Underground Airlines(73)

“Nothing,” I said. Gingerly I removed the ice pack from my head and thanked him again.

“You straight?” he said, and I said, “I’m straight,” and he chunked the ice into the sink.

The music stopped, briefly, while someone flipped the tape, and when it came on it got bigger. Multiple voices singing, sometimes words and sometimes just sounds. Rough, uneven melodies with high harmonies, then fast overlapping chopping passages. Big drumbeats, hand claps, and whistles. I had been missing it forever, whatever music this was. I longed to have known it before—I longed to have known this music all my life.

I felt myself come back into myself, drop by drop, like a drained well filling back up. I stood up, and everybody clapped for me, then they died laughing when I offered an ironic bow. I think I may have done some dancing. I politely declined the fat rolled joint that Maryellen offered to me, not wanting to find out how cannabis would interact with olanzapine.

When I was sitting again it was at the kitchen table, and for the first time I noticed a very old white man. I could have sworn he hadn’t been there before, that I would have seen him, but on the other hand he looked like he’d been there forever, for centuries: pulled up close to the table in a wheelchair, dressed for a funeral, dark suit and thin black tie. Everybody else was drinking from cans and bottles, but his crooked fingers were splayed around a rocks glass containing only ice and the last clinging droplets of something dark and brown.

“Is that glass empty, son?”

“Sorry?” I had been looking out the window—the basement had a pair of high garden windows, letting in a peek of dirt-colored sky. I was wondering where exactly I was.

“It is rather dark in here, but I do believe my glass is empty.” His voice was a decayed whisper, still carrying its ancient and decorous southern accent. “I do believe that it is. Would you be so kind as to fill up that glass? You will find a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red in a cabinet beside the icebox.”

His watery eye was fixed on me. I found the whiskey and poured him out his glass.

“I appreciate it, young man. I do very much appreciate it.” The old white man sipped slowly and licked his thin, cracked lips. “I do not believe I have had the pleasure.”

“This man is named Elijah, sir.” It was Ada. She had materialized at my side, one hand on my shoulder. He craned his thin neck around to peer at her.

“Elijah?” he said, looking back at me slowly.

“That’s right, Counselor.” Ada looked at me carefully, and I said, “Yes, sir. Elijah.” And then, because it seemed like the thing to say, I said, “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“The honor…” He cleared his throat with effort. “The honor belongs entirely to me.”

His body had been incapacitated at some point, probably by a stroke. Half of him was slumped and slurred like a melting candle. He’s a hundred, I thought. He’s a thousand. He had the look of eternal old age, like he had been old forever, sitting pale and wraithlike in his old-fashioned wheelchair.

“Now, Elijah.” He gazed at me, licked the tips of his yellow teeth. “Now. You have embarked upon your journey. You are finding your way to freedom. The bad times are behind you, Elijah, but much uncertainty lies ahead. I cannot imagine…” Another pause, another elaborate throat clearing. “Cannot imagine how you must feel. But please know that here, boy, here in this home you are welcome. Here, there is…” He spread his arthritic fingers as wide as they would go. “Sanctuary.”

“Well,” I said, and then—what else was there to say?—“Thank you.”

“Yes, sir, Counselor,” said Ada on my behalf. “Elijah is on his way. On his way to the promised land.”

“God bless you, boy,” said the lawyer. “God protect you.”

And then just like that he fell asleep: tilted his head to one side, and his eyes clicked shut like a doll’s.

“Sir?” said Ada. “Mr. Russell?”

“Oh, he out,” said Marlon, easing past, a beer bottle in his fist.

“Yeah.” Ada patted the old man on his hand. “Think you’re right.”

“One of these times, you know, he gonna just die.”

“Hush your mouth,” said Ada. She smiled with undeniable tenderness at the lawyer as Marlon wandered away. “He’s right, though. He comes and goes. One of these days he won’t come back.”

The group was getting quieter around us: people talking in low voices, murmuring. Big Otis and little Maryellen had settled into the chair I was in before, she on his lap, cuddling close.

“We just tell him everybody’s named Elijah. Makes things easier is all.”

I scratched my forehead. “I’m supposed to be talking to him. That’s what they told me.”

“Well, go on,” Ada said. “Talk.”

I looked at the lawyer, then at her, and I saw that she was laughing, and I laughed, too.

“Yeah, how about that, huh?” Ada shook her head. She draped a blanket across the old man’s lap, eased a few strands of white hair out of his eyes. “But you try telling the Holy Ghost up there it’s a bunch of Negroes running the show.”

Cook had said much the same thing, laughing but not smiling, as we drove down Meridian Street to the monument: that Mockingbird mentality.