in the darkness. I passed a car rental agency, and the street I was on curved away to the right through an underpass beneath some other road. Buildings ahead, some sort of under-illuminated confusion. I approached, saw a sign reading “All Traffic” with an arrow pointing to my left, and looked that way to see a highway a little distance off, surmounted by great huge green signs. One of them said something about the airport, so I walked in that direction.

  Yes, that was the main road into the airport, the one taken by all the cars and taxicabs. “JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT” the biggest sign said, and just beneath that, “MAIN PASSENGER TERMINALS 2 MILES.”

  Two miles? This was the entrance, and the terminals were two miles away? Shaking my head, telling myself it was a good thing I’d left myself plenty of time to get here, shifting my bag to the other hand, I went on walking.

  There was a grassy patch between me and the highway. I crossed that, then turned in the direction of the terminals, and walked on the verge, with the traffic just to my left. It was going very very fast, creating its own wind, and I kept as far from the concrete as I could, though up ahead I saw an under-pass that looked a little narrow for a pedestrian like me.

  I never got that far, at least not on foot. A vehicle, just past me, bumped its tires up onto the grass and slowed to a stop quite some distance away. It was, I saw, a police car, and I wasn’t surprised when a pair of white lights showed at the rear and the car backed up to me. I stood to one side, permitting the car to come between me and the roadway, and waited.

  They both got out of the car, two hard-faced suspicious young uniformed cops with silly Groucho Marx moustaches. “Okay, Mac,” one of them said, “what’s your story?”

  “I’m going to the airport,” I said.

  He looked scornful, as though he thought I thought he’d been born yesterday. “On foot?”

  I looked down at the objects in question; sandal-covered, the toes getting rather dirty from all this walking in the outer world. “They’re my own feet,” I said. I couldn’t think of any other response to suit the circumstances.

  The other policeman gestured at the highway noisily beside us, as though it were an important piece of evidence against me. “You’re walking on the Van Wyck Expressway?”

  “Is that what it’s called?”

  The first policeman snapped his fingers at me. “Let’s see some eye dee,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Identification,” he explained. Though it didn’t sound like an explanation, it sounded like an additional order.

  “Identification,” I repeated, and frowned doubtfully at my bag. Would there be anything in my luggage with my name on it? My initial—B—was inscribed with laundry marker inside the neck of the robe I was wearing, but that hardly seemed sufficient for me
n as serious and self-important as this.

  The policeman who had snapped his fingers was frowning at me more and more sternly. “No eye dee?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I could look, but I don’t think—”

  The other policeman said, “What’s the bag for?”

  “I’m going on a Journey,” I told him. I’d thought that was obvious.

  “You’re taking a plane?”

  I might have tried sarcasm, but it probably would have been lost on him. “Yes, I am.”

  “You have a ticket?” he asked me, and his design finally became clear.

  “Of course!” I said, delighted with him. “It’ll have my name on it!” And I dropped to one knee, unzipped the bag.

  Movement made me look up. Both policemen had moved back a pace, close to one another and closer to their car. Both were staring at me with rather frightening intensity, and both had their hands hovering near their holsters.

  “Um,” I said. I’ve watched enough television to be not totally unaware of the outside world, and so I understood at once that my intention to put my hand inside this bag had frightened and angered those policemen. It was incumbent upon me to reassure them; soon. “My ticket,” I said, and pointed my finger at the bag. I was very careful not to point it at them. “It’s in there.”

  Neither of them moved or spoke. They didn’t quite seem to know what to do about this situation.

  I said, “Would you like to do it, get the ticket? Shall I give you the bag?”

  “Just get out the ticket,” one of them said, and I saw that he’d relaxed a bit, though his partner was still rigid with the suspicion that I was a bomber or a maniac or an escaped murderer.

  The ticket, fortunately, had been the last item placed in the bag and was still near the top. I found it, left the bag unzipped, and handed it to the one who had originally asked to see it (and who had been the first to relax). He studied it, while his partner went on studying me, and behind them their car suddenly spoke in a squawking incomprehensible voice like a parrot. They ignored it. The policeman with my ticket said, “You’re Brother Benedict?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s this here? C-O-N-M.”

  “That’s the Order I belong to, the Crispinite Order of the Novum Mundum.”

  The other policeman said, “What’s that? That Catholic?”

  “Roman Catholic, yes.”

  “I never heard of it.” He seemed to think that fact significant.

  The other one said, “You’re going to Puerto Rico, huh? Missionary work?”

  “No, uhh, not exactly. No.”

  “Vacation?”

  “I have to see someone,” I said, “on monastery business.”

  He gestured with my ticket toward the bag. “Mind if I take a look in that?” It was phrased like a question, but the toughness of their manner suggested I didn’t have that much choice in my answer.

  “Of course,” I said. “I mean of course not. I mean yes, go ahead. Here.” Picking up the bag, which was still unzipped, I handed it to him.

  “Thanks.” Another statement belied by its manner.

  He unpacked my bag on the flat surface of the police car’s trunk, while his partner continued to beetle his brows and give me long suspicious glares and the cars going by on the Van Wyck Expressway slowed to catch a no-doubt tantalizing glimpse of this roadside entertainment. Brother Quillon’s socks, carefully rolled, rolled off the car and were retrieved by the policeman.

  His partner, the starer, abruptly said, “What’s the Assumption?”

  Startled, I said, “What?”

  He repeated his question.

  “Oh,” I said. “The Assumption. Well, in our present circumstances, it is the attitude you’re supposed to have toward my innocence, but I think what you’re referring to is Mary’s Assumption into Heaven. Christ ascended, because being God He had the power to lift Himself, but Mary, being human and without Godly power, had to be assumed, drawn up through the power of God. Are you trying to find out if I’m really a Catholic?”

  He didn’t answer me. The other one, having repacked my bag, now returned it to me, saying, “We don’t get walkers out here that much, Brother. Particularly dressed like you are.”

  “I don’t suppose you do,” I said.

  He had retained my ticket. Looking at it again, he said, “American Airlines.”

  “That’s right.”

  Now handing the ticket back, he said, “Get in, we’ll take you there.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said.

  I rode in the back seat, holding my ticket in one hand and my bag in the other. The more mistrustful policeman drove, glaring at the other traffic and occasionally muttering to himself, while his partner spoke into a microphone. I suppose he was talking about me, but I couldn’t make out what was said, and when the parrot-voice of the car’s radio responded I couldn’t understand a word of that either.

  I leaned forward toward the front seat when I was sure the radio communicating was all finished. “You know,” I said, addressing myself to the milder of the policemen, “there was a Ray Bradbury story exactly like this years and years ago. About a man walking, and being stopped by the police because walking had become a suspicious activity.”

  “Is that right.” he said, not looking at me, and began flipping documents on a clipboard. And that was the last any of us said in the car—except for the radio, which squawked incoherently from time to time—until they stopped at the terminal and I said, “Thank you again.”

  “Have a good flight,” the policeman said, but not as though he cared.

  * * *

  Did I have a good flight? I don’t really know, having no standard for comparison.

  It was an experience, that’s all. I was gathered together with a great crush of people, and we were all shuffled through a “checkpoint” where my bag was searched for the second time tonight and X-ray equipment was used to discover any weapons I might have concealed beneath my robe. After that we were shuffled down a long corridor with many left and right turns, and were suddenly on board the airplane.

  How did that happen? I’d been expecting a walk across concrete from a building to a plane, but the corridor ended at the plane. In fact, it was difficult to tell exactly where the corridor stopped and the plane began. I was looking around at all that when a stewardess—pleasant-acting, a bit plump—said, “Father, may I see your boarding pass?”

  Boarding pass; the piece of pasteboard I’d been given at the desk where I’d first shown my ticket. “Brother,” I murmured, and handed it to her.

  “Yes,” she said, with the same smile. She looked at my boarding pass, ripped it in half, gave half back, and said, “Three-quarters of the way down the aisle, on your right.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “My pleasure, Father.” Her perky smile grazed my cheek and hit the passenger behind me. Why did she remind me so much of that policeman, the one who’d said, “Have a good flight”?

  Three-quarters of the way down the aisle another stewardess, somewhat older and more harried and human, placed me in my seat amid a gigantic Puerto Rican family on its way home for the holidays. (When I say gigantic, I do not mean to imply that any of them were tall.) (Nor do I mean to imply, by that disclaimer, that any of them were thin. I was a bit squeezed.)

  They were a wonderful family. Their name was Razas, their original home was “near” the town of Guanica on the south shore, and they welcomed me into their midst (or their fringe; I’d been placed in a seat against the wall, next to a window) as though they’d just rescued me from a blizzard. Three or four of them helped me adjust my seatbelt, my footrest and my chair-back, my bag was successively stowed in half a dozen different thoughtful locations, and it became utterly impossible for me not to accept a pillow.

  And then we were in the sky, and the airport lights outside my little oval window had been replaced by blackness, thinly populated by faraway stars. I had thought I might be nervou
s during takeoff, since that’s the traditional time for first-flight jitters, but it had all happened so abruptly, while I’d been trying to comprehend Spanglish being cheerfully shouted at me by three Razas at once, that I didn’t think to be frightened until the opportunity had passed.

  It now developed that the Razas were under the impression they had come out for a picnic rather than a plane trip. Baskets of food, shopping bags of food, boxes of food, all blossomed into existence as though in some parody of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Great thick sandwiches, chicken legs, fruit, beer, soft drinks, cheese, tomatoes—it just kept pouring out. Everybody’s mouth was full, and everybody went on talking just the same.

  There were other similar family groups around us. Songs were sung, stories were told, running children were spanked, visits were made up and down the aisle, and the stewardesses stayed pointedly away.

  In some bewildering fashion, this rigid plastic environment with its three-seat pews and its narrow aisle had been turned into a front stoop, a series of front stoops, and December had been turned into spring. Enveloped in this atmosphere, full of chicken and beer and friendliness, soothed by the clamor all around me, I sat back at last in my little corner, my head resting on my pillow, and my thoughts turned again to Travel and its myriad manifestations.

  It seemed to me the Razas were somehow the opposite of the automobile people, those who were in a state of Latent Travel even when at home and who finished their lives wandering from trailer court to trailer court, dragging a simulacrum of home behind them. The Razas, on the other hand, had such strong self-identification, such vital ties to one another and to their heritage, that without conscious effort they defeated Travel, they swept away its qualities of isolation and disruption and disconnection. Where those others were Traveling even when at home, the Razas were at home even when Traveling. Their self-created environment overpowered the external environment. They had found an answer to the question of Travel that I didn’t think had ever been dreamed of by anyone in our community. When I got back, I told myself drowsily, I would have a lot to tell the others about my adventures. So thinking, I dropped gently away into sleep.