October Light (27 page)

“She's fine,” Pearl said, and smiled. “How's yours?” Pearl's mother had been dead three years.

“She gets by,” he said. He shrugged and made a so-so waggle with both hands. His smile was like a boy's, as if he'd never done anything shameful in his life. He was delighted—that much was true—to see her. She felt herself blushing again, and pouting like a fool. “Well, shoo,” he said, and gave his head a shake.

Before she knew she'd do it, she pointed at the door with the lettering on it. “Leonard, what
is
that place? You know?”

He turned to look, then smiled. He had a nose like an ocean liner and teeth like parked white trucks. “Ma'am,” he said, “that's the American Medical Society's Special Organization to Prevent the Corruption of Our Youth into Horrible Addiction.”

“Go on!” she said. A sudden white light flashed through her.

He nodded like a judge, then smiled again. “No foolin, baby, that's what it is. Whole lot of dudes with pipes and whiskers tryin to keep this country beautiful.”

But he was talking too fast, and her mind was awash. Terrifying stories of drugs, murders; images of doors with five, six night-latches, heavy iron chains, dull black pistols in deal-dresser drawers. She remembered hearing shots, somewhere in her childhood. She said, “What's ‘international trafficking'?”

He tipped his head, soberly, as if the question were natural. “International trafficking is The Mexico Connection—things like that. These dudes find out where some smuggler's at and they ride down on 'im wif their big black hosses and they bugles sounding like Jericho all over, and they yells, ‘Burn 'em! Destroy 'em! Ride 'em cowboy!'” He laughed, momentarily closing his eyes, hands splayed out like a tapdancer's. She felt a strange urge to touch him and drew back.

The door opened and she raised the magazine to hide her face. Leonard watched her. Dr. Alkahest came out and rolled right by without seeing her. She shot a look past the magazine. He pushed the elevator button. When he'd rolled the chair in, and the elevator had closed with a
whoosh
behind him, Leonard said softly, “You in trouble, Pearl?”

She shook her head, but no words came. The magazine fell from her hands and struck the floor. She looked down, surprised. When Leonard bent over, starting to pick up the magazine, she had a sudden intuition that he was about to touch her knee. She froze, her back turning to ice, but the hand continued down, picked up the magazine, brought it up again. “You ok?” he said.

She had no idea. She was filled with panic. She didn't even like Dr. Alkahest, so what difference did it make if he was up to some terrible mischief? But her mind was unclear, full of guns and syringes, her mother turning toward the door, listening. On Twentieth Street, the place they'd moved next, there was a boy named Chico, about sixteen years old, two years older than she was. One day he was there and the next he was gone, and people said he'd OD'd on heroin. He was simply gone. She looked at the street, at the place where he'd stood the day before, grass coming up through a crack in the sidewalk, and he was gone and the place where he'd been was like a burn in film.

“Where you comin from, Pearl?” Leonard said.

The Jungle,
she thought crazily, and the same instant her stomach jerked in as if to vomit the idea, the same revulsion she'd felt as a child at the movies. Barenaked Africans with drums and spears, bones in their noses, running around with crazy yells, killing people, shrinking people's heads. The corridor leaped toward infinity, floorless, and she seized the nearest thing to her, his arm, and held on for dear life. He looked at her from nowhere, no-time, with frightened eyes, the left one larger than the right. Slowly, he raised the fingertips of his free hand to touch her hands, cautiously, lightly, and she knew it had never so much as crossed his mind that all flesh is imprisonment and filth.

“You pregnant?” he said.

She saw light bursting down the long corridor, and she was momentarily better. She drew away a little, even managed a foolish, apologetic laugh. “Not me!” she said. She looked at his face with sudden interest. It was the face of a coal-black mule, but intelligent and concerned. She said, feeling suddenly free, “Me, Lennie? You crazy?”

Dr. Alkahest, carefully unsmiling, entered Wong Chop's. He took a booth near the back, on the first floor, and a waiter, absolutely soundless, brought him a menu. The second time the waiter came, Dr. Alkahest said, an irascible whine, “There's nothing I like here. Let me talk to Mr. Chop.” His heart raced, and he dared not look at the waiter. The waiter considered, face like a mask—he looked about eleven but was probably middle-aged—then bowed, exactly like a puppet, and flowed away. Two minutes later a large Oriental in a crimson robe came beaming in, his palms pressed together like a Buddha. “Good evening,” he said. “I Wong Chop.” He bowed as if humbly but spread out his hands, palms up, as if nothing on earth could be more faultlessly joyful than being Wong Chop.

“How do you do,” Dr. Alkahest said. “I'm John F. Alkahest, M.D.”

“I deeply honored,” Wong Chop said, his little eyes merry behind the thick green glasses. He bowed again, ignoring the hand Dr. Alkahest extended. “We glatified you come to our humble estabrishment, Doctor.” Another bow. It was mere parody, of course, an act for tourists. Nevertheless, Dr. Alkahest was pleased.

“On your menu—” Dr. Alkahest began.

Wong Chop looked embarrassed, shamed beyond words, as if the menu were somebody else's work, a cross he could scarcely bear. “We have other thing, of course, Doctor,” he said with a wave and another deep bow. “I venture say we allontee satisfaction.” He smiled.

Dr. Alkahest smiled back wickedly. “What my friends recommended,” he said, “was this.” He brought the folded slip of paper from his pocket and pressed it into Wong Chop's hand. Wong Chop read it with no change in his smile, then folded it again, and, still smiling, sighed. “Ah, esteemed doctor fliend, you teasing poor Wong Chop!”

“Not at all!” Dr. Alkahest insisted. He began to tremble. “My friends assured me—”

“Some joke, must be,” Wong Chop said sadly, compassionately. “They pray you a plank.” He stood smiling down at Dr. Alkahest like a friendly red mountain. Then at last he said, “But perhaps I help you in some small way. Let me show you table you possibly find more congenial.” He led the way, walking sideways, bowing, down a panelled hallway painted Chinese red to an arched door beaded and draped. He held back the drape while Dr. Alkahest wheeled through. It was a cubicle ambushed on all four sides by crimson. Paper lanterns hung from the shiny black ceiling, and below them stood a table for two, a linen tablecloth, candles, and two lacquered bowls. A stone Chinese lion saying
OM
kept watch in the corner. Wong Chop lit the candles.

“Now,” Wong Chop said, and rubbed his hands. He pushed Dr. Alkahest's wheelchair to the table, then went around and sat in the chair across from him. He waved two fingers at a silent little man Dr. Alkahest had not noticed, and the man swept away. He returned instantly with a tray containing two green and gold, thin cigarettes with golden tips. This time as he went out the door there was a humming noise and, turning to look over his shoulder, Dr. Alkahest saw something solid move past the slit in the archway drapery. A panel had sealed off the room. Wong Chop smiled and held out a gold-tipped match. Dr. Alkahest fumbled the cigarette to his mouth and Wong Chop lit it. Almost instantly Alkahest's delicate brains were addled, inspiring him toward song. Wong Chop lit his own cigarette and, puckering his lips, breathed in with enormous satisfaction. He laid one fat hand on the table, and Dr. Alkahest seized it.

“Now,” Wong Chop said again, and waited. He had a large forehead and beautiful, womanly features. An aristocrat, Dr. Alkahest surmised. Man to be trusted. The plump fingers which Dr. Alkahest clutched were dimpled like a girl's. Sign of generosity.

“I want to get to the source,” Dr. Alkahest said. He leaned so far forward that he almost fell out of the wheelchair. “I'm a wealthy man.” In his excitement he let it out as a yelp.

“As for that—” Wong Chop said sadly, thoughtfully. With his free hand he waved the marijuana joint. “I am humble restaurateur. Now and then a little token may fall into Wong Chop unworthy hands, but as to
source
—” He seemed grieved that he couldn't be more help. Dr. Alkahest was delighted, though of course not fooled. Wong Chop was brilliant; they would come to an understanding. Wong Chop was growing larger, swelling gradually like a balloon, and that too was delightful.

“Tell me about your friends,” Wong Chop said, momentarily forgetting his pidgin, “—the people for whom you serve as agent.” Behind his little eyes lay tigers.

“With pleasure,” Dr. Alkahest said. “In fact, it's information that might be of some use to you.” He giggled, beside himself. Wong Chop's eyes narrowed, and Dr. Alkahest hurried on. “They are people, in fact, who are not what you might call
friendly
to you.” Wong Chop's eyes narrowed more. “I'll trade my information for yours,” Dr. Alkahest piped, believing he was falling though in fact he was not—not yet. It came to him that his chin was on the table.

“Information on smuggler?” Wong Chop asked, reserved.

Dr. Alkahest tried to nod. “That's what I meant.”

Wong Chop pushed back from the table, musing, puckering his lips, drawing in hard on the cannabis. After a while he said, abandoning his pidgin, squinting thoughtfully, “The information would be useless to your friends. Better to deal, I suggest, with Wong Chop. Here today, gone tomorrow, that's how it is with marijuana smugglers. No ‘ice,' you see. The rackets are in on the hard drugs, so the authorities get paid off. Marijuana smugglers, on the other hand, are mere peasants—foolish children and crazies. The police knock them off like flies. Good public relations.”

“You're an honest man,” Dr. Alkahest said, and meant it. Tears sprang to his eyes.

Wong Chop went on musing, eyes narrowed. He blew smoke through his nose. “Any smuggler I might name would be pinched, I assure you, before your friends ever got to him.”

“I'll risk it! I'll risk it!”

Wong Chop nodded. “And in return—”

“Yes, yes!”

Wong Chop leaned forward, put his elbows on the table. “The
Indomitable,”
he said softly. “Just off Mexico. Lost Souls' Rock.”

Dr. Alkahest's heart beat crazily. With violently shaking hands he hunted through his pockets for pencil and paper. At last he found them, tried to write. He couldn't. Wong Chop reached over and wrote in swift strokes like knife cuts, then jerked back his hand. “Now, Doctor?” His whole face was suddenly a stranger's face, malevolent and keen, “these ‘friends' you represent?”

“Oh, I don't
represent
them,” Dr. Alkahest exclaimed. He couldn't tell whether it was his body trembling or the room. He raised one finger, like a teacher, and shook it, full of joy. “I got your name from the Society for the Hindrance of International Trafficking,” he squeaked. “An organization of dedicated American doctors, he he he!, with whom, by merest chance—”

He had no clear idea what happened next. One moment he was looking at Wong Chop's face—it was swelling, turning purple—the next, the table was flying past his chin and he was falling through blackness, like a man in a dream. He looked up, saw a light, a blurry lantern. Then he was awash in some overwhelming stench, some sludgy liquid that carried him along through echoing darkness like a stream in the bowels of a whale. “You've misunderstood me!” he howled. And then, with his hypersensitive ears he heard, or imagined he heard: “Hello? This is Wong. Narcotics. Listen, it's another false alarm. If you could spare me a couple of men and a rowboat—” Dr. Alkahest gasped and fainted.

He woke up on a ledge, his trousers snagged on a comb of rusted pipes, his wheelchair beside him. Black sewage dribbled over him and trickled away with a soft noise into the ocean. It was a lovely day, seagulls and an infinitely gentle sky. Two old men in a rowboat looked up at him and sadly shook their heads.

~ ~ ~

Sally smiled and closed her eyes, meaning to put the book on the white wicker table in a minute, and also get up to turn off the lights. She was instantly asleep. Her mouth fell open. When she awakened it was early afternoon.

“The bees are as warlike as the Romans, Russians, Britons, or Frenchmen. Ants, caterpillars, and canker-worms are the only tribes among whom I have not seen battles; and heaven itself, if we believe Hindoos, lews, Christians and Mahometans, has not always been at peace.”
John Adams, 1822

4

On Both Sides the Spat Is Further Escalated

1

She'd stood knocking for five minutes on her father's kitchen door, chickens looking up at her, and still no one answered. She'd never seen the door locked before tonight. She was beginning to be alarmed.

Lewis was behind her, standing dejectedly by the fat, silent Chevy—he'd turned the engine off—looking at the bright yellow maple leaves strewn across the yard, here and there a few bright red ones from the red maple by the mailbox. “He'd ought to rake these,” Lewis said mostly to himself. It was a stupid idea and she was tempted to tell him so. The branches were still full; if her father were to bother with the leaves already fallen, there'd just be more tomorrow. Anyway, you didn't really need to rake leaves in the country. They'd be blown away before snowfall. But Lewis wouldn't know that, brought up in a prim little house with a prim picket fence in prim North Bennington—just four blocks away from Aunt Sally's old house—and she decided to say nothing, merely set her jaw tighter and frowned up at Aunt Sally's narrow window. She knocked harder and called, “Aunt Sally, you up there?” Still no answer. She looked over at Dickey.