The Between (23 page)

“What’d I miss?” Stu asked loudly in a lighthearted tone, walking in late.

“You missed somebody who thinks it’s a big laugh when a racist threatens to kill a bunch of niggers,” Hilton snapped.

Stu looked surprised, and Hilton felt the discomfort level rise in the room among his racially mixed staff. Ahmad cleared his throat, glancing at two white counselors who seemed taken aback.

“I don’t think it’s about that, Mr. James,” Ahmad said.

“I didn’t ask you what you think it’s about. I know what it’s about, young brother. I know what’s up. You’re so brave when nobody’s looking, why don’t you show your face now and explain why it’s funny when somebody wants to kill an uppity nigger’s children?” Hilton asked. The more he spoke, the more infuriated he felt. His fingers were trembling. His staff watched him, their faces solemn.

“Oh, so it ain’t funny now, is it? Where’s the big joke now? Who’s laughing now? Huh? Why don’t you say in front of my face what you’ve been saying behind my back? 1 wonder what’s wrong with Mr. James. I wonder why Mr. James sleeps so much. I wonder why he’s so upset somebody wants to kill his family.’ Where’s all that now? Huh?” His voice cracked as he raised it.

The silence in the room was dreadful, and the faces staring back at Hilton ranged from pale to confused to indignant.

“It was probably someone from night or weekend shift, Mr. James,” Ahmad said finally. “I don’t think it’s fair to keep everyone away from their work when it might not be one of us.”

Insolent, know-it-all son of a bitch. All of the frustrations and fury bottled up inside of Hilton gave way. He stood up, a rasping sound rising in his throat that emerged as a strangled shout. When he tried to walk away, his foot caught in his chair leg and knocked the chair to the floor with a sharp crack of wood. Hearing gasps and murmurs, Hilton stormed out of the room.

He spent the day in his office with his door firmly closed, and he didn’t emerge even when he got hungry in the late afternoon. No one dared disturb him except Stu, who knocked once to inquire about him, but Hilton said he was fine and asked Stu if he had any rounds to make. Wanda apparently wasn’t putting any of his calls through, and Hilton ignored the occasional flashing on his private line. Dede, no doubt.

As hours passed and Hilton tried to concentrate on paperwork, his mind replayed the scene in the backyard with Charles Ray Goode. He’d heard the footsteps, seen the flesh, and fired. How did he go wrong? He’d been startled when the gun kicked, so maybe that was when his aim slipped. He should have been using buckshot. He would have sprayed Goode if he’d been using buckshot, no matter where he was hiding.

The fucking FBI was useless, letting him slip out like that.

Everyone was fucking useless. Everyone.

At ten minutes to five, Hilton wondered where the day had gone. He couldn’t remember whether he’d slept at all, but he was certain he hadn’t dreamed. That, at least, was something to be happy about. He rubbed his face, dreading the return home to the tension that waited for him there. Dede had curbed her shouting, apparently somewhat afraid of him now, but she hadn’t softened her cutting gazes.

Hilton would rather be anywhere but there.

He began to wander through the centers hallways, where a custodian was mopping. Most of the clients were in the cafeteria, so the rooms were empty except for a few people either sleeping or watching television. Arriving night-shift staffers gazed at Hilton only briefly before averting their eyes; apparently, word of his morning outburst had spread. Fuck them, too.

The ribbon-cutting for the new wing was scheduled for Friday, and the work was finished except for sweeping and touch-up painting. Hilton found himself in the darkened, deserted enclave at the mouth of a long hallway. Light streamed from beneath a door at the opposite end. No one was supposed to be in there yet.

“Mr. James?” Ahmad’s voice. Hilton whirled around, and his assistant stepped back slightly. “Just so you’ll know, your friend with Metro Police brought in a blind homeless man this afternoon. He found the old guy wandering on 1-95, about to get hit. We gave him lunch and a bed until we hear back from a shelter. He wanted to sleep.”

“This isn’t Camillus House. You know we can’t—”

Ahmad shrugged, not letting him finish. “I know. I made the call on this one, and I’m sorry if it’s wrong. I felt bad for him. I know someone at a shelter who promised to pick him up by six. I figured that’s what you would have done.”

Nice kiss-ass line. Annoyed but too tired to argue, Hilton dismissed Ahmad and faced the empty hallway once more. As he stared at the rows of closed doors on each side, he was seized by a deja vu that made his stomach feel queasy. Must be the stench of the fresh turpentine and plaster, Hilton decided. His shoes echoed against the dusty floor as he walked through the dark wing he’d helped to create from nothing.

Each door had a two-foot vertical window above the doorknob; Hilton glanced through each one into darkness and tried each knob. Locked. He’d left his keys in his desk drawer, and he wanted to look at the beds and check out the view from the windows his new clients would have when they arrived. Another one locked. Damn.

For some reason, his hearts pace was growing more rapid. The longer he walked through the hallway and the more doors he tried, the more uneasy and sick to his stomach he felt. He also felt more determined to find a door that would yield and let him in.

The old man. Hilton hadn’t wanted to disturb him, but it was the only door left. And it was sure to be unlocked.

Each room slept four, and the paint inside was a cheery peach color so the clients would feel relaxed. Although the mattresses were bare, Hilton saw an old man in several layers of tatters sprawled across the bed closest to the door. His nightstand light was on, and Hilton found a laminated Social Security card there, apparently the man’s only possession. Antonio Guspacci, it said.

He was older than Hilton expected, at least eighty. The man’s lips were crusted and his patchy white beard unkempt and filthy. His wrinkled face was sun-reddened and probably needed some skin treatment. He lay on the bed unnaturally, with one leg twisted behind him and a wrist dangling over the mattress’s edge. Hilton wondered suddenly if the man was dead.

But no. Beneath the man’s coffee-stained down vest, Hilton could see his chest rising and falling with bottomless breaths. The next time he looked at the man’s face, the clouded eyes were wide open as though they were staring right back at Hilton. Hilton’s joints felt chilled.

“Somebody’s there,” the man stated. His voice was ancient.

Hilton sat in the chair next to the bed. “Yes sir, Mr. Guspacci. My name is Mr. James, and I’m the director of this center. The police found you—”

The man’s gnarled hand dropped on top of Hilton’s. His fingers were cold. Hilton wondered, angrily, why no one had brought the old man a blanket for his nap.

“You’re a traveler, too,” the man wheezed, smiling suddenly. Most of his teeth were gone, and the remaining ones were brown, eaten with decay. “Come closer.”

Hilton leaned over to oblige him. The man smelled as though he hadn’t bathed in some time, but Hilton was accustomed to that smell. The man’s cold, rough fingers played with Hilton’s facial features, painting a picture of him in his mind. His smile faded slightly. “You’re so young,” he said, distressed. “Why so young?”

Ahmad should have called the county mental hospital,

Hilton realized, but so many of the homeless were mentally ill that the old man’s ramblings didn’t surprise him. He tried to bring him back to the time and place they shared: “What do you remember about the expressway? What were you doing on 1-95?”

“Do you have a family?” the old man asked.

Hilton nodded, forgetting the man couldn’t see him.

Tears sprang to the man’s sightless eyes and rolled down the crevices across his face until they were lost in his beard. “Of course you do. But not me. There’s no one here, no one for me. That’s why I don’t understand. There’s no reason I should be traveling still. Maybe I’m only meant to talk to you.”

His speech, though halting, was so refined and articulate that Hilton wondered what kind of life the man led before his circumstances struck him down so. He was probably educated. Hilton didn’t know which was harder for him to accept, homeless children or the homeless aged.

Again, the man’s hand rested on Hilton’s. “I finished at Bucknell in Pennsylvania. That’s where I met Carol. I taught there some time. But leukemia took our child, and then grief took Carol years later. So I know what it is to bury a child. I belong to that most unnatural fellowship. Old folks like me shouldn’t be burying our children every day like we are. But our fellowship grows. When the old have buried all the young, that’s when the world dies.”

The old man’s voice grew hushed and reverent, as though he were reading from a sacred text. “Can you hear your continent’s weeping? I hear it, a chorus of elders. But this is a plague from man, not from God. Evil is arrogant, just as in the days when it breathed through the slave traders, and then the Nazis. It is still strong today, but that arrogance can be ours to use against it. It’s like the Bible says: ‘And a little child shall lead them.’ Which child, we don’t know.” He paused, his ruined eyes still locked on Hilton—“Or do we?”

Hilton didn’t speak, his mind sifting through the man’s mutterings for the shrouded logic. He spoke with such wisdom and confidence, Hilton wanted to accept every word.

But he was lost, and he suddenly felt foolish for trying to understand.

The man went on, a spell broken: “I had a good life once. But I’m no fighter. I’m not stuck on this world, not like you.”

“Stuck how?” Hilton asked, trying to be conversational.

“You know what I mean. Stuck. Clinging. I’m not that way.”

Hilton suddenly felt more than a little edgy under the man’s grip. He remembered something CJ. often said: a fool may be crazy for ranting, but you’re a bigger fool for listening. He pulled his hand free and patted the man’s cold knuckle. “I think I’d better get you a blanket so you won’t freeze.”

“I hope I’m finished traveling. I’m ready to sleep.”

“Where are you traveling to?” Hilton asked, half smiling.

“To here,” the man said matter-of-factly. “With you.”

O-kay, Hilton thought, raising his eyebrows. Time to excuse himself. The old man definitely wasn’t making a lick of sense.

“Don’t worry, you’ll understand,” the old man said, as though eavesdropping on Hilton’s thoughts. “When you’re traveling, it only seems like dreams. Worse than dreams. But they’re not. They’re real. They’re journeys. All journeys make you tired.”

“Go to sleep,” Hilton said softly, close to his ear, then he stood and walked toward the door. He heard a chuckling behind him, and he saw the old man’s wide, toothless grin again as he began to laugh like an old friend.

“He sure wasn’t expecting what you had waiting for him. Was he, Hilton?” the old man called, his voice nearly buried in phlegm.

“What?” Hilton asked, a split second before he remembered he’d never told the old man his first name.

The man laughed merrily until he coughed. “He wasn’t expecting you to have a gun,” he said.

Hilton stood paralyzed while the old man’s words ruptured his reason. He gazed at the man hard, his throat swollen with his breath arrested there. The old man was still chuckling to himself with his eyes closed. Hilton’s mind rang with his words.

After a few helpless seconds, Hilton breathed. Simple enough. The old guy must have heard something about the shooting incident from a staffer during the day. That was all. It might not explain everything, but it would have to do.

On his way to the supply room in the main annex, Hilton ran into Stu, who was walking toward him with a briefcase and his coat folded over his arm. Stu smiled warmly, seeing him. “Welcome to the world of the living,” Stu said.

Hilton put his hand on Stu’s shoulder, a gesture of reconciliation also meant to halt any questions. “Stu, before you split for the day, there’s a Baker Act in the last room in the new wing. He’s a real old guy, blind. Would you mind giving him a quick look before you leave? He may have a bad cold.”

“Sure thing. I’ll go right now.”

Wanda had gone home when Hilton returned to his office, but a note from her waited on his desk: “Don’t let it get to you. Believe it or not, we’re your friends.” Hilton smiled, reading it. He recalled his tantrum earlier that day with a sense of shame. He must have scared the daylights out of his staff. The thought of the banner still made him angry, but he’d overreacted. He’d have to convene another meeting tomorrow morning to apologize.

Another wasted day. Hilton began to pack his briefcase with papers he knew he’d never look at once he got home. But hope springs eternal, he thought to himself.

He didn’t realize Stu was standing in the office with him, so he gave a start when he heard the doctor’s calm voice. “Hil, I just told Ahmad to get an ambulance here.”

“He’s that bad?”

“He’s dead.” He said it carefully, gauging Hilton’s response.

Hilton let his leather briefcase flap shut. “Jesus.”

“Can I ask who brought him here? He’s not a client.”

“I think Curt brought him, until a shelter could come get him. He’s homeless.” Hilton felt a bit unhinged, and he dreaded the task of filling out a police report. Just what he needed.

Stu sighed. “Not much chance of finding his family, I guess.”

“He doesn’t have any family. He told me it’s just him.”

Stu gazed at Hilton over the top of his reading glasses. “He told you that when?”

“I’d just left his room when I saw you, Stu. I was talking to the guy. That’s why I figured he had a cold, because his voice was so bad and he was coughing. But I didn’t think—”

Stu slowly pulled out Hilton’s chair and sat down, his face glum and thoughtful. He pulled his reading glasses off.

“What?” Hilton asked.

Stu wrapped his hands around his glasses, staring straight ahead toward Hilton’s desk. “Hil . . . I’m no M.E., but the corpse in that room is in early rigor mortis. He’s cold and stiff. He’s been dead at least a couple of hours, probably longer.”