Apex Hides the Hurt (17 page)

Had he seen any signs around town with Field’s name? Where were his sons and daughters? He knew more than he wanted to about Winthrops, had broken bread with a bona fide Goode. Where was Field’s legacy? Where were his streets, and where did they lead?

Even before he discovered the discrepancy, he had decided that Field hadn’t voted to change the name to Winthrop. It wasn’t in the man’s nature.

He was eating dinner in Riverboat Charlie’s, papers spread out before him. He noticed a spot of coffee on a page from Gertrude’s original manuscript and started to wipe it off. These were historical documents, after all. Didn’t want Beverley to spank him. Anyway. His eye fell on the words, “Field had taken to fever and was not present, but the motion was passed unanimously and the town was changed forever. Winthrop was born.” He’d read that passage a few times already, but it had never registered. Field didn’t vote?

He opened up the official, bound version to see how the section survived the Winthrop Foundation editing process. He tried to avoid getting tartar sauce on the pages as he searched out the passage in question. “The motion was passed unanimously, and with a stroke of a pen, the town was changed forever. Winthrop was born.” No mention of Field, ill or otherwise. The final version was richer one cliché and short one local character.

He called up Regina. He had some questions.

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He liked his epiphanies American: brief and illusory. Which is why he was so disappointed that a week after the operation he still felt such deep disquiet. Pierce the veil, sure, that was one thing. To walk around with the weight of what he had witnessed, quite another. Or limp around, more accurately.

It started in the hospital, the long road to hermitage. Later, he retained a few shadowy recollections of acquaintances by his bedside. Someone squeezing his hand, probably Bridget, murmuring earnestly, “Can you hear me in there?” Or perhaps this was from coma movies, and merely appropriated from popular culture for the occasion of his hospitalization. When he was conscious, and had stepped down from his fever mountain, they gave him the skinny on what had befallen him. Discovered, delirious and muttering, sprawled out on a street corner. Delirious but well dressed, which was why he was eventually taken to the emergency room, instead of being left to rot. The ghastly shock waiting underneath the adhesive bandage, and the amputation of his putrefying toe, no other option at that point. His only response to the news was to inform the nurses that he would refuse all visitors.

Bridget made a commendable effort, expending the energy to make six phone calls and two attempted visits to his room. It was more than he gave her credit for, more than he deserved, actually, and he couldn’t help but be slightly moved. That she did not persevere after the first few days was just as well. He would have defeated her in the end. Tipple and the rest did their part, some of them making it to the door of his room before being scooped up by the nurses. He rebuffed them all. This prepared his co-workers for the letter he sent weeks afterward, informing them that he would not be returning to the office. Foreshadowing, he mumbled to himself, as he hoisted the hospital room remote. The remote control was connected to the wall by a heavy umbilicus, and the weight of the wire hanging over the side of the bed kept it creeping away from him as if it were alive.

The doctor was a third-year resident, rendering into dull comedy utterances such as, “In all my years of practicing, I have never seen such neglect.” Doctor Miner presented the scenario with a charming air of exasperation. The repeated assaults on the toe’s well-being had left it merely ugly, Doctor Miner explained. It would have healed in time. The real culprit was the infection, which had remade the flesh after its own hideous design. He was writing up the case for a medical journal, so startling was the pedigree of the microscopic creatures who turned up in the culture taken from the star-crossed digit. “In all my years of practicing,” he told him, “I’ve never seen such an eclectic group.” He rattled off the arcane names of organisms with relish, as if recounting the guest list at the glamorous party he’d hosted the night before.

Retracing his steps proved fruitless. For all intents and purposes, he received the infection from a toilet seat. Only months later, when he was laid out on the couch in perfected lassitude, did he remember the weekend at Red Barn, and his encounter with the lagoon of pig shit from the farm next door. Who knew what was living in that hellish swamp, biding its time. Must have been quite a party inside his sneakers, with an all-access pass to his wounded toe. Served him right for trying to get a little nature.

Advanced State of Necrosis. Good name for a garage band.

“How could you let it get so far?” Doctor Miner demanded. “A guy like you should know better.” Which sounded at first like a racial remark, but he couldn’t work up any rote indignation. He should have known better.

He explained about the Apex. He hadn’t even known anything was amiss down there, apart from the pain from the constant stubbing, which, truth be told, he had accepted as his lot and gotten used to after a while.

The doctor simply said, “Apex,” shaking his head in morose recognition. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

On the subject of the limp, the physician was adamant in his diagnosis. There was no reason for it. The human body is an adaptable instrument, the doctor told him.

The mind is less so, he told himself.

Hobblon for the Limpers in Your Life. Hobblon Makes Your Gimp Limp Hip. From Stub to Stump Using My Patented Five-Point System.

He adjusted quickly to the recluse lifestyle, which was much more complicated than it appeared to outsiders, who enjoyed their invigorating jaunts outdoors and frequent social interaction without considering the underlying structures holding everything together. Keeping away from people, that was easy. Neglecting one’s physical appearance, that wasn’t too difficult either. The hard part was accepting that the world did not miss you.

Weeks into months. And so on. He became acquainted with the sadism of time, and then accepted said sadism as an unavoidable feature of existence, as if it were a noisy upstairs neighbor. Eventually, his award arrived in the mail. He never opened the box; instead he put it in the closet with the other cheap trophies, the piles and piles of things he had named.

It was not all stasis and sweet, sweet languor, however. He ended up doing a phoner, a few weeks after the incident. Roger called him up, breaking down the situation with uncharacteristic hysteria. The firm was a week overdue on a lucrative account with a car company that was about to announce their new line of mid-priced hybrid-fuel minivans. The car company knew they wanted “100” in the name—their in-house team had arrived at this after years of feuding, bad feelings, and busted friendships. They were definitely going to stick with 100, after so much bloodshed. The other element—well, that was where Tipple and his old team were supposed to come in.

It was a no go, however. “It’s like everybody’s come down with some kind of goddamned brain flu,” Tipple complained. Everyone was quite put out. Any chance, Tipple asked, that he might help out?

He listened to the story distractedly. He was unaccustomed to normal speech, having grown more acquainted with the dingy dramas of afternoon television, and their dispiriting cadences. The world of afternoon television astounded and delighted in the sheer breadth of its humiliations. The streets were filled with victims, and the television programs sought them out for the delectation of those at home, whose own deep and particular brands of abjectness could not compete. The signs and symbols were simple and direct. Nothing complicated or duplicitous about them. Nothing lying in wait for ambush. He observed the shape of his body on the couch. He was shriveled into a comfortable fetal pose that resembled a question mark. So he said, “Give them a Q.”

“What?”

“Give them a Q,” he repeated. He hung up.

He got a check in the mail a few weeks later, but he wasn’t sure if that was for merely picking up the phone, or if they had used his contribution. Such as it was. Only when he saw the ads for the Q-100 did he get his answer. A Q. It was a name reduced to abstraction. To meaninglessness. It depressed him, the ridiculousness of seeing his whim carved into the culture. How’d you come up with that? Just sitting around and it occurred to me. What curdled in his thoughts was how easy it was, even after his misfortune. Nothing had changed.

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He feared he’d have to buckle up for another ride down shadowy sentimental lanes, but they didn’t go very far at all. She picked him up in front of the hotel, and they drove down the block, across the street, then on to the pier. They could have walked. The car nosed up to the guardrail at the end of the pier, the headlights draping a white shape on the water for a few seconds before she cut the engine. Couples and kids walked slowly on the asphalt, sucking ice cream and commenting on the stars in a Sunday-night daze. Back to work tomorrow. For a second he’d had an image of her steering them into the drink. For discovering the terrible secret, but of course it was only a terrible secret if anyone cared. And no one cared. Except him.

Regina cleared her throat. And once more. She began: “The thing about him being sick started because he did fall ill soon after, and never got better. He died. So that got mixed in there over the years, but on the day of the actual vote, he was there. Yes.” She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and finally turned to face him, her eyes red-vined. “When can we expect your decision?” she asked, her voice crisp, almost bullying. More sheriff than mayor.

“Soon,” he said. “I think I’m almost there.”

“No surprise which way you’re leaning.”

“You know that article was a piece of crap. Just some PR.”

“I know,” she said eventually.

He was in no hurry. He let her take her time. A hollow clanking sound, rigging animated by the wind, made its way across the water. Ghosts rattling their chains, he thought. Hey, ’member me?

“It’s a wonder they were friends at all,” Regina started. “They had such different temperaments. What united them was their tragedy, if you think about it. And the idea that they could make something better.”

He had pictured the scene repeatedly over the last few hours. Field walks in thinking it was business as usual. Him and his friend against Winthrop. Maybe humming a spiritual or something, fuck, he didn’t know. The kind of song you sing when you are about to be ambushed. A Caught Unawares song.

Regina said, “Abraham had a family. And then the extended family of all the people who followed them here. He had responsibilities. Field didn’t have anyone. He’d lost his family back on the plantation. You have to understand where they both were coming from.”

He thought: They put the law down to protect themselves against Winthrop. As long as they stood together on the city council, the two black men were a majority, and there was nothing the white man could do. They got it in writing, on the books, the way white people did it. And that would be enough, right? So they thought. What name to put to the expression on Field’s face when they took the vote? A Jeep made a U-turn behind Regina’s car, blinding him for a second. He had to admit that Regina had a distinguished profile. The blood of kings in her veins, nose and brow and chin of the brand that said: We make the hard decisions.

Her hand went for the ignition, stalled on the key, then fell into her lap. “Man,” Regina said, “I don’t know what Winthrop promised him. Property? Money? They definitely didn’t talk about that on Easter or Christmas, when we used to sit around and the old folks would tell us the story about how we came here. How proud we all should be that we were related to such strong souls.”

At the very least Goode got a few street signs out of it. He looked over at Regina. What was she hoping to accomplish, really, by bringing the town back to Freedom? To undo the double cross? Right the injustice. Only it was not the injustice he had been thinking of. “What are you going to do?” he asked. He didn’t know what he meant.

She said, “Maybe he didn’t get anything concrete. Maybe it was enough that it was the most prudent thing for the community they were building. That,” she said, pointing at the end of the pier, the dark water, “that was going to make or break this place. Supply lines. He knew that. So why not change the name. Right?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he said. He’d been trying to get into the heads of those two men, but was having a hard time. They lived in a completely different context. What did a slave know that we didn’t? To give yourself a name is power. They will try to give you a name and tell you who you are and try to make you into something else, and that is slavery. And to say, I Am This—that was freedom. He imagined the vote again. Did they come to blows? Did they curse? What name to give to the smile on Sterling Winthrop’s face. Jagged syllables and sharp kickers all the way. And what name to give to the lack of surprise on Field’s face. Because he must have known from the beginning of their trip that some brand of doom was waiting for him up here. Or not waiting, but dogging his every step, like it always did. His shadow and true companion.

“I wish I could ask them,” Regina said wistfully. “I wish I had been there when they first arrived and looked around and said, ‘This is the place.’ It must have been beautiful. It was Abraham that came up with Freedom, did you know that? Field was of his own mind, of course, with some cockeyed idea, but the people decided to go with Freedom.”

He asked what Field’s suggestion had been.

It took her a minute before she was able to recall it. Seeing his expression, she shook her head in gentle dismay, her lips pressed together into a thin smile. “Can you imagine thinking that would be a good name for a place where people live?” she asked.

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Any handy road atlas describes the long tradition of noun names, adjectival names, that yoke abstraction to dirt, where we can get our grimy hands on it. Confluence, KY, Friendship, LA, Superior, CO, Commerce, OK, Plush, OR. Hope, AR, naturally. Oftentimes these names can also be found on the sides of packages of laundry detergent or abrasive cleaners, so generous and thorough is the sweep of their connotation. Freedom, needless to add. Can’t forget Freedom.