Heathern (4 page)

"Money," they cried. "Please. Money for food. Money."

I allowed my eyes to lose their focus, that it would seem
those people were not truly there. Shaking lesioned fingers
from my shoulders, I tried to push through. Someone
shoved a fist into my pants pocket, restraining me. "You got
money, bitch," my assailant said, yanking as if to rip away
my clothes; he was too weak to do more than hold me back.
His eyes were as dead as an angel's. "Give it to me." I tried
to escape but he wouldn't, or couldn't, free his hand.

"Avi," I shouted; he swam toward me through the crowd.
"Get him away-

"Gimme money-" Avi's hand encircled the man's neck. I
pulled him from my pocket as Avi lowered him to the
sidewalk. The crowd dispersed, seeming much calmer. Avi
let go, took my arm and led me off.

"You killed him?" I asked, my leg still warm with the
man's touch.

He nodded. "Forget." We dashed up the school's worn stairs. Avi used unarmed methods that shed no blood and
therefore left him sinless. Forget? I tried. Though I'd
housebroken compassion, I still wet my bed at night.

Once buzzed in we entered a hall that was enlarged to
serve as foyer. Posters taped asymmetrically around the
walls bandaged the plaster's wounds. Some enumerated
medical litanies and the ninety-eight warning signs of
cancer. Another gave numbers to call in event of rape,
robbery, accident, or suicide, with no assurance of any
answer to any question. A third, drawn in garish colors,
diagrammed the proper use of contraceptives. One poster
was but a photo of kittens sitting among flowers. They
looked stuffed. A fiftyish woman sat behind a paintspeckled desk. She had fresh mums in a jar and fresh gauze
around her arm.

"We're from Dryco," I said. "We have an appointment to
see Lester Macaffrey."

The doctors must have taken her larynx in removing her
cancer; when she spoke she lifted a microphone to her
throat, her generated voice sounding more mechanical than
a Toyota's. "Third floor, second door on the right."

As she returned to her work we began ours, ascending
the narrow stairs at the rear of the hall. Former residents,
the apartment-dwellers past, left nothing behind but their
vegetable tang, the faint odors of cooked lentils, boiled
cabbage and, as if we passed a marketstall, a whiff of
cilantro. It seemed too quiet to be a school. The drawings of
students hung on the walls we passed.

"Good color sense," said Avi. "You expect a thematic
repetition, considering their age."

Some of the pictures might have been drawn by any child
living in Beirut or Belfast or Johannesburg. Others were
identifiable as designs of our neighborhoods. In those,
crowds raced from distant buildings that spewed inky
clouds, soldiers shot young men in their yards, children ran
after wagons carrying off their dogs. An artist of a tradition al school sketched a suburban design, unexceptional but for
detail: a mother and father stood before their house,
holding the hands of half a child. The gallery continued
beyond the third floor; we went no further. Hearing at last
the sound of children's laughter, I wondered at whom they
laughed. On the glass of Macaffrey's door a stenciled
message read Knowledge is Danger.

"Visitors," called a man's voice when I knocked. "Come
on in." Avi slipped ahead of me, opening the door; I saw
him, inside. Macaffrey's look was that of a million's; once
out of my sight, I couldn't have more accurately described
his look than a cloud's. "Sit with the rest or stand in the
corner."

Choosing to stand, we noted absentees: there were no
desks, no chairs, no books or blackboard, no TV or tapeplayer. Only half the windows had glass; on this cool day all
wore their wraps. The unobservant might have found the
pupils no more memorable than their teacher. They must
have had homes, for all appeared washed, and if Macaffrey
supplied their clothes he must have provided detergent as
well. Perhaps he had trouble with shoes; most wore sandals
fashioned from strips of tire and rope. A girl sitting in the
front row, her hands clasped before her in her lap, spoke to
us. The rest of the class was preternaturally still.

"We were-" She halted, and scratched her head, searching for the word she wanted; each of her hands bore an
extra thumb. "Discussing, that's it. We were discussing the
fall of man." She laughed. "Man's first disobedience. The
fruit of that tree."

"You're studying Milton?" I asked.

He looked at me; I stared between his eyes as he spoke, as
if I were being interviewed. "Biblical interpretation of every
sort has its purpose, you know." Avi and I frowned in
unison, as might twins, each of us surely thinking that we
had found nothing more than the usual fundamentalist
continuing to eat through the woodwork. Scholars sus pected that American students would find the legend of
creationism no more comprehensible than the theory of
evolution, therefore remaining untainted by either, but I
had my doubts, and suspected Macaffrey of being one of
those keen to demonstrate to the young that the only proper
logic is none at all; so I imagined, until he began.

"Let's recap for the benefit of our guests," he said. "The
key to understanding the first chapters of Genesis is remembering that nothing in it is written as it happened.
What do we call such writing?"

A girl with hair the color of crow's wings lifted her arm,
her hand reaching no higher than her head. Another child
of that test group; her legs were little more than stubs
propping her squat body aright. "Allegorical," she said, her
voice raw, sounding as if she'd smoked and drank heavily,
awaiting exit from the womb. "Truth bedecked in Halloween drag."

Neither game nor video could have seduced Macaffrey's
audience into taking their eyes off the screen he presented.
"Good, Marge. So face facts. Seven days represent billions
of years. Keep in mind that this was written for people who
didn't know from hours. With that ground planted, let's get
to the growing. What was that snake, and what made it
special?"

"They meant Neanderthal people," said a boy. "Godness
liked Neanderthal people. They couldn't talk but they
communicated."

"They had flowers at their funerals," added another boy,
perfect enough but for the ragged scar transversing each
cheek.

"They saw Adam and Eve," said Macaffrey. "Who were
they?"

"Cro-Magnon," shouted a girl. I looked and looked
again, but saw nothing wrong with her. "God liked them.
They acted without a script."

"They yearned to burn," said a boy standing on his hands; without legs, he waved like wheat in the wind. "No
patience."

"There're two kinds of people in the world," said
Macaffrey. "The Garden was the world as it once was, as it
was intended to be. Everything was very peaceful for a very
long time. Both groups kept to themselves. They did as
they'd always done. There were no problems. No disruptions. They were very afraid, and didn't know why. What
was the matter?"

"They knew they weren't complete," said the girl with
four thumbs.

"Their creation, though perfect, wasn't whole. It was
divided, as They were. Godness knew that our intermingling would cause no end of trouble but knew as well that
the choice would have to lie with us. She put the flea in the
serpent's ear-symbolically, of course." The students
laughed, as if knowing well the answer to a riddle just
heard. "We've known responsibility for our actions ever
since."

"So what happened?" Avi asked, as if hearing it for the
first time.

"Opposites magnetize," said the crow-haired girl.
"Wanting to mindblow, they aimed bedways."

"Cain and Abel were the first children," said a boy,
scratching his ear with his toe as he spoke. "They suffered
for being first."

"For being human. Their children's children were as us,"
said Macaffrey. "They know They put too much of Themselves into us and it drives Them crazier than They already
are. As we forever throw ourselves off cliffs to see if we can
fly, so They forever strive to sort things out, certain that one
day an imperfect being will fit into a once-perfect world.
They're still learning, too," he concluded. "Class dismissed."

Once undammed the children flooded from the room.
Macaffrey remained where he stood as his listeners left, looking to have reached the chopping block and wondering
what delayed his executioner. His natural speaking voice
was different from his teaching tones, looser yet clipped,
and possessed of a heavier twang than Thatcher's.

"I been expecting you," he said, his eyes turning toward
ours; I looked away, wishing not to be so quickly lured.

"What on earth are you teaching them?" I asked.

He grinned. "Kind of adapted to circumstance over the
years. Only way to get some things across is to lose them in
the packaging, you might say. Like putting vitamins in
sugar. What're you here for? Come by for private lessons?"

"The head of our company wants-" What did Thatcher
want? "Wants to see you tomorrow, in our office."

"There's a reason for this honor?" he asked, his voice
sharp with the same edge that Bernard's sometimes bore.

"He seems to believe you might have something to tell
him."

Had Bernard not told me Macaffrey's age I could only
have guessed it to be somewhere between seventeen and
forty, his appearance varied so in the room's shifting light.
"Does Macy's tell Sears?" he asked. Did Southerners speak
only in riddles? With such responses he and Thatcher might
prove made for each other.

"How do you conceptualize?" Avi asked-an unexpected miracle for him to stir from his solipsism long
enough to hear a stranger's words. Still, for Avi to grant
attention did not assure trust.

"They come to me," he said.

"You've got the sound of a state Christian," said Avi.
"Just doing the police in different voices." One night Avi
told me about his fiancee. On a morning during the troubles
she'd been on a bankline. A gang burst in, members of a
sect who frowned upon the sins of moneylenders and their
clients. Avi hoped she'd been thinking of him as she died,
but I doubted she was. They watched her watch her blood
wash the marble pink beneath her. The truth later emerged about poor old Jesus, so conveniently released that it might
have been by design, settling the restless, eliminating old
troubles that the new ones could crowd in. Those guilty of
lesser murders were never punished; during his retreat Avi
conceived a readjusted creed, and upon reentering the
world came to Dryco as Bernard and I did, our memories of
the lost world willfully erased. Amnesia came as easily as
hunger, after awhile.

Macaffrey seemed ashamed to be so accused. "My father
was a minister who passed out grape juice, lying it was
wine." I wondered who I might see staring back at me if I
looked into his eyes. "My family knew their purpose.
Doesn't matter. You like our school?"

"You have a refreshing approach," I said. "Your students
are remarkably articulate for their age-"

"When they want to be, they are," he said. "They saw
you staring. It doesn't surprise them or please them."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I've read about them but never
seen-

"Social worker words," he said, smiling. "Sideshow eyes.
They're in their own world, after all." He lowered his voice,
as if to detail his own conspiracy. "Some of them talked
minutes after they were born, you know. Doctor I once
knew explained that their vocal cords had already lowered,
or risen, or however it works. Generally that's why babies
don't talk, but they did. That's not the most wonderful
thing-"

"What is?"

"If they knew how to talk when they were born, think
how long they must have been listening." His cheeks
crushed his eyelids together as he smiled, burying his gaze
beneath wrinkles. "Why's your boss want to see me?" he
asked, his eyes suddenly open, and I staring into them.
When I first tried to speak, I couldn't; finally I stammered a
reply.

"If I knew I wouldn't be allowed to say."

"Fair enough," he said. "I'll be there at noon tomorrow,
once my classes are done."

"We'll send a car-"

"I'll get there," he said, opening the door. "Let me walk
you downstairs, make sure you get out all right."

As he led us away I knew an uneasy comfort, the feeling a
beaten child might know if her parent suddenly tossed
aside the whip to gather her young one into her arms. Other
teachers passed us on our way down, patting Macaffrey's
arms and shoulders; students slowed, rushing by. He
nodded to all, an incumbent cruising his electorate.

The man's body still lay on the sidewalk. Macaffrey
sighed as he saw him. "Your handiwork?" he asked Avi,
who murmured admittance, his hand caught in the cookie
jar. Kneeling, Macaffrey placed his hand on the man's chest
and shook him. He turned his head to look at us, fixing his
unblinking eyes upon mine. My knees gave way, for I
hadn't fought off his look; I started to slump, and felt Avi's
arm encircling my waist, holding me up. The one hitherto
lost to the world blinked his eyes.

"Behave!" Lester said, helping the man to his feet. "How
old are you, friend?"

He looked sixty. "Eighteen."

"Then you ought to know what can happen when you
bother people you don't know. Go on, get out of here. Don't
do it again. Go on."

The man stumbled toward Avenue A, patting his head as
if trying to remember where he'd had it. Avi and I looked
around. Word of Macaffrey's appearances passed quickly;
peering from windows, gazing out of doors, poking faces
above the roofs of cars, the block's hundreds showed
themselves, none speaking, none moving, all watching
Macaffrey. He looked back at them with emotions I hadn't
allowed myself to feel publicly for years, shivered and
spoke.

"Noon tomorrow, then," he said, almost whispering, rushing back to the yellow door, seeming as haunted by the
neighbor's eyes as I was by his.