Barking Man (30 page)

She’s moving out ahead of him, maybe four or five people away. She’s in good shape except for a slight hunchback and one hip set higher than the other. It appears that her hands have been broken off at the wrists and reattached at right angles to her arms. She goes up the western stairway like a crab, and turns along the heavy balustrade into a large square space that no one requires for anything except to overlook the echoing floor below. Here he catches up with her.

“Hey, lady”

She turns to him. Close-cropped hair, little mouse ears, sweet and tranquil face of a dark madonna.

“Hey lady, you know? You got a nice voice.”

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so much.”

The lucky five appears in his hand, turns into an origami crane and flies to her—where it disappears, for everybody has to know a little rough magic nowadays. She smiles at him, her teeth small, perfect, brilliantly white, her brown eyes bright as she looks for him down in the boar’s floppy eye holes.

“Hey mister? You’re something yourself.” With a helical movement she takes his hand, and
-O-
, that grace note thrills down through him, searching out his loneliness, his longing, his exaltation …

“… he’s blowing beets.”

His head cranked high, Mr. Potatohead watches the Staten Island Ferry’s ramp hydraulically lower onto the dock. Not far from him some abandoned soul is puking pale pink waves, stinking of Boone’s Farm and stomach bile. “He’s blowing beets,” the witness remarks once more. Mr. Potatohead does not see or hear or smell a bit of it. When the crowd surges forward, he surges too.

It’s a bit cold and a bit windy out on the bay, so Mr. Potatohead has the prow of the boat all to himself. The sky has dropped its disguise by this time. His head is naturally in position, so as soon as he pulls off the boar’s-head mask he can see all of his stars to perfection, here for him again and always, exactly as he knew they would be. Swan and Dragon, Eagle and Dolphin, Great Bear, Hercules, Asclepius, the Scorpion … monsters and heroes intermingled, how strangely, how wonderfully they move.

Madison Smartt Bell is a critically acclaimed writer of more than a dozen novels and story collections, as well as numerous essays and reviews for publications such as
Harper’s Magazine
and the
New York Times Book Review
. His books have been finalists for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award among other honors. Bell has also taught at distinguished creative writing programs including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Johns Hopkins University, and Goucher College. His work is notable for its sweeping historical and philosophical scope matched with a remarkable sensitivity to the individual voices of characters on the margins of society.

Bell was born on August 1, 1957, near Nashville, Tennessee. His parents were intellectuals who mingled with poets and artists. Not long after being taught to read, Bell decided to become a professional writer, as he viewed authors as the most powerful and important people in the world. His excellent academic record earned Bell a scholarship to attend Princeton University. There he studied fiction in one of the first creative writing programs for undergraduates in the country, graduating summa cum laude and earning numerous writing awards from the school.

After Princeton, Bell moved to New York City and took on various jobs including security guard and sound engineer. Many of his urban experiences and observations became subject matter for his first published works. At twenty-two, Bell moved to Virginia to pursue an MA at Hollins University, where he wrote his first novel and many of his early collected stories.
The Washington Square Ensemble
(1984) depicts New York at its grittiest and most dangerous in the late seventies, and showcases Bell’s astonishing eye for detail, ear for dialogue, and compassion for people on the margins of society.
Waiting for the End of the World
(1985) is a more ambitious and complex novel that also explores the teeming city.

After moving back to New York for a short time, Bell settled in Baltimore, Maryland, to teach at Johns Hopkins and Goucher College. At Goucher, he met and married poet and teacher Elizabeth Spires. During a particularly prolific period, Bell produced a hard-boiled crime novel,
Straight Cut
(1986), his first collection of stories,
Zero db
(1987), and a novel made of interconnected perspectives of New York residents,
The Year of Silence
(1987).

Bell’s subsequent books began exploring broader territories, geographically and historically.
Soldier’s Joy
(1989) examines race, the South, and the impact of the Vietnam War on veterans’ lives. The story collection
Barking Man
(1990) follows characters around the globe, and
Save Me, Joe Louis
(1993) brings a pair of Bell’s Manhattan reprobates to rural Tennessee. Next, Bell turned to historical epics, such as his fictionalization of Haiti’s slave rebellion and early years,
All Souls’ Rising
(1995), a work that earned him National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award nominations, and the two subsequent novels that completed his trilogy of Haitian history,
Master of the Crossroads
(2000) and
The Stone That the Builder Refused
(2004). In the last decade he has also produced fiction and nonfiction books including a biography of Toussaint Louverture and a walking guide to Baltimore,
Charm City
(2007). In 2008 Bell was awarded the prestigious Strauss Living Award, which grants distinguished authors five years of funding to focus on their writing.

Bell continues to write and teach in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife and daughter.