Bloodroot (20 page)

I CALLED DANNY AS SOON AS I GOT HOME. HE ANSWERED ON THE
first ring.

“I’ve been waiting for this call,” he said. “I didn’t know a thing about Al tailing you.”

“You knew,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t your idea, but you knew.”

“No,” Danny said. “I didn’t.”

“You could’ve given me a heads-up,” I said. “It would’ve helped.”

“How? What would you have done different?”

“Keep him away from me,” I said. “Talk to Al, talk to Santoro, do what you have to do, but I want him off my ass.”

“I don’t talk to Santoro,” Danny said, “and I don’t question his orders.” He paused. I could hear him breathing through the phone. “I was hoping you’d roll with the punches here, that you’d trust me. That said, I can’t blame you for not trusting me. This isn’t something we can do over the phone. There are things you need to see for yourself. Meet me at Willowbrook Park, by the cemetery, at ten.”

“You’re kidding me, right? I’m not moving any more bodies. You’ve got Al for that.”

“No bodies,” Danny said. “No Al. This is something between you and me.”

“Then come over,” I said. “We’ll split a six and talk, like real brothers. Like we should’ve been doing all along.”

“You have no idea,” Danny said, “how much I wish we could do it that way. But we can’t.”

“You tell me why not,” I said. “The truth.”

“Meet me in the park,” Danny said, “and you’ll see why not. At the graveyard, I’ll tell you everything you want to know, and maybe a few things you don’t, but should. See you there.” He hung up without waiting for my answer; we both knew I’d show.

I sat on the couch, spreading out the week’s lesson plans on the coffee table. Valley Forge. The same plans I’d used for the past three years. I could recite them from memory. Maybe that was why they couldn’t hold my attention. My eyes kept wandering to the fuzzy green numbers of the cable box. I stayed on the couch until 8:47. Then I walked to the liquor store around the corner for a pack of cigarettes and a small bottle of Bacardi.

At nine sharp, I lit a Camel, made a weak rum and Coke, and emptied my schoolbag. I set aside what I needed for work and emptied everything else out of the bag: every dried-out pen, every nub of chalk, every crumpled department memo, my expired faculty ID. Fifty-three cents in chalk-dusty coins. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d cleaned out that bag. If I ever had, I hoped it hadn’t been that long ago. I hadn’t accumulated much of worth or use during my time in the halls of academia. The pile made for one sad time capsule of wasted effort. I gathered up the detritus of my career in two hands and dumped it in the trash.

I grabbed my flashlight from the cabinet and packed it in the bag. It’d be smart to bring a weapon, too. I found my lone steak knife among the kitchen utensils in the sink, rinsed it off, and stuck it into my boot—promptly pushing it through my sock and slicing a thin gash in my ankle. Gritting my teeth, I tossed the knife back in the sink. I dumped some rum on a piece of paper towel and stuffed it through the hole in my sock, limped in circles till my red badge of courage stopped bleeding. I added more rum to my Coke.

In the junk drawer I found a hammer. I tried stashing that in my jacket pocket, but the head fell hard against my ribs. It was more stable upside down but that way it just tangled in my pocket and then I couldn’t get it out, not without taking off my jacket. Instead of the hammer, I put the bottle of rum in my jacket. I dropped the hammer into my book bag, cracking the lens on the flashlight. Fortunately, after a few good shakes, the bulb lit up. It would have to do. I set it gently into the bag. Was I ready? I was pathetic, that’s what I was. But I was also out of time. I called a cab, slung the bag over my shoulder, and, keys in hand, headed for the door.

The phone rang as I locked up. Kelsey. Had to be. Isn’t that always the way? I’d have to think of something to tell her when I saw her at work. I let it ring.

 

 

 

I HAD THE CABBIE
drop me off at a twenty-four-hour deli a few blocks from Willowbrook. I waited until the cab drove out of sight, lit a cigarette, and hustled over to the park.

The street was pitch dark, no sidewalk, no streetlights. I stuck close to the guardrail, my fingers trailing along the rough, cool metal. Up ahead, floodlights bathed the park entrance in a white cloud. Without thinking, I walked right into the light, where anyone could’ve seen me, and turned up the gravel path, stepping over the heavy chain that kept the cars out after dark. Swearing at myself, I scurried out of the light, thankful no one drove by while I was making a show of trespassing. I decided to wait until I hit the woods before breaking out the flashlight. A wall of shadow against the starry night sky, the trees weren’t hard to find. Off to my left, I spied the softball backstop silhouetted against the night sky. A sharp right at first base would lead me to the trail through the woods to the cemetery.

Wary of picnic tables and trash cans, of forgotten soccer balls and softball bats, I made my way across the park, holding my bag against my hip. I shivered in the chilly nighttime breeze, my nose running. October was remembering herself. My boots made no sound on the wet grass. Swallowed by the surrounding dark, I felt invisible, like less than a ghost. I liked the feeling a lot. Tension I didn’t even know I carried seeped out of my shoulders. I felt free. Then I remembered Al.

When I reached the edge of the woods, where the trail began, I looked behind me. All I could see was the light at the entrance. Everything between me and there was darkness. No sign of Al. I held my breath, listening for the Charger. Nothing. No sound at all. No animals in the woods, no insects. Winter was on its way. Everything was shutting down. Instinctively, I put up my jacket collar. I slid the bottle out of my pocket. As I unscrewed the cap a moan, or maybe the echo of one, drifted from deep in the woods. I drank two long swallows and strained to hear. The moan echoed again, deeper this time. It might have been a name.

Holding the lip of the bottle to my mouth, breathing in the sharp, burnt-sugar scent of the rum, I waited—listening to the building orgasm of a woman somewhere off in the dark. I waited till she was done, put all the other places I could’ve been right then out of my mind, and stepped into the trees.

The trail was slow going. I wasn’t a Scout anymore, wasn’t a kid. I’d lost my field guides and compass long ago. I didn’t have Indian Scout Danny leading the way, charging ahead unafraid of fallen branches and hidden holes, oblivious to the welts and scratches on his hands and forearms. I was too old to be unconcerned with my next step.

Thirty yards deep the trees closed behind me and I turned on the flashlight. I held it at my hip in one hand, reaching the other out to clear away the thorny undergrowth crowding my path. Rotting leaves stuck to my soles at every step, raising the scent of wet, clean earth. It smelled like the cemetery had when we first turned the dirt, before we unleashed the stink of the carcasses. Soft, blurry moths bumbled through the beam of my flashlight. Harder, shinier things scuttled out of the light. I was afraid to breathe too loud. Compared to my younger self, I was an old man, hunched and shuffling.

Just as I started to worry I’d picked the wrong trail, or that there was no trail left, I saw stars through the tree branches ahead of me. Right as I was about to emerge from the trees into the graveyard, I tripped, tumbled through a bush and landed on my face in the clearing. My flashlight bounced out of my hand and rolled to the foot of the stone wall, where it caught Danny’s feet in its glow.

He hopped down and picked up the flashlight, turning it off as he walked toward me. I was on my feet and dusting myself off when he reached me. I took the light from him and put it back in my bag.

Danny lit a cigarette and handed it to me. “You all right?”

My elbow had slammed hard on a stone and throbbed like hell. I felt like the rum bottle had bruised my ribs. Thankfully, it hadn’t broken. Bruised was okay, but this was not a place I wanted to be bleeding. “I’m fine. What the hell are we doing out here?”

“It’s a long story,” Danny said. He turned away from me and walked back to the wall. He leaned forward on it, his weight on his palms. The moon hung high over him, a pale eye trained on his shadow.

“I’m ready to hear it.” I stayed where I was, bending my arm, working the pain out of my elbow. “I’m not cool with this, these people you’ve got me mixed up with.”

“Al and I work together and I guess we’re friends,” Danny said, “but I don’t have any control over him. He doesn’t take his orders from me. I don’t always know what his orders are. Everything comes from Santoro.” Danny climbed over the wall and turned to face me. “Whose name you can never say over the phone again. We can never discuss his business over the phone.”

“No problem,” I said. “I’d just as soon never have anything to do with him again.”

“Maybe someday soon that’ll be possible,” Danny said, walking away from me across the graveyard. “But not right now.”

I climbed the wall and caught him. Together, we walked over the long cold graves of dead children, the tall grass whispering at our steps. All the sad, plywood grave markers were long gone. Looking around, there was no telling what lay buried beneath our feet. But Danny and I knew.

“Santoro needs you,” Danny said. “Or he’s decided he needs you, pretty much the same thing either way.”

“To get him information about the school?” I asked. “C’mon, he can do better than me. There’s got to be someone higher up he can buy off.”

“This is true,” Danny said. “Most of that’s already taken care of. That state construction money’s at his fingertips. There’s just one glitch where a buy-off might not be the answer. Trust issues. Santoro’s hoping you can help us figure an approach.”

“Would that glitch be my boss?” I asked. “Whitestone?”

“I was hoping you could help me, too,” Danny said. He stopped walking, looking up. We’d reached the grounds of the old children’s hospital. “Santoro’s future plans are not the only reason we’re here.”

As we passed the tumbledown, smashed-up bell tower, the lush graveyard grass stopped cold at the buckled asphalt of the parking lot. The whole building sagged as if sat upon by a giant. Broken glass cracked beneath our feet. We kicked aside fallen bricks. Graffiti-stained boards covered the first-floor windows. Above, as high as anyone could throw a brick, all the other windows had been smashed out. I could smell the mold and the stale char of old fires. Two-by-fours formed pale
X
’s across the front door.

Danny climbed the fractured marble steps. His foot shot through a space in the two-by-fours, kicking the front door. It fell straight back like a drunk, slamming to the floor with a sound like a gunshot. I yelped, about leaping out of my boots. Danny ducked through the door and into the darkness.

“Stop!” I shouted, running to the foot of the steps. Danny’s shape was all but lost in the darkness. “What are you doing?”

“I need you,” Danny said, “to come in here with me.”

“You’re outta your mind,” I said. “Come back out here.”

Danny’s face glowed in the flame of his lighter then disappeared again. I watched the marigold tip of his cigarette brighten, bathing his fingertips in yellow light. I heard him exhale. He disappeared again, nothing remaining but the smell of smoke and an orange ember hovering in the dark.

“What’re you afraid of?” he asked. “I’m right here.”

I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Every kid on Staten Island heard the horror stories about Bloodroot. In grammar school, it was a place and a fate the meaner parents used to threaten their unruly kids with. If you didn’t straighten up and fly right, you’d get shipped off to Bloodroot—where they knew what to do with bad children. What the demon staff of that place really knew about handling bad kids we were afraid to ponder. New York called it a hospital because it was full of children, but Bloodroot was an asylum if there ever was one.

After New York State shut it down, when we were in junior high, its reputation only grew worse. We heard the true crazies never left, that they were locked in and left to subsist on rats and birds and toilet water and, in the worst of the stories, each other. We heard that teenagers, those vampiric greasy-haired mysteries we glimpsed haunting our neighborhoods, took it over. As if all the kids that should’ve been sent to Bloodroot ended up there anyway. Rumors flew about evil doings after dark. Murders, rapes, and devil worship. It seemed that every cat or dog that ran away from home got sacrificed to Satan out there. There were stories of the same happening to runaway children. Even the cops were afraid of the place.

“You want to know what everything’s about,” Danny called to me, “then you need to come in here with me. You need to see it.”

I walked up the steps and ducked under the boards. I felt Danny’s hand on my shoulder as I stood.

“Give me the flashlight,” he said. I did.

Danny shone the beam over the grimy chessboard floor. Muddy footprints, human and otherwise, ranged in every direction. Rats scurried away from the light, rattling empty beer cans, swarming over a battered, broken wheelchair in their haste for the darkness. The whole room stank of rot and mold. It was like standing inside an abandoned crypt. I was afraid to look up. A dirty film crawled over my skin. I told myself it was only my imagination.

“Okay, I’m in here,” I said. “It’s fucking gross. It shouldn’t be a museum. I agree. One hundred percent. I’ll tell Whitestone. Can we go now?”

Danny guided the beam over the cracked, water-stained walls. One wall was tiled with giant mosaics. Looming human figures, twenty feet tall, their blank faces and long-fingered hands jaundiced by moisture and time. A nurse in an old blue uniform, her hand on a blind child’s shoulder. A white-coated doctor stooping, his stethoscope pressed against the heart of a legless child in a wheelchair. Danny moved the light. Another wall, old photos ruined in their warped frames, the faces they memorialized consumed by rot. To our left, an old sofa long ago set afire slumped blackened and broken against one wall. To our right ran a long, warped wooden counter. That, too, was burned in places, smashed in others. At the outer edge of the light hovered the first few steps of a marble staircase.