BRIDGE, TUNNEL: CHAPTER TWO

MAGGIE @  GUVHAUS   
ROGER and THE TEXAS 88s 
The RIGHTFUL END OF SAUCY J
   MAGGIE GOES DOWNTOWN

THERE WAS a time she thought her life would be substantial; her father had convinced her she would be a writer, a delegate, a goddamn politician, he told her the more corrupt the better -- a father who spoke half-mockeries, (but half).  More often now she dreamed of going with Roger somewhere quiet, and being for him.  He talked about a construction company; he talked about a farm; he talked about selling trucks -- now he was gone, and she felt bitterly unanchored to this dreaming they had shared; she was his road woman -- up out of this place, her worth to him had been one phone call.  Where was he?  Alan was right: he hadn't asked her.  Had he and Tucky ridden out from under the mountain, and crossed the border with the others?  She finally let the thought annunciate: He might not come back.  Boys get on bikes and go off with other boys, and promises seem far away and silly.


SHE LIVED on West 38th, State Residence, well-protected by cops and military, GuvHaus, the helipad kids in her building called it, (as did Roger) -- these whiz kids, who worked the State landing site at the park, stopped inviting her to the roof to smoke hash after Roger came around; they'd wine and dope, and watch humvees, and put bets on how long the lights would stay on, and on the nights the neighborhood power went down, they would lay against the rough tar of the roof, and wait for the stars to color in as light realigned to old bearings, and they would chant as if they were Indians out of the island's biography corresponding to visible stars.


THE ONE time Roger went to the roof with these people was the night the 88s caught Saucy J.  The 88s were wild cops out of Arlington, Texas, who worked Hudson Street, what they called 8th Avenue and 8th Street  -- don't try to tell them there was no place 8th intersected 8th.  Even soldiers like Roger admired them; rare for soldiers to respect any of these PMC cop units, but the 88s were tough, and nearly honest, and they were obsessed with Saucy J, the biggest name on the street before Henny Penny touched down.
The story was Saucy J killed girls before the change had come, was a tabloid legend in the old days.  When all what happened happened, his story was trucked away with those bricks that made up the culture of a city -- no reason to read up on sicko victim to victim killers when the headquarters of the newspapers no longer existed, when people burned in the streets.  Saucy J became another forgotten word coupling like Big Mac or Gym Membership.  That was until the first downtown cop got cashiered dirty: mutilated and left out front of St. Bernard's on 14 -- a base camp for a long-standing Jersey outfit of former State Police.  The poor kid was one of them, and the way he looked, an Ed Poe monkey was loose -- this kid was eaten up: his hands and feet chewed off, his skull flattened, and the flesh splayed, refolded around it, so that he looked like a puffer fish staring into the sidewalk drain, dreaming about a swim.  Two more showed up like this, and it might have kept going accept Saucy J frigged big, picking a Texas Pete for victim three rather than another Jersey Mike.
THAT NIGHT Roger smoked with the Helipad Kids, and held on to her, as they all watched the street.  The kids wanted to know about Saucy J -- where'd they get him?
Roger, feeling the kinship of shared drugs, told them: They walked down Eighth from St. Bernards, and shot every bug they saw until someone told.  These were the bugs they had let hang out; their launderers, the scavengers they traded supplies with.
Roger counted lit windows in the buildings across the way.
The 88's called us.  To say they were doing it.  It was shoot it up with them, or don't.  We chose "don't".  Killed twenty Bugs before the Bugs gave him up.  He was living in the Path tunnels.  They went down and got him.  The Bugs watched twenty die before they realized the Eights weren't stopping.  These bugs didn't want to give him up.  They love Saucy J.   Love cops chewed up.  
One of the Helipad Kids asked, Did you see him?
J?  I did.  (The kids poked in around each other like there was a meal to eat out of what Roger said next),  He had fingernails.  Long nails.  He was covered in shit.  And he's tiny.  A tiny little thing.  I don't know how he did it himself.  It was him, the face from the posters.  If you go down to Hudson, Roger smiled, His head is hanging on their front door.  There's a candle burning in his mouth.


MAGGIE WENT up to the roof at dawn of this the day she would go down town to meet Henny Newton, the second day of Roger Kent's absence.  Heli-Kids were sleeping on old beds they had dragged up from empty apartments; it was an orphanage; a Tetris screen of old cots.  High above them were the advertisements of the closing age as guidelines on what product to scavenge: Drink COLA ROBA! -- COURAGE, BALLS, AND GUILE!
She crawled into bed with a Helipad Kid she knew had gone safely homosexual in the year he had been skilleted -- gay for the stay, indeed -- his sex drive had proved ill by her previously, so she cuddled in beside him -- Raccon Kid she called him behind his back --big stupid kind eyes -- she cuddled, he was oblivious, and she counted sodas in the air.


ALAN HAD called and called, but she had left the phone in her room to grow some courage against that Roger call not coming for awhile; (a witch's trick to bubble the cauldron as it were), and so she woke naturally late in the day, and went back to her room, and showered.  But now it was too late to walk up to the office without an escort, and so she decided Alan Marybella, and Henny Newton, would have to wait an extra day.  And even as she said it her room became very ugly.  Poisonous cold panic came to her from looking at the corners of the rooms.  Go!  Go!  Go.  Gots to go.  Yup.  Her father would have said, "corners of the room", like coroners of the rum, and so she called Alan --
He answered on a ring -- Where have you been?
Under the weather.
Have you?
Directly under it.
It's still tonight. He said.
Quiet for a moment, and then he turtled out something sweet and unexpected: Would you like some turkey sandwiches?  I can get them from up the hill if you'd like.
Turkey sandwiches, She repeated.
Yes, you dummkopf, turkey sandwiches.
You know what I want?
No.
I want the coroners of the rum, Alan.  That's what I want.
What are you on about?
The coroners of the rum.
I'll have an escort to meet you at Nine.
A penny for Henny.  Where will they escort me?
The lights are much brighter there.
Are they?
You can forget all your troubles.
Alan?
Yes -- (they were giggling)
My cares?
You can forget those too.  Quite smoking dope.  Go meet him. 
She heard him laughing as he hung up the phone.


AT NINE tall men came up the stair.  Knocked at her door.  Every one of them a Texas caucasian with dirty beard and bullet vest.  They had stubbed forty-five caliber UMPs tied on, dirty little gumdrop shooters, and she opened the door to them.
Good evening!  She said.
They stood there.
Texas is it?
You're Maggie, Mam?
You guys want a smoke?
No, Mam.  It's time to move.
THREE HUMVEES on the street, and a dozen more men.  The Lead Beard held her by the arm as they stepped out.  The street was empty -- these boys had that effect.  From high above the Heli-Kids hooted down to her.  She waved.


EVERY STREET could be accessed southbound to this convoy.  The city, accessed southward, felt like entering a mineshaft, the further they went, the darker it got, the narrower.  And the smell changed.  Here was the heaping garbage stink, here they went into the cancerous belly.  The Lead Beard sat with her in the back seat of the middle truck, This is gonna take time.  We got to hit our base, there we're gonna leave the trucks.  Then ten of my men are gonna walk you east, then south, then east.  The place is down down, where the streets are gone.  Down in the cow pasture by the garbage dump.  The tower's there, and that tower is him  We're gonna get you there, and hand you off.  Read me?
Sure.  She said.
Sure.  Like it.  We've walked it a million times.
I'm not worried.
No?  Maybe you should be a bit.
Do you know Sgt. Kent with the 59 MPs?
I don't think so.
He went with you to get Saucy J -- I mean, rather, he escorted him out, or, whatever they did.
The Lead Beard had the brown wall-eyes of a fox.  He rubbed her hands with his scratchy gloves.
That didn't happen.  He said to her.
I know him, She said.
Shit.  So do I.  He looked embarrassed.  He weren't with us.


HER FATHER was called Engel.  Engel the storyteller.  His stories were tricks.  This she learned later.  Fairy tales to which he cast himself.  Always stories from before she remembered.  Of this time her father had no photographs of, but for an embarrassingly long time these stories were the truth.  She believed his world stacked up.
He would say, Remember the farm, Maggie?  Remember how the old dirt road forked, and to the left the road continued on along the river, and the right rose up to our old farm? Remember the rows of poplar that lined the road?  Remember the island in the middle of the river?  We could see it from your room.
And she would claim to remember this, and she meant it.  And none of it existed.
When he had her acknowledging the scene he painted was a true place, he made the leap:  And what lived on that island?
A Witch.
That's right.  Remember her coming to the house that day, asking for corn?
She invited  you to supper.
She did.
It was a trick.
To trap me in a wager.  She wanted to take you from me.
Her wager, and her trick, was a drinking contest.  But, as Engel claimed to know, she had put an illusion on her cup, so that when Engel went to her island, and took his turn, he would drink from the river, and thus, no matter how deep a drink he took, he could never win.  Because he knew this, and because he knew the wager would be for the farm, and his daughter, he made a plan.
What did I do?
Hid me.
Where no one would find you.   And then I went down to the island, and I sat at the table in the Witch's house, and I drank with her.
HE TOLD her this story many times.  So many times.  Maybe she requested it.
He drank.  And drank.  Until he must breathe, and of course there was no drop in the water level in the cup.  He threw the cup at her and ran.  The Witch came on, chasing him out of the house.  Maggie remembered the version of this witch she had drawn in via the listening: A tall hag with a massive belly; a spider of a woman, a dewey silver mommy long-legs.
I leapt into the river, and she followed me.  But I escaped her.
I know how!  She would say to her father.
I turned myself into a trout, and swam away.  I swam three hundred miles of river, until I came up, and hid in a beaver's dam!
She believed this then.  Would swear, as she was she, it had happened.  She memorized this and twenty other tales: he had walked through time, started and ended wars;  and this knowledge, her father the shape-shifter, the thousand year old man, and the touch he had with that other world just off to the side of ours, was a secret to protect.


THE REAL Engel Haff, before he died, had admitted these were lies to her as she sat sentry over his death in that small room behind the tavern he ran, but there was more: as he admitted his lies, he also admitted to her that those parallel lies she had attacked others for whispering about him, those sinister claims, the desecrated lives of innocent ones, were the truth.  The anchored language of her coming up with him he reversed in those musty days he spit blood into soda bottles, and pissed the bed, and, Yes, I did it.  All of it.  That's why these people are outside: to see me through.
HE DIED while she fed him baby food.  He told her it was happening as it happened.  His victims waited vigil out in the yard, some had come weeks earlier, and camped in the parking lot of the bar,  and while she kept them from him while he lived, after he died they passed through the room, and spit on his peaceable husk.  She allowed them the goodbye.


ALL OF THIS thinking again on her father's lies was virgin arithmetic to contrast against this new Roger Kent, the doppelgänger she created in place of him, as she rode south in the truck with the beards; Roger the Liar in correspondence with the great liar.  
THE TRUCKS made their Hudson HUB: a stone firehouse had been blasted open, and the 88s had constructed a hallway from the guts of it, that led from the truck stalls of the old fire station, up to another hole blasted through even older stone, at the back rectory of an ancient church -- this was a compound!  Beards loomed above them on every building, and had rigged lights to shine down along the road, like a casino strip in the desert was the changing light here from everywhere else.  And there, on the high spear-tip doors of the cathedral, was the hanging skull candelabra that must be the Saucy One himself.
THE LEAD BEARD whispered to her, Come on in, Maggie.  Let's get supper before we walk back out in the dark.
He took her arm, and escorted her as if to her wedding, up the walk, to the cathedral doors.  Saucy J's smug Jack-O-Lantern smirk was gone to rot.  Candles had burned his lips black.  His eyes were lazy from the hours of torture he must have taken before the Eights got tired of it.  Saucy J's head spun right, the door opened, and Maggie followed the Beard to church.