Underground Airlines(71)
“What the f*ck?” I said, or started to say, but the first man said, “Shut up, boy,” while he dropped the shovel and punched me in the stomach.
I would have doubled over, but I was held too tight. The fresh gash in my shoulder threw up a hot flash of pain, and my guts hurt where I’d been hammered. I kicked my legs out and wriggled like a bug in the air while the first man danced backwards, fists clenched, and the huge man holding me whispered, “Almost done.”
“What?” I said.
“Shut yo mouth, nigger,” the first one shouted and punched me on the side of the head.
Through a haze of pain I saw the Alabama patrolman, up on the roof, watching us impassively.
“Hey,” I said, but then they were all in on me, punching me again, throwing me down, landing their boots in my chest. I convulsed, moaning, closing in on myself like a fetus, and from the far corner of my eye I saw the merry beat cop on the other side of the square taking this all in with mild amusement, shaking his head as though I and the men beating me were rambunctious kids on a playground. I saw two white men in fedoras in front of the pharmacy, murmuring to each other and laughing. I saw all of them, all the good people of Green Hollow, the men and the women and the kids; all the fine folks had stopped to take in the show.
They kicked at me a few more times, though I writhed enough, wrenching my body this way and that, to take most of their shots in the shins or in the back, on the hard surfaces of my spine. I spat pink into the dirt and hauled up onto my haunches, steadying myself on my arms with my hands palm-planted in the scrabble grass. Above me the two men stood with fists balled, staring down.
I wondered if a rumor was flying around town. I wondered if it had reached Martha’s table at the Cotyledon. I hoped she’d have the sense to stay where she was. Not to give herself away, not to rush out and cry my name—Jim, or Brother, any name at all.
“Stay down,” the bigger of the two men hissed, and I did, I stayed down, and the two of them leaned over me glowering and godlike.
The one who hissed at me had a fierce, cold look about him, like he was wrought from iron. I let the strength of my arms go slack and fluttered my eyes shut and the two men heaved me bodily out of that dirt. I was carried between them like a bag of soil, aft and end, my head lolling back to one side. My ears were ringing, and a thick knot of pain was gathering in my stomach where the one man’s boot had first connected.
They bore me that way, body slack and head hanging backwards, across the patchy courthouse lawn toward a big car waiting, pulled up to the sidewalk. A woman fell into the pack, walking along with us, a pace or two behind. Her hair was wrapped in a tight-fitting orange cloth. She had thick arms, a powerful striding body. She scowled at me as we progressed across the lawn, her hands clenched into fists, her eyes like two stones deep in her head.
“Are you the lawyer?” I said to her.
“Do I look like a f*cking lawyer to you?”
She stepped close to me. To me, being carried as I was with my head thrown back, she was upside down. With swift, precise movements, she took out a hypodermic needle and a small vial. I struggled, but there was nothing to be done—the men held me tight while she filled the needle and jabbed it into a vein in the side of my neck. My vision swayed. They dropped me into the trunk of the car.
“Welcome to the Hard Four,” said one of the voices, gruff and full of laughter, while the world slipped away from me. “It don’t get a lot better.”
3.
When the world and I found each other again I was swimming through some kind of pink-hued southern sea. I was a gone goose. I was flying, but I was underground, too. I was under the city of Indianapolis, back in Jackdaw’s miserable tunnel, surrounded by dripping clay walls, by darkness and illness and cold. I was in Bell’s Farm; I was in the shed buried underneath the earth, a Franklin’s black government boots just visible through the slit, and I had done something, but what had I done? And I was also at the Capital City Crossroads Hotel, in the basement, where the pool and the gym were, and I was on that planet that Castle used to murmur in my ear, the planet called the future.
I got up, and I fell down. First onto my knees, and then, after a moment’s consideration, the rest of the way, down onto my back. I felt something alien on my thigh and looked down and it was my dick, flopped over like a scrap of rope. I was bare-ass naked, which was hilarious, and some people were laughing, so I went ahead and laughed, too. My voice was a creepy giggle, unfamiliar to me, so I stopped.
“Get back up on the chair now,” said a woman’s voice, stern but not unkind. A little tremor of humor in the voice. “Go on. Come on.”
I obeyed instructions as best I could. First I put my forearms onto the seat of the chair, then I heaved myself up and twisted myself around. I had to stop halfway through and get a couple breaths in me, paused with my ass in the air, gulping the smell of basement—what the hell basement was I in?—and hearing more laughter swimming all around the corners of my brain.
The jab and the sting. That vial, that stubby little pot full of poison. Someone caught me with a shot of something. Whatever it was had me all cooked up for sure. I was out on the ice—I was out on the dance floor no question.
“Siddown, honey,” said the voice, then the face that belonged to it came into focus—it was the woman from the square there, the one who had poked me. The orange head wrap was gone: her hair was short dreadlocks, a bristle of corks. She was crouching now in front of me. She had cagey eyes and ruby lips and her skin was smooth. She lifted a red bath towel that had fallen off my lap and pooled at my feet. It must have been covering my nakedness while I dozed in the chair—I lifted it up and covered myself up again.