What Came After (22 page)

Lucky him, he thought. The place emptying out every day except for the old woman. Plenty of food coming in, just in case she was right about what they had in mind for his fate. Every day that they came back with rabbits or birds or fish he had another day to work on freeing himself. And whenever he finally pried the pins out, all he’d have to do was wait until it was just the old woman home before he opened up the door and left. As simple as that.

He thought of how easy it would be and he thought of getting home to Liz and Penny and it gave him the patience he needed. Plus now he knew where to find his spare pistol.

Later on she brought his food. She didn’t enter this time. She stood outside the door while he ate and that was all right because it meant she didn’t see when he soaked up a pool of grease with a part of his shirttail and saved it for lubricating the hinges. She just bent to slide the plate through and then stood outside the door. He talked to her, though. Said he hadn’t meant any trouble by speaking to the girl. By seeing if she knew some old fairy tale. It wasn’t anything. He hadn’t meant any harm. Certainly not by asking if the cat had her tongue since who knew. It was just an expression people had.

The woman didn’t answer. Weller just talking to the idea of her outside the door. Talking and tearing off a piece of his shirttail with his teeth and sopping up grease and continuing to talk. Telling her he hadn’t meant any harm. Not to a poor little girl. Not when he had a little girl of his own back home who was the whole reason he was down here in the first place.

Just planting that seed. Sliding the plate back through and thanking the old woman kindly, and planting that seed.

*

She brought him his breakfast the next day and he talked to her some more. Told her why he was on the road, if she was interested. Why he’d come so far from home. How that daughter he’d told her about was blind and how he was going to get her cured if it killed him. Not looking for sympathy but just telling his story, the way a person would.

Around noon, when they were all alone in the building, he stepped away from what he was doing and called down to her from the square window. She glanced up at the sound of his voice and quickly turned her back as if to pretend she hadn’t heard him. Busying herself. He called down asking her name. Saying his name was Henry and what was hers. She didn’t answer.

*

He had his tools ready, and he began working on the hinges. Working on the top hinge for a while and moving to the middle when his back started to seize up and then kneeling to work on the bottom. Repeating that. Thinking he’d like to get far enough today that he could work a little grease into each of them and have that going overnight.

Between the noise of his scraping and his deep concentration and the old woman’s light tread, he didn’t hear her come up the stairs until she was there. Outside the door saying, “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t tell me nothing. I’ve got ears.”

“I’m working on your movie projector,” he said. Not sure where the lie had come from but glad to have it.

“You can lay off right now,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I want to see if I can make it work.”

“We got no use for a movie projector.”

“I know that,” he said. “The bulb’s busted anyway and you don’t have any juice, so you’d be in trouble if you wanted to start watching a movie.”

“Nobody here needs to watch a movie.”

“I know that.”

“So leave it alone.” That cracked voice sounding hurt. “It’s been ages since I seen a movie, and I don’t guess I need to see another one.”

“All right. I’ll quit.”

So he had to work quietly. He kept his motions small. He wrapped his scrapers with rags. He untangled the bedsheets and the foam rubber that someone had made into a pallet and he shook out the mouse droppings and folded them double and he worked underneath them. There was no air and it was hot and it stank, but everything stank. A man using a red plastic bucket for his toilet doesn’t trouble himself about that. He only considers how long it might be before he’s free of the whole business.

When they all returned that afternoon he hadn’t scraped away enough to use the grease, so he waited. The old woman brought him his supper and he ate it and saved some more grease in case. She whispered to him through the slot once he’d handed it back. Said she was glad he’d made up his mind to behave himself. Said if he kept it up he might last until his people from Black Rose came and got him.

He whispered back what was she talking about.

She was gone.

*

By that same time the next afternoon he’d broken through to raw metal in three places, one at the top of each hinge where the pins went down through, and he worked the sharpened steel into the crevices he’d exposed. Rubbed in some grease and let it work.

She came and slid him his supper and he whispered to her. What was that she’d said about Black Rose? He wasn’t any Black Rose.

She said not to kid her. That motorcycle. The helmet. His gear. All of it Black Rose and all of it brand new and nobody got hold of that stuff who didn’t have a claim to it. You try stealing from Black Rose you don’t get very far so don’t try to kid her. She said they’d sent one of their own to negotiate. To cut a deal and sell him back home where he belonged.

He said, “You mean that fellow who left.”

She said, “That’s the one.”

He said, “So he’s going to Washington.”

She said, “Wish him luck. You still might get out of here in one piece.”

It was ridiculous but he didn’t say so. Black Rose would come get him if he’d taken possession of that car he was after, but until then he was utterly dispensable. The man was chasing down a dead end. Probably fixing to get shot. He felt some sympathy for him but not enough to say so. Not enough to say so and let the old woman see how little value he actually had in the world. So what he said was, “That’s a good plan. You folks think of everything.”

And what she said was, “Don’t get smart.” The fellow who’d left was her son-in-law. She’d lost her daughter in the Great Dying, but still. Family was family.

“Not to mention he’s the little girl’s father,” said Weller.

“You might not be as smart as you think,” said the old woman.

*

He worked on. The more progress he made, the more he saw that he hadn’t guessed how aggressive the rust might have been. It had eaten right through. So thoroughly that when he’d cleared the head of the top pin and worked a sharpened bit of steel underneath it for a lever the lever just sank into the metal like into something soft. And when he put a little pressure on it, the head tore off clean. The little round disk popped away and ricocheted against the door and nearly hit him in the eye. All right, he thought. Fair enough. He could still drive the pin through, and he could do that with one of the other pins as soon as he had one out.

He moved on.

The pin in the center hinge broke too.

The third one, the one at the bottom where the water leak had done less damage and the rust was lighter, came out clean. It took some patience and it took some time and it took all the rest of the grease he had, but it came out. Weller wiped the grease from it. Standing in the projection booth holding it up like a prize for just a moment, the pin gleaming darkly in his hand. Fragile and a little bent. He wanted to straighten it, but he didn’t dare.

He rubbed the grease from it again. Took off his boot to use the heel for a hammer, not caring that the old woman would hear. He positioned the pin above the middle hinge and began tapping on it. It bent more, but he kept tapping. The other pin starting to inch free. Red rust falling.

The sound of his tapping drew the old woman. She said you quit horsing around with that projector and he said what do you care if I do or don’t. He said you worry about your granddaughter and her father of hers that went off. You worry about them and leave me alone. Not pounding then because she was right outside the door and she’d know exactly what he was doing.

She said, “That one who went off isn’t her father. He married my girl but they never had children. Her father’s my own son. My own son by blood.”

“What happened to him?”

“Last thing I knew, he was carrying a six-shooter around.”

Weller understood. “So he’s the boss.”

“You could say that,” she said. “The boss is usually the one with the six-shooter.” Using that old word again. That old word from the western movies that almost nobody had ever seen.

“I had a gun like that myself once,” Weller said. “But I lost it.”

“I guess that’s why you’re not the boss anymore.” The old woman laughed. Laughed like she thought Weller was funny, not like she was rubbing it in. And then she stopped. Turning away. Getting ready to go on down the stairs. “Now you leave off on that hammering,” she said. “Don’t cross me and don’t cross my boy. People who cross my boy don’t come out of it happy.”

Weller standing behind the door with his boot off, waiting. Saying, “I understand.” Saying, “I guess if a fellow’s got what it takes to run a crew like this, he might leave behind a little bit of a wake.” Giving him his due.

“They’re only alive on account of him,” she said. “They’d do anything for my boy.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Every single one of them had his tongue cut out because he said to do it.”

Nothing from Weller.

“That boy of mine,” she went on “You’re either with him or against him. That’s how he knows.”

“How about you?”

“I’ve got seniority.”

“What about the girl?” he said. “His own daughter?”

The old woman began to move off at last. “She’s with him,” she said. “What did you think?”

*

He woke in the morning to another day drawn out from nothing by the dream of his wife and daughter. Thinking this was it. This was the day he would set himself free. He got the middle pin out right away. It was broken into a million pieces and the shards of it were all powdered down into a little heap on the floor, but it was out. One more to go. He stood with one boot off and stretched up on his toes to reach the top hinge and he breathed in the thin trickle of rust that leaked down with every strike. The angle was awkward but there wasn’t anything in the room he could stand on. The projector was bolted to the concrete and nothing else was solid enough. He tried the stack of film cans but it just toppled over. Crashing down. Spilling out streamers of celluloid.

The old woman came with his breakfast but she said he wasn’t going to get it unless he laid off. He said didn’t her son want him fed and she said yes and he said then maybe she’d better not start making his decisions for him. A man who’ll have his own child’s tongue out. How did he get started on that anyhow.

She told him. It was as if she’d been waiting for him to ask. For anyone to ask. For anyone to be able to ask and now Weller had shown up and raised the question and made himself her father confessor.

She took responsibility for everything. This was before the Great Dying, she said, but they didn’t have any insurance so it was really the same thing as the Great Dying and even if they’d had insurance nobody could have fixed what happened. What she’d done and what she’d caused. She’d eaten something while she was pregnant and the next thing she knew her son had come out damaged. Maybe it was the beginning of the Great Dying. Maybe her son was one of the first. Regardless he’d been born damaged and she and her husband God rest his soul had raised him up as best they could but he’d turned out crooked in spite of them. A child who looked all right on the outside but whose insides were damaged. It had made him crooked. And in the end, she was the one to blame. Which made her to blame for her grandchild too. She took it all upon herself.

Weller said he understood. He understood all about that.

She said oh sure I’ll bet you do.

Weller said no. Really. Kneeling down and letting his boot drop silently to the floor and talking to her through the ventilation slot. Saying how it was the same way with him and his daughter. How he was on this terrible trip not just for her sake but also for his own when you got right down to it. Taking something he did wrong and killing himself if he had to in order to make it right. Something that wasn’t any poor child’s fault.

After a while saying how about my breakfast. And the woman sliding it through.

As soon as he’d finished and she’d taken the plate and gone back down the stairs, he started hammering again. Up on his tiptoes in that cramped position. Blame it on that because you might as well blame it on something. His strike was off and he was still thinking about what he owed Penny and the pin bent itself at an angle of about thirty degrees. He tried straightening it, kneeling and daring to give it just one single tap, but a rotten break opened up in the middle, leaving just two useless pieces left. Short pieces not much more than shards themselves. And him kneeling on the floor with one boot off and one boot on, cursing himself and looking everywhere for some other possibility. There was nothing else to use on the hinge. He’d already determined that. As for ways out other than the door, it was hopeless. There was a ventilation grid overhead but it was only about ten inches on a side. The square opening that looked down over the auditorium wasn’t much bigger than that and even if it had been picture window he couldn’t have gone out through it. Not without some way to lower himself down. These rotten sheets and rags would never do. And even if he’d lowered himself to the balcony what then. He could feel it collapsing underneath him already. He could feel everything collapsing underneath him.