Meeks (17 page)

On the stage sat a pair of lovers; an ancient estate loomed behind them. I was a boy, and I was with my mother, and some actors were enacting a play in the park. I sighed with contentment. A thin and silvery veil fell behind the lovers, as if the enormous house had been cast backward into a fog. The lovers leaned in close but were startled apart again by the distant pops of hunting rifles, and the screen shot back up into the trees, and the house in the background suddenly loomed large—the father charged from the wings, storming across the stage.

I buried my face in my mother's thick, dark hair and covered my ears. Of course, I knew things would turn out well for the lovers even then, but the certainty of the outcome seemed to have no bearing on my fear as I waited for the lovers to be united in the final scene, in the glow of a wedding feast, and, concurrently, all of the new marriages of all the couples in the audience were solemnized. Happiness engineered to function on a massive scale. Who could doubt the genius of the Captain?

The sets were cleared; people milled about, entertaining themselves with fresh critiques of the familiar tale. They spread blankets out on the grass and lay about in their sweaters, and new wives fed new husbands figs, and fathers sawed salami discs for children to gnaw, and the workers, too, lay about in large numbers, chatting quietly to one another or sleeping in the gentle autumnal sunshine. Mother and I watched contentedly from our rock.

The crowd reassembled for the Founders Play. Couples huddled together against the chill in the air and watched the stage intently. I sat very still in my mother's lap, and even the birds fell into penitent and tense silence as they watched.

The old Police Chief climbed the steps. Workers walked in pairs on either side of the cake, carrying lengths of burning rope low over the surface to light the multitude of candles. Then the people began to chant:
Meeks! Meeks! Meeks!
My mother and I smiled at one another, at the deliciousness of our situation.

Do you hear that? she said.

They're calling me!

You must not go, she said and held me and refused to let go.

I would pretend to struggle. Finally she would let me stand, and I would point to the platform. Mother, I would say, you must understand that I must go, because the people need me.

Then she would bury her face in her hands and pretend to weep, and though her weeping (and, may I say, her acting in general) was utterly unconvincing and couldn't have fooled a child, I could never withstand this spectacle, and I would break character immediately to run to her side and pry away her hands in order to see her face and say, Mother, are you really crying?

Then she would pull me back into her lap, and we would watch the rest of the play together. This is real, said my mother reassuringly, as she pressed my hand against the cool, smooth surface of the rock. And that, she said pointing to the stage, is
not
. Only then could I relax into enjoyment of the final scene: the Bell Ringer took hold of the rope and yanked it hard, sending the Condemned Man flying through the trap door. The enemy of all our hopes was hanged! Or, I should say, the actors had made it seem so, and the
bom, bom, bom
of the evening bells rolled over the city in triumph.

Mother and I would make our way eventually to the heart of the action, where people were cutting greedily into the Independence Day cake, using the knives they had brought from home, and everyone partook of the cake, including Mother and me, and while the other families headed home to boisterous dinners around a centerpiece that was both a page from the history of our world as well as a piece of cake, Mother and I would stay in the park, surrounded by the trampled effects of a massive celebration. Another Independence Day, Mother sighed, as we ghosted past the empty stage or watched the theater workers coil the ropes and begin the sweeping away of the evidence of the day. The remains . . . through which Mother and I wandered in a mother-and-son melancholy that I loved. Though this division from others suited me perfectly when I was a boy, I hated the way in which, invariably, it cut into my mother's mood. The people headed home. Mother and I sat in the park. I ate and ate, while Mother left her cake untouched and watched the workers clear the park.

Ben

He kicked away the heavy blankets. Blood had seeped through the outer layer of bandaging around his chest. He tried to think of something nice. He wished his father were alive to witness the beautiful symmetry of their lives. The last day he spent with his father, they had gone to the park. His father said nothing, picked through a box of blue-berries. Ben heard a low pop, then a surge: the long rows of old-fashioned lamps lining the walk were glowing to life. Ben's father stared thoughtfully into the box of blueberries, and handed one to Ben.

"Do blueberries grow on trees? Do they start as flowers?"

His father raised a finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh."

It was early evening in the late summer, and the park lights were glowing like campfires yellow in a fog. Ben placed the blueberry reverently on his tongue, and then crushed it against the roof of his mouth. He remembered the comforting dim glow of fresh lemons on the nearby fruit cart, the spiked fruits from far away, snug in their paper-box compartments like saints’ relics, the green-tinged bananas, as if tinged with green smoke. The pyramids of red, polished apples and the rock-gray potatoes in the crates under the fruit stand: his heaven and earth. How had they all come into this world? These and all the other things he thought of as his. How would he coax them back into existence if he were charged with replicating life, with repeating the signs of creation he had always seen and heard? If this world were destroyed tomorrow, if the Enemy crossed the river at night and laid the universe of his boyhood bare? He wouldn't even know which things to put on the trees, which in the sea, which he would hide underground for the farmers to yank free.

Ben heard a shoe scuff the floor on the other side of the bedroom door; he heard a truck start laboriously and then idle; he heard the house pipes filling up with water; Ben heard the birds whistling cautiously outside his window.

A door slammed shut deep inside the house; Ben recognized the sharp outline of a porcelain pitcher on an antique table beneath the bright window. (He loved her! He loved her!)

The doctor and the young woman's father carried Ben, wrapped in his bedsheets, from the house. It was night; it was cool out; the father kicked the car door shut. Soon the unmistakable sounds of the city were upon them. Ben woke up in the old hospital beneath the low ceiling of the basement ward. Surgeons, Brothers of Mercy, dying men, and, somewhere in the great building, Ben considered, laboring mothers at work on the creation of new Brothers and Sisters. Ben lay in bed and thought about the young woman, alone in the dead quiet of the country estate, every pleasure hobbled, he hoped, by her regret. Why had she let him go?

One afternoon, the Brothers of Mercy came onto the ward. Ben could smell the acrid bite of their boot polish, the childlike sweetness of their talcum-dusted bodies. One of the doctors pointed at Ben in his hospital bed; he was sitting against his pillow sketching a mango on a notepad the Brothers of Mercy had given him.

A pair of Brothers stopped by his bed. “You're looking better, old man!” said one. Ben smiled noncommittally. One Brother fished a pair of rumpled dark trousers from a sack; the other Brother threw a gray smock across Ben's chest.

Ben was wearing the gray smock, sitting by the river in the oblique autumn sun. His pale suit had been shredded by an idiot country doctor obsessed with finding secondary wounds. His beautiful suit destroyed, the suit that had made him
him.
And he had lost her. How?

Yellow jackets drifted from the head of a neglected statue by the water. The yellow jackets floated evilly between the rusted spikes of the statue's crown. Her sword was pointed toward the ground; the blade disappeared into the high weeds; her broad, strong hands rested coolly on the massive hilt. She and Ben were looking out over the river, and beyond the river to the open sea! The Brothers of Mercy were watching Ben closely; he dug dutifully in his suit pocket for his lunch, though he had no appetite. He unwrapped one of the stale pastries the doctor had given him. He licked the powdered sugar from the sides. Other men talked, smoked behind the mangy river trees, coursed back and forth through the tree shadows. The Brothers of Mercy watched everything. Yellow jackets descended behind the sharp points of the statue's crown and disappeared; there must be a seasonal nest living in the head of the statue, thought Ben. The unimaginable state of her mind! For the yellow jackets, for her, for him, it was near the end—the days were growing cold and small.

Ben broke off a small piece of pastry and then bit the piece in half. He wished it were possible to keep things—the granite pinks of the autumn sky, the charred pilings of the collapsed piers, the sugar on his tongue—permanent and vivid without compressing them into memories. He wrapped the pastry in the worn piece of wax paper and shoved it deep into his pocket. The strong autumnal sun hit his face; cool air was rushing in from the river.

"Back on your feet! Move it!” One of the Brothers was poking at Ben's legs with a stick.

Meeks

Bedge had instructed me to meet him at the station the day before the big day. As I walked toward the station, I liked to think I was indistinguishable from the many energetic walkers and friendly nodders and other purposeful souls who characterize our city, especially during the holidays. I strode with great purpose, and I bounded up the steps to the police station; I opened the door effortlessly and went inside.

Bedge took me into the room at the end of the hall—a small, plain room dominated by an enormous table and a few chairs lining the wall. Black jackets had been hung over the backs of several of the empty chairs. Seated in one of the chairs was a diminutive older man with a measuring tape draped around his neck. The little man sat upright, with his hands settled equidistantly on his knees—his whole being seemed to be in a state of careful apprehension. Bedge, he said quickly and stood. I felt that Bedge and I were old friends suddenly in the presence of an awkward and unfortunate outsider.

This is the tailor, said Bedge—he had ignored the tailor's greeting. He'll fit you for your suit—your costume.

The tailor approached me, holding his measuring tape out like a net, as if I were some simple creature who could be crept up on and captured. I backed away and glanced at Bedge. I was wary of the tailor and do not, as a rule, enjoy or find easy to tolerate the touch of strangers’ hands upon my body, even upon my clothes. Sensing my dis-ease, Bedge added, it's just the jacket. Your pants are dark enough and will do. (I looked down at my pants—they were almost black with filth.)

The tailor waited, his measuring tape slack in his hands. He said, Spread your arms out like this, and he demonstrated for me.

I stood still, my arms extended to the sides. I stared into the thick glass of the window. I could make out the faint vertical lines of the bars on the other side. The tailor opened a black case on the table; I peeked over my shoulder and surveyed the contents—they might easily be mistaken for instruments of torture: boxes of glinting metal pins, blades, the hard mouths of black clips, small and giant pairs of scissors.

The tailor removed my coat, an operation during which I flinched repeatedly. I stood miserably, vulnerable as a naked child; I crossed my arms over my chest.

Oh, my God. What's this? said the tailor, feeling the outline of the gun hidden in the lining of my jacket. He has a gun!

The tailor rushed to Bedge and grabbed at his shirt, as if he intended to yank open the doors to his barrel chest and hide there. I stayed where I was, humbled by the revelation of my lies upon lies in Bedge's eyes, but when the tailor turned, I could see that he was genuinely frightened: I was a deranged animal, long-tortured and held back only by a rusted circus chain—but he was an innocent man! He handed the jacket to Bedge: Here, you can feel it. It's definitely a gun.

Please step away from me immediately, said Bedge, glaring at the tailor. Bedge refused to look at me, studied the gun. It's empty, he said. Not even loaded. Now, shall we proceed?

That's it? said the tailor, backing away. That's all you're going to say?

Bedge questioned me: Meeks, where did this come from?

From the man I arrested in the park, I said, staring at my boots.

As I suspected. Were you intending to hurt anyone with it?

No! I was only thinking of the man in the black jacket.

Of course you were. Will you let me take care of him?

I'm sorry, Bedge.

It's OK. Now, put your arms out like this, said Bedge, extending his arms. I stared at him, imitated him. Bedge pointed at the tailor's chest—
Finish
your work!—and then sat down in one of the chairs lining the wall. The tailor had me try on a few jackets, and then busied himself around my body, circling me like a stable fly, nipping fabric here and there. I stared straight ahead, my heart pounding impatiently in my chest. As he made adjustments, the tailor rambled on about the state of the city, the fine work of the police, the decline of certain streets, the importance of guiding the young, the detestable strangeness of people new to this neighborhood or that. I looked to Bedge once or twice for reassurance, but he gazed past me, as if he were sitting alone in the room and remembering someone fondly—I liked to think it was me he was remembering.

The tailor angled pins speedily through the seams of the jacket hanging on my body and went on excitedly: I mean, consider the cake this year: It has never been longer or better; never have there been more people at work on it; the vibrancy of the icing is a revelation. . . . Bedge stared, said nothing; I lost track of time. The next thing I knew, I was bristling with pins, and my arms were growing weak from the effort of holding them up, and the tailor was snapping shut his case.