Streams of Babel (16 page)

"What's up?" he asked. "What can we do? Coach even called off wrestling practice today and tomorrow so we could do for Owen like he would do for us. Don't just, ya know, tell us to leave."

I exhaled an apology. Dobbins had replaced me as running back last year on the football team. He wasn't future Harvard material any more than I was, but he had a piercing eye that let you know he was interested in what you had to say, and he
wasn't known for spilling over at the mouth. I pulled him along down the stairs and into the laundry room, shutting the door.

"He's not flipping out, is he?" Dobbins asked.

I shook my head, realizing that would be their first suspicion. "He's just come down with something and ... it looks a little like what Mom had, that's all."

"So, where is he?"

"Cora Holman's. She's got it, too."

He let out a groan. "Damn. No rest for the weary. Bet it's not serious, dude. Rain's doing okay?"

"Seems to be."

"And sorry about Dempsey's comment on Cora up there. It just isn't the time, but uh..." Dobbins laughed nervously. "He's always had a case for Cora Holman, so he has to cut up, I guess."

I opened the dryer door, liking how easy it was to pursue this line of talk instead of the more serious ones. I joked, "He likes poised and proper, huh?"

"He likes a challenge. We keep telling him he'll have better luck with a member of the British royal family. As for them having what your moms had..." He gestured awkwardly. "Cora's mom was a drug addict, right? Didn't we used to hear that around school?"

"Yeah."

"And your mom's favorite motto was always 'I sleep fast.' I mean, neither one was probably up for fighting terrible germs, right? So ... maybe you shouldn't worry about Owen so much. It's not going to get him like that, Scott, if he's got what your mom had."

"You're probably right, but—"

"But you got your paramedic's imagination working overtime, eh?"

My head dipped in half a nod. "It's on a mountain of memos from the CDC, all these emerging infectious diseases we're supposed to be looking out for while working."

"Yeah? I guess nothing matches what Owen has?"

"I read through a stack of thirty-six of those memos last night, though most of them are far-reaching. Ya know...'There's this tsetse fly in Marrakech that's been biting Africans in the ass. If it hops a plane to Newark, here's what you might see.'"

"You're gonna make yourself nuts." He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Try to relax, man. You're starting to sound like Mr. Steckerman."

"What's he saying?" I had started to reach in the dryer for a T-shirt, but I froze.

"Nothing—lately. We had that assembly in early January when he went over from the FBI to USIC, and he came to school to talk about terror attacks. It was part of the 9/11 razzmatazz, like, a canned speech that was coming from law enforcement officers all over the country."

"Oh." I must have looked wrung out because he kept patting my shoulder until I bent down to get the stuff out of the dryer.

"He told us that as Americans, we have a responsibility to look after our neighborhoods and make sure there's no suspicious activity going on. But then ... he wasn't very good at telling us what we were supposed to be looking for. In fact, he got us all confused by saying that as Americans we shouldn't profile."

I pulled out Owen's favorite Steelers jersey and dumped it in the gym bag. "I guess he can't exactly say to look for a bunch of 9/11 poster boys assembling suspiciously in public places while carrying Zippo lighters and dollar-store box cutters."

A laugh blew out his nose, but he muttered, "Don't, man. Tannis is around here somewhere."

Tannis Halib, son of a Saudi heart surgeon at Saint Ann's, was another of Owen's football buddies. I groped around the dryer in a frustrating hunt for two matching socks.

"Shit, I wouldn't have Steckerman's job for all the tea in China," I beefed. "At least I can say, 'Here's a picture of a goddamn tsetse fly. It's from goddamn Marrakech, and if you see one, you better squash its sorry ass.' So, what did he end up telling you? Hell, I'm open." I shrugged. "Might as well look for terrorists while I'm looking for tsetse flies and every other goddamn thing."

"I don't even remember. Something very vague and ...
American.
Look out for people gathering in houses on a regular basis where they didn't used to gather. Something like that."

"Ha! We'd all be under arrest in this house tonight"

I found two Wigwams but one had a hole, so I tossed it over my head and fished for another. "Confusing times, as my boss constantly says," I griped on. "
Strange gatherings in your neighborhood,
huh? With my luck, I would end up busting some new division of the local garden club and every lady in town would be pissed at me."

"I saw a strange gathering," Dobbins went on cheerily. "I didn't say anything about it after Mr. Steckerman's terrorism assembly, though."

"Yeah, maybe you should report it to him," I said politely, eyeing up another sock, which turned out to be a short Wigwam, and my first find was a long. Owen wouldn't care, but I had this thing that socks ought to match up. I'm a realist: I don't believe in the black hole in the dryer.

"But it sounds like profiling," Dobbins went on. "I probably would have said something, but I figured it would sound dumb."

One new Wam in the dryer meant another new Wam also was in the dryer. I pulled out a bedsheet, hoping that would help. It was the sheet I'd stripped off Mom's bed and washed about ten minutes before she told me she wanted to go to the hospital.

The bed was still stripped. It's part of the whole run-over-by-a-truck feeling I'd had for three days—bumping into items that remind you of how alive the person was a week ago. I was barely listening to Dobbins.

"...saw a strange gathering while I was parked in front of Buzby's Liquors over in Surrey. You know that discount shoe place across the street?...dozen or so men were in there after hours, popping champagne and drinking forties. It's like they were toasting something, celebrating something. I took a walk over that way, because Ronnie got to chatting with Mr. Buzby, and he didn't leave me the keys to play the radio."

Ronnie Dobbins was Bob's older brother, and I just nodded.

"I walked over to the shoe store, because it looked like they had Asian revenge on Prada in the window, and I wanted to see how close the match was, ya know? Well, they saw me through the window and slithered into this back room—all dozen or so of them—like they didn't want any window-shoppers gazing
directly at them. It's a pretty quiet street outside of Buzby's, and it was like they had a second thought about what they were doing when I went up to the window. And this one guy came to the door, unlocked it, and said to me that they were closed, which I knew. It looked like he wanted to get rid of me. And truth be told? His English was for shit. You know how my dad rags on about that. People come here, and they ought to start learning the language before they start soaking our money. Anyway, I thought it was weird because it wasn't New Year's Eve for two more days. I was at this liquor store with Ronnie to order a keg for our party, so it was probably only the twenty-eighth of December. They were toasting each other, like, celebrating something..."

I rose slowly to my feet, rubbing the back of my head where I'd just banged it on the dryer opening, upon hearing that date. I'm good with details, but sometimes it takes me a while to know
why
I'm good with a particular detail. That December 28 date made me jump, and it was only while straightening up that I remembered Mr. Steckerman quoting some e-mail intelligence chatter from the guys they thought were trying to poison water somewhere:
They will drink in December and die like mangy dogs in April...

"You saw this in December?" I asked curiously. "A bunch of guys in a storefront, speaking shitty English, and celebrating like they'd just accomplished something?"

"Or won something, or did something, yeah."

I thought about this, half shrugging. It could have been a great sale that netted the owner thousands of bucks. They could have been some religion I didn't know—of which there are a hundred in these parts—that started the new year on a different day than we did. The idea that they were celebrating the
finishing up of an act of terror seemed truly out there, though I was a little bit intrigued by the image.

"What do you think they were celebrating?" I asked.

"Hell if I know. I didn't think about it at all ... Until Mr. Steckerman said to watch out for unusual gatherings of people. But then I decided it wasn't worth telling."

"Why?"

"Because. I don't know if 'weird' means 'suspicious.' But here's one more thing. They were at a party with all guys. Who leaves the opposite sex out of champagne, unless it's one of those cultures that treat women like shit in the first place?"

I looked down, and a newish, long Wigwam lay flopped over one sneaker. I reached for it, annoyed and half confused. "So. We've got a party in a store. No women. Bad English. And paranoia when you start looking in the window."

"Is that suspicious?" he asked.

Hell if I knew. "Crazy times, Jeezus."

"Yeah, and it happened around here.
Around here.
And it was at least two weeks old by that point. Nothing had been blown up, so it doesn't matter."

I got a chill over the memory of Mr. Steckerman's story at the hospital—about certain waterborne agents of bioterror taking months to become symptomatic in humans. I patted Dobbins's bicep, trying to feel sufficient sympathy. He hadn't heard that story.

I slung the gym bag over my shoulder. "The grand overview is that something around here took two lives, and if it's anything dramatic, it's got to be an emerging infectious disease. The only agents of bioterror that could strike in December and
kill in March would be in the water. And USIC said the towers are clean."

Dobbins's laugh reminded me to take a reality check.
Mystery of the Terrorists at Trinity.
Sounded like some goddamn latest edition of the Hardy Boys.

"So ... can I go with you to see Owen?" Dobbins turned the subject. "If I don't tell the other guys? He shouldn't have to suffer the flu pukes with Rain's motormouth driving him nuts and Cora Holman's frigid good manners giving him frostbite."

I couldn't answer because my mind was all over the place. I couldn't help myself. I had visions of Mom refilling her dented, dinged, three-week-old Evian bottle at the tap every time I turned around. I couldn't see how USIC could be wrong about their testing results, but I was uneasy, remembering how things sometimes happened on my shift—people died in the ambulance, even when you thought you had everything under control, or you were doing the best job that you knew how to do.

"Maybe we could just drive past that discount shoe place and get a look at those guys," I suggested. "Not that you can tell a terrorist just by looking at one, yada yada..."

"Well, you can't see them," Dobbins said. "Here's the weirdest thing about that story. The day after New Year's, I went to take the keg back for my brother. And the discount shoe store was deserted—I mean
gone
deserted, like the windows were soaped up and the place had been shut down, and there was a
FOR RENT
sign in the window."

Like they'd done something, celebrated it, and then skipped town.
I didn't want my imagination to run wild, but I was drawn to this concept like the moon draws water.

"The place was still deserted when we got another keg there after winning that last wrestling match. It's almost like I dreamed it or something."

"But you didn't," I questioned him, "right?"

He shook his head, heaving a sigh. "No, man. I was wide awake and stone- cold sober. You really think I should have bothered Mr. Steckerman about this?" he asked again.

"Who knows? Probably their lease ran out and they were celebrating a year of American prosperity. But I'll tell you. Nothing is helping me more to get through these days than trying to figure out what got Mom. Maybe I could put it on my list of stuff to do to keep from having a nervous breakdown—just to drive past there, maybe look in the windows. You in?"

"Any time, bro."

I looked at my watch. "Owen's probably still sleeping, and I'm just too twitchy to sit downstairs with my uncles, et cetera, and talk about the past."

"I'll drive. But then, I want to see Owen. I don't care what he's got."

I nodded, reaching above the detergent to grope through some extra medical supplies I kept around. I tossed some surgical gloves at him. "Wear these around him. Breathe at your own risk ... and don't look at me like that."

His stunned eyes dropped, and he shoved the gloves in his jacket pocket without saying anything.

CORA HOLMAN
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2002
5:31
P.M.

WHILE OWEN SLEPT, Rain gazed at the television until another cartoon show had finished—Looney Tunes, which I knew. I watched with one eye barely opened and the other shut in case she happened to look over. A conversation was out of the question right now. How long would it be before she got to
Where are all your friends?
Or,
Tell me about your mom.

But she had been right about her headache predictions, and by the time the fourth Looney Tunes cartoon had run, I felt so much relief that my eyes only wanted to relax.

She turned as the credits rolled. The last little drippings of sun shot strange rays through the window, giving us a slightly orange glow. If I shut my eyes now, she would know I was trying to avoid her.

She crawled over, and I managed to smile.

"How's your head?" she asked.

"Better ... thanks."

"Told ya. Very weird headaches. You get the digestive tract parts, too, yet?"

"Yes. On the first day"

Her jaw bobbed downward, but then came up, as if she had decided against asking me if I'd thrown up or had the runs. I would have answered her, I think. But to offer such a detail without being asked—the thought left me muted. She reached up and patted my hand, kind of stroking it awkwardly, but it was a nice gesture. It was outside the "necessity touching," like hugging at a funeral. The sensation went all the way up my arm to my heart, making me wonder if there wasn't something magical about the human touch after all.