Underground Airlines (40 page)

Part Three

North

Compromise is not the worst of sins, but it is the busiest. The only one we’re all of us doing, twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week.

—Reverend Kevin Shortley,
On the Urgent Necessities,
1982

You are not alone
I am here with you
Though you’re far away
I am here to stay

—Michael Jackson, “You Are Not Alone,” 1994

1.

One more
hotel room.

Motel, maybe. I don’t know. Morris drove for a while, some dull collection of dark hours, with me in the back of the unmarked silver sedan he had shoved me into by the top of my head, and then I saw neon that said
VACANCY
. I saw a squat one-story building, and then I was at a door with a number 4 on it. One more ugly hotel room, facing one more deserted parking lot, in one more invisible town.

Morris knocked on the door marked 4, and it was Willie Cook who answered—Cook with his shark’s smile, his dancing eyes. He was out of uniform, sleeves rolled up, chewing a piece of gum and holding up his hands as if to welcome an old friend.

“Well, all right,” he said. “You made it.”

“Oh, my God,” said Martha behind him. “Oh, my God…” Her voice reminded me what I must look like, battered and bandaged and chained. Cook, without turning, said, “Now, you stay where you are, baby.”

I watched Martha sit slowly back down on the edge of the bed. I formed my mouth into a smile.
It’s fine,
I thought, just as loudly as I could.
Not as bad as it looks.
Morris had taken me out of the leg shackles, at least. At least I had my pants back on.

I let Morris push me into the room, and I stood where he placed me: in front of the rickety little motel table between the kitchen area and the bed area. Cook settled into the table’s one wooden chair and put his feet up, like a working man relaxing at the end of his hard day. There was a gun on the table, too—not his service weapon; some snub-nosed thing—and a laptop showing a screen saver of the Indy 500, colorful race cars moving in patterns on the sleeping monitor.

Morris tossed Cook the envelope, and he caught it, held it a second, then set it down on the table. His big gold class ring made a hollow knock on the cheap wood.

“Well, all right,” he said again. “Nicely done.”

Morris fetched himself a beer before settling with a sigh into an overstuffed chair beside the window. He had the bottle in one hand and his service weapon in the other, pointed at Martha.

She looked bad. She looked half out of her mind with weariness and confusion. There were, at least, no bruises on her face, no blood at the corners of her lips. Her eyes were dark and panicky, roving back and forth between Morris and Cook, Cook and me.

God, that girl should have run. She should have run from me in Indianapolis; in Green Hollow, Alabama; at Garments of the Greater South; she should have run. She should have run from me a million different times.

“I don’t understand this,” I said to Cook. “What is happening? What is she doing here?”

He blew a bubble, destroyed it with his teeth. “Did you forget?”

“What?”

“Your leash, son. Father Barton’s laptop, tapping into your tracker, keeping tabs.” It was the same laptop on the table in front of him, next to the gun.

“I didn’t forget,” I said. “But it was my understanding that when I had the lost package in hand, I would return directly to Indianapolis and give it to Father Barton.”

“Yep. That was indeed the plan.”

Questions were struggling to the surface of my mind, one by one, then all together, like animals emerging from mud. Had they known the whole time that I was planning to double-cross them, to turn this goddamn envelope over to the marshals? Was it just Officer Cook who had been on to me, or was it Barton also? And what about Morris, who, Cook had told me, knew nothing about his Airlines service—what was he doing running these kinds of errands, not to mention how? How had Morris come by the authority to get a man sprung from the bowels of a megaplantation?

The only question I said aloud, though, was my first one again. “What is she doing here?”

“She’s insurance,” said Cook. “To make sure we get what we need.” He pivoted in his chair, pointed at Martha. “Tell him, honey.”

“They’ve got him,” she said, her voice coming like from under water. “They’ve got Lionel.”

I turned back to Cook, caught him poking his tongue through his gum, stretching it into a thin pink membrane. “Why?” I said.
“Why?”

“Settle down, boy,” said Morris, shifting his pistol from Martha to me. “You settle down.”

Martha stood, hands clenched at her sides, and Morris brought the gun back to her. “You, too.”

“Please,” I said to Martha. Trying to calm her down. Calm myself, too. Whatever was going on, I didn’t think these guys were kidding. “Please. Sit.”

This now, for Martha, on top of everything. What she had learned only hours ago, about Samson, and now this. Martha sat on the edge of the bed and tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling, and the moonlight coming unevenly through the blinds washed the side of her face and made her look old and sad.

“I was bringing it to you,” I said to Cook. There was a fresh dark feeling blooming in my stomach, filling me up like internal bleeding, and I heard that darkness come into my voice. “I was going to bring it to you all.”

“Sure you were,” he said. “Sure.” And then, new subject—oh, just by the way: “You know, I don’t think you ever told me what your man’s name is. Your agent, I mean. In the marshals.”

Oh, Martha,
I thought.
Oh, Martha.
This on top of everything.

“Bridge,” I said quietly. “Louis Bridge.”

“Oh. Huh.” Cook snapped his gum. “I was thinking, wouldn’t it be funny if I had the same guy?”

There it was. An answer. A lot of answers, actually, all arriving together, all at once.

“Actually, my man’s a lady,” Cook added. “Deputy United States Marshal Shawna Lawler. I never met her, but she sounds sexy as hell on the phone. If you’re into white women.”

He flicked his eyes toward Martha.

“I don’t…” she said. “I don’t…” She stood up again, and Morris said, “Sit,” and she said, “What does he mean?”

“Me and your boyfriend here, Jim, or Victor, or—what’d you call him? Brother. I like that. Me and Brother, we’re just the same. Same little secret.” He stood up solemnly from that wobbly motel table, pointed a finger at me, slow, and intoned: “Nigger stealer. Soul catcher. Government man.” He lowered the finger, sat back down. “Just like me.”

I waited for Martha to say something else, anything else, but she didn’t. She might have said,
I don’t believe you;
she might have said,
It can’t be true;
but from that corner of the room there was nothing.

I didn’t look at her again. I couldn’t look at her anymore.

Cook was done smiling, at least. All the winking and smirking, all the wiseass man-of-the-world business had fallen away in an instant. Without that smile, he looked like a different human being. He sat rigid in the chair, and his face became tired, closed, with sadness behind his eyes, like the shadowy water just visible under the surface of the sea.

I wondered what
I
looked like now, when at last I wasn’t trying—not pretending anything. I wondered what I was looking like in that small room, alone with Cook’s revelation, with the truth of what I was at last filtering out into the world.

“Please believe me, man. I’m not happy about this,” said Cook, his voice low. “About
none
of this. But you’re my chance. Okay? You’re my chance.”

He stood up again at the table, leaned forward while he talked. While he explained—while he tried to explain. “All I’m supposed to do is get Barton’s secrets. That’s the job: get the man’s secrets, and they set me free. That’s my deal. Two years I been at it, and two years he’s been keeping me low on the pole. Errand boy, muscleman, bullshit. Two years.” He put up his hand and spread apart two fingers.

He turned abruptly to Martha. “Then here comes your friend.” I did not look at her. I couldn’t. “Sad little mush-mouth Jim Dirkson. Talking about this wife in the mines. Here’s my chance. I push you on the priest, let’s do this one, let me quarterback it. Tutor me, Padre, you know? Here’s my chance to learn some secrets, get into the inside. Agent Lawler keeps saying, get what we need and you’re done. You’re free.”

Every time he said that word,
free,
I felt sick. Lord, what they had done to this man. What they had done to me. The monsters they had made us into, prowling along, sniffing for chances.

“But then you”—he pointed one finger at me, wagged it—“you go and turn out to be what you are. Turn out to be like me. And I was like, whoa, whoa. Wait. This is even
better
.”

Morris belched, long and loud. Settled in the armchair, coasting through this dull guard duty with the bored confidence of a white man lording it over a black and a woman. I stared at Cook, remembering his excitement that morning on the banks of the White River. Kevin lying dead, Maris furious, Barton grieving, Cook seizing the moment. I was having my realization in that moment, and he was having his.

“I explained to Barton that he should send you to go and get this thing. I told him how we could tap your chip, how I had me a solid connect in the marshals. Then I called up Agent Lawler.”

Me on the phone with Bridge, sending him to BWI airport, and Cook—or whatever this man’s name was—on the phone with Lawler. Phones ringing off the hook in Gaithersburg.

“I said, listen, baby, remember this evidence Barton’s been so hot on? What about I get that for you? Illegal collusion. Major federal lawbreaking. Well, she liked that a lot. She loved it.”

There was no point in explaining to Cook that his agent wanted her hands on the evidence for the same reason mine did: to get rid of it.

“And better than that, I said to her, I said, what if I can get you one of me, a nigger-catcher soul-stealer motherfucker like me—except this one’s gone to the dark side? He’s working freelance for the Airlines. What if I get you all that? If I get you all that, you gotta let me go, right? Then you gotta set me free.”

He lifted the envelope off the table, and I was surprised at the sudden pain I felt. I felt it in his hands like it was a part of my body, like it was my heart he was holding. The idea of that thing going back to Maryland, getting buried by the marshals, after all Kevin had gone through to get it, all that Luna had gone through. Even me. But that’s where it was always headed anyway, wasn’t it? I was never really going to bring it to Father Barton so he could announce it to the world.

But somehow in the wake of Cook’s revelations, I was mourning that alternative future, longing for a victory I had never really contemplated.

“So here’s what’s up, man,” said Cook. “We’re going to take out this hard drive, hook it into the laptop here.” He gestured to the computer on the table. “Just to make sure you didn’t pull a fast one, like my pops used to like to say. Make sure we got what we think we got. And then I’ll call Agent Lawler.”

He tore the envelope open at the top. I held up my hands, the chains rattling.

“Wait, though. What if Barton’s right?” I said. “What if there really is information on here that could”—what were the words, all those hopeful, lunatic words?—“shake the foundations? Change the world? Just—what if?”

“Come on, now,” he said. “Barton’s full of shit.”

“Yeah, I know. I know.” I took a step toward Cook, aware of Morris in the corner of my eye. “But we’re talking about the future. The future of the country. Talking about three million slaves.”

Cook said something familiar; something I had thought to myself—and not long ago, either. “I ain’t thinking about the three million” is what he said. “I’m thinking about me.”

“Wait…”

“Hey. Hey!” He had the package open. He pulled out what was inside. He looked up at me. “What the
fuck?
”

Motion from the other side of the room, Morris rising from the chair. “What is
that?
”

We were all staring at what was in Cook’s palm, then suddenly Martha was moving. She was off the bed just as Morris was off the chair, quick as choreography. She grabbed Morris’s beer bottle and smashed it on the edge of the table, making a weapon that caught Morris in his rush, so it was really his own running that drove the broken edges into his belly.