TWELVE
The hum rose and rose as the three of them stumbled across the trash - and brick-littered wilderness of the vacant lot. As before, Jake saw faces in every angle and shadow. He saw Gasher and Hoots; Tick-Tock and Flagg; he saw Eldred Jonas's gunbunnies, Depape and Reynolds; he saw his mother and father and Greta Shaw, their housekeeper, who looked a little like Edith Bunker on TV and who always remembered to cut the crusts off his sandwiches. Greta Shaw who sometimes called him 'Bama, although that was a secret, just between them.
Eddie saw people from the old neighborhood: Jimmie Polio, the kid with the clubfoot, and Tommy Fredericks, who always got so excited watching the street stickball games that he made faces and the kids called him Halloween Tommy. There was Skipper Brannigan, who would have picked a fight with Al Capone himself, had Capone shown sufficient bad judgment to come to their neighborhood, and Csaba Drabnik, the Mad Fuckin Hungarian. He saw his mother's face in a pile of broken bricks, her glimmering eyes recreated from the broken pieces of a soft-drink bottle. He saw her friend, Dora Bertollo (all the kids on the block called her Tits Bertollo because she had really big ones, big as f**kin watermelons). And of course he saw Henry. Henry standing far back in the shadows, watching him. Only Henry was smiling instead of scowling, and he looked straight. Holding out one hand and giving Eddie what looked like a thumbs-up. Go on , the rising hum seemed to whisper, and now it whispered in Henry Dean's voice. Go on, Eddie, show em what you're made of. Didn't I tell those other guys? When we were out behind Dahlie's smokin Jimmie Polio's cigarettes, didn't I tell em ? "My little bro could talk the devil into settin himself on fire,"I said. Didn't I?Yes . Yes he had. And that's the way I always felt , the hum whispered.Ialways loved you. Sometimes I put you down, but I always loved you. You were my little man .
Eddie began to cry. And these were good tears.
Roland saw all the phantoms of his life in this shadowed, brick-strewn ruin, from his mother and his cradle-amah right up to their visitors from Calla Bryn Sturgis. And as they walked, that sense of Tightness grew. A feeling that all his hard decisions, all the pain and loss and spilled blood, had not been for nothing, after all. There was a reason. There was a purpose. There was life and love. He heard it all in the song of the rose, and he too began to cry. Mostly with relief. Getting here had been a hard journey. Many had died. Yet here they lived; here they sang with the rose. His life had not all been a dry dream after all.
They joined hands and stumbled forward, helping each other to avoid the nail-studded boards and the holes into which an ankle could plunge and twist and perhaps break. Roland didn't know if one could break a bone while in the todash state, but he had no urge to find out.
"This is worth everything," he said hoarsely.
Eddie nodded. "I'll never stop now. Might not stop even if I die."
Jake gave him a thumb-and-forefinger circle at that, and laughed. The sound was sweet in Roland's ears. It was darker in here than it had been on the street, but the orange streetlights on Second and Forty-sixth were strong enough to provide at least some illumination. Jake pointed at a sign lying in a pile of boards. "See that? It's the deli sign. I pulled it out of th weeds. That's why it is where it is." He looked around, dien pointed in anodier direction. "And look!"
This sign was still standing. Roland and Eddie turned to read it. Although neither of them had seen it before, they both felt a strong sense of deja vu , nonetheless.
MILLS CONSTRUCTION AND SOMBRA REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATES ARE CONTINUING TO REMAKE THE FACE OF MANHATTAN!
COMING SOON TO THIS LOCATION:
TURTLE BAY LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS!
CALL 661-6712 FOR INFORMATION!
YOU WILL BE SO GLAD YOU DID!
As Jake had told them, the sign looked old, in need of either refreshment or outright replacement. Jake had remembered the graffito which had been sprayed across the sign, and Eddie remembered it from Jake's story, not because it meant anything to him but simply because it was odd. And there it was, just as reported: bango skank. Some long-gone tagger's calling card.
"I think the telephone number on the sign's different," Jake said.
"Yeah?" Eddie asked. "What was the old one?"
"I don't remember."
"Then how can you be sure this one's different?"