If I Had Two Wings Read online

  Ed Phelps picked up the guitar and began to strum. As he tuned the instrument, a look of quietness and acute observation overtook Billy’s face, very like a cat.

  The tuning did not take too terribly long, and, truth to tell, though Ed Phelps had not picked up a guitar in over fifteen years, and had probably forgotten more than he had ever known, as he strummed and hummed to himself, doorways in the back of his mind began to slowly open, then more and more, one by one, two by two, four by four, and he remembered his grandfather and how he played and how he taught Ed to play, and he remembered playing on the back porch with Mr. Moses Rascoe, who drove a truck, but who was so good he played sometimes for money, and like a silverfish under a sink, a song jumped up into Ed Phelps’s head and he commenced to sing and play:

  You get a line and I’ll get a pole, honey.

  You get a line and I’ll get a pole, babe.

  You get a line and I’ll get a pole,

  We’ll go fishin’ in the crawdad hole.

  Honey, baby mine.

  Ed Phelps looked all about and Billy’s face was no longer cat-like, but all Christmas, and all the young people in the room were beaming and tapping their feet—with the logical exception of Francesca, who looked as if she might bite him at any second.

  He remembered a verse that Mr. Moses had taught him:

  What did the catfish say to the eel, honey?

  What did the catfish say to the eel, babe?

  What did the catfish say to the eel?

  The more you wiggle, mama, the better I feel,

  Honey, baby mine.

  Ed Phelps put an end to the song with a sweet ping and a run that brought back blueberry-pie memories. Billy rose, and was full of whoops and hollers and hot praise, and his friends and folk were clapping, and Billy set in straightaway figuring how he could get Ed up onstage with him.

  “Oh hell, no,” Francesca said.

  “Seriously, it’ll be a riot,” Billy said.

  “Well,” Ed said, “I have to meet the wife in a little bit anyway.”

  “Oh,” Billy said, “she won’t mind. We can invite her. It’ll be a riot.”

  “I. I would mind, Billy.” Francesca was now standing in front of Billy, towering over him, upon her face the expression of the schoolteacher who has finally reached her limit: “He can stay. He can watch the show. He can even bring little Mrs. Deacon and his hellhounds for all I care. But he is not going up on that stage with you, bubba. You dig? Fuck not with me, kiddo. Now—I believe you have a show to do, and I promised you’d be on time. For a change.” Francesca walked out the door.

  As soon as Francesca left the room, Billy embraced Ed Phelps, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “Thank you, mate. You’re a real trouper.” He introduced Ed to his two assistants, saying they would take care of all his needs and that he’d see him after the show.

  Ed did not realize that all this time he was in a theater called the Ritz, and he was ushered up into a VIP box to overlook the standing crowd and the stage. One of Billy’s assistants led him to a phone where he left a message for Isaline, that he wouldn’t be able to join her for Les Misérables but he was all right and he’d see her after the show.

  After a long, long time, the lights went down and the music finally began. Ed Phelps was at once excited and deflated. He was happy to be here, happy to be a VIP, but he did not particularly care for the music, which made him a little sad. It was silly music, it was loud music, it was all catchy phrases and easy beats, stuff he heard on the radio, and he figured he might have heard some of this music on the radio in the past, but, to tell the truth, it all kinda sounded the same these days. But the young people seemed to enjoy the music, and they seemed to enjoy Billy, and this made him happy.

  Billy himself came off as a rough boy, a rude boy, a loud boy, a dirty boy, a tough boy. All of which made Ed Phelps laugh. He wondered how Billy would have done in the navy. There were some mighty tough men there, and a lot of them were even smaller than Billy, and they did not wear leather.

  During the intermission, Francesca came up to him and shook his hand. She did not have a smile on her face, but she did seem more pleasant. “You never played guitar professionally a day in your life, did you?”

  “Ah, well, no, ma’am. You are correct.”

  “He thinks I’m an idiot, but you don’t get to be senior executive vice president at thirty for not knowing music. I know music.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  AFTER THE CONCERT, he found his way back to the greenroom, and to the assistants. He wanted to thank Billy, but didn’t want to take up any more of his time. So he asked the assistants to thank Billy for him, and he donned his hat and headed for the door, on his way back to the Milford Plaza and to Isaline.

  Just as he reached the outside door, he heard Billy calling, his boots tapping against the floor.

  “Deacon, my friend, a bunch of us are going down to Bobby De Niro’s new place. Would you please be my guest? You’ll love it. It’ll be a riot!”

  Ed Phelps thought on it, thought about what he would say to Billy and these young people, thought about the senior executive vice president and music he didn’t respect.

  “Thank you kindly. And you have been awful kind. But I need to get back with my wife. She may think I’m laying dead in a gutter somewhere.”

  “All right, my friend. I can dig it. At least let me drop you off. Where are you staying?”

  JUST BILLY AND Ed in the backseat, and as soon as they sat down Billy launched into a long discussion of his career and the music business these days, and how he was once on top, and then the bitch hit him, sent him in a spiral, how you always need to look out for the bitch because the bitch is jealous . . . and Ed was beginning to have a difficult time following him, and couldn’t figure if the bitch was the music industry, a woman, or just life, and he didn’t really care. The leather seats were deep and plush, and he couldn’t help but admire the scenery as the large car glided through the streets of Manhattan, and his mind wandered as Billy carried on . . .

  The men, the women, the girls, the boys, all well lit in the nighttime, but accompanied now by long shadows, the bikes weaving in and out of traffic, the hot dog carts, the ambulances and flashing police cars, the subway entrances issuing forth human after human like ants from a mound, the streetlamps and the blinking colored lights, above stores and offices, the giant words crawling across buildings that told the world news, and the giant head twenty stories high or more, saying, obviously, something of grand importance, but at the same time nothing nowhere could be as important as being there right there, right then in all that color and size and flash . . .

  By and by, the car came to a stop, and the driver got out and opened the door for Ed. He turned to Billy and said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “How did you know I could play a little guitar?”

  “I didn’t, mate. I had this feeling though. Call it me intuition. I figured if you couldn’t you’d just tell me to fuck off, or something like that, innit? Just having a laugh.”

  They shared a chuckle. As he was getting out Billy asked his name.

  “Ed. Ed Phelps of Tims Creek, York County, North Carolina.”

  “Ed.” Billy stuck out his hand and shook Ed’s. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Ed Phelps of North Carolina.”

  The walk to his hotel room took a while, the hall of the Milford Plaza being long and skinny and harshly bright.

  When he got to the room he found Isaline in the tub—he called to her, and opened the bathroom door, and saw nothing but mist and was hit in the face by a wall of heat so thick and by the scent of pomegranate and strawberry and God-knows-what, all of which quickly took his breath away—

  “Close that door, man! Don’t you let out my heat!”

  I will never understand, he thought, why this woman insists on turning her nightly bath into a sauna, but left her to her devices, glad to finally be home. He’d tell her all about his day
when she got out, which could be in thirty minutes, which could be an hour.

  He put on his pajamas—the fancy silk paisley pair Edmund had given him for Christmas—much too fancy for his tastes and much, much too fancy to wear every day, but they seemed appropriate for this trip. He got into bed and waited for Isaline. The TV was on, the sound cut down, playing some Lifetime TV drama she was forever watching. Ed took hold of the remote and commenced to flip through the channels, hoping to find the Hitler Channel or Discovery.

  Something caught his eye and Ed Phelps paused and there he was. He looked tiny there on the screen and much younger than he had just a while ago, and so very white, all that white hair against such glowing white skin. He looked downright sick and pitiful. He looked like he needed to go home to his mama and get something good to eat.

  He was singing one of the songs he had sung earlier that very evening, the song about dancing with himself, and Ed Phelps still couldn’t make heads nor tails of it, and figured it meant something dirty, but just didn’t care to know, nor did he care for the beat, which was monotonous and straightforward and boring—and oh my Lord . . .

  In the music video—which made even less sense than the song—all these white folk who were supposed to be zombies or homeless people or such, in either event scary-looking, he supposed—though they couldn’t have scared a baby goldfish even if they tried hard—were climbing up this tall, tall, tall skyscraper to get at Billy, who was singing about masturbation or whatever up on the roof of this building. There are puppets and all kind of random foolishness thrown in . . . and at the very end, Billy grabs ahold of some electrode-looking thing and becomes electricity and shoots bolts of lightning at the pretty zombies and they all fall down to earth, from the supertall building, and Billy continues to go on about how he wants to dance with himself, and Ed Phelps is left to wonder about so many things. And the day makes more sense and the day makes less sense, and he is happy to be in bed, and have it all to think about, all to tell about, to Isaline, to Dr. Streeter, and he must remember to tell Isaline about the pastrami sandwich at the Carnegie Deli . . .

  The day weighed down upon him, but the day was feather-soft, the day was sweating bottles of water, the day was loud like cigars and smelled of truck horns, the day was a golden giant flying among the skyscrapers delivering fire to a beautiful Latina—Oye mamá! Oye mamá-sa!—hot day, long day, sweet day, music day, and the day turned to a guitar and the guitar strings turned to worms and the worms turned into cucumbers and the cucumbers turned into his mother’s fingers, and she gave them to him peeled white with salt and pepper and a little vinegar, and the taste was childhood, and the taste was still new, and the sun was high in the sky, and it was 1946 and he was fourteen, and he was in the tobacco field, and deep in the lugs, and the day was hot, but he was happy—BACCOOO! BACCOOO! AIN’T NO BACCO IN HEAVEN I KNOW!—and he heard his grandfather’s voice, and his grandfather was singing, and he heard his grandfather’s voice and his grandfather was singing.

  I Thought I Heard the Shuffle of Angels’ Feet

  From the beginning I found the American male to be so alluring. They are like children, even the old ones. The fear of their own feelings gives them such magnetism. They do not seem to realize that such avoidance makes them that much more vulnerable. Open.

  —From Pixote, with Love, Jacson Ribeiro

  “Goddamn Lexus.” It was Jacson’s car. Not Cicero’s style. Too big, too expensive, too much a “statement.” Jacson has been all about statements. His life was a statement. As had been his death.

  Now Cicero Cross sat in a dead luxury car in the middle of a York County gravel road, watching the rain come tum-tum-tumbling down. This storm was like the storms Cicero remembered from his youth—great late-afternoon deluges accompanied by a preternatural darkness, great crashes of lightning, nature’s resounding timpani of thunder. He remembered his grandmother saying: “Hush now, boy. God is talking.”

  He was actually shocked when his cell phone got a signal. This being Down East, North Carolina, where he got no reception fifty percent of the time. This being one of those perfect movie moments when our hero runs out of options, his back against the wall. Caught out in the rain. And here comes the monster . . .

  The nice Mumbai voice at AAA, so machine-pleasant, unhurried, empathetic, full of guileless cheer, told him a truck was on the way and would be there to pick him up in forty-five minutes to an hour. Maybe a little longer. Cicero felt a bit miffed that it would take so long, then relaxed into that sense of release: no longer in his hands. Help is on the way. He regretted that he couldn’t listen to the radio. Five hundred specialty stations beamed down with Arthur C. Clarke-blessed electromagnetism; blanketing the planet; a perfect time to listen to all-Sinatra or all-Sly and the Family Stone or all-Barbara Walters. But only the pelting of H2O and his thoughts, his guilt, to keep him company. At least it wasn’t midwinter.

  “Fucking goddamn Lexus.”

  The lights appeared surprisingly soon, in less than twenty minutes. A dark figure, rather hulking, swung out and down from the high door with simian agility, and Cicero got out in the rain to meet his savior. The rain was just mizzle now, faint and soft. He could smell the cornfield to his left, and the cotton field to his right.

  “Hey, boy,” Tony said.

  “Tony? That you? I . . . damn.”

  Tony Carter reached out his great paw, calloused and hard. “Been a while, ain’t it?”

  “Man, am I glad to see you. This damn car just shut down on me. Can’t get a peep out of it.”

  “Let’s hook her up and take her in and we’ll see about getting you on the road.”

  Cicero stood back and watched his old high school classmate—how long had it been? Fifteen years? Twenty years? Tony Carter maneuvered the high and wide wrecker, backing it up to the front of the car, lowering the mechanism, chaining the wheels, slowly, deliberately lifting up the overpriced hunk of glass and steel and chrome and rubber like a casket.

  Tony had been a big guy, back in the day, now he was huge, heavyset, but, as they say, he wore it well. He still moved with the grace of the athlete he once was, and still had that reserve which made his stillness, in contrast to his speed, disquieting. And thrilling.

  “Go ahead and get in the truck, man, we’re about ready to roll.”

  In the cab of the truck Tony stopped before he started down the road and beamed at Cicero, full face, the way a relative looks at a soldier home from war. “Good to see you, bro.”

  HIS UNCLE said Cicero wanted to sell his land. He was right. But not for the reasons Dax Cross thought.

  “Boy, you ain’t selling shit. If you and Tisha Ann agree to sell that land after I’m dead and gone, then you won’t have my blessing, but you’ll be free to do it. But I’ll be goddamned if I let you sell it while I got breath in my body.”

  The coughing commenced. Red-eyed and rheumy, Dax Cross was now so emaciated and ashen, his coughs thoroughly wracked his body. The smells that wafted up and down the halls of the Seraphim Care Assisted Living reminded Cicero of his grandmother. Liniment oil. The same brand, no doubt. But there were other smells, the antiseptic kind, the all-too-human kind, the smell of cafeteria carrots and Salisbury steak and instant mashed potatoes and peas and Jell-O served in Styrofoam boxes for those too weak to hobble down the hall, like his uncle, who no longer had the heart to battle with his wheelchair. “One hundred acres left. One hundred. I inherited that from my granddaddy, and he inherited it from his daddy. Got another fifty acres from RuthEster. Hated to sell that. And told myself . . .”

  His uncle had been repeating this story to Cicero for over a year now. Starting when he and his cousin Tisha Ann decided, after the amputation, that Dax Cross couldn’t stay at home alone any longer. Dax fought the idea even when it became apparent, even to him, that the cost of completely refurbishing the eighty-year-old house they had all grown up in to accommodate an electric wheelchair, to refit the bathroom, the ramps, the lights—even with the governme
nt assistance—would be too expensive. Tisha Ann agreed. For the first forty-seven years of Cicero’s life, Dax Cross had been a firm but cheerful older man, philosophical, even-tempered. In fact Cicero could not remember his uncle ever raising his voice except when Cicero was a boy and had done something extraordinarily foolhardy, like let the dog in the chicken coop, or leave the refrigerator door wide open all night. But for the last year he had become a constant, screaming, yelling, cussing, fiery pain; it was as if diabetes had stolen not only his leg but his sense of himself. Instead of sadness, Dax Cross seemed only to experience anger.

  “I got my army pension. I got my teacher’s pension. I got my TIAA-CREF. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sell that land.”

  “We can keep the house, Dax. But—”

  “But my black ass, you fucking Nazi faggot. Get the hell outta here! Go. I’m sick of looking at you. You fucking asshole. Talking about selling my land.”

  “Uncle Dax. I—”

  “Get the fuck out I said!”

  The nurse, a gentle-faced white woman, her hair in a stylish brush cut, who seemed not in the least pained to intervene, placed her hand on Cicero’s shoulder. “We better let your uncle rest now, son. He’s been having trouble resting. Ain’t that right, Mr. Cross?”

  Dax Cross leered at the woman, combination vampire and werewolf. “I am not a child. Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking baby.”

  “Language, language, Mr. Cross! Or I’ll spank you!” She gave an ineffectual and out-of-place giggle.

  “Okay, Dax. I’m going to go now. Need to get back to Washington.”