They questioned him, gave him squirrelly looks, but eventually put their exams away and settled down to work. A few moved their pens with fluency and joy, others seemed to fight the simple tools, wristbones rigid on the table. Some became absorbed in their labor, others struggled, tongues wagging.
When they finished, and Hugh asked them to compare their efforts, they were astonished — as he knew they would be — at how different their drawings were.
Africa front and center.
Saudi Arabia at the core.
Lima, Peru — Earth’s navel.
“So,” Hugh said. “Will the real world please stand up?”
They didn’t understand this phrase. “Never mind,” he said. “What does this teach us?”
They agreed that a person’s image of the planet depended on his or her home culture, that national and regional biases blind us to others’ conceptions of the truth.
“And we all have individual biases as well,” Hugh added. “I’ve learned that most of us can’t see our culture — the basic set of assumptions that shapes our strongest beliefs — any more than a fish can see the bowl it’s swimming in.”
“My teacher.” Karim, a young Tunisian, waved his hand. “I think maybe it means something more.”
“Yes?” Hugh smiled at him. Karim was one of the best students, naturally friendly and charming.
“I think maybe it means …” He worked his mouth around the clumsy sounds he wanted to express, as if anything he said — as if language itself — would be woefully inadequate. “The world? She is, perhaps, unknowable.”
Back in his office after class, Hugh tried to phone Alice but her secretary said she’d called in that morning. Hugh tried her at home but got only her machine. Was she sick or had Saturday night upset her so much she’d taken to hiding out? He heard Spider again: sen-si-tive. “I hope you’re okay,” he said into the receiver. “Please call me. I’d like to see you again. I believe, next time, we can find a safe part of town. Promise.”
But already, in mind-drifting moments, he’d been planning a trip to the Thicket. As he’d told Spider, Saturday had strengthened his desire to see Spider’s roots, to prove to himself he could enter the world of the blues, and not be chased away. Yes, yes, why not … but first, he thought, he had to fix his own backyard.
His light flickered and went out. He punched Paula’s number, but the girls were staying with a friend. She said he’d have to call them back. He didn’t feel like arguing, just now, about his visit, so he hung up. He called and left a message with the department secretary, saying he’d be gone the next two days. Personal business. His students were taken care of — they had their next assignment. He drove home, packed his toothbrush and a change of clothes. He left two plates of cat food in the bushes. The kittens stared at him suspiciously. He checked his watch. Good. The restaurant would just be opening for supper. A quick bite — quick, before he changed his mind — then he’d hit the road.
Virgin of Guadalupe candles washed Chimichanga in thick, eggy light. Hugh dipped a tortilla chip into a mulcahete brimming with green salsa. For several minutes now he’d watched cooks step furtively through the restaurant’s back door with trays of steaming beans and rice. Through a window lined with white lightbulbs (shaped like laughing skulls) he saw them cross the parking lot, tap on the wooden shed out back, and hand in the food.
A waitress arrived with chili rellenos, tacos al carbon. A baleful waltz poured from the jukebox speakers.
He washed his hands, tried Alice’s number from the pay phone near the bathrooms. Still no answer. As he stood there gripping the receiver he overheard a cook, in the kitchen’s plastic-bead doorway, tell Carlos, “New group tonight. Two families.”
“Where from?”
“Michoacán.”
“We clear enough room?”
“I sent Billy to Kmart for three more sleeping bags.”
This was Hugh’s chance. He stepped forward. The cook frowned, then vanished into the kitchen.
“Carlos?” Hugh said.
“Professor!” He had a wide smile, with dimples and big yellow teeth. “What can I do you for? How’s your food?”
“Wonderful, as always. Listen, can I ask you something? I don’t mean to pry into your business, but — ”
“Oh my. Sounds serious.” Carlos grinned.
“The shed out back? The trays?”
His face darkened. “What trays?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not … I’ve just been thinking, if you were feeding folks, immigrants or something — ”
Carlos shook his head.
“The thing is, there’s a homeless woman around the corner, near my apartment. She sleeps behind a Dumpster. I give her money for food, but I don’t think she eats well. She’s a little funny in the head. I just thought …” He shrugged.
Flamenco guitar. Shouts, glass-scrapes, a hissing of steam in the kitchen.
Carlos rubbed his chin, examined Hugh’s face. Finally, he touched Hugh’s shoulder and motioned him close. “If you can get her to come around after dark. Do you think you can do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try.” It would have to wait until he returned from the Thicket. Another day. What was a day like for the woman? How hard was it to survive twenty-four hours?
“I deny everything, of course. But maybe she can get a little rice. Some beans.”
“Thank you. Thank you. I knew you were a good man,” Hugh said.
“A bad businessman.” He laughed. “I remember where I come from, that’s all. A sense of obligation, you know?”
“Yes.”
“You take care of yourself, Professor, all right?”
Hugh finished his meal. Through the skull-lined window he saw an old beige station wagon stop in the parking lot. Carlos and two of the cooks opened its doors. Dark children stumbled out, wrapped in blankets. Skinny men in chewed straw hats, women clutching cloth bundles. They huddled on the black and slippery gravel. Then they scurried into the shed.
“Pigs be comin’ for me, folks, so we on the move tonight, somewhere in the city. Smoked me outta my home. You be next, brothers. Bastards won’t rest till they confiscate all the black property in town. Mark me. Sendin’ dope and guns into our ‘hoods so they got an excuse to invade …”
Hugh fiddled with the fine-tune. “They right behind me, brothers! You hear that gunfire? I’m broadcastin’ now on foot, somewheres in the projecks. Bustin’ down doors, grabbin’ up women and childerns. We all know they lookin’ for me. Want to shut down the Truth. But I ain’t goin’ quiet into their lily-white night …”
Up ahead, on the freeway, a car backfired. Hugh jumped.
Now, only silence where Black Magic usually screamed defiance. The fine-tune didn’t help this time. The hollow sound depressed him.
Well.
What did he used to tell the girls when they worried at night? If there’s a creepy shadow on the wall, don’t dive under your covers. Look at it. Study it. Or walk right up to it until you learn it’s nothing to fear. Daddy, are you coming to see us?
He set his cruise control and headed for the Thicket.
It could have been Mississippi, the rich, alluvial furrows of the Delta where Robert Johnson met the Devil and the roots of the blues grew wild. But this was Texas. Algier Alexander with his field-holler bellow, his prison and farm labor laments; Blind Willie Johnson slurring hellfire, scraping a pocketknife across rain-rusted strings; Black Ace, Manee Lipscomb, with their echoes of vaquero guitar — it was high time Hugh came here to witness their fertile soil.