American Subversive (25 page)

“I don't work for anyone. Not like that. I'm . . . I'm a blogger.”

“A what?”

“A blogger. Someone who—”

“I know what a blogger is.”

“Well, then.”

She was staring at me, through me, her jaw locked in place. And still I couldn't quite make her out behind the glasses, the sweeping bangs, the elusive movements that held the potential of sudden flight.

“I . . . I received an anonymous e-mail about the recent bombing in New York, and it said you were involved.”

“What else did it say?”

“That's it.”

“I don't believe you.”

“
Were
you involved?” I asked.

“Who sent it?”

“I told you, it was anonymous.”

“Listen,” she said. “I'll take off. I'll take off right now if you don't start answering my fucking questions.”

“Will you calm down for a second? If I were going to turn you in,
don't you think I already would have
?”

I hadn't meant to say this. It just came out, but the words had a visible effect on her. Slowly, she took her foot off the railing and edged closer, as if this were something approaching a normal conversation.

“Don't raise your voice,” she said.

“There's no one around.”

“That's what I thought, then you showed up. Now tell me exactly what the e-mails said.”

And so I did. And then I told her more. Why not? It's not as if I knew that much. She stood stoic against the fence, listening closely as I explained (without using names or incriminating details) how I'd tracked her down. She interrupted only twice. When I mentioned the bomb going off on the wrong floor, she asked when,
exactly,
I'd received that e-mail, and what,
exactly,
it had said. And a few minutes later, when I told her I'd spoken with her parents, she asked how they'd sounded. Otherwise, she remained silent until I'd finished, at which point she turned to take in our surroundings. Paused in profile, my ingrained image of Paige Roderick finally fell away, and the woman herself came into focus: the long legs, the narrow waist, and a blossoming upper body—broad shoulders and full breasts—evident (albeit to a trained eye) even under the loose T-shirt. And still,
it came back to her face, vaguely European—Dutch perhaps—in its eccentric beauty. She had a wide mouth and full lips and a high forehead like some ultimate crowning achievement. Only her eyes remained a mystery.

Ten seconds passed, maybe more, and just as it seemed she was going to speak, a roar went up inside the Ox-Pulling Pavilion. We both looked over at the giant tent.

“They're done in there,” she said. “I have to go.”

“Wait.”

“For what?”

“I just told you everything, and you haven't—”

“Listen.” She stared straight at me. “Just go back to wherever you're from and forget we ever met.”

The hordes began trickling out, a few already wandering in our direction. Paige looked around again, then hopped the fence in a single scissorlike motion.

“Tell me where you're staying,” I said. “We can talk this through.”

“Fuck off.”

“I won't call the cops. I won't say anything, I promise.”

“What is it you want? Money?”

“I want your story.”

“My
story
?”

“Yes.”

“For your stupid website? I swear it's people like you that—”

“That what? Anyone else would have posted your picture or called the FBI as soon as they saw it. You know, under the circumstances, you might consider showing me the benefit of—”

“So why haven't you? Huh? I don't understand. If it's notoriety you want. I can't think of a better way to get famous then turning in an alleged terrorist.” She was raw with anger, and I paused a moment before I spoke again.

“I don't want notoriety. I want to understand.”

“How we did it?”

“
Why
you did it.”

We had crossed a line, accepted for a moment the hypothetical crime that had brought us together. She must have felt it, too. She adjusted her sunglasses and took another glance at the exiting crowd.

“I don't believe you,” she said.

“Well, I'm telling the truth. For a long time I didn't believe in any of this myself. In you, I mean. All I had was the fucking photograph.”

“Do you have it now?”

“Yeah, sure.” I reached into my pocket and handed it to her. The printout was crumpled, the back covered with nonsensical notations—numbers and addresses, the raw statistics of this anomalous pursuit. She unfolded it slowly, as if it held great value. “I don't have the best printer, so it's not as clear as the image on-screen—”

But she wasn't listening, hadn't heard a word. No, she was staring at herself crossing Madison Avenue as if confronting irrefutable proof of the afterlife. Just as I was about to speak again, she looked up at me. The color had drained from her face, all the robustness, the life. She handed the page back and without so much as a parting word she turned and strode quickly across the field toward the sprawl of trailers.

When I called after her, she began to run.

PAIGE
 

THE DUST WAS THE SAME, A CLAY-COLORED GRIME THAT LOOSED ITSELF FROM ten thousand trampling feet and stuck fast to your clothes, your skin. The sounds were the same, and the sweet smells and rust-dappled rides built a generation ago. Even the dispirited animals, which you'd think would vary by region, were the same in Vermont as they were at the Haywood County Fair in Waynesville, North Carolina. We used to go every September, the four of us setting off at some impossibly early hour so my mother could join the other Maggie Valley women in the morning skillet throw. The men would cheer from the sidelines as the frying pans took flight amid a volley of laughter. But after twenty minutes of being ignored, the husbands inevitably drifted away, taking their bouncing children with them. I don't know where the other families went—to see the giant pigs, probably—but they never came with us. Our destination was a secret even from my mother. Bobby always took charge, my father and I struggling to keep up as he led us to the unkempt corner of the fairgrounds that housed the freak show. There they were, the bearded lady and the Siamese twins, the midgets and magicians, and the man who hammered nails up his nose. They operated in ill-lit booths, peddling their aptitudes and appendages to the young, the curious, the gullible. Bobby and I were all three, and yet we hardly even glanced at these lesser attractions, for our hearts belonged to the man behind bars
at the end of the alley. He was huge, a seven-foot-tall leviathan, spitting and snarling and drooling down the front of his filthy shirt. And still, we always snuck up close to read the story posted on the cage. For what a story it was. He was called the Smoky Mountain Man, and after a lifetime in the wild he had wandered into a backwater in the most remote part of the state and begun terrorizing its citizens. He broke into houses, even stole rotten children. But he never stole from the poor. And the children were always returned without a scratch. It didn't matter. The government began a manhunt that spanned two decades and claimed a dozen lives, and finally they caught him. That his jail cell was a flimsy sideshow cage at a regional state fair was a fact Bobby and I never questioned. We were too young to know the world that way. We believed in him,
identified
with him. He was the shadow just beyond the foot of my bed, the noise in the woods where the backyard ended.

Then one year it rained. The skillet throw had no-shows, so the Maggie Valley squad was forced to draft my father. When Bobby and I complained, he told us we could go see the Smoky Mountain Man by ourselves.
If we were careful
. My brother was eight, I was seven, but we never gave it a second thought. We scampered fearlessly through the puddles until we reached the freak show, and the ominous cage at the end of the alley. The place was deserted. And the Mountain Man? He was sitting in the back of his cell, legs crossed . . . reading a book! He didn't see us or, anyway, didn't look up. Bobby was stricken, but quickly recovered. He took my arm and we backed away. This is our chance, he said urgently, as the rain streaked down his cheeks. I didn't know what he was talking about. Still, I let him lead me around to the rear of the cage, which was covered by a heavy tarp. Bobby peered inside. It was pitch-black.

Let's get out of here, I said.

Hold on. I have an idea. Bobby pulled aside the canvas curtain and stepped into the darkness.
I'm going to set him free
.

Before I could respond, my brother was gone. I heard his tentative footsteps, and then only rain on the canvas. I was standing on a service pathway behind the booths and tents. No one else was around. No one to witness what would happen next. I wanted to cry, but what good would that do? And who would care? From somewhere inside
the cage I heard a knock, and the squeak of hinges,
a door opening
. There were muffled voices, Bobby's and another. I'd never heard the Mountain Man speak, and I imagined roars like thunder, but his voice sounded calm and measured. For a moment, I thought I heard laughter. Then silence. Had Bobby been attacked? Killed?
Eaten?
I was about to run back around to the front, but then came footsteps, and a familiar voice calling my name.
I'm here,
I said. The canvas ruffled, then parted, and there was my brother, looking brave as ever, but confused, and a little bit lost.

He wouldn't come with me, Bobby said. Then he shrugged a sad little shrug and we started back toward the grown-ups.

The following year was our last, for we'd become skeptics. We saw glue on the ground near the bearded lady. And noticed a blanket positioned over the twins' attached torsos. The Mountain Man was still there, as always, but we didn't go see him. We were finally old enough to understand what had happened, and already too old to talk about it. It didn't matter. Our heroes now were the mountain men still at large.

Here they were, a generation later, the sideshow performers of my youth. The acts were different, the grotesque faces new, but their calls and come-ons were the same. And they still haunted me. I followed Aidan Cole down the midway as memories of Bobby and the Mountain Man came rushing back. My brother often broke my train of thought, but the moment was too critical and I fought hard to stay in the present.

What was Aidan doing? For one thing, he didn't seem to be looking for me. Maybe he'd given up and come to enjoy the fair: a good walk, some fresh air before heading back to New York. He sauntered along, absorbing the atmosphere, like a man taking his first steps in a new city. The situation seemed so improbable. He appeared completely unthreatening, and yet he radiated danger, veritably pulsed with it. I came up close behind him as he stopped to watch a little boy shoot baskets. A crowd had formed, offering distraction, providing protection. The safety of large numbers. This was the moment, and I tried to block out the risk. Exposure, capture, the end of everything. I could still turn around, retreat to the house and tell Keith we'd been
made. We'd be free and clean in half an hour, no prints, no traces. Just pack up the new bomb and move on—another house, another garage. I knew how Keith worked; he gave himself options. We'd vanish into the heart of the country we were trying to expose, trying to save. But I couldn't turn around now.
I
had to know who this man was, this bridge between my lives. Because I thought I'd burned them all.

I grabbed his arm and he didn't pull away. He was understandably astonished, yet he made no move toward—or from—me. I'd been ready to run, but as he stood there groping for words, I knew I wouldn't have to. He was no cop, no agent, no bounty hunter. There was nothing hard about him. His eyes were deep and blue in the sunlight, his wavy, brown hair too wild for Wall Street, too tame for the arts. His clothes—the jeans, the shirt, the hip sneakers—were slightly less than a statement. He was ruggedly handsome, but seemed uneasy in the outdoors; athletic having never played a sport; well-groomed without relying on products. I wondered what worlds he orbited, what scenes he slinked around. Then I wondered if anything truly terrible had ever happened to him. Because it didn't look like it.

Fucking say something, I told him.

I was angry. Everything was flooding back now, a decade of witnessed indifference, the selfish manifest destiny of a generation I'd failed to fit into.
A
nd so I'd chosen this other way, this contrarian antilife. Now this, too, was being threatened.

When he finally opened his mouth, he said my name and I almost broke. I hadn't heard it from a stranger in so long. When I knew he wouldn't run—he was as interested in me as I was in him—I led him through the crowds toward the back of the fairgrounds. It would be safer there, past the animals, past the people. I found a place near the sprawling carny camp, where I could escape if I had to.