Underground Airlines(58)

He should not have died, but he had died, and there I still was.

I should have died.

I should have died in Bell’s Farm in a rainstorm and a swamp of blood, and I should have died on a Chicago sidewalk. I should have fought against the men from the vans until they were forced to shoot to kill.

And now here beside this gray churning river I should have been the one who got shot, but there I still stood, and still I wanted life.

The sun continued on its rise. A wash across the scene, blood splatter on the shallow rocks, scuff marks on the scrub. And all the anger and confusion turned upon me. Maris and Cook wheeled toward me, and Maris was still holding the gun.

“Gimme my gun back,” said the cop. The sun caught his class ring. Class president, homecoming king. All of us just a bunch of people out here, stumbling around down by the river.

“I will return it to you when I’m through,” Maris said to him, and then to me, steely-voiced, cool: “Stand up.”

I stood up.

“Raise your hands in the air.”

Barton was kneeling in the low run of the water, with Kevin’s head cradled in his lap, praying. Or silently cursing. Or, as he stroked the side of that dead child’s face, trying to bring out the information that he wanted so desperately, bring it up to the surface by conjure or caress. Maris advanced toward me. It seemed wild to me that they would do it here, here with the morning traffic already rumbling past within earshot. Barton was holding the boy, and Maris was coming closer with Cook’s service pistol.

“Wait; wait.” Cook was in motion, moving fast. Putting himself between Maris and me. “Hold up.”

The cop crouched down by the priest, and they huddled together, their heads just touching, the two of them an arch spanning Kevin where he lay, in and out of the water. Cook was whispering into Barton’s neck, and the priest began to nod, fire coming into his eyes.

“What?” said Maris, and then louder. “What?” Impatient, nostrils flaring. Anger fuming off his forehead. This monster, this government man, me—I needed to die, right then. It was so clear.

But the other two men kept talking, a minute or more, with Maris frozen out and Kevin dead and me just waiting, until Cook pulled back and stood up. “All right?”

Barton rose also, laid Kevin’s head down gently, and rose slowly, too, saying “Yes” again and again, and I saw how pleased Cook was with himself that he had made this sale, whatever it was. Even as the arrogant priest swooped in to seize his idea, swoop in and take it over: Mockingbird mentality. “Here is what we are going to do.” His voice was steady now, steely. The murmuring priest was gone, the fiery preacher was gone; here now was the field commander, leader of men, decisive and determined. “You will go and make these arrangements,” he said to Cook. “But first you need to deal with the body. Do you have a way to handle it?”

“Yeah,” said Cook. “I do.” He looked down at Kevin, and so did I, and we saw the water wash over the boy’s face, his eyes staring up at the sun.

Barton next addressed Mr. Maris. “You will take the government man to the place and wait. Do you understand me? You are to wait.” The priest did not wait for Maris’s answer. He turned and walked up the slope to the road, water dripping from the fringes of his cassock. “Now,” he said. “It is Sunday. I’m going to Mass.”



Maris did as he was told.

He drove me to Saint Anselm’s Catholic Promise, where I had been before, and we sat in that dusty main room, in the circle of fold-up chairs.

We listened to church bells ringing, listened to the boastful revving of motorcycle engines, listened to the rattle and thump of hip-hop bass lines coming out of SUVs on Central Avenue. I longed for a radio, longed to ask my captor if he might put on something to pass the time. Something sweet and easy. Some Smokey Robinson; some MJ. But there was no engaging Mr. Maris. He sat across from me with his legs spread wide, staring at me evenly, a shotgun between his legs. I sat woozy while my shoulder burned and bled. My hands were tied together behind the back of the chair. I was offered no first aid, no water.

“Were it me,” said Maris at one point, very softly, still staring, “I would make it hard for you. Slow. Do you understand my meaning?”

I didn’t answer him. I was thinking about Kevin.

Thinking about his old neighborhood: Brightmoor, in Detroit.

Thinking about his parents: Charles and Chandra.

Thinking about what he had done, what he had tried to do, and how he had died. I yearned for music, to separate me from these thoughts.

“Were it me,” said Maris, “it would not be pleasant. Do you understand?”

Still I said nothing. Maris was not done. He scraped his chair out of the circle, moved it closer to mine, keeping the shotgun between his legs. I considered ways I might have disarmed him, even with my hands tied to the chair as they were. Things I had learned.

“How many has it been? How many have you brought in, in your hunt? How many?”

When still I said nothing, Maris flared his nostrils, narrowed his gaze.

“You do not even know. Is that it? More than you can count? More than you think of?”

Two hundred ten. I could have told him if I wanted to. Two hundred ten since Chicago, since Bridge in the basement of the federal building, since my training in the Arizona desert. Two hundred ten, including this most recent: Jackdaw. Kevin. Son of Charles and Chandra.