Underground Airlines(6)
Tit for tat. Give and take. Negotiation and conciliation. Compromise. It’s how the Union survives.
People still find ways to evade the burdens of the FPA, though. Local sheriffs sandbag investigations; state legislatures pass thinly veiled personal liberty laws, no matter how many times the Supreme Court sends them back stamped Unconstitutional. Plenty of “good citizens” go to jail every year rather than lift a finger to assist a slave-hunting marshal. Since 1970, African American law enforcement officers are allowed to claim nonparticipation under the Moore amendment.
The US Marshals Service, therefore, has needed to find other means of pursuing its mission.
That was me. I was “other means.” A man with no name, a quasi-employee of a clandestine branch, moving from city to city, job to job, under the supervision of a voice on a Maryland telephone. Bridge assigned me my cases, but my tactics were up to me. I pursued my cases efficiently and effectively, and as long as I did that, my own past remained buried. I remained in the North and free. Give and take. Negotiation and conciliation. Compromise.
When we were done on the phone I was feeling low and mean, which is how I always felt after talking to Mr. Bridge. Certain emotions were bubbling up in my stomach, close to my throat. Certain kinds of memories were rattling their chains. As always. I flicked away the butt of the shitty Pakistani cigarette and stared out from the darkness of the balcony into the greater darkness of the parking lot, feeling as if I barely existed at all.
I did, though. I was real, and the case was real. Somewhere in this city there was a lonesome runner, terrified and tired and overwhelmed by the sights and the lights of the free world, and I was going to find him. Have him dragged home. Home.
The full file would come tomorrow, like Bridge said. Tomorrow my search would begin in earnest.
5.
It is remarkable, when you consider it, all the complicated works we construct to avoid anything that might disturb us or cause us pain. The bulwarks and baffles we build up, the moats and the mazes.
When I got down to the lobby the next morning, Thursday morning, my head was clear, and I felt focused and calm. I had slept well. It was just before 7:30 a.m., and I was the only one in the complimentary breakfast area off the main lobby of the Crossroads Hotel. That’s how I like it. I like to get down to these free breakfasts after they’ve set everything out but before the crowds of folks come in, smiling and chattering and buttering their toast. I’m not a man for small talk in the mornings. I found a seat by the window and set down my newspaper on the table to claim it. I always try to stay at hotels that have these kinds of free breakfasts: warming trays brimming with bacon and herbed diced potatoes, bottomless cups of coffee, sweet muffins in paper wrappers. It is my practice to savor whatever is there to be savored, whatever is available, whatever they just put out for you to take.
I scanned the front page of the Indianapolis Star, which was all about Donatella Batlisch, she of the firestorm, the one who had struck the match. She was the president’s nominee to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, and someone had dug up her master’s thesis, which highlighted the “range of instruments available under existing law” to punish investment companies that trade in plantation profit. Then Batlisch gave an interview, Time or U.S. News, one of those, refusing to disavow her views, saying only that she’d discharge the duties of the office without prejudice. And then the president, an avowed “centrist” on the Old Question—as you had to be to get to be president—had surprised everybody by declining to withdraw her nomination.
Is this a watershed moment? said the page 1 editorial I was staring at now, chewing on my bagel. Is this a moment when things begin to change?
“No,” I said to the paper. “It’s not.” I took another bite. I turned the page.
A girl came in, a white girl in blue jeans and a blue-jean jacket and massively scuffed black Doc Martens–type shoes. She had an oversize leather pocketbook, this young lady, and as I watched she began casually dropping items into the bag’s big maw. This little white lady needed to refine her thievery skills, that was for sure. With each act of petty pilferage she looked first right and then left, like a cartoon mouse about to grab a hunk of cheese, before dropping whatever it was—a banana, a single-serving box of muesli—into the big purse.
A hotel man came in, khaki pants and polo shirt, treading silently enough on the thick carpeting to escape the girl’s attention—although I, a great noticer of small sounds, heard him fine. He waited, watching, arms folded across his chest, as the girl helped herself to one of the paper cups stacked beside the coffee machine and began to fill it with the two-percent milk meant for cereal.
“Miss?” he said suddenly, loudly. “May I help you?”
“What?” The woman turned quickly, jerked the paper cup from the milk dispenser, sloshed some over the sides. “No. No, you’re fine. I’m good. Thanks.”
The hotel man walked over to her, brisk and self-important in his slacks and magenta shirt with CROSSROADS HOTEL sewn on the breast pocket. I turned my eyes back to my newspaper, studied the headlines. The Batlisch hearings. The Pacers win a close one. Wilmington joins Syracuse and Detroit in bankruptcy, and what cities will be next?
“The food set out for breakfast is intended for use during the breakfast hour only.”
“Oh—wait.” The girl tried on a smile, looked around. She couldn’t even figure out a lie for it. “I mean, yes. Oh. Of course.”