This Magnificent Desolation (20 page)

That poor, poor, unfortunate child, Maggie slurs suddenly into the dark, as if she were speaking from within some terribly sad, prophetic dream, in which only she and Magdalene had a part, and Duncan follows her voice upward toward the ceiling, where the major constellations have emerged, luminescent as fireflies. Maggie rolls onto her side, away from him, and, hugging her arms and legs, curls into a ball, until she seems no larger than a child herself. And Duncan wants to touch her but something holds him back—he feels as he had when he first stared at the Soap Woman through her coffin-glass at the museum.

Such a tragedy, Maggie murmurs in her dreamsleep. It's such a tragedy.

He stares at the clouds turning black on the ceiling and the stars shimmering distantly through the glass skylights and the room becomes cold and he turns inward against Maggie and imagines her as a young girl—not much younger than Magdalene—even as her drunken snores fill the room with their familiar, discordant warmth.

April 1983

At the tunnel site great excavators and cranes with hydraulic hammers prepare the way for the tunnel crews, and while they shore slurry and silt, set piles for cement and iron forms that will hold back the sea, the tunnelers are allowed a reprieve. It is a warm day in early spring, two weeks after the latest blackout, and the men sit on the slope of President's Hill, overlooking the construction, dozing or eating their lunches, smoking and talking with one another. A cool breeze blows in off the water, pushing at the grass, bringing goose bumps up on their skin, and with it the pungent low-tide smell of the excavations and further the black bilge and sulfur from the old tanneries across the bay in Oakland.

Joshua sits, smoking a cigarette, beside Sully, John Chang, Javier, Minkivitz, and Minkivitz's younger brother, Jamie; he focuses on the physical sensation of inhaling and exhaling and the burn of the cigarette in his throat, the smoke streaming through his mouth and
nostrils. The insides of his eyelids are turned red by the sun and crazy, elliptical shapes bounce and tremble there and in their center, small static dots like the snow upon a television screen when programming has ended. The sound of the heavy cranes dropping their hammers into the piles booms across the bay. Like the footfalls of the colossal prehistoric beasts of the Cretaceous, whose remains they had found buried in the shale and silt at the bottom of the sea.

You know, we build on major fault in the earth here, Javier says. Right on the very top of it! Through the ground Joshua feels the slight tremors from Javier's agitation, and he opens his eyes. Javier is rabidly chewing on his sandwich, his cheeks bulging and his Adam's apple working up and down, and as soon as his mouth is clear he begins speaking rapidly again, wags a finger at the bay: Right here, man. Right fucking here.

Jamie stares at Javier. Jamie is as pale as porcelain, with small ears, like those of a young boy's, protruding from the sides of his oval face. Blue veins show beneath the skin below his eyes. His brother, Charlie Minkivitz, the foreman on the job, slurps loudly from a plastic bowl of soup. Every few moments he pauses and glances at his younger brother.

Javy, man, Joshua says, there's major faults everywhere in San Francisco. Calm down.

Yes, yes, of course, but—and now Javier is nodding his head passionately—but no one builds directly over them like we do!

Listen. If there's a quake, we're in the safest spot in the city.

This is true?

Sure, that's why we're building the tunnel beneath the water. It's safer down there and stronger than any bridge. When the next one hits, I either want to be down there with you or else on the Transbay.

Minkivitz looks up from his soup again, thick lips pursed and wet. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then chortles. Whoo, boy, that's a good one. We have the chance to die a
hundred times a hundred different ways before this dig is ever complete and he's telling you it's safe being underground. What you think he knows, Javy? You think he went to goddamn Stanford or something?

Harvard, Joshua says, and draws from his cigarette. He rolls his shoulders and stretches into the sun. His back creaks loudly and something—a tendon or ligament—sounds in his neck. The muscles spasm and then relax and Joshua winces.

Wha?

I went to Harvard, Minkie.

Bullshit. Can you believe this guy? Can you believe him? Went to Harvard, he says. A nigger in Harvard! Bullshit, I say. You're a fucking liar.

And Joshua, looking at Minkivitz's puckered face, begins to laugh, a belly laugh that shakes his whole body, that leaves him weak, muscles trembling and jittery. He wipes at his eyes, and when he is done, he looks toward Minkivitz, shrugs at Javier, and then stares out over the bay with a serene wide smile on his face.

Jamie clambers awkwardly to his feet, as if he has suddenly lost his equilibrium, as if he is walking the bow of a ship cresting a great swell at sea. He moves farther down the hill and, after a moment, they hear the sound of retching. Joshua, Javier, and Minkivitz stare after him: the silhouette of a tall narrow figure doubled over upon the scaffolded embankment, swaying uneasily as he stands, and then bending to retch again.

What's the matter with your brother,
che
?

Minkivitz continues to stare after him—they all do. Finally: He doesn't like the work, he says. The tunnel—he's not cut out for it. Says he keeps hearing and seeing things in the dark. I should never have brought him on; he's too young.

Maybe it's the bends? Javier says. Site managers from Bextel and Sonoyama International have been rushing the men through the compression chambers more and more often as the tunnel falls behind
schedule—in the last week alone the superintendent has cut the time at each stage by five minutes. He says: I know a man once who had the bends and he used talk to his dead mother. Always puking too. He bleed from the eyes and think he's Jesus. He went crazy, y'know? I think we all go crazy down there.

What types of things is Jamie seeing? Joshua asks.

I don't know. I don't ask. Why the hell would I? You listen to too much of that kind of crap and it'll drive you nuts. He shrugs angrily.

A moment passes and Minkivitz shakes his head and swears: Fuck! Angels. That's what he says. He's seeing fucking angels everywhere. Minkivitz exhales loudly through his nostrils, as if he is trying to contain some great, inexpressible frustration and sadness. Joshua is aware of his chest rising and falling and the silence that has fallen over the three of them and over the hill upon which they're sitting.

Our father passed away when Jamie was young, Minkivitz says. I asked the super to make him go get a medical, y'know, see a shrink.

Joshua and Javier nod. Everyone in Local 223 knows that the Minkivitzes' father committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge when they were boys.

Above, gray, swirling clouds move in a twisting gyre over the middle of the water, seeming to turn in concentric circles and then, at the bottommost turn of the screw, seeming to turn fully in upon themselves, and then to churn backward, as the gyre rises once more, moving upward into the dense thunderheads, which seem to have suddenly swept in from the sea, and above these, so high they must crane their necks, an icy white cloud has expanded and spread, pressed against the bottom of the stratosphere until it has flattened into an anvil.

Well, friend, Javier mutters, glancing up at the clouds nervously and putting out a tentative hand as small chunks of hail begin to fall. The boy not seem well, that for sure.

May 1983

Joshua and Duncan ride beyond Oakland through a strange dusken light, pink-tinged clouds feathering the sky above them, not speaking but quietly enjoying the sensations of the ride: the sound of the Indian's heavy engine, the weight of speed pressing upon them, and the world changing so quickly, weaving through the fragmented light seeping down beyond the tree line flickering and blinding as a strobe and then the sudden and comforting reprieve of the nether light before dark. Evening birds—doves and whip-poor-wills—sounding and challenging in the gray, ashy bracken, and barely visible through the high firs, a feathery skein of stars.

They motor though the ashen twilight, Duncan holding tight to Joshua's field jacket, along twisting roads soured by the odor of strange tamarind trees and through the high-roofed tunnels of giant Douglas firs, the evergreen smell of them sharp in their nostrils, the loud rumbling sound of the bike's exhaust cast back at them from the
thick surrounding growth, muted and strangely echoed, altering all sense of space and of the distance over which they travel to Admiral's Point.

The night comes fully then and a cold breeze with it so that Duncan clings tighter to Joshua's waist, his eyes watering in the chill, moist air. The Indian's headlight a narrow white light trembling on the road before them and sweeping across the firs that press out at them from the darkness at the sudden sharp angles of the road, which Joshua handles effortlessly, as if without thought, merely leaning this way and that and slanting the bike so steeply at times that Duncan thinks gravity will pull them down and smash them upon the road, send them spinning like a sparking, gasoline-spewing whirligig hurtling out into the dark.

Finally they reach Admiral's Point, cindered gravel crunching beneath the tires, and Duncan climbs, shivering, from the bike. Beyond the wide grass expanse of Soldier's Park the distant city shimmers.

Joshua walks toward the flagstone walkway and Duncan instinctively reaches for his hand even though he knows he is too old for this gesture and Joshua takes it in his calloused grip. Duncan wonders about the nights mother rode with Joshua on his bike, which was rare, and to the places they traveled. What did they talk about? Was he ever a part of their discussions? Did he have a place in their plans for the future?

Do you take mom up here? Duncan asks.

No. Only you.

Why?

Joshua seems to think about this and then shrugs. Some things a man just has to show another man, yeah? Some things that don't need explaining, some things that you don't want to explain even if you could. It's like those trips you take with your momma, just between the two of you. So, this is just between us. I mean, what do
you
two do when you're together?

Nothing. We just drive. And sometimes Mom gets sad or tired and she cries and then we come home again.

Joshua purses his lips, considering this. Is that all right with you? he says. The driving, I mean. If you don't want to go, you can tell her, y'know?

No, it's okay. I don't mind.

Far, far away a tugboat blows its horn. Duncan thinks of the things that fathers say only to their sons and the words that never need to be spoken, uttered aloud. For no reason at all, his heart begins to hammer; it feels tight and squeezed and sore in his chest.

Joshua, will you tell me about my father? And although this is what Duncan asks, for the first time he is no longer interested in discussing him, who he was or what became of him, he merely wants Joshua to speak and to hear Joshua's voice.

Joshua fills his mouth with air and then holds it so that his cheeks balloon. He stares out at the water, lets go of Duncan's hand, making Duncan wish that he hadn't spoken at all, and presses hard at his eyes. Finally he exhales. Nope, he says. I can't do that. I promised your mother. Why do you care so much about this anyway? What has he ever done for you? Here you got your mother who loves you. And she's struggling, and it's hard.

I don't know why. He's my father.

Joshua thinks about this for a moment. Yeah, I know. My father's out there too.

Joshua laughs, and Duncan smiles, glances toward the stars.

No, I mean right out there—he lives in Oakland, I haven't seen him in fifteen years. Joshua's smile widens momentarily, teeth flashing, and then as he looks out over the bay, his expression hardens.

One time, he says, my father took me to a basketball game, to the Celtics. That's back when your mother and I lived in Boston. She never tell you things about when she was a little girl?

Joshua looks at Duncan and Duncan shakes his head. I was so
damn excited, man, I must have been talking about it for weeks. It drove my mother crazy. I thought if I kept talking about it then there was no way my father could change his mind, but I also worried that if I talked too much, he would change his mind, but I couldn't help myself. See, my father never did stuff like that, never did anything with us.

The C's were playing Cleveland, I remember that. And I remember that at some point in the game my father stood up, just for a moment, to cheer. Someone scored a basket, I don't remember who, and someone shouts from behind us: Sit the fuck down, you fucking nigger, and my father paused, turned around to see who had shouted at him. He stood there and looked back at the crowd. And then a whole group of voices cry out: Hey, nigger, sit the fuck down! And my father did, but first he turned back to the game and stood there for a moment as if he were still cheering and wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Then, real slow like, he sat down.

He didn't watch the rest of the game and neither did I. We just stared straight ahead without saying a word to each other. When the game was over, my father sat there, and finally, when the Garden was empty, he stood up and we left. We didn't talk the whole ride home and he never took me to another game again. We never did anything together again.

And it may sound stupid, I was only ten, but I knew that my father was a broken man, that he no longer had any pride left. When he beat my mother, deep down I think I knew he was trying to beat the pride out of her too. And I hated him for that. I've always hated him for that. He thought he was strong, but for him to do that to my mother, to me and my little sister … Joshua shakes his head. I promised myself I'd never be weak like that.