A Thousand Miles from Nowhere (22 page)

“I won't,” Henry said. “Thank you.”

Rusty Campbell touched Henry's shoulder as he turned to go. “You know,” he said, “my father worked with Marion Hughes's father for the railroad. It was Norfolk and Western then. My father was the station agent. His father was a fireman on one of the old coal engines. They both worked hard, but a fireman was as tough a job as there was. Dangerous as hell and about twice as hot. Marion and I played around outside the station sometimes when we were kids. I wasn't there the day an engine caught fire, but I soon learned his father was the one who'd died. I never saw him again until he was grown and his wife got diabetes and needed dialysis. She faced losing some fingers and then one leg and then another. That was a tough thing, telling them such news, but it was made a whole lot tougher just knowing what all those years had done to Marion Hughes, all those years since he'd just been a child who'd lost his father.”

Henry nodded, and Rusty Campbell shook his hand. “You might take that into account,” he said. “It's not the same, I know, but you went through a similar loss. Take it easy on yourself.”

“I will,” Henry said. “I'll try to.”

In his room back at the Spotlight, Henry took out the sample packs that Rusty Campbell had given him and left them unopened on the vanity. He'd start taking them in the morning. He couldn't stop wondering, though, what it would mean, how he might be changing his own story. What if the path he was heading down was predetermined, the place where he was supposed to go? Wasn't it a good thing, though, to try to change it? Hadn't he done enough harm? Even so, he was worried there was some essential part of himself he'd lose. But looking around his room—at the stuff that he hadn't given to Mrs. Hughes, at the painting of the flying child and the worn purple carpet and the lamp with its paper shade—he couldn't imagine what it was he could possibly fear losing.

IT WAS
only a moment, the briefest glimpse, but Henry was absolutely certain of what he'd seen. He could not possibly be mistaken. He had not imagined it or dreamed it or allowed memory and its accompanying ghosts to swirl through or obscure or alter his vision.

What had happened was this: That night, when he couldn't sleep, when the clatter had started up again in his head, he'd walked back down to Mohit's study, took the manuscript from the drawer, untied it, and began reading. The poem was so familiar to him now that he remembered long passages; he could easily conjure up in his head the images of the prince and princess, of the gods and goddesses.

He thought about what Mohit's hero had done, what all his years of reading had taught him every hero must do. He thought of Don Quixote, of Ulysses, of Ishmael setting out on impossible excursions that seemed destined to fail but in the end did not, would not, could not.

All along he'd thought his journey was leaving New Orleans, casting everything aside, escaping his life. What an idiot he'd been, he told Amy. The true journey—the journey that mattered—was to return.

He'd left Mohit's study and gone back to the room where he'd stored all the things he'd been given. He'd turned on the TV and watched a CNN report on how difficult rebuilding and recovery would be when residents were finally allowed to return. They'd showed Lakeview and Gentilly, Mid-City and the Garden District and the Marigny. They'd showed Bywater and Tremé and the Ninth Ward and up Esplanade all the way past Claiborne and the cemeteries to City Park. And when they showed Carrollton and then Uptown, he'd watched as the camera moved building to building along Magazine. The reporter was talking, explaining this and that, providing estimated costs—two hundred million here, fifty million there—but Henry had stopped listening when he realized he knew exactly where the camera was going, one block to the next and the next. He had leaned in, stared intently, was ready when the shot finally arrived: Endly's.

And there, right there, through one of the cracked, grimy plate-glass windows, clear as day, he could see him, inside, looking directly out: Tomas Otxoa.

“Who?” Amy said, sitting across from Henry in her kitchen at a small black lacquer table. She'd let him in, though it had already been well past midnight when he'd seen the news report. He'd gotten into the blue truck and made the drive to Lovingston, the truck's headlights again and again illuminating deer grazing along the side of the highway. He'd pulled into Amy's driveway as if he were a thief, coasting to a stop, engine switched off. He hadn't wanted to frighten her, though of course his knocking on the door until he woke her must have done so anyway. He hadn't thought to wonder if she would be alone until she'd opened the door, let him in. It was nearly three a.m.

“Right,” Henry said, recognizing that he'd need to explain it all, that of course Amy didn't know who Tomas Otxoa was or about all the stories he'd told Henry or the fact that one day he had simply disappeared. She wouldn't know that Henry had searched for him, walked everywhere in the neighborhood for days and days, hunted for him in abandoned buildings and at the wharves along the river. She wouldn't know what it might mean that Henry had now seen with his own eyes that Tomas, after all this time, was alive and had wound up back at Endly's, that he had taken refuge in the old grocery store after the storm, maybe even during the storm, and—the most incredible, astounding thing of all—that Henry had seen in that brief camera shot not only that Tomas looked haggard and confused but also that he was holding against his chest a cardboard box, one precisely the size and shape of the cardboard boxes he'd seen Amy use again and again when she received or shipped off completed copyedits or page proofs, a manuscript box that, though he knew he couldn't be certain—how could he be certain, as impossible and crazy as it seemed?—he nevertheless believed was exactly and undeniably that: a box with a manuscript inside, a manuscript Tomas Otxoa, wherever he'd been, whatever he'd endured, had managed to keep safe during the storm. Maybe it was simply the manuscript of one of his brother's old novels. Or maybe it was a new one. Maybe he'd found his brother after all, or maybe all this time he'd been in possession of this one final novel and now he'd kept it safe, cradled in his arms, this one copy the only one and thus in danger of winding up, like everything else in the city had wound up, ruined and lost. Henry didn't know any of this for certain, of course, but he'd seen what he'd seen, and it might well be true; it was as likely to be true as not, wasn't it?

He stopped. He let the rush of his words become silence. He looked at Amy.

Yes, he knew what he sounded like. He knew what she was no doubt thinking. And how could he—there was no way he could—convince her otherwise. Who would believe him, such an absurd coincidence—Mohit's manuscript here and Tomas's there, these two unknown works, singular, irreplaceable, finding their way somehow into his life, though, look,
look,
he had brought Mohit's poem with him. Here it was—and he pushed it, tied once again with the colored thread, across the table to Amy. At least she could read this, see for herself that this one manuscript, at least, was real, was what he claimed it to be, and maybe she would then be persuaded that he wasn't crazy or delusional or ill.

Amy's eyes were teary, her mouth pinched closed, her shoulders slumping forward. He saw in her expression the devastation, the pain, the damage he'd caused. He saw the exhaustion. Then he watched her run her hand through her hair and erase all of it, make her face go blank. “Okay, Henry. Okay,” she said. “I'll read it. I need to get some sleep but I'll read it.”

She waited.

“Yes, okay,” he said, defeated. He must seem to her crazy, irresponsible, out of control. Not a person to be believed, not worthy of her forgiveness.

But he was not wrong; he wasn't. She would read Mohit's poem. She would encounter its grace, its great epic grace. She would be swept up in its story of refuge and redemption, of gods and princes, of the young couple longing for a child, bathing in the Ganges beneath the stars.

And he would find Tomas, save him, see what lay inside the box he held cradled against his chest.

He had no idea how he was going to manage it, just as he didn't know how he was going to pay Mrs. Hughes the money he'd promised. Maybe there was still money stuffed in the coffee cans at Endly's. Maybe the insurance he'd been required to take out on the property would yield more, much more, than he alone needed.

But he didn't even have a car to get to New Orleans. And even if he did, how would he gain access to the city? It was still shut down, every news report repeated; it was still without electricity or running water. Bodies were still being discovered, dehydrated and delirious survivors found in collapsed homes or wandering among the wreckage. There were roadblocks on the interstate and on the causeway and on the bridges that hadn't been washed away.

He had to figure out how to get there, how to save Tomas.

He'd come here to ask Amy for—what? For her car? For her company? For her faith?

Amy led him back to the front door, quietly shut it behind him even before he'd reached the truck. He drove the winding road out to the highway in the awful darkness, and now the deer grazing on the side of the highway and the possums crouching in the median or slinking along the edge of the woods were all looking up as he passed, their pairs of eyes quick flashes of blinding light, twin matches being struck again and again and again, and he gripped the truck's steering wheel in his clenched fists and pressed his foot down on the accelerator until he could feel the truck's shuddering shoot up through his wrists and into his shoulders and, finally, into his chest.

He slept. And when he woke he realized the stupidity of what he'd done—he'd taken the only copy of
The Creator's Mistress
and left it with Amy. She wouldn't, in her disgust and despair, simply throw it away, would she? Even if she were filled with rage and grief at what he seemed to have become yet again—the delusional idiot who'd left her and moved into an empty grocery store—she cared enough about words and manuscripts and a man's lifelong devotion to poetry and his loving wife's faith in this improbably grand and romantic endeavor that she wouldn't just throw the whole thing away. Would she?

Oh God.
He got dressed and walked down to the office. Latangi wasn't there, so he stepped behind the desk and knocked on the door to her apartment. “I'm so sorry,” he said when she opened the door wearing a dark red nightdress, a gold-and-red-striped robe pulled over it, askew. She straightened the robe, pulled its gold belt tighter, pushed her hair away from her face. She smiled.

“Good morning to you, Mr. Henry.”

“I'm so sorry,” he said again. He hadn't even looked at the time.

“Yes, Mr. Henry?”

“I gave Mohit's poem to Amy. To read.”

“Yes,” Latangi said, smiling.

“I left it with her,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Okay. That is fine.”

“I just thought I should tell you,” he said. “I was worried. I didn't know if that was it, if there was another copy, if something happens to this one.”

“No, no, Mr. Henry. Do not worry. It is all on the computer. One click and”—she made a whirring noise—“each page emerges from the printer. No problem at all.”

Henry sighed in relief, in exhaustion. Of course it was on the computer. How ridiculous to have not figured this out.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

Latangi looked at him a moment, then she stepped forward and spread her arms wide.

“Oh, Mr. Henry,” she said. “Here, here. So many worries. I wish I could do something for you.”

He heard the
rat-tat-tat
of Father Ferguson's pipe on the desk.
Your problem, Garrett.

He stepped into Latangi's embrace.

Your problem, Garrett, is that you can't think straight.

He felt like a child, as though she were holding him as she would a child.

“Please, please, Mr. Henry,” she said. “Inside. I would like my tea. And you—coffee, yes?”

“Yes. Thank you,” he said, and he felt her let him go.

He followed her inside.

“Well, I have news for you, Mr. Henry. But it can wait a few moments—” She drifted off into the kitchen and left Henry in the living room, still crowded with stacks and stacks of import items: leather elephants and camels and giraffes, wicker baskets and wooden spoons and colored glass paperweights, tin cigar boxes painted with Hindu gods: Shiva and Parvati and Ganesh, dozens of others. Latangi had told him stories about so many of these gods that Henry had trouble separating one story from the next. He did remember her telling him that Shiva was the husband of Parvati and father to Ganesh and that he was usually depicted as being blue because in order to save the world from destruction, he had calmly swallowed all of the world's poisons. Parvati had feared the harm this would cause her husband, so she'd gripped his neck and squeezed his throat. He was saved, but his skin was forever stained.

“It's a beautiful color,” Henry had said to Latangi, looking at a painting in her apartment of Shiva holding a trident, a cobra curled around his neck, another wrapped in his hair. “Aquamarine?” he said. “Turquoise?”

“Beautiful, yes,” Latangi had said, “but only if you are one who is content to live this life with blue skin. I do not think I would be.”

“Well, at least it's a great story,” Henry had said.

“Yes, yes,” Latangi had replied. “‘It is the power of the story, not its truth,' Mohit would tell me. ‘A story's greatness,' he would say—and, you see, he wags his finger like an old schoolteacher—‘is measured by how wide and deep and far the earth shakes when words are spoken.' Wise, yes, my Mohit?”

“Yes,” Henry had agreed.

Now Latangi emerged from the kitchen with a tray—her teapot and cup, his mug of coffee, some thick slices of bread. “So you have visited your Amy?”

Henry nodded.

“That is good, yes?”

“Not so much,” he said.

“It is only time,” Latangi said. “You will see. She will return to you.” She set her teacup down, sat, and folded her hands in her lap.

“You have something to tell me,” Henry said.

Latangi looked down at her hands.

“Something important,” Henry said. “Yes?”

Latangi nodded but sat there quietly.

Henry had never seen her at a loss for words, and he wondered if perhaps she was going to tell him that he must move out, that she could no longer afford to have him occupying a room for no charge, that the little bit of work he was doing for her—making deliveries, going to the grocery, hauling trash and broken furniture to the landfill—wasn't enough. Or maybe she too had decided that he was crazy—the hours and hours he spent reading in Mohit's study, the promise he'd made to Mrs. Hughes about the money he'd get her. Or maybe he'd frightened a guest; maybe he'd appeared to be lurking in the parking lot. He thought then, for the first time in weeks, of Clarissa Nash, the girl he'd imagined, the terrible desire he'd felt, the awful dark raging conflagration of desire. Had he made some woman feel as though he were dangerous, as though he might attack her? Who, though, could it be? The guests at the Spotlight—the salesmen and utility workers, the illicit couples, the young families with their little children, the haunted men—there was no one to whom he would have signaled such a thing. Loneliness, maybe. Yes, loneliness. But not desire. He'd felt free of it. He'd wanted only peace; he felt he had been restored to himself, restored to wanting only Amy.

“So I will be leaving,” he heard Latangi say. “This. The Spotlight. Virginia.”