At the door of the hotel, he gave quick thanks, abandoning her on the curb despite the obvious fact that she would have assisted him to his room and afterward. The night had not turned out as planned for all involved.
There was one more indignity in store for him.
His room was clean.
The clothes folded and tucked into drawers, the flecked cups in the bathroom banished and replaced by cellophane-covered cousins, the paltry lozenges of soap replenished. A lemon zesty tendril tickled his nose. The only mark of disorder was the DO NOT DISTURB sign, which had been rent evenly in two and placed in the middle of the quilt. The housekeeper had placed it just so, the pieces touching at a forty-five-degree angle and elegantly framed by the edges of the bed. A tableau of victory. She had been a worthy opponent, and he lamented this second defeat, so quickly after the last one. Reminded of his misfortune after blissful forgetfulness for a few days, and then bested by a feather duster: it had been a brutal twenty minutes.
He showered, inspecting his body for bruises and marks. Nothing to the eye. Except for the site of his most famous injury.
He fell asleep quickly but it didn’t last. An hour later he was staring at the ceiling and he knew he was going to have a hard time for a couple of hours. Cleaned up, straightened up according to the house style, his room was returned to its familiar strangeness, and he remembered his first night in the hotel. Back where and when he started. How had he ended up in this place? Not this particular room, but place. No one to call. No one to ask for advice, or even calming nonsense about the events of their day. Sure, he could point to his hospitalization as a clear marker of Before and After, but he recognized such distinctions as counterfeit. His course had been set long in advance. This place was the sum of old choices, the heap of his years. In that nameless town, he asked himself, what was he going by lately? What name was he traveling under? Perhaps his banishment to this place was only fitting. Unavoidable.
His guts twisted on themselves and he uttered a startled groan, cursing the barbecue and all it had wrought. Intestinal turmoil and insomnia were his buddies until dawn, when he finally fell back to sleep.
Everybody was gone by noon. He heard the luggage catch on the lip of the elevator, the groups huddle below his window as they waited for the correct shuttle bus. They made farewells and traded personal information, some sincerely and some for politeness’ sake, and he was struck by the momentum of endings. Then it seemed only he was left in the hotel, floating in his bed three stories above the town, a patch of bad weather hovering over things. A brand of darkness that set people who saw it waiting for lightning and noise.
Things had been reset. Over days he had re-created the chaos of his rooms back home, and it had been undone. Last night he had been on the verge of delivering a name, and had been silenced. By a wobbly table, his stupid foot, a momentary lapse of balance: it didn’t matter. He had been returned to the day of his arrival. In his new room, he started from scratch. The housekeeper had made a gift of a neat pile of books in the center of the desk. He reached for Gertrude Sanders’s contributions to the world of letters, the official version and one less so. He hit the books.
. . . . . . . .
Colored.
The sliver of himself still in tune with marketing shivered each time Gertrude used the word colored. He kept stubbing his toe on it. As it were. Colored, Negro, Afro-American, African American. She was a few iterations behind the times. Not that you could keep up, anyway. Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed.
It was her use of the word that got him thinking about it. You call something by a name, you fix it in place. A thing or a person, it didn’t matter—the name you gave it allowed you to draw a bead, take aim, shoot. But there was a flip side of calling something by the name you gave it—and that was wanting to be called by the name that you gave to yourself. What is the name that will give me the dignity and respect that is my right? The key that will unlock the world.
Before colored, slave. Before slave, free. And always somewhere, nigger.
What was next? In the great procession. Because things never remain still for long. What will we call ourselves next, he wondered. If he knew what was next, he’d know who he would be.
. . . . . . . .
People started stopping him on the street. When he went out for coffee. When he went out for lunch, his research material in a white plastic bag dragging down his arm, dead weight. It began with double takes as he stalked Winthrop Square. They’d gesture at him and whisper to each other, That’s him. They approached, fingers on his shoulder. You’re that guy, aren’t you? I know you. Didn’t I see your picture in the paper? Lemme tell you something.
He had considered his three clients, one after the other, and listened to their arguments and entreaties. But in truth they were only three of a thousand clients. Thousands. He was quarry now, out in the open, exposed. If they had an opening, they took it, blocking his path or looming over him as he sat guzzling his coffee. The former bookkeeper for the factory, whose posture was such that he appeared to grow into himself. Teenagers on skateboards who scraped across the pavement halted two inches from his face, and cackled excitedly before jetting off. Widows and veterans with their disparate agendas. Homemakers laden with shopping. The old white man he had met the first day, the one with the dog, intercepted him and laid this spiel on him while the animal gnawed on his shoelaces.
He said, Okay, okay.
In the middle of the afternoon he sat on a bench in the square. Was he daring them to approach him, did he want them to? Did he need something from them? He didn’t know. When he caught people across the street squinting at him, he filled in their backstories. That one descended from the second wave of newcomers, the ones who showed up in Winthrop when the plant had taken off and was expanding. That lady over there claimed a direct blood tie to those who followed in Goode and Field’s wake once word of Freedom spread, once people heard of the place where colored folk could be treated like human beings. Advertising of one sort or another had drawn them here, slogans with their luminous entreaties. Freedom was a place where you could get a fresh start. Winthrop, now there’s a place where a man can make his mark. The future is yours. Odds were, if his stories didn’t fit the person in question, they were right for somebody else. That white guy right there had only been here for a month, he tapped out code for Aberdeen and was raising his kid by himself, an easier proposition here than in the city he had left. New Prospera was the final element; after that his resurrection would be complete.
They wanted to know what he thought about things. By the end of the afternoon they were beginning to scare him. Better to be back home on the thirtieth floor of a midtown office building than down here in muck, elbow to elbow with these specimens. Giving him the Muttonchop treatment. At lunch he was granted a monstrous vision as the waitress quizzed him, her pen poised over her notebook. Him as the last living being and the rest of humanity turned to zombies. Like in the horror movies. As was custom for such situations, no reason was given for this transformation. Why is everyone so alien? Just because. He runs through the streets of a deserted town, newspapers twisting in the wind, dumbfounded headlines ripping down the ave. They come at him, lurching, wearing the same clothes they used to wear, normal-looking yet in complete exile from themselves and their histories. Surrounding him, after pieces of him. Hey, mister—what’s your name?
The waitress told him New Prospera had a nice ring to it. They approached him and asked questions, as if he could help them. As if they could be helped.
He made some headway. At one point he took a break and found himself by the window of his hotel room. Not looking at any single thing but feeling as if he were peering through the surface of Winthrop Square. To whatever was below. Just spacing out, really, when Albie shuffled into his field of vision, moving erratically down the sidewalk.
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Everybody’s uncle stopped all who walked by, for a quick hello or catch-up. Almost his opposite number—instead of being hunted, Albie was the one in pursuit. From the window, he watched strollers bend toward Albie’s gravity as they passed him. But then, when he pulled back, he saw another level of citizen that purposely avoided Albie. From his angle, he saw them change trajectory so they escaped Albie’s zone, crossing the street or suddenly darting into storefronts. Anything to avoid this strange man. It didn’t matter what his name was, or how many times a day they said it, wrote it on envelopes, read it on signs. The old man was weird and unsettling. And that was that. He felt guilty for his vantage point on the third floor, as if he were eavesdropping on people’s thoughts.
It was the last time he saw Albie. Winthrop’s favorite son. Why hadn’t the two freed men named the town after themselves, he wondered. Goodefield. Nice place to raise a family, they’re closing the drive-in to open a new mall, and it’s about time. Certainly the duo didn’t lack for ego. It required a certain lack of modesty to lead your followers across hundreds of miles of wilderness and whatnot, and all the homesteaders in their caravan qualified as followers in his book. He crunched the names, fed them into the input slot of his particular talent. Goode the Light, Goode Delight: a maker of vibrators. Field the Dark, Field Dark: where you find yourself when you are lost. Darkfield: manufacturer of military equipment, ordnance, and such. Darkfield Military Supply. Darkfield Secrets and Enigmas Inc.
On paper, in the official history, they were even-stake partners, but when it came to day-to-day matters, you were going to go with one or the other. The Light or the Dark. You had to pick one, he knew. To give your allegiance to, when faced with Lost White Boys or night riders or more mundane obstacles. How to shake off the nightmare. How to make it through the day. And more often than not, you were going to go with Goode. Sleep came more easily, no doubt, with his words echoing in your head. You understood deep down that what Field had to say was the world’s truth, but you were going to pick Goode every time. It was easier that way.
Had he seen any signs around town with Field’s name? Where were his sons and daughters? He knew more than he wanted to about Winthrops, had broken bread with a bona fide Goode. Where was Field’s legacy? Where were his streets, and where did they lead?
Even before he discovered the discrepancy, he had decided that Field hadn’t voted to change the name to Winthrop. It wasn’t in the man’s nature.
He was eating dinner in Riverboat Charlie’s, papers spread out before him. He noticed a spot of coffee on a page from Gertrude’s original manuscript and started to wipe it off. These were historical documents, after all. Didn’t want Beverley to spank him. Anyway. His eye fell on the words, “Field had taken to fever and was not present, but the motion was passed unanimously and the town was changed forever. Winthrop was born.” He’d read that passage a few times already, but it had never registered. Field didn’t vote?
He opened up the official, bound version to see how the section survived the Winthrop Foundation editing process. He tried to avoid getting tartar sauce on the pages as he searched out the passage in question. “The motion was passed unanimously, and with a stroke of a pen, the town was changed forever. Winthrop was born.” No mention of Field, ill or otherwise. The final version was richer one cliché and short one local character.
He called up Regina. He had some questions.
. . . . . . . .
He liked his epiphanies American: brief and illusory. Which is why he was so disappointed that a week after the operation he still felt such deep disquiet. Pierce the veil, sure, that was one thing. To walk around with the weight of what he had witnessed, quite another. Or limp around, more accurately.
It started in the hospital, the long road to hermitage. Later, he retained a few shadowy recollections of acquaintances by his bedside. Someone squeezing his hand, probably Bridget, murmuring earnestly, “Can you hear me in there?” Or perhaps this was from coma movies, and merely appropriated from popular culture for the occasion of his hospitalization. When he was conscious, and had stepped down from his fever mountain, they gave him the skinny on what had befallen him. Discovered, delirious and muttering, sprawled out on a street corner. Delirious but well dressed, which was why he was eventually taken to the emergency room, instead of being left to rot. The ghastly shock waiting underneath the adhesive bandage, and the amputation of his putrefying toe, no other option at that point. His only response to the news was to inform the nurses that he would refuse all visitors.
Bridget made a commendable effort, expending the energy to make six phone calls and two attempted visits to his room. It was more than he gave her credit for, more than he deserved, actually, and he couldn’t help but be slightly moved. That she did not persevere after the first few days was just as well. He would have defeated her in the end. Tipple and the rest did their part, some of them making it to the door of his room before being scooped up by the nurses. He rebuffed them all. This prepared his co-workers for the letter he sent weeks afterward, informing them that he would not be returning to the office. Foreshadowing, he mumbled to himself, as he hoisted the hospital room remote. The remote control was connected to the wall by a heavy umbilicus, and the weight of the wire hanging over the side of the bed kept it creeping away from him as if it were alive.
The doctor was a third-year resident, rendering into dull comedy utterances such as, “In all my years of practicing, I have never seen such neglect.” Doctor Miner presented the scenario with a charming air of exasperation. The repeated assaults on the toe’s well-being had left it merely ugly, Doctor Miner explained. It would have healed in time. The real culprit was the infection, which had remade the flesh after its own hideous design. He was writing up the case for a medical journal, so startling was the pedigree of the microscopic creatures who turned up in the culture taken from the star-crossed digit. “In all my years of practicing,” he told him, “I’ve never seen such an eclectic group.” He rattled off the arcane names of organisms with relish, as if recounting the guest list at the glamorous party he’d hosted the night before.
Retracing his steps proved fruitless. For all intents and purposes, he received the infection from a toilet seat. Only months later, when he was laid out on the couch in perfected lassitude, did he remember the weekend at Red Barn, and his encounter with the lagoon of pig shit from the farm next door. Who knew what was living in that hellish swamp, biding its time. Must have been quite a party inside his sneakers, with an all-access pass to his wounded toe. Served him right for trying to get a little nature.
Advanced State of Necrosis. Good name for a garage band.
“How could you let it get so far?” Doctor Miner demanded. “A guy like you should know better.” Which sounded at first like a racial remark, but he couldn’t work up any rote indignation. He should have known better.
He explained about the Apex. He hadn’t even known anything was amiss down there, apart from the pain from the constant stubbing, which, truth be told, he had accepted as his lot and gotten used to after a while.
The doctor simply said, “Apex,” shaking his head in morose recognition. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
On the subject of the limp, the physician was adamant in his diagnosis. There was no reason for it. The human body is an adaptable instrument, the doctor told him.
The mind is less so, he told himself.
Hobblon for the Limpers in Your Life. Hobblon Makes Your Gimp Limp Hip. From Stub to Stump Using My Patented Five-Point System.
He adjusted quickly to the recluse lifestyle, which was much more complicated than it appeared to outsiders, who enjoyed their invigorating jaunts outdoors and frequent social interaction without considering the underlying structures holding everything together. Keeping away from people, that was easy. Neglecting one’s physical appearance, that wasn’t too difficult either. The hard part was accepting that the world did not miss you.
Weeks into months. And so
on. He became acquainted with the sadism of time, and then accepted said sadism as an unavoidable feature of existence, as if it were a noisy upstairs neighbor. Eventually, his award arrived in the mail. He never opened the box; instead he put it in the closet with the other cheap trophies, the piles and piles of things he had named.
It was not all stasis and sweet, sweet languor, however. He ended up doing a phoner, a few weeks after the incident. Roger called him up, breaking down the situation with uncharacteristic hysteria. The firm was a week overdue on a lucrative account with a car company that was about to announce their new line of mid-priced hybrid-fuel minivans. The car company knew they wanted “100” in the name—their in-house team had arrived at this after years of feuding, bad feelings, and busted friendships. They were definitely going to stick with 100, after so much bloodshed. The other element—well, that was where Tipple and his old team were supposed to come in.
It was a no go, however. “It’s like everybody’s come down with some kind of goddamned brain flu,” Tipple complained. Everyone was quite put out. Any chance, Tipple asked, that he might help out?
He listened to the story distractedly. He was unaccustomed to normal speech, having grown more acquainted with the dingy dramas of afternoon television, and their dispiriting cadences. The world of afternoon television astounded and delighted in the sheer breadth of its humiliations. The streets were filled with victims, and the television programs sought them out for the delectation of those at home, whose own deep and particular brands of abjectness could not compete. The signs and symbols were simple and direct. Nothing complicated or duplicitous about them. Nothing lying in wait for ambush. He observed the shape of his body on the couch. He was shriveled into a comfortable fetal pose that resembled a question mark. So he said, “Give them a Q.”