Underground Airlines(91)

“I’m serious,” Billy said bitterly, hissing out a long contrail of smoke. “I do not know how I got into this f*cking mess.”

Maybe Billy didn’t know, but I had my suspicions. Ada guessed it was sex that had roped the man in, a pair of nubile abolitionist nurses, but looking at Billy, inhaling, twitching, pulsing, I figured it had to be drugs.

“It all depends on who’s doing that hand search, you know, and it was supposed to be Murph. I had the f*cking envelope, though. I was holding it.”

Billy had been directed to leave his jacket slung over his balcony—unit 8, three stories up—and then when he went to put it on that Sunday night, lo and behold, a padded envelope was in the pocket. You would never approach the LVEP with anything remotely resembling contraband, except that on this night it was supposed to be Murph—the whole plan hinged on Murph’s weak vigilance. Then Murph got the flu.

“You believe that?” Old cigarette out, new one lit. “The f*cking flu.”

Kevin, meanwhile, in his terrible hiding place: barrel of shit, barrel of blood, barrel strapped to the bed of a truck. The truck in lurching motion, the rattle of the wheels, the slosh of the fluid around him, the sick, close, dark air. And then after all those miles, Billy pops him out of the truck at the truck wash. He’s ready for his connecting flight—and where’s Luna? Where’s the package?

“Billy?”

“It was just bad luck.”

“Billy.”

“Bad, bad f*cking luck.”

“Billy, where is it?”

He screwed up his eyes and stared at me. “What?”

“The package, Mr. Smith. Are you telling me it never went off this plantation? Are you telling me it’s still here?”

“Yeah, it’s here.” He was close to the point of tears. He gaped at me. He pressed his dirty fingers into his temples. “That’s what I’m telling you; it’s here.” He got up with a jerk, so fast he wobbled and nearly fell down. “It’s in my f*cking fridge.”



My ticket to freedom was exactly as it had been described.

A padded envelope, five inches by seven inches. A half an inch thick. On the front, the logo of GGSI, and on the back, Kevin’s initials. I traced his handwriting with the tip of my forefinger.

I felt nothing. I put my palm on it and waited for the rush of feeling I was expecting, the dream of my new life in Little America, maple trees and a frozen lake and the curl of chimney smoke from my small wooden home.

The envelope felt like nothing. If felt like a small package, five by seven, with a slight bulge in the center.

The crazy courage of this kid. Jackdaw, born as Kevin. The balls. Lying to those holy fools the whole f*cking time. Go and get that girl and I tell you where I put your f*cking envelope. When he never even had it. He never f*cking saw it. He had never held it in his hands.

All of it a wild bluff. Tricked Barton, tricked me, tricked everyone, all to get this girl Luna out.

And now she was dead. And now he was dead.

And here I was in the inside of his world, mourning him all over again, this crazy courageous kid: he’s down there dead in the water, and here I am.

Billy Smith was hovering behind me, twitching back and forth on his heels, hands in his hair, breathing heavy.

“Yeah, man, I’m just glad to get rid of that thing. I mean it. That thing’s been giving me bad dreams, man. Real f*cking bad dreams.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” His breath was hot and stale. “You know that lady? The lady that got shot? I dreamed that, man. Night before it happened. She was giving her, like, testimony, you know? In my dream. With the long table and the microphones. All those ugly men staring down at her. You know they wear those flag pins on their jackets?”

I stood facing Billy, holding the envelope, feeling its small weight in my palm.

“Everybody was just f*cking freaking out, you know, calling her this and that, nigger lover and everything, and then someone just came up behind and”—he made his fingers a gun, grimaced as he fired it—“pow, shot her head off, you know? That was in my dream. I dreamed it, and then the next day it happened on the f*cking news!”

I tucked the envelope into my waistband, at the small of my back. Still I was waiting to feel something—the rush of possibility, the thrill of victory—waiting to feel my future coming.

“So all right, so what the f*ck, man?” said Billy. “Somebody coming to get you? You got something set up?”

“No.”

“What? What do you—how you gonna get out of here?”

“We’re going to figure it out, Billy,” I said. “We’ll figure out something.”

“We?” he said. His eyes bulged in his narrow face. “Oh, no way, oh, no. No f*cking way.”



We were back and forth on it for a while, Billy and me. He was trying to make me understand what I already knew, what I probably knew a lot better than he did: that it was impossible. People have tried all the ways, man, he told me. Packed in crates. Sewn into seat linings. Wrapped up within a palletized load of cargo. Inside the engine block. Clinging to the chassis.

“Jackdaw got out,” I told him. “You got Jackdaw out.”

“Yeah, but that got planned. You hear what I’m saying, man? That got set up for a f*cking year. I mean, I was part of it, I don’t even know how long that got planned. And so what do you wanna do? Just, like, what? Fucking ride out shotgun?”