After the First Death (7 page)

“I can’t say any more at the moment, Ben,” my father said. “Look, stay put. Someone will be over soon. And don’t worry about anything.”

I hung up, the telephone perspiring with my transferred sweat.

The bus, the kids, the hijackers, and my father using a cover name all these years at Delta. And: What was Inner Delta?

I realized I hadn’t thought of Nettie Halversham for at least three minutes. A kind of record for me that dismal day.

Funny. I can’t recall Nettie Halversham’s face.

Was it that long ago?

But time is weird, isn’t it? It plays funny games. Like this room. It seems as if I have been here forever. But it’s been only since last September, hasn’t it?

Hasn’t it?

To whom do I keep addressing these questions, as if I expected a phantom to sneak in here and answer when I’m not looking?

Speaking of time, it is now 11:15 and they are overdue.

My parents, I mean.

They said they would be here by eleven. Castle is a three-hour drive from Delta. Maybe they had a flat tire. Maybe they started late. Maybe my father has changed his mind and will not come after all.

Maybe I hope he will not come.

Because then I will have sit across from him and look him in the eye. And I know I can’t do that. Not yet, not yet.

From where I sit typing, I can see across the quad to the space between Hunter Hall and Old Ivy through which visitors must pass on their way to the dorms or Daniel Webster Hall, where visitors are entertained by students in one of the parlors.

I keep looking up to watch for my mother and father. The snowball fight is over and the quad is deserted. The wind rises occasionally, breaking the covering of snow into soft white rags that fall haphazardly on the ground.

I am typing very slowly now, one word at a time, and between the words and even the letters (I never learned the touch system but must hunt and peck) I look up to wait for them to appear, for
him
to appear.

Hoping he does.

And hoping he doesn’t.

And feeling sometime that he’s already here in the room with me, watching and waiting.

My father, the phantom.

part
4

Miro
hated the waiting. In the airline terminals, in the bus stations, in all the small stuffy rooms. Or that day in Detroit when they were trapped in the hotel lobby and waited nine hours, immobilized, without food or drink, a gun in his hand all that time so that after a while the gun seemed like a part of him, the way a sliver in the flesh can become a part of you, pulsing with pain. There was no pain here in the bus at least, although it was uncomfortable. The heat was beginning to gather, and the windows could not be opened, of course. The children were somewhat subdued but restless, crying out at times, the girl unable to control them in such moments. When the children quieted down, the girl sat in the driver’s seat, her hands clenching the steering wheel as she stared into space.
The shock, no doubt.

Miro was glad that he had orders to follow and duties to perform. His first duty had been to apply the plastic sealer to the windows so that they could not be opened except with a great effort. Next, the taping. Miro had applied the masking tape to each window, allowing a thin slit to remain uncovered. In this way, they could look out of the narrow opening without exposing themselves. They would be able to watch the building some one thousand feet away across the chasm where, Artkin said, the soldiers and the police would establish their headquarters. They would also be able to watch the woods on both sides of the chasm for snipers.

Miro had done the taping swiftly and efficiently. The children were a nuisance as he worked. He had to step over them and between them, brushing their legs aside in order to reach the windows. The children looked up at him curiously but with a certain amount of indifference, as if they were watching a scene on television, something that did not affect them at all, something they could tune out if they wished. The effect of the drugs, Miro supposed. Or perhaps American children were already doped with television itself.

As he placed the tape on the last window, he felt a tug at his pants. He looked down. A small blond boy was looking up at him, smiling. The boy did not seem frightened of the mask. He had two missing teeth in the front of his mouth, and the gap in his teeth gave him a clown look. Miro continued to apply the tape and the boy kept tugging at his pant leg. Miro ignored him and hurried to finish the job.

The children were meaningless to Miro. They all looked the same to him: small human beings, without identity, strangers who did not arouse his interest or curiosity. He could make no connection with them. He
had never played with children when he was growing up. His only companion had been his brother, Aniel. Aniel had been two years older than he. Neither of them had been children, really. They had scrounged for a living in the refugee camps, although it had been Aniel who had done most of the scrounging, an expert, drifting out into the steaming mornings among the thousands who came and went in the camps and returning later with scraps of food or sometimes clothing—an old jacket, shirts or socks—he had either begged or stolen. Once, Aniel had brought him a small wooden object. Orange. In the shape of an animal.

“What is it?” Miro had asked.

“A toy,” Aniel had replied.

The word held no meaning for Miro. He recognized the shape of the toy as an elephant. For some reason, the small object held his attention. He would pretend that the elephant was walking across the desert and that he was riding on it and bad men chased them. And then he awoke one morning and the elephant was gone. He and Aniel searched for it in vain. When Miro had fallen asleep in the abandoned shelter, the elephant had been standing near his face, on the dirt floor. Someone stole it in the night, Aniel had explained to Miro. One of the people with whom they shared the shelter for a while, perhaps.

Miro had accepted the explanation without complaint. Stealing was a way of life. But a dim knowledge took shape within him, just as the wooden object had taken on an animal shape. And the shape of the knowledge was this: Do not seek to own anything, do not try to make anything belong to you, do not look for pleasure in anything. It will be taken from you sooner or later just as you must take from other people.

The boy tugged again at Miro as he finished with the
taping. Miro brushed his hand away and went toward the back of the bus. He walked softly, not wanting to stir the children. He did not want to become involved with them. He wanted to get involved with no one, the girl included. All he wanted to do was follow orders and complete this particular operation. The operation was a worry to him. He didn’t feel at ease. He was vaguely disturbed. And he wasn’t certain why he felt that way. Was it because Artkin was being secretive about much of it? Artkin who loved to review plans had gone only so far in his review and no further. He had told about the seizure of the bus and the killing of the driver and the drugging of the children and the locks to make the bus secure and even the taping, but nothing about what would happen next. Miro had dared not question Artkin—no one was so foolish as to do that. Artkin had merely said, “Once on the bridge, we wait. We must be patient. But our patience will be rewarded.”

Artkin was now in the van with Stroll and Antibbe. Is he outlining the plans to them and ignoring me? Miro asked himself, immediately ashamed of his jealousy. He had been jealous before, simply because he was always the youngest, the uninitiated. His killing of the driver today was supposed to have signified his manhood, his complete acceptance into the brotherhood of freedom soldiers. He looked down at the girl now with resentment. He also resented the dead child who lay here on the back seat, waiting for Artkin to decide what to do about him.

This is why Miro did not like waiting. It gave him too much time to think, to ponder, to wonder about things he should leave to Artkin. He wondered now about the girl, squinting his eyes to see her at the front of the bus. He had tried to engage her in conversation, attempting to follow Artkin’s orders, but she had been uncommunicative.
Miro pondered what she was thinking. Did she suspect that she would die before this incident was over? Had she seen through Artkin’s lies, even though he lied so skillfully? A sudden thought struck Miro. Does Artkin lie to me as well? Have I also been taken in by his skill?

He shook his head as if he could get rid of such a terrible thought that way.

He looked out through one of the window slits. Outside, all was peaceful. The bus was high enough to see over the parapet at the edge of the bridge. The parapet would protect them when they passed from the bus to the van. The building across the chasm was still deserted, without movement. He searched for the glint of sniper rifles in the woods but saw only branches, heavy with summer leaves. A bird cried overhead; he did not recognize the sound. In his homeland beside the river, the old men said that turtle doves and larks circled in the air above the orange trees. He had seen no turtle doves in the United States. No orange trees, either, although Artkin said they grew in southern areas like Florida, where Miro had never gone.

Swiveling his eyes toward the sky again, Miro heard the sound of a helicopter, and his breath caught in excitement. The sound grew louder. He felt the blood begin to pound in his veins, his heart beating rapidly. The helicopter’s motor throbbed violently now; it seemed to be on the roof of the bus itself, enveloping the entire bus in its sound.

The waiting was over at last.

Now it could begin.

When Kate heard the sound of helicopter, she had been sitting despondently in the driver’s seat, clutching the wheel uselessly, unable to face the children any
longer and unwilling to look at the boy Miro. She knew she was doomed. She had known it the moment she saw them put on the masks. The knowledge had sickened her, causing her stomach to lurch with nausea. They had allowed her to see them unmasked. She could recognize them anywhere, identify them, point them out in police lineups, the way it happened on television cop shows. The children perhaps didn’t represent a threat to the hijackers; the testimony of five- and six-year-olds probably wouldn’t hold up in court. But Kate knew they couldn’t afford to let her go. Or let her live.

In an effort to escape the thoughts and the panic they brought, she had moved among the children, tousling hair, stroking cheeks tenderly, speaking to those who weren’t completely asleep. Most of the children were still in a kind of half stupor, languid, like limp rags. Now and then a child stirred or sat up, looking around inquiringly. A thin boy with freckles and electric-orange hair tugged at her sleeve. Yawning, he asked, “When are we getting to camp?”

“Soon,” she said. “Pretty soon.”

He smiled wanly at her and sank into a kind of half sleep, eyelids fluttering.

A girl, blond and blue-eyed, the kind of child who won “Prettiest Baby” contests, looked up at Kate. Her chin quivered, tears spilled on her cheeks.

“What’s the matter?” Kate asked gently.

“I forgot my Classie,” the child said.

“Who’s Classie?”

“Classic’s my chraff.” She wiped the tears with a small, trembling hand.

“Your what?” Kate asked. She was conscious of the boy Miro looking down at her from where he stood on a seat a few feet away taping the windows.

“My chraff,” the child said, sniffing, her nose running now. “I want my chraff.”

“She means her giraffe,” said a boy who sat slumped next to the girl. He had seemed to be deep in sleep. In fact, his eyes were still closed as he spoke. He was a fat little kid, all roundnesses. Fat cheeks, fat stomach. “She always takes her giraffe with her, but she forgot it today,” the boy said.

The girl’s face lit up with delight. “You know my Classie, Raymond?” she asked.

“Of course I know her,” he answered. His voice was deep, as if coming from a long distance inside his body. He opened one eye and looked around, first at the girl and then at Kate. The eye was bright and alert, gleaming with intelligence. Hardly the eye of anyone drugged. Then he closed the eye again. Kate studied him. She had a feeling that he was sitting there awake, listening, waiting.

“Can we go back and get my Classie?” the girl asked.

“Later, maybe,” Kate said. And to change the subject, “What’s your name?”

“Monique,” the child answered, yawning, rubbing her eyes, her head dropping slowly to one side.

Miro had come down from his perch and advanced toward her now. The mask accented his eyes and his lips. They all looked alike in the masks. His lips had looked sensuous before; now they were merely big and thick. His eyes were magnified: hard and dark and penetrating.

“You don’t like the mask?” Miro asked.

“You look repulsive,” Kate said, filling her voice with contempt, hoping it disguised her fear, her panic.

Miro drew back. In his mask he had encountered fear and terror before, but never the kind of hatred he saw on the girl’s face.

“We will not wear the masks all the time,” he said, stumbling a bit over the words. He was uncertain of how to proceed. He wanted to follow orders, win her over, but did not know how to make that look of hate vanish from her face. “We will wear the masks only outside the bus. With the windows taped, there is no need to wear them inside. And they might disturb the children.”