“It’s too late,” I say. “They need lawyers.”
“Then you can work here,” she says, taking me by the shoulders. “I have too many kids. I need another set of hands.”
“Another mouth,” I say.
She brushes my hair, gently kissing me now. “Yeah.”
We can’t sleep. Instead, we sit for a long time in the open windows, looking down on the intersection. On the far corner is the all-night Korean deli; two workers, a Korean and a Hispanic, are sitting on crates and smoking cigarettes outside. There’s no traffic, and when the wind is right, their voices filter up to us. We listen to the earnest attempts of their talk, the bits of their stilted English. I know I would have ridiculed them when I was young: I would cringe and grow ashamed and angry at those funny tones of my father and his workers, all that Konglish, Spanglish, Jive. Just talk right, I wanted to yell, just talk right for once in your sorry lives. But now, I think I would give most anything to hear my father’s talk again, the crash and bang and stop of his language, always hurtling by. I will listen for him forever in the streets of this city. I want to hear the rest of them, too, especially the disbelieving cries and shouts of those who were taken away. I will bear whatever sentence they wish to rain on me, all the volleys of their prayers and curses.
In the morning, Lelia already knows where I am going. She wants to go with me but I ask her to stay home. One more trip to him, that is all. She looks sick, worried.
“Nothing will happen to me,” I promise.
“You better be right, Henry,” she says, her voice breaking a little. “Or I’ll come find you and kill you, I swear.”
I have her snap all the bolts on the door. Don’t answer the phone, don’t answer the door.
I go out into the street and look for a cab. An old silver Pontiac pulls up. It’s Jack’s car.
“Let me give you a lift,” he says. “Come on, now.”
I get in. I say, “What, Jack, you want to go inspect the ruins?”
“No, Parky,” he says, pulling away. “I came to see you.”
We drive for a while without talking. He takes the tunnel, and when we come back out and pass the toll plaza he takes the first exit. He drives the smaller streets to the house in Woodside.
“Parky,” he says softly, “what is there to say?”
“Not much,” I answer. “You won. I guess this is my concession ride.”
“I won nothing,” he says firmly. “Dennis has, perhaps. But then he wins all the time.”
“You knew the play, didn’t you, Jack?”
He shakes his head. “Dennis would never tell me that. He knows I would prefer not to lie to you.”
“You knew about Kwang and Eduardo.”
“I knew we were not responsible for the bombing. That was not us. I told you that from the start.”
“But the other matter.”
“Okay,” he says, not looking at me. “I did. But only after he was killed. I swear I did not know him. Dennis has other stations at his disposal, you know. He can bring in people when he wants. He was very angry that day of the bombing. Very angry. He let it slip. He wanted payback for his investment.”
“And I gave it to him.”
“It worked out that way, yes? Dennis put you in for your own sake. A refresher course. No one knew but him. Not even Eduardo. Each to his own world. But things changed, as they always do. You were in place. As Dennis says, in situ.”
“Eduardo was good,” I say, picturing him play-boxing with Kwang.
“He got caught,” Jack says. “Like you, he let himself get too close, but then he also got himself dead. In my book these are two big strikes against him.”
“So I have just one.”
Jack snorts. “You know, I would still take you on my team, Parky, any day of the week.”
He stops the car a block from the house. It’s early, but there are already people milling about in the street in front of the house. “Maybe you should go home, Parky. I will take you back home now. This is pointless. You owe him nothing.”
“Don’t tell me what I owe, Jack,” I say to him. “Don’t tell me anything like that.”
I get out and stand beside the car. His hands are heavy on the steering wheel.
“This must be the moment,” I say. “Now you get to retire.”
“Yes,” he answers. “So what will I do?”
“Garden,” I tell him. “You can work on the house.”
“But who will come up?”
I can’t answer him then. I don’t like seeing the picture of him, all sweaty and muddy, trudging into a silent house. His hands full of harvest, his kitchen shining and bright. But there’s no one to show the sauce tomatoes to, no one to smell his rosemary and sage. He takes his time, pulling the fragrant leaves. There. He will cook a beautiful meal tonight.
“You’ll be okay,” I say.
“That is right,” he says, weakly. “You are kind to let me drive you, Parky. You are a kind man.”
“I don’t mean to be.”
“What does it matter?” he says.
“Goodbye, Jack.”
“Henry,” he suddenly says, the sound of it strange. “Try hard to forget us. It can be done. Forget what you can.”
* * *
The crowd is growing loud again. Some of the people are arm in arm, drinking from beer bottles wrapped in small brown bags, not only men but women, too. If I were one of the people they were protesting, fresh off the boat, I would be sure I had just happened upon some community celebration, a festival of the culture.
Americans, one of them would say, are a wonderful and exuberant people. They dance, they play-fight, they puff up their lips and blow out their chests. They enjoy using their hands. They seem to live always at a football match. They stand in broken columns and flurry with both arms and both legs and they are not afraid to make a mess of themselves. They don’t so much sing as they do chant. Chanting is more satisfying, at least how they do it. Their calls first start all together and slow and then pick up speed and volume until they finally dissipate to separate voices and rounds of hand clapping and cheers. They slap hands in the air. Everyone leaps up and down. The sight is a most pleasing thing. They are every shape and color but they still share this talk, and this is the other tongue they have learned, this must be the special language.
We see flashing lights in the distance. Soon a line of six or seven squad cars turns the far corner and heads up the block toward us. The cars reach the edge of the throng and then slowly pull their way through the crowd, the lead car trying to move everyone to the sidewalks with sharp barks of its siren. It doesn’t work. People excitedly rush the vehicles, trying to see if he is inside one of them, checking all the back windows. From their motions you can tell he doesn’t seem to be there and this makes everyone even more anxious and edgy. People are beginning to shout at the squad cars, drum on the window glass and the trunks. The cars finally park and the cops angrily push their way out. There is some shoving, and finally they force people out of the way, using their nightsticks as blocking bars.
With all the commotion, I find I can get closer to the house, right up against the blue barricades that bar the short driveway. I notice that none of the officers manning them seems too concerned when the squad cars pull up, which tells me he probably isn’t with them. The extra cops are now aligning themselves along two yellow tapes they string in the form of a corridor that leads from the street to the house just past where I am.
The mass returns quickly, filling in the spaces on each side of the narrow cordon of police. I am hemmed in. The cameras are already pushing for the best angles, and the reporters are mostly ignoring the crowd, trying to get the officers to tell them what is going on; they complain that they need to know if they should be feeding live.