The Waste Lands

  "Goddam thief," the man who was reading The Plague said, and the other browser laughed. Calvin Tower paid no notice.

  "--but I can't bear to dock you that much on a day like this. Seven bucks and it's yours. Plus tax, of course. The riddle book you can have for free. Consider it my gift to a boy wise enough to saddle up and light out for the territories on the last real day of spring."

  Jake dug out his wallet and opened it anxiously, afraid he had left the house with only three or four dollars. He was in luck, however. He had a five and three ones. He held the money out to Tower, who folded the bills casually into one pocket and made change out of the other.

  "Don't hurry off, Jake. Now that you're here, come on over to the counter and have a cup of coffee. Your eyes will widen with amazement as I cut Aaron Deepneau's spavined old Kiev Defense to ribbons."

  "Don't you wish," said the man who was reading The Plague--Aaron Deepneau, presumably.

  "I'd like to, but I can't. I . . . there's someplace I have to be. "

  "Okay. As long as it's not back to school."

  Jake grinned. "No--not school. That way lies madness."

  Tower laughed out loud and flipped his glasses up to the top of his head again. "Not bad! Not bad at all! Maybe the younger generation isn't going to hell after all, Aaron--what do you think?"

  "Oh, they're going to hell, all right," Aaron said. "This boy's just an exception to the rule. Maybe."

  "Don't mind that cynical old fart," Calvin Tower said. "Motor on, O Hyperborean Wanderer. I wish I were ten or eleven again, with a beautiful day like this ahead of me."

  "Thanks for the books," Jake said.

  "No problem. That's what we're here for. Come on back sometime."

  "I'd like to."

  "Well, you know where we are."

  Yes, Jake thought. Now if I only knew where I am.

  14

  HE STOPPED JUST OUTSIDE the bookstore and flipped open the riddle book again, this time to page one, where there was a short uncredited introduction.

  "Riddles are perhaps the oldest of all the games people still play today," it began. "The gods and goddesses of Greek myth teased each other with riddles, and they were employed as teaching tools in ancient Rome. The Bible contains several good riddles. One of the most famous of these was told by Samson on the day he was married to Delilah: 'Out of the eater came forth meat,

  and out of the strong came forth sweetness!'

  "He asked this riddle of several young men who attended his wedding, confident that they wouldn't be able to guess the answer. The young men, however, got Delilah aside and she whispered the answer to them. Samson was furious, and had the young men put to death for cheating--in the old days, you see, riddles were taken much more seriously than they are today!

  "By the way, the answer to Samson's riddle--and all the other riddles in this book--can be found in the section at the back. We only ask that you give each puzzler a fair chance before you peek!"

  Jake turned to the back of the book, somehow knowing what he would find even before he got there. Beyond the page marked ANSWERS there was nothing but a few torn fragments and the back cover. The section had been ripped out.

  He stood there for a moment, thinking. Then, on an impulse that didn't really feel like an impulse at all, Jake walked back inside The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

  Calvin Tower looked up from the chessboard. "Change your mind about that cup of coffee, O Hyperborean Wanderer?"

  "No. I wanted to ask you if you know the answer to a riddle."

  "Fire away," Tower invited, and moved a pawn.

  "Samson told it. The strong guy. in the Bible? It goes like this--"

  " 'Out of the eater came forth meat,' " said Aaron Deepneau, swinging around again to look at Jake, " 'and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' That the one?"

  "Yeah, it is," Jake said. "How'd you know--"

  "Oh, I've been around the block a time or two. Listen to this." He threw his head back and sang in a full, melodious voice: " 'Samson and a lion got in attack,

  And Samson climbed up on the lion's back.

  Well, you've read about lion killin men with their paws,

  But Samson put his hands round the lion's jaws!

  He rode that lion 'til the beast fell dead,

  And the bees made honey in the lion's head.'"

  Aaron winked and then laughed at Jake's surprised expression. "That answer your question, friend?"

  Jake's eyes were wide. "Wow! Good song! Where'd you hear it?"

  "Oh, Aaron knows them all," Tower said. "He was hanging around Bleecker Street back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. At least, if you believe him."

  "It's an old spiritual," Aaron said to Jake, and then to Tower: "By the way, you're in check, fatso."

  "Not for long," Tower said. He moved his bishop. Aaron promptly bagged it. Tower muttered something under his breath. To Jake it sounded suspiciously like fuckwad.

  "So the answer is a lion," Jake said.

  Aaron shook his head. "Only half the answer. Samson's Riddle is a double, my friend. The other half of the answer is honey. Get it?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "Okay, now try this one." Aaron closed his eyes for. a moment and then recited, "What can run but never walks,

  Has a mouth but never talks,

  Has a bed but never sleeps,

  Has a head but never weeps?"

  "Smartass," Tower growled at Aaron.

  Jake thought it over, then shook his head. He could have worried it longer--he found this business of riddles both fascinating and charming--but he had a strong feeling that he ought to be moving on from here, that he had other business on Second Avenue this morning.

  "I give up."

  "No, you don't," Aaron said. "That's what you do with modern riddles. But a real riddle isn't just a joke, kiddo--it's a puzzle. Turn it over in your head. If you still can't get it, make it an excuse to come back another day. If you need another excuse, fatso here does make a pretty good cup of joe."

  "Okay," Jake said. "Thanks. I will."

  But as he left, a certainty stole over him: he would never enter The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind again.

  15

  JAKE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN Second Avenue, holding his new purchases in his left hand. At first he tried to think about the riddle--what did have a bed but never slept?--but little by little the question was driven from his mind by an increasing sense of anticipation. His senses seemed more acute than ever before in his life; he saw billions of coruscating sparks in the pavement, smelled a thousand mixed aromas in every breath he took, and seemed to hear other sounds, secret sounds, within each of the sounds he heard. He wondered if this was the way dogs felt before thunderstorms or earthquakes, and felt almost sure that it was. Yet the sensation that the impending event was not bad but good, that it would balance out the terrible thing which had happened to him three weeks ago, continued to grow.

  And now, as he drew close to the place where the course would be set, that knowing-in-advance fell upon him once again.

  A bum is going to ask me for a handout, and I'll give him the change Mr. Tower gave me. And there's a record store. The door's open to let in the fresh air and I'll hear a Stones song playing when I pass. And I'm going to see my own reflection in a bunch of mirrors.

  Traffic on Second Avenue was still light. Taxis honked and wove their way amid the slower-moving cars and trucks. Spring sunshine twinkled off their windshields and bright yellow hides. While he was waiting for a light to change, Jake saw the bum on the far corner of Second and Fifty-second. He was sitting against the brick wall of a small restaurant, and as Jake approached him, he saw that the name of the restaurant was Chew Chew Mama's.

  Choo-choo, Jake thought. And that's the truth.

  "Godda-quarder?" the bum asked tiredly, and Jake dropped his change from the bookstore into the bum's lap without even looking around. Now he could hear the Rolling Stones, right on schedu
le: "I see a red door and I want to paint it black,

  No colours anymore, I want them to turn black . . ."

  As he passed, he saw--also without surprise--that the name of the store was Tower of Power Records.

  Towers were selling cheap today, it seemed.

  Jake walked on, the street-signs floating past in a kind of dream-daze. Between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth he passed a store called Reflections of You. He turned his head and caught sight of a dozen Jakes in the mirrors, as he had known he would--a dozen boys who were small for their age, a dozen boys dressed in neat school clothes: blue blazers, white shirts, dark red ties, gray dress pants. Piper School didn't have an official uniform, but this was as close to the unofficial one as you could get.

  Piper seemed long ago and far away now.

  Suddenly Jake realized where he was going. This knowledge rose in his mind like sweet, refreshing water from an underground spring. It's a delicatessen, he thought. That's what it looks like, anyway. It's really something else--a doorway to another world. The world. His world. The right world.

  He began to run, looking ahead eagerly. The light at Forty-seventh was against him but he ignored it, leaping from the curb and racing nimbly between the broad white lines of the crosswalk with just a perfunctory glance to the left. A plumbing van stopped short with a squeal of tires as Jake flashed in front of it.

  "Hey! Whaddaya-whaddaya?" the driver yelled, but Jake ignored him.

  Only one more block.

  He began to sprint all-out now. His tie fluttered behind his left shoulder; his hair had blown back from his forehead; his school loafers hammered the sidewalk. He ignored the stares--some amused, some merely curious--of the passersby as he had ignored the van driver's outraged shout.

  Up here--up here on the corner. Next to the stationery store.

  Here came a UPS man in dark brown fatigues, pushing a dolly loaded with packages. Jake hurdled it like a long-jumper, arms up. The tail of his white shirt pulled free of his pants and flapped beneath his blazer like the hem of a slip. He came down and almost collided with a baby-carriage being pushed by a young Puerto Rican woman. Jake hooked around the pram like a halfback who has spotted a hole in the line and is bound for glory. "Where's the fire, handsome?" the young woman asked, but Jake ignored her, too. He dashed past The Paper Patch, with its window-display of pens and notebooks and desk calculators.

  The door! he thought ecstatically. I'm going to see it! And am I going to stop? No, way, Jose! I'm going to go straight through it, and if it's locked, I'll flatten it right in front of m--

  Then he saw what was at the corner of Second and Forty-sixth and stopped after all--skidded to a halt, in fact, on the heels of his loafers. He stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, hands clenched, his breath rasping harshly in and out of his lungs, his hair falling back onto his forehead in sweaty clumps.

  "No," he almost whimpered. "No!" But his near-frantic negation did not change what he saw, which was nothing at all. There was nothing to see but a short board fence and a littered, weedy lot beyond it.

  The building which had stood there had been demolished.

  16

  JAKE STOOD OUTSIDE THE fence without moving for almost two minutes, surveying the vacant lot with dull eyes. One corner of his mouth twitched randomly. He could feel his hope, his absolute certainty, draining out of him. The feeling which was replacing it was the deepest, bitterest despair he had ever known.

  Just another false alarm, he thought when the shock had abated enough so he could think anything at all. Another false alarm, blind alley, dry well. Now the voices will start up again, and when they do, I think I'm going to start screaming. And that's okay. Because I'm tired of toughing this thing out. I'm tired of going crazy. If this is what going crazy is like, then I just want to hurry up and get there so somebody will take me to the hospital and give me something that'll knock me out. I give up. This is the end of the line--I'm through.

  But the voices did not come back--at least, not yet. And as he began to think about what he was seeing, he realized that the lot wasn't completely empty, after all. Standing in the middle of the trash-littered, weedy waste ground was a sign.

  MILLS CONSTRUCTION AND SOMBRA REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATES ARE CONTINUING TO REMAKE THE FACE OF MANHATTAN!

  COMING SOON TO THIS LOCATION: TURTLE BAY LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS!

  CALL 555-6712 FOR INFORMATION!

  YOU WILL BE SO GLAD YOU DID!

  Coming soon? Maybe . . . but Jake had his doubts. The letters on the sign were faded and it was sagging a little. At least one graffiti artist, BANGO SKANK by name, had left his mark across the artist's drawing of the Turtle Bay Luxury Condominiums in bright blue spray-paint. Jake wondered if the project had been postponed or if it had maybe just gone belly-up. He remembered hearing his father talking on the telephone to his business advisor not two weeks ago, yelling at the man to stay away from any more condo investments. "I don't care how good the tax-picture looks!" he'd nearly screamed (this was, so far as Jake could tell, his father's normal tone of voice when discussing business matters--the coke in the desk drawer might have had something to do with that). "When they're offering a goddamn TV set just so you'll come down and look at a blueprint, something's wrong!"

  The board fence surrounding the lot was chin-high to Jake. It had been plastered with handbills--Olivia Newton-John at Radio City, a group called G. Gordon Liddy and the Grots at a club in the East Village, a film called War of the Zombies which had come and gone earlier that spring. NO TRESPASSING signs had also been nailed up at intervals along the fence, but most of them had been papered over by ambitious bill-posters. A little way farther along, another graffito had been spray-painted on the fence--this one in what had once undoubtedly been a bright red but which had now faded to the dusky pink of late-summer roses. Jake whispered the words aloud, his eyes wide and fascinated: "See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

  On his shell he holds the earth

  If you want to run and play,

  Come along the BEAM today."

  Jake supposed the source of this strange little poem (if not its meaning) was clear enough. This part of Manhattan's East Side was known, after all, as Turtle Bay. But that didn't explain the gooseflesh which was now running up the center of his back in a rough stripe, or his clear sense that he had found another road-sign along some fabulous hidden highway.

  Jake unbuttoned his shirt and stuck his two newly purchased books inside. Then he looked around, saw no one paying attention to him, and grabbed the top of the fence. He boosted himself up, swung a leg over, and dropped down on the other side. His left foot landed on a loose pile of bricks that promptly slid out from under him. His ankle buckled under his weight and bright pain lanced up his leg. He fell with a thud and cried out in mingled hurt and surprise as more bricks dug into his ribcage like thick, rude fists.

  He simply lay where he was for a moment, waiting to get his breath back. He didn't think he was badly hurt, but he'd twisted his ankle and it would probably swell. He'd be walking with a limp by the time he got home. He'd just have to grin and bear it, though; he sure didn't have cab-fare.

  You don't really plan to go home, do you? They'll eat you alive.

  Well, maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't. So far as he could see, he didn't have much choice in the matter. And that was for later. Right now he was going to explore this lot which had drawn him as surely as a magnet draws steel shavings. That feeling of power was still all around him, he realized, and stronger than ever. He didn't think this was just a vacant lot. Something was going on here, something big. He could feel it thrumming in the air, like loose volts escaping from the biggest power-plant in the world.

  As he got up, Jake saw that he had actually fallen lucky. Close by was a nasty jumble of broken glass. If he'd fallen into that, he might have cut himself very badly.

  That used to be the show window, Jake thought. When the deli was still here, you could stand on the sidewalk and look in at all the meats
and cheeses. They used to hang them on strings. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did--knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  He looked around thoughtfully and then walked a little farther into the lot. Near the middle, lying on the ground and half-buried in a lush growth of spring weeds, was another sign. Jake knelt beside it, pulled it upright, and brushed the dirt away. The letters were faded, but he could still make them out: TOM AND GERRY'S ARTISTIC DELI PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!

  And below it, spray-painted in that same red-fading-to-pink, was this puzzling sentence: HE HOLDS US ALL WITHIN HIS MIND.

  This is the place, Jake thought. Oh yes.

  He let the sign fall back, stood up, and walked deeper into the lot, moving slowly, looking at everything. As he moved, that sensation of power grew. Everything he saw--the weeds, the broken glass, the clumps of bricks--seemed to stand forth with a kind of exclamatory force. Even the potato chip bags seemed beautiful, and the sun had turned a discarded beer-bottle into a cylinder of brown fire.

  Jake was very aware of his own breathing, and of the sunlight falling upon everything like a weight of gold. He suddenly understood that he was standing on the edge of a great mystery, and he felt a shudder--half terror and half wonder--work through him.

  It's all here. Everything. Everything is still here.

  The weeds brushed at his pants; burdocks stuck to his socks. The breeze blew a Ring-Ding wrapper in front of him; the sun reflected off it and for a moment the wrapper was filled with a beautiful, terrible inner glow.

  "Everything is still here," he repeated to himself, unaware that his face was filling with its own inner glow. "Everything. "

  He was hearing a sound--had been hearing it ever since he entered the lot, in fact. It was a wonderful high humming, inexpressibly lonely and inexpressibly lovely. It might have been the sound of a high wind on a deserted plain, except it was alive. It was, he thought, the sound of a thousand voices singing some great open chord. He looked down and realized there were faces in the tangled weeds and low bushes and heaps of bricks. Faces.