This Side of Brightness

  Eleanor always uses the same line at the end of each letter:

  Like we said, you keep your handsome head down, Clarence, and come back to us in one piece and don’t go making us spill the river with tears.

  On the evening that the war officially ends in stalemate, they receive a letter from Clarence to say that he will remain on in the demilitarized zone. He should be home shortly. He hints that he has met a girl at the army base: she is a nurse’s aide and she has painted a bowl of grits on the front of his cook’s helmet. The letters arrive monthly—one of them even comes when Clarence is on R&R in Japan. Eleanor keeps the stamps in a special envelope.

  And then one afternoon, in the late summer, they receive another letter. They open it with their heads hung penitently. They already know from a two-week-old telegram that Clarence has been injured. A knife rolls slowly through the top lip of the envelope. Walker feels a bead of sweat roll down his spine. He uncurls the sheet of paper very slowly and hands it to Eleanor to read.

  She throws her arms around him in simultaneous relief and grief when she reads the letter. The letter has been dictated by Clarence to the nurse’s aide. It takes a moment for Eleanor’s eyes to adjust to the handwriting.

  Dear Mom and Pa,

  I am alive and well. I was hit by a mine when I went out walking. We had just clocked off from the canteen, a buddy and me. We were south of Pusan, just going for a walk in the forest at the bottom of the mountain. It must have been a trip wire. I should have listened more carefully to Rhubarb. My buddy, he lost both his legs. Some of the shrapnel hit me in the eyeball and I lost my eye. I’m sitting here trying to be brave about it, but hell. Anyway, the nurses here have been looking after me good, especially that girl Louisa I told you about. She’s right here, scribbling down every word I say. Well, almost every word! She’s from Chippewa country out West. She’s been treating me special. She even went found me a gramophone and some 45s of old Rex Stewart so I can listen to him blow that horn. The radio stations here aren’t so good—all you get is Nat King Cole and all. But I get to listen to old Rex. Just lie here in bed and let him play. My injury doesn’t hurt much. Sometimes it’s hard looking only through one eye, but I reckon I’ll get used to it. Don’t let that river spill over because I’m as good as can be expected. You know that bowl of grits that I told you about—Louisa painted it for me—well, I think that’s about the funniest thing in the world. I’m looking forward to you-all meeting Louisa. We are good friends. Well, more than good friends to tell you the truth. And you know what? I understand that day, now, I understand that day, Mom, in the warehouse when you said you didn’t know me. In the Army you learn not to know yourself at all. And I got to thinking. And I know what you’re saying. So I understand and I forgive you, Mom. Well now, I don’t want you to get getting weepy, so I’m going to sign off. One thing is, though, we been thinking about getting a discharge, going back to New York, Louisa and me, start a little business, I don’t know what. Maybe even get married, how about that! Something so we can all go get a big apartment and live together and be happy and no more spilling of rivers for any of us.

  The letter is signed: Clarence W. and Louisa Turiver.

  Beneath that, a P.S.: I have a feeling that something will grow in the forest where my eyeball is. And beneath that another P.S.: No jokes about the eyepatch please!

  * * *

  Eighteen months later, in 1955, Walker and Eleanor peep around the curtain separating them from their daughters, slip outside into the corridor—noise of thumping fists coming up the stairs from Hoofer McAuliffe’s place—and walk along, floorboards creaking under their feet, to the shared bathroom. Eleanor puts a finger to Walker’s lips to stop him from laughing. The walls are yellow and smudged with handprints. The tiles on the floor are black and cracked. Eleanor scrubs the basin and wipes the side of it with toilet paper, making the sink immaculate, so that when she shunts up and sits up on the porcelain and lifts her nightdress to take him inside, she feels clean and young, although she’s thirty-eight years along and her body has begun perambulating downward.

  “How’re your knees?” she asks when Walker stands on his toes and his back arches.

  A vagabond breeze comes through the small open window, leaving the bathroom cool. She undoes the clips at the back of her hair, reaches to touch his hip.

  “How’re your knees, honey?” Eleanor asks again.

  “Still there, Grandma,” says Walker, rocking on the balls of his toes, biting his lower lip with his teeth to block out the laughter.

  She jabs him in the chest. “Don’t Grandma me. I’m not a grandma just yet.”

  They remain there, making love, and Walker will remember this forever: the clean sink, the yellow walls, the handprints, the lifted nightdress, the portent of a moth careening wildly below the bare lightbulb.

  chapter 9

  back down under where you belong

  Sounds of scuffling feet, and Treefrog knows there are people at the tunnel gate. Maybe some kids who have come to play Burn the Mole. Or Elijah and Angela making love again, screaming in their ecstasy and dejection. Or Dean with a bundle of boys at his hip. The voices carry, and then someone says very loudly, “Shut up, assholes.”

  Flashlights illuminate the tunnel.

  Treefrog climbs out of bed and puts on his overcoat, shoves his feet into his boots. He blows out all the Sabbath candles. Perfect darkness. Out on the catwalk, he tucks his overcoat beneath him, sits, leaves his legs dangling over. He sees the beams from the flashlights catch on the snow falling through the ceiling grate and he hears a voice: “Well, fuck me running backwards.”

  Eight of them, some in plain clothes.

  They bunch close together. The clips on their holsters have been undone. Gloved hands on their guns. They lean into radios as if telling immortal secrets. Their flashlights move frantically, catching on the dead tree planted under one of the grills, moving up and onto the murals and the same voice intoning again: “Fuck me with a bar stool, boys, they even got themselves a tree over here, fuck me.”

  “Fuck you,” whispers Treefrog, “fuck you.”

  The cops move along the side of the tracks and Treefrog says a little louder, though not loud enough for them to hear, “Oink, oink.”

  He pulls his legs up and makes sure he is shrouded and unseen. The last time the cops came down a murdered man had been found under 103rd Street. Nobody knew him; he died with his penis erect, a necklace of bullets on his chest. Dean found the man first and nicknamed him the Boner and the cops came down, running in the darkness like Keystone fools, waving their guns at shadows. They lined everyone up against the wall—“Up against the wall, motherfuckers!”—and frisked them for weapons. There was an argument over who would search Treefrog’s nest; they were scared of the climb. Eventually they brought down a ladder. Although he stole a map that Treefrog had been creating, one of the cops tried to get Treefrog to go to a city shelter. “You live like an animal! You should get some help, man, you’re living like a goddamn rat!” But Treefrog stood impassive with his long hair around his eyes and then began chuckling. The cop slapped him with the back of his hand and told him to take the smirk off his face or he’d end up like the dead man.

  “What? With a boner?” Treefrog said.

  And the cop said, “Shut your mouth, man.”

  They were down in the tunnel for two days, but nobody found out who the dead man was, or why he was murdered, or even if he had murdered himself.

  Treefrog watches as they come to the row of cubicles and stand outside Elijah and Angela’s place. Some light leaks out from the cubicle. The cops spread back in twos, some of them crouching down by the tracks with their guns out. “Po-lice! Come out! Po-lice!” Treefrog wonders if Elijah and Angela are sucking a pipe. “Po-lice!”

  One of the cops steps forward and kicks the door, and suddenly Elijah comes out of the cubicle with his arms above his head, Angela behind, pulling her fur coat over the thermal shirt, shouting, “We didn’t do
nothing, we didn’t do nothing!”

  “Take it easy,” says a cop.

  “Don’t touch me!” shouts Angela. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!”

  “Stand still!”

  “Leave us alone, we ain’t got no drugs.”

  “Shut the fuck up, lady, okay?”

  “We ain’t got nothing. We was sleeping!”

  “Hey, somebody shut that bitch up, will you?”

  “Who you calling bitch, motherfucker?” says Elijah.

  “Jesus wept,” says a cop.

  “You guys know it’s illegal to be down here?”

  “I lost the key to my penthouse.”

  “Funny funny.”

  “Forgot the mortgage payment too.”

  “I told you they all crazies down here, what did I tell you? I told you, didn’t I tell you? Moles! They’re crazy.”

  “Fuck you,” says Elijah. “I ain’t a mole.”

  “Why you living underground then, mole?”

  “Enough!” shouts one of the cops. “You all know James Francis Bedford?”

  Silence in the tunnel. Treefrog sees one of the cops go across the tracks to the dead tree and look up to the roof, with snow falling down around him in the circle of his flashlight, the cop shaking his head in amazement.

  “You all ever heard of James Francis Bedford?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, answer my goddamn question!”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Treefrog watches as Elijah and Angela stand shivering in the cold. A flashlight swings and captures Dean’s face as he slips out from his shack. He shades his eyes with his arm. Papa Love pulls back the curtain on his cubicle door.

  “Another couple of moles here!”

  Papa Love stands silent, outside his shack, his gray dreadlocks slack on his shoulders. Dean bravadoes up to the cops and pulls the flap of his hunting cap up off his ears.

  “You know James Francis Bedford?” says a cop.

  “Who?”

  “Watch my lips. James. Francis. Bedford.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “White guy. Six one. Scar on his chest. Tattoo here.”

  “What about him?” says Dean.

  “Found him dead yesterday. Heard he lived down here.”

  “Shit,” says Elijah. “Someone died?”

  The cop shines the flashlight in Elijah’s eyes. “Six hundred volts. Electricity went right through the top of his head. Splattered him around a little.”

  “Damn,” says Dean. “That’s Faraday.”

  “Who’s Faraday?” asks the cop.

  “What’s wrong with Faraday?” says Angela.

  “James Francis Bedford,” says the cop.

  “Goddamn. That’s Faraday. That’s his nickname.”

  “White guy?”

  “Yeah,” says Dean.

  The cop lifts his hand in the air. “About yay tall.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tattoo of a circuit board here.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “As a doornail, buddy.”

  “They killed Faraday!” screams Angela.

  “You don’t even know who Faraday is,” says Elijah.

  “They killed him, killed him, killed him!” She begins sobbing into the sleeve of her coat. “I liked Faraday! I liked him!”

  “Where did he live?” asks a cop.

  “Why you wanna know?” says Elijah.

  “His family wants his stuff.”

  “His family?”

  “Yeah, you know, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles. Come on, no fucking around. Hey you! Dipshit! Where did he live?”

  “There.”

  Dean points out Faraday’s cubicle.

  “He lived in that piece of shit?”

  “That’s his house.”

  “Goddamn. What’s the toilet seat for?”

  “A doorbell.”

  “I’ll be fucked.”

  One of the cops jimmies open the lock, and the door to Faraday’s place swings open. They step inside and later emerge with a crate filled with a bundle of papers.

  “Nothing in there excepting some books,” says a cop.

  “You all know who James Francis Bedford was?”

  “He was Faraday.”

  “He used to be a cop.”

  “Faraday? A cop?”

  “He was good people,” says the cop. “Had himself an accident once. Lost his nerve. Shot someone. Never recovered. His family asked me to come down get his stuff. Good people, Bedford’s family. They was all good people. Even Bedford was good people once. Before he came down here.”

  Treefrog jumps down from the catwalk and walks soundlessly through the tunnel gravel until a cop pins him with a beam of light.

  “Shit, we got moles everywhere!”

  They gather together outside the cubicle—Elijah, Angela, Dean, Papa Love, Treefrog—and watch the cops comb through Faraday’s shack.

  “What they looking for?”

  “Fucked if I know. A gun, maybe.”

  “Motherfuckers,” whispers Angela.

  “They prob’ly killed him,” says Elijah.

  “You really think Faraday was a cop?”

  “No way.”

  “You think he shot someone once?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He owes me twenty bucks!” says Dean.

  “Shut up, man.”

  “Hey!” says Dean to the cops. “Leave Faraday’s shit alone! He owes me twenty bucks! Leave it alone! That’s mine!”

  “Finders keepers,” whispers Angela. “They woke me first. I keep Faraday’s shit.”

  “I’ll slap you, you bitch,” says Dean.

  “Elijah!” she shouts. “Elijah!”

  But when she turns around, Elijah is not listening. He has pulled down the hood of his sweatshirt, scrunched up his eyebrows, and tilted his face sideways. Then he scratches his head and says aloud, “Faraday? Faraday had a family?”

  * * *

  Faraday—they hear later—had gone fishing for electricity way downtown in the Second Avenue tunnel. He went to help someone hook up a transformer, but on the way he found a fishing rod in a Bowery dumpster. He was sprung after snorting heroin and wanted to test the rod out. Whisking it through the air, Faraday descended through the emergency manhole cover into the Second Avenue tunnel. He stood at the edge of the tracks and played riverbank with the darkness, whisked the rod like a dream above his head. The little fly hook at the end of the line went spinning out and down toward the tracks, then came up again and jiggled in the air as Faraday lassooed the rod back over his shoulder. It happened in an instant: he stumbled and fell across the tracks and touched his hand against the third rail. The current sucked him in and his body went lengthwise against the metal, and the fishing rod completed the circuit. He must have been a corpse of wild blue sparks. Every fluid in his body boiled first, all the blood and water and semen and alcohol boiling down to nothing. Six hundred volts of direct current blew a hole in the top of his head. The cops had to turn the electricity off before they could peel him from the rail. They placed a bit of his brain in a blue plastic bag, one of the cops puking up at the sight, and the people who lived in the tunnel stood around, staring, saying nothing, although one of them later ran off with the rod—Angela was sure it must have been Jigsaw—saying there were beautiful rainbow trout to be found in the puddles under the platforms, the most fabulous rainbow trout ever seen in the city.

  * * *

  Treefrog unloops the clothesline, takes down a dark necktie, and beats it against the wall to free it of tunnel dust. The dust slips through the candlelight and descends lazily, landing on the spider limbs of wax at the base of the candles. The tie emerges black, with a pattern of red squirrels. He has forgotten how to fix a knot and so he simply loops it under the collar of a filthy flannel shirt. He tries to run a comb through his hair, but it is too long and matted and twisted. He shoves an extra T-shirt into his overcoat pocket to use as
a balaclava later, if necessary. Reaching into his bedside table drawer, he takes a sample bottle of aftershave, stolen once from a drugstore, and dabs a little high on his cheeks. It smells nauseating to him. He completes the blind ritual through his nest, touching everything with both hands, finally laying his hands on the speedometer.

  While waiting for the others, Treefrog plays handball against the Melting Clock to warm himself. He is down to one handball and will have to buy another soon in case he loses it.

  When Angela, Dean, and Elijah arrive he lifts up his beard and shows them the tie. They laugh at the sight of him—“Mister Treefrog Rockefeller!” says Angela—so he wraps it around his forehead and the four of them leave the tunnel together. Papa Love has decided not to go. They shove themselves through the gap in the gate and leave footprints in the snow on the steep hill up toward the park. Angela squeals as the snow touches her feet. She and Elijah are soaring on what they have smoked, and she has drenched her mouth with lipstick, looking vaguely beautiful and gaudy.

  Treefrog has to walk the hill four times to get an even number of steps, touching his hand against the icy trunks of the crab-apple trees each time as he goes.

  “You’re a goddamn loon,” shouts Angela.

  He jumps the fence and catches up with the others as they walk past the playground by 97th. A shiver runs through him as he watches a mother launching a child on a swing, the child’s feet swinging through the air. He tips his sunglasses on his head and waves goodbye to Lenora.

  Between West End and Broadway, they stop at the Salvation Army store for Angela to get a scarf. She emerges with an extra pair of socks tucked under her fur coat, saying, “I think I’m about frozen.”

  She pulls the socks high on her legs and steps back into her lopsided heels.

  On the subway train to Brooklyn, Treefrog sits alone at the far end of the car. The others stay by the door, looking at their reflections in the dark glass. Treefrog tucks himself away in the corner seat, reaches for his Hohner, and plays softly.

  * * *

  In a Brooklyn diner, under a neon sign for Boar’s Head ham, the cook is so perfect at cracking eggs that he does it with his eyes closed. Treefrog’s head bobs in approval. The cook pierces the shell with one long fingernail and flips the contents out with ease, two eggs side by side.