Numbers Don't Lie (9 page)

“Of course not, not yet,” Wu said. “It begins at the Edge of the Universe. It's like a line of traffic starting up, or the tide turning; first it has to take up the slack, so in the beginning it will seem like nothing is happening. At what point does the tide turn? We may not notice anything for several thousand years. A blink of the eye in cosmic time.”

I blinked. I couldn't help thinking of the beaded seat cushion. “But wait. Is it possible that something here
could
already be going backward,” I asked. “Rewinding?”

“Not very likely,” Wu said. “The Universe is awfully big, and . . .”

Just then I heard a knock. “Gotta go,” I said. “There's somebody at the door.”

 

* * *

 

It was Candy, in her trim Parks Department khakis. Instead of giving me, her soon-to-be-fiancé, a kiss, she walked straight to the little kerosene-powered office refrigerator and opened a Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke. I knew right away that something was wrong because Candy loathes and despises Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke.

“Aren't we meeting for lunch?” I asked.

“I got a call a few minutes ago,” she said. “From Squirrel Ridge, the nursing home. Daddy hit Buzzer.”

I tried to look grave; I tried to hide my guilty smile. In my wishful thinking I thought I had heard “hit the buzzer” (and figured it was a local variant of “kick the bucket”). I crossed the room and took Candy's hand. “I'm so sorry,” I lied.

“You're not half as sorry as Buzzer is,” Candy said, already dragging me toward the door. “He's the one with the black eye.”

 

* * *

 

Squirrel Ridge, the nursing home, sits in a hollow just north and east of Huntsville, overlooked by Squirrel Ridge, the mountain. It's a modern, single-story establishment that looks like a grade school or a motel, but smells like—well, like what it is. The smell hits you as soon as you walk in the door: a dismaying mix of ordure and disorder, urine and perfume, soft food and damp towels, new vomit and old sheets, Beech-nut and Lysol pine. Next, the sounds hit you: scuffing slippers, grunts and groans, talk-show applause, the ring of dropping bedpans, the creak of wire-spoke wheels—broken by an occasional panicked shout or soul-chilling scream. It sounds as if a grim struggle is being fought at intervals, while daily life shuffles on around it. And indeed it is. A struggle to the death.

I followed Candy to the end of a long hall, where we found her father in the dayroom, smiling sweetly, strapped in a chair in front of a TV watching Alan Jackson sing and pretend to play the guitar. “Good morning Mr. Knoydart,” I said; I could never bring myself to call him Whipper Will. In fact, I had never known the Whipper Will who was the terror of trailer parks in four counties. The man I knew, the man before us, was large but soft—beef gone to fat—with no teeth and long, thin white hair (which looked, this morning, a little grayer than usual). His pale blue eyes were fixed on the TV, and his fingers were busy stroking a paper napkin laid across his knee.

“What happened, Daddy?” Candy asked, touching the old man's shoulder tentatively. There was, of course, no answer. Whipper Will Knoydart hadn't spoken to anyone since he had been admitted in January, when he had called the Head Nurse, Florence Gaithers, a “stupid motherfucker, a bitch, and a ______,” and threatened to shoot her.

“I was helping him out of his wheelchair to go to the bathroom, and he just up and slugged me.”

I turned and saw a skinny young black man in whites, standing in the doorway. He wore a diamond stud in his nose and he was dabbing at a black eye with a wet rag.

“He got this look in his eye. Called me a ________ (excuse me!), and then he up and hit me. It was almost like the old Whipper Will.”

“Sorry, Buzzer. Thanks for calling me instead of Gaithers.”

“It's no big deal, Candy. Old folks with Alzheimer's have inci
dents
.” Buzzer pronounced it with the accent on the
dent
. “Gaithers would just get all excited.”

“Buzzer,” said Candy. “I want you to meet—” I was hoping she would introduce me as her soon-to-be-fiancé, but I was disappointed. I was introduced as her “friend from New York.”

“Whipper Will's Yank,” said Buzzer, nodding. “I heard about him.”

“Sorry about your eye,” said Candy. “And I do appreciate your not calling Gaithers. Can I buy you a steak to put on it?”

“I'm a vegetarian,” said Buzzer. “Don't you worry about it, Candy. Your daddy's not so bad, except for this one inci
dent
. He lets me wash him and walk him around every morning just as sweet as anything; don't you, Mister Knoydart? And we watch TNN together. He calls me whenever Pam Tillis comes on, don't you Mr. Knoydart? He wasn't always so sweet, though. Why, I remember one time he took a shot at my mother, when we lived out at Kyber's Creek Trailer Park. Called her a ______. Excuse me, but he did.”

 

* * *

 

“Buzzer and I are old friends,” Candy explained as we went back out to the car. “He was the first Black kid in my junior high, excuse me, African American, or whatever, and I was Whipper Will's daughter, so we were outcasts together. I looked after him and he's still looking after me. Thank God. If Gaithers finds out Daddy's acting up, she'll kick him out of Squirrel Ridge for sure, and I won't have any place to put him, and we'll be back to square one, and how would that be?”

“Bad,” I said.

“Well, hopefully it's over. Just an inci
dent
.” She said it the same way as Buzzer.

“Hope so,” I said.

“Funny thing is, didn't you think Daddy looked better?”

“Better?”

“I think Buzzer's been putting Grecian Formula on his hair. Buzzer always wanted to be a hairdresser. This nursing home thing is just a sideline.”

 

* * *

 

We had managed to miss lunch. We made a date for dinner and “a drive” (tonight was to be my night to pop the question), and Candy dropped me at the office. It was only three o'clock, so I opened a Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke and spread out my
Corcoran's
on the windowsill, determined to make up for lost time. I was awakened by a rhythmic clacking, jacking, cracking, snorting, cavorting noise, and a faint electrical smell. The floor was shaking. Whipper Will's upright fax machine was spitting out a sheet of purple-ink-smeared paper, which drifted to the floor.

I picked it up by one corner and studied it while it cooled:

 

 

But before I could figure out what it meant (I knew, of course, who it was from), the phone rang. “There's the answer to your question,” Wu said.

“What question?”

“You asked me if something here could already be going backward.”

“Not there,” I said. “Here.”

“By ‘here' I mean here on Earth!” Wu said. “And as my calculations show, it is theoretically possible. Perhaps even inevitable. You know about superstrings, right?”

“Sort of like superglue or supermodels?” I ventured.

“Exactly. They hold the Universe together, and they are stretched to the limit. It's
possible
that harmonic vibrations of these superstrings
might
shake loose discrete objects, so that they would appear as bubbles or reversals in local entropic fields.”

“Fields? What about vacant lots?” I told Wu about the beaded seat cushion.

“Hmmm,” said Wu. I could almost hear his brain whirring. “You
may
be on to something, Irv. Superstring harmonic overtones
could
be backtracking my sightline from the Edge of the Universe, and then following our fax and phone connections. The same way glass breaks along a line when you score it. But we have to be sure. Send me a couple of pictures, so we can
quantify
the— Ooooooops!” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Here comes my boss. Say hi to Candy. I'll call you later.”

 

* * *

 

There was still plenty of afternoon light, so as soon as Wu hung up, I headed across the corner lot to Hoppy's Good Gulf and borrowed the Polaroid he uses to photograph accident scenes. As I took the picture, I
quantified
for myself, by counting. The eleven beads on row four had increased to thirteen, and the other rows also seemed to be much improved. There weren't many beads lying in the dirt. The seat cushion looked almost good enough to put in my car, if I had one.

It was creepy. I didn't like it.

I returned Hoppy's camera and took the long way back to the office, trying to make sense of it all. Were the falling leaves going to float back up and fasten themselves to the trees? Was Candy's Volvo going to have four speeds in reverse? I got so confused just thinking about it that I put the photo into the wicker OUT tray of Whipper Will's upright fax machine before I remembered—I guess
realized
is the word—that I had no outgoing. I could talk to Wu on the phone (when he called me) but I couldn't fax him anything.

Perversely, I was glad. I had done what I could, and now I was tired. Tired of thinking about the Universe. I had an important, indeed a historic, date coming up—not to mention a bar exam to study for. I opened a Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke, spread my
Corcoran's
on the windowsill, and lost myself in pleasant dreams. Mostly of Candy and that last little uniform button.

 

* * *

 

A Huntsville Parks Department professional has many obligations that run past the normal nine-to-five. Some of them are interesting, some even fun, and since Candy loves her job, I try to accommodate (which means accompany) her whenever possible. That night we had to stop by the North Side Baptist Union Fish Fry and Quilt Show, where Candy was the Guest of Honor in her neatly pressed, knife-creased khakis. The fish was my favorite, pond-raised cat rolled in yellow cornmeal, but I couldn't relax and enjoy myself. I kept thinking of later; I was in a hurry to get up on Squirrel Ridge, the mountain. But one good thing about Baptists, they don't last long, and by 9:15 Candy and I were parked up at the Overlook. It was a cool night and we sat out on the warm, still-ticking hood of the P1800 with the lights of the valley spread out below us like captured stars. My palms were sweating. This was to be the night I would propose, and hopefully she would accept, with all the privileges that entails.

I wanted the evening to be memorable in every way, and since the Moon was supposed to be full, I waited for it to rise. As I watched the glow on the eastern horizon, I thought of Wu and wondered if the Moon would rise in the west after the “Reversal.” Would anyone notice the difference? Or would folks just call the west the east and leave it at that?

It was too deep for me to figure out, and besides—I had other things on my mind. As soon as the Moon cleared the horizon, I got off the hood and dropped to my knees. I was just about to pop the question, when I heard a
beep beep
.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Buzzer,” said Candy.

“Sounds like a beeper.”

“It is. Buzzer loaned me his beeper,” she said, reaching down to her waist and cutting it off.

“What for?”

“You know what for.”

There are no phones up on Squirrel Ridge, so we high-tailed it down the mountain with the SUs howling and the exhaust barking, alternately. Candy's big fear was alerting Gaithers, who was on duty that night, so we rolled into the parking lot of Squirrel Ridge, the nursing home, with the lights off. I stayed with the P1800 while Candy slipped in through a side door.

She was back in half an hour. “Well?” I prompted.

“Daddy hit Buzzer,” she said (or I
thought
she said) as we drove out of the lot as quietly as possible. “It's cool, though. Buzzer didn't say anything to Gaithers. This time. I figure we've got one more strike. Three and we're out.”

“Where'd he hit him this time?”

“Not hit,” she said.
“Bit.”

“But your daddy doesn't have any teeth!”

Candy shrugged. “Seems he does now.”

 

* * *

 

And that was it for what I had hoped would be one of the biggest evenings of my life. My proposal, with its acceptance, with all the privileges that entails—none of it was to be. Not that night. Candy needed her sleep since she had to leave early in the morning for the annual statewide all-day Parks Department meeting in Montgomery. She dropped me off at Hoppy's Good Gulf and I took a long walk, which is almost as good as a cold shower. It takes only twenty minutes to cover every street in downtown Huntsville. Then I went back to the office, cutting through the corner lot. In the light of the full Moon, the beaded seat cushion looked almost new. The top rows of beads were complete, and there were only a few missing on the lower section. I resisted the urge to kick it.