After the First Death

  “Kevin isn’t coming back, Raymond.”

  She saw panic flash in Raymond’s eyes. She knew she couldn’t tell him the truth.

  “Kevin got sick. Maybe the stuff in the candy made him sick. So the man took him to the van out there. There’s a bed in the van. He’s better off there.”

  “They shouldn’t give children stuff that can make them sick,” Raymond said.

  “I know,” Kate said.

  “They’re bad men,” Raymond said, his old man’s voice suddenly frail. “Is somebody coming to save us?”

  “I hope so, Raymond,” Kate said, searching for the right words. “We’re not alone, you know. There are policemen and soldiers out there. They’ve surrounded the bridge. I’m sure they’re going to get us out of here.”

  “You didn’t eat the candy, did you, Kate?”

  “No, I want to be awake and alert.”

  “I want to be awake and alert, too,” he said.

  She touched his fat pink cheek. She felt oddly comforted, and didn’t know why. Maybe it was discovering an ally on the bus, even though he was only five years old.

  “Maybe I can help you,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Kate answered, to make him feel good.

  Suddenly, Raymond closed his eyes and his body went limp, his head drooping to one side. A moment later, Kate felt the presence of Miro nearby. His leg brushed her arm as he passed. She shivered slightly, although it was warm on the bus, the heat gathering as the day progressed. Miro took up his station near the door again. Kate looked down at Raymond. He had sensed Miro’s approach and had immediately feigned sleep. He was a smart little kid. The situation suddenly presented possibilities to Kate. A faint strand of hope. The boy wasn’t drugged; she knew something the hijackers didn’t know. Perhaps the boy could help in some way. Sometimes a kid could do something an adult couldn’t do, squeeze into a place an adult couldn’t squeeze. Her mind raced. Maybe other things. The important thing was this: Artkin and Miro and the others didn’t know.

  She bent her head toward Raymond.

  “Keep pretending,” she whispered. “Maybe you can be my helper. I’ll come and talk to you later.”

  Raymond lifted his face toward Kate. One eye opened and closed.

  The wink made Kate smile.

  Kate’s thighs were chafed and irritated. She thought: I’ve got to get out of these pants. The panties were damp, and the dampness was acid eating her flesh.

  The children were still subdued, dozing in the dimness of the bus. The day had turned cloudy. The absence of sun and the blocking out of light by the tape gave the interior of the bus an aspect of twilight. This fake dusk softened the sharp edges of things, and Kate found herself growing drowsy on occasion. The afternoon was at a standstill, the bus surrounded by silence except for the occasional howl of a siren or throb of a hovering helicopter.

  “How long will this go on?” Kate had asked Artkin when he had looked into the bus a few minutes ago, something he did periodically despite Miro’s presence. It seemed she had asked Artkin that question a million times, and a million times he had answered: “No one knows. We must be patient.” In one way, she wanted this standstill to go on and on. Each moment that passed gave her a sense of having survived this long. She was afraid of what would happen if some kind of action took place. The thought haunted her: They can’t afford to let me survive. They will kill me first. She had lived with that knowledge for such a long time now—time, she had learned, has nothing to do with a clock on a wall or a watch on your wrist—that the shock and horror was muted, had become part of the nature of her existence. And, mostly, she refused to think about it but kept herself busy moving among the children, holding one or another, or peeking out the window looking for some sign of encouragement out there. She drew comfort passing Raymond’s seat and patting his head. Sometimes, he opened that one bright gleaming eye. Other times, he was quiet, and she hoped that he slept.

  As for Miro, he was a brooding presence in the bus. His eyes followed her but looked elsewhere when she turned toward him. He often studied the outside terrain with a concentration that amazed Kate. He could stand in one position forever, it seemed, unmoving and yet somehow relaxed, as if he’d had years of training. Maybe he had. He also stood at the doorway of the bus on occasion, the door open, the lock dangling, drinking in the outside air. The air dissipated the smells of urine and perspiration that had accumulated in the bus. Kate was afraid her own urine had contributed to the rancidness of the air. She longed for a shower. Or just to wash herself down there. And she had to take off these pants.

  Miro was standing just outside the doorway, facing away from Kate. She made her way to the back of the bus, touching a child here and there as she passed. With one hand gripping the top of a seat for balance, Kate removed her jeans. Her wallet slipped to the floor. She let it lay there for the time being. She stepped out of her jeans. Her legs felt cool even in the heat of the bus, free of the denim. She glanced over her shoulder: the children still slept and Miro was still out of sight. She drew down the panties, the nylon damp on her flesh. She stepped out of them. Standing there for a moment, she let the air caress her irritated flesh. She rubbed herself there, as if she could soothe her skin that way, wipe away the chafing. Turning slightly, glancing over her shoulder, she saw Miro at the far end of the bus. He was looking at her, suspended, caught in mid-motion, one foot on the top step near the driver’s seat. Frozen. He wore the mask, which always emphasized his eyes. His eyes now were huge and startled. She could see them even at this distance. There was also something else in those eyes. She knew that look.

  Furious for allowing herself to be discovered this way, naked buttocks exposed, Kate groped for her jeans and pulled them on with trembling fingers. When she looked again, Miro was gone. Vanished. As if he had never been there at all.

  Spotting the wallet on the floor, she stooped and picked it up. The wallet, getting frayed with use, a birthday gift from her mother last year. As she began to slip it into her pocket, she remembered the key in the change compartment among the loose nickels and dimes. The key to the bus that her uncle had given her a few weeks ago, which she hadn’t bothered to attach to the chain holding her other keys. This morning, her uncle had left his own key in the ignition when he’d gone into the house to ask her to take his run to the children’s camp. Kate took out the key; it was cool on her flesh. She clutched it tightly, wanting to confirm its presence, feel its reality. She looked around apprehensively. No Miro. The children sleeping. Beautiful. She removed one sneaker and placed the key inside. She slipped the sneaker on and felt the key slide toward the front of the sneaker. The key nestled between her toes. It felt good as she walked to the front of the bus, as she touched the children. I’ve got a secret, she thought with delight, almost giddy. Not only a secret but a weapon. The key was a weapon to be used against the hijackers. The key could start the bus, and the bus could take them out of here. She went by Raymond. Another secret: Raymond who did not sleep, Raymond who was bright and alert.

  Her panties were bunched in her hand. Kate slipped them into her back pocket. She thought of Miro and the way he had looked at her when she’d stood there practically naked. She remembered the look in his eyes. No girl could ever mistake that look. Maybe she had another weapon in her small pathetic arsenal.

  One of the children cried out, a nightmare cry that split the silence. She went to the child—Monique emerging from a bad dream—and murmured sweet soothing sounds. Sweet, because maybe she and the children were not so hopeless or helpless after all.

  Miro entered the bus and removed the mask. His skin was hot and flushed. The girl was bending over one of the children, absorbed in the child. He resented the children. They were an additional burden. Their restlessness got on his nerves. Their cries often disturbed his quiet moments of reverie, memories of himself and Aniel long ago. The children demanded the girl’s constant attention, which made it difficult for him to approach her, to win her confidence. Artkin h
ad said the girl was his responsibility, but he felt as though he was not doing his job properly. She eluded him all the time, refused to meet his eyes, sought refuge in the children.

  He watched the girl now, looking at the jeans covering the flesh he had seen exposed and unclothed a few moments ago. That pale pink flesh. Unprotected. That had been his first reaction after the shock of seeing her naked, the flesh glowing in the half darkness of the bus. She had seemed so … he’d groped for the word, found it in the old language, tried to translate it into English, and came up with only: unprotected. Or perhaps innocent. But innocence had vanished when she had turned and seen him staring at her. Anger instead. And her anger had stung him, as if he had been caught peeping at her, as if he had been one of those sleazy persons in Times Square who pay money to look at naked girls. He dreamed sometimes in the night of dusky girls, rounded and full, whose flesh flirted with his eyes through wisps of veils. He had never actually seen a woman or a girl without clothing, except for photos in magazines. Not until this girl, Kate. Her slim flat buttocks and the fullness of her thighs had startled him.

  His face was still warm now as he looked at her. She was not yet aware of his presence, or if she were, she was pretending he had not entered the bus. One of the little boys waved to him. The boy with the missing tooth. Miro did not wave back. He would feel ridiculous waving to a child. Let the girl talk to them and wave to them. That was her job. The boy continued to seek Miro’s attention. The girl looked up. Miro searched her face for signs of anger and found none. Worse, perhaps; she acted as if he was not there at all, was invisible or transparent. The child waved again and called out: “Hi.” Brightly now, smiling for the first time. The girl said, “He likes you. Why don’t you wave back?”

  Miro was confused, his face warmer than ever, the pulse throbbing in his temple. He waved at the child, his hand strangely limp, and managed to croak: “Hello.” He meant his voice to emerge strong and confident, but he was betrayed by his voice, which was suddenly too high and too false. His face now scarlet, Miro turned away from them, pulling the mask over his head. He looked out of the slit in the windshield pretending to study the scene outside. He was puzzled, bewildered, but a small place inside him was sweet with pleasure. The girl had spoken to him; she was not angry. And now he could recall the sight of her nakedness with pleasure, a stirring inside him that he had never known before.

  Raymond was a good boy. He always did what his mother told him to do. He loved his mother. She was pretty and she always smelled nice. She bought him toys and games but she did not spoil him. His father spoiled him. Or tried to. He loved his father as much as he loved his mother but in a different way, of course. Sometimes, it puzzled Raymond. He liked to cuddle with his mother and nuzzle his face in her neck. But he liked to sit with his father, side by side in the chair. He would sit there quietly while his father watched the Red Sox on television. He liked the smell of his father, too. His mother smelled sweet, like perfume. His father smelled like the outdoors, like the shavings that fell when he sawed the fireplace wood.

  Raymond’s mother had gray hair and his father was bald. He heard them say: “Raymond is a late baby.” He worried when he heard them tell people that. He knew what late meant. It meant not on time. It was not good for people to be late. “Come on, we’re going to be late,” his father would call to his mother when they were going out and the baby-sitter was there. “If we’re late, there’ll be hell to pay,” his father said one time in the car when they were going somewhere. “Don’t be late now,” his mother would tell his father on the telephone. Raymond would lie awake at night, thinking of being late, thinking of going downtown with his mother and meeting people and hearing someone say: “But a late baby is such a pleasure.” Raymond didn’t know what a pleasure was but he knew what being late meant. He began to cry a lot. He began to get stomach aches. He tried to do things to make his mother and father proud of him. To make up for being late. He kept his room neat. He washed up good before eating. He did not fidget. He did not eat candy except at special times.

  Now in the bus, Raymond did not fidget. He was afraid of the men in the masks. He was afraid they would find out he was a late baby. He was glad the girl who drove the bus sometimes was here. She reminded him of his mother even though her hair was not gray. Her name was Kate and he liked that name. She had told him that he might be able to help her. Like the times he helped his father carry in wood for the fireplace. People were glad when you helped them. He would help Kate.

  Waiting to help her, he kept his eyes closed.

  But not all the time.

  He opened them sometimes.

  First one, then the other.

  Sometimes, both of them—but only a little bit so that no one would notice. Especially not the bad men. They would be angry because he did not eat the candy. And that would be just as bad as having them find out that he was a late baby.

  Artkin summoned Miro at last.

  Antibbe climbed aboard the bus and nodded his head toward the van. Antibbe seldom spoke, and when he did his voice was a hoarse growl as if speaking were painful to him.

  “He wants you,” Antibbe said. “I will watch the girl.”

  Miro glanced toward Kate, wondering what her reaction would be to this hulk of a man. Some men are menacing merely by their presence; Antibbe was one of these, and even more so in the mask. Miro considered that Antibbe could be a poet inside, gentle even, but outside he gave shivers. The thought surprised him: Where do thoughts like this come from? He never used to have thoughts like this, like wild birds flying. He had been content to let Artkin do the thinking, the planning, the pondering.

  Kate was looking at Antibbe with apprehension. Or perhaps fear. It pleased Miro that the girl did not look at himself that way and seemed to relax in his presence. I am winning her confidence, he thought, as Artkin said to do.

  “Be careful, the snipers,” Antibbe growled as Miro pulled the mask over his head.

  Miro said to Kate, “I will be back.”

  He turned abruptly away from the girl, afraid that his promise to return was a display of protection; he was certainly not here on the bus to protect her. He felt her eyes on him as he stepped down and out of the bus, onto the tracks. The van was only a few feet away but he had to be careful. He would have to crouch because of the snipers even though the guardrail was high enough to provide some protection. The space between the railroad ties made him conscious of the river far below. Miro did not trust the rotting wood, and this made him step gingerly toward the van.

  The interior of the van was even hotter than the bus. It was smaller than the bus and cluttered. It smelled of something stale or gone bad, like food left out too long. Stroll stood at the back of the van, peering through the slit in the taped rear window. He did not turn as Miro entered. Stroll was always solitary, as if he were alone on the planet. Yet he was a beautiful driver and Miro loved to watch him steering the car.

  Artkin stood before the CB monitor, his maimed hand twisting a dial. He greeted Miro with a nod of his head. The air suddenly came alive, a crackle of sound, static, and then a voice leaping from the monitor:

  “KLC. Draw back at the angle. Then report on the zero-nine-six. Repeat: KLC. Draw back at the angle. Then report on the zero-nine-six.”

  Another voice: “Parallel. Parallel.”

  Then silence.

  “They are using a special code of course,” Artkin said, “but we have been supplied with it.”

  “What were they saying?” Miro asked. They had used monitors in other operations, although Miro had never paid much attention to what was being said. The messages were always in code, and Miro found codes tiresome. It was bad enough using the American language and trying to think in this language without having to learn codes as well.

  “They are saying nothing we do not know,” Artkin said. “Deploying their men, stationing them at strategic points. Mostly, they are using words to substitute for action. They, too, must wait.”

&nbs
p; Growing bolder, Miro asked, “And what are we waiting for?”

  Stroll changed his posture at the back window. A slight movement, but eloquent because Stroll could remain motionless for hours. Perhaps I have surprised him by asking a question of Artkin, Miro thought, and he took pride in the matter. But hadn’t Artkin said that he had treated Miro as a boy too long? And wouldn’t he earn his manhood soon, if not today then tomorrow?

  “All right, Miro. Tell me what you have seen from the bridge and then I will tell you what you have not seen.”

  “I see that we are surrounded. That the police and the soldiers are everywhere around the bridge. They have set up headquarters in the building across the ravine. Snipers are in the woods. Helicopters fly above us sometimes. We have the children on the bus. And the girl. One child died.” He hesitated. Was there more? He was amazed again at Artkin, the way he had of turning his defense into an offense. He had said he would tell Miro everything and instead Miro was doing the telling.

  “Good,” Artkin said. “You have summed up the situation as far as your knowledge could do so. Now this is what you cannot see, Miro, what you cannot know.” Artkin wiped some beads of perspiration from his forehead with his good hand. “We have entered an alliance. With people who are not of our nation. We are not the only revolutionaries, Miro. They exist in all nations, even here in America, this so-called democracy. I cannot tell you with whom we have made our alliance—even I do not know. Sedeete is in charge of that phase of the operation.”

  Sedeete. The use of the name filled Miro with awe. Sedette was above Artkin, above everyone. He was the planner and the mover. Miro had only seen him twice; once when he had ended his schooling and was about to depart for America. Sedeete had shaken the hand of each of them, in the old grasp of freedom fighters. A small man with burning eyes and lips like thin knives. His hand in Miro’s had been curious: like old cardboard, dry, as if his skin had been replaced with false flesh. The second time had been a few days ago in Boston when Sedeete sat on a park bench with Artkin in the Public Gardens. Miro had remained in the van while Stroll and Antibbe stood watch at various points. Miro had only gotten a fleeing glimpse of Sedeete, afraid to look too long at him, as if Sedeete’s glance could somehow poison him from afar. Sedeete was the leader of all the freedom units in North America. The realization that he was involved in the bus operation made Miro see how important it was.