Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Sardul sighed and shook his head. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.” He put his pistol in his pocket. “What is it?” he said, switching to Punjabi.
“I need money,” the woman answered.
“For what?”
“To feed your big belly.”
“How much?”
Aunty held her thumb and index finger a centimeter apart. Sardul opened his safe again and handed her a wad of twenties. She put them in her coat pocket and walked out the door.
“Knock next time!” Sardul screamed after her.
“I don’t need to knock in my own house,” she called back.
Sardul closed the door and locked it this time. “So, what do you need?” he said again.
“A quarter.”
Sardul handed Shez a Tupperware container filled with a quarter-pound of pot.
“Not a QP,” said Shez. “A quarter-ounce.”
“I thought you said you were done, by the way.”
“I am. I’m just doing someone a favor.”
Sardul pushed his scale in front of Shez, and Shez placed marijuana on it until the number 7 appeared in red. He closed the Tupperware and handed it back to his friend, but Sardul began to scowl and shake his head.
“What?” said Shez.
“I always tell you—round up, not down. I’ve got a rep to maintain.”
Shez threw on another bud, and 8.2 grams now rested on the scale.
Sardul nodded in approval. “You’re a talented man,” he said. “But business just isn’t your thing.”
Shez stood with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie at a bus stop near the corner of Newark and Central. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. Two Filipino women in high heels emerged from the nearby probation office and lit up cigarettes next to him. They shivered and linked their arms together. A bus arrived and carried them away. He was waiting for the 86, but it never came. He looked at his watch: 4:45. Shit, he thought. He was cutting it close.
The reality of his day and decisions suddenly became clear to him. He wanted to play music again, but his simple life of pot and royalty checks was cozy. He wanted to change, but just thinking about change was draining. He had sabotaged himself. Again. He felt ashamed.
An 80 bus pulled up, and Shez asked the driver if something was wrong with the 86. The driver told him the 86 didn’t stop here. Shez decided he would take the PATH to Grove Street and walk to Hamilton Park from there. He could deliver the bag and get right back on the train. He would make it to his meeting with time to spare. He took the marijuana out of his backpack and slipped it underneath the elastic of his boxers. They often searched Shez’s bags on the train because of his beard and skin tone, but they never searched his body. The baggie chafed his penis as he walked toward Journal Square.
He entered the terminal and waited on the platform amidst a crowd of tired brown and black faces. Everyone stared up at the TV screen streaming outdated weather reports and incorrect train times. Trains heading to Newark arrived and left on the other side of the tracks, but all trains to New York were behind schedule. Shez tensed up again. Time wasn’t on his side.
A train bound for the World Trade Center finally arrived, and he got on board. It was one of those new trains, the ones with shiny blue interiors. A couple of seats were empty, but he stood by the doors. A man standing across from Shez stared at him. He was wearing a suit and had a silver stud in his left ear. He had wide shoulders and a leather briefcase. Shez put his backpack on the ground, and the man’s eyes followed the bag.
Shez’s phone began to buzz. He removed it from his cargo pants. Nicholas had sent him an SMS.
You coming or what?
it read.
The shame Shez had been feeling suddenly turned to anger. He was angry at himself, and pissed at Nicholas. He looked at his watch. It was 5:12. Maybe he could do everything—drop off the bag and even pick up his tweed jacket. But what was the point? He didn’t owe this customer—ex-customer—anything.
The train barreled toward Grove Street, and Shez started punching in a message.
Sorry man, can’t help you. No more hats … Ever
! He pressed the send button, but the phone told him his message didn’t go through. He noticed his signal strength was low—only one bar left, and even that bar began to flash. He held the phone up toward the ceiling of the train, hoping for a stronger signal. He noticed the businessman with the earring was still staring at him.
He tried sending again with his arm closer to the window, but the text refused to go through. His arm dropped to his side, and he sighed. He felt eyes bearing down on him. He looked up and saw the businessman glaring at him. The man’s green eyes were wide. The man’s face was clenched.
“Do you have a problem?” Shez asked him.
“Yeah, I do, actually,” said the man. “What were you just doing?”
“Why?” Shez wanted to unleash his anger, but remembered the pot in his crotch.
“Because it looked a little suspicious.”
“It’s none of your business what I was doing.”
“Yes it is. My safety is my business.”
“What?” said Shez. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not kidding, and I wouldn’t mess around if I were you. What do you have in that bag?”
Shez began to sweat. The train pulled into Grove Street, and he was relieved. He disembarked, but the man followed him onto the platform. Shez saw the man walk toward a cop, and he headed for the staircase. He began to climb the stairs, the seven—no eight—grams of pot pressed against the skin near his groin. He was almost at the turnstiles. If he could make it through, he’d be free. He was on the last step when a voice called out.
“Excuse me!” it shouted. “Sir, hold up. Sir, stop where you are. Police!”
Shez froze. Then he slowly turned around.
“Get back here,” the cop said.
Shez obeyed him.
The cop, a black guy, made Shez stand beside a door at the far end of the platform. The businessman waited a hundred feet away from him talking to another cop, a white guy. The black cop searched Shez’s backpack. He pulled out the Nirvana CD, and then a couple of old issues of
DownBeat
. “A jazz fan,” he said.
His words comforted Shez. Things might end up okay. They might not find the pot. If they let him go, he promised himself he would never sell a dime of pot again. He would get this job and move on with his life. His hopefulness vanished, however, when he saw a third cop walking a German shepherd down the stairs. The burning in his stomach made his moistening pits feel particularly cold.
The new cop and the canine walked toward Shez.
The black cop asked Shez to put his hands against the wall and widen his legs. He patted him down thoroughly but didn’t touch his groin. The cop with the dog instructed the animal to give Shez a sniff.
I’m fucked, Shez thought. If this fucking dog barks, I’m busted.
The dog sniffed his shoes, his pants, then his hoodie.
Shez tried to send it subliminal messages.
Don’t bark, doggie. I’m your friend, doggie.
The dog didn’t bark.
“Looks like this one isn’t carrying any bombs,” said the black cop.
“Come on, boy, let’s go,” commanded the dog cop. Man and canine went back up the stairs.
“Does this mean I can leave?” asked Shez.
The black cop shook his head. “You’re going to have to wait for just a few more minutes. It’s your name. It’s similar to one that’s on a watch list.”
“You think I’m a terrorist?”
“No, but I’m sure as hell going to check.” The cop took out a key and opened the nearby door, which led to an office with a crappy computer and an old phone.
Shez looked at the wall clock. It was six-thirty.
“Have a seat,” said the cop.
Shez obeyed him again.
The cop started playing solitaire on his computer. Shez stared at his feet and thought. He thought about asking whether he should consult a lawyer. He thought about asking if he could use the phone to tell Sandra he was going to be late. His father wouldn’t have been afraid to do one or both of these things, but Shez knew the best thing was to stay quiet.
The phone rang at 7:34, and the cop answered it. “Okay,” he said, “that’s what I figured.” He put down the phone and looked at Shez. “You’re okay; you can go. But I’d think about changing that name if I were you.”
Shez surfaced in front of Grove Point. He walked toward the Dunkin’ Donuts and pulled out his phone. His meeting should have started fifteen minutes ago. He dialed Sandra.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m going to be a little late.”
She asked him how late.
“I can get there in forty-five, an hour max. You’re never going to guess what—”
“Forget it,” she told him. “I don’t want to know.”
“Should we reschedule?” he asked, but he knew the answer before she responded.
“I’m done, Shez.” She ended the call.
He walked down Newark Avenue and entered his bar. He held up a finger, and the bartender poured a Jameson. He called up Nicholas and told him he’d be there in a little while. Tomorrow he’d go back to Sardul’s and get a full quarter-pound.
B
etween a spreading magnolia and a forest of cattails that ran all the way to the estuary stood Marty’s dilapidated studio. The walls were damp, and low-tide stink mixed with turpentine and oils. It was late on a Saturday night in early March. They drank beer and passed a joint. Len spoke of insomnia, a recent murder out on Money Island, and a buck he’d seen with pitch-black antlers. Marty told about a huge snake on the outside of the studio window and then showed Len his most recent paintings—local landscapes and a series of figures called
Haunted High School
.
“That chick looks dead,” said Len, pointing at a canvas with a pale girl in a cheerleading outfit, smoking a cigarette. In the background loomed an abandoned factory, busted glass and crumbling brick. A smokestack.
“She’s haunted,” said Marty. “I gotta sell a couple of these in the next gallery show in Milville on Third Friday. I need enough to fix the roof. We’re fuckin’ broke.”
“I heard there was a guy in a van buying glass eels before daybreak in the parking lot behind the burned-out diner on Jones Island Road,” said Len.
“The state banned it back in the ’90s, didn’t they?” Marty asked.
“Yeah,
they
banned it,” Len said and laughed. “I heard one kilogram is going for a thousand dollars. That’s two pounds of eel for a grand.”
“How many eels is that?”
“You gotta remember,” said Len, “they’re only two inches long, see-through thin. So you have to do a fair amount of dipping to bring up two pounds, but not enough to call it work.”
“Are you saying we should do this?”
“Well, we should do it just once. Think of your roof.”
Marty nodded.
“Shit, I could use the money for my prescriptions,” said Len.
“How much can you make in a night?”
“Most guys do about a kilogram and a half to two. Some do a little better. But there are times when a person’ll bring in twenty or even more.”
“How?”
“They know a spot no one else knows, a certain creek, or gut, or spillway, where saltwater and freshwater come together and the glass eels swarm. And I was thinking today, after I heard that they were going for a grand, that there was a place my father would take me fishing for eels at the end of July. We’d barbecue them.”
“How long ago?”
“Thirty years.”
“You think we could find it?”
“Nothing changes around here,” Len said. “Myrtle’s Gut. Down the end of your own block out here. At the marina, we get in a canoe and paddle a little ways and there’s a big island of reeds. It’s pretty sturdy to walk on, but the water is everywhere and if you take a wrong step in the dark you could fall in up to your neck. There used to be a trail through the reeds into the middle of the island. Sort of at the center is a spot where this creek comes up from underground and winds its way for three turns, once around a Myrtle bush, on its way out to the Delaware.”
“That ain’t real,” Marty said.
“Yeah,” said Len, “that’s what it is. A freshwater creek that runs out to the reed island beneath the floor of the bay and then surfaces.”
“And the eels that go there swim underground up into the freshwater streams?”
“Eels will do anything they have to do to get where they’re going. On their way back out to sea to spawn, if a creek dries up, they’ll wriggle right across the land. Years ago on a full moon night in August you could club eels passing through. It was an event. The guy who owned the best meadow for it had a stand nearby that sold corn dogs and lemonade. Everybody clubbed a couple. There were guys there who’d take your eels and smoke them for you for a half dollar.”
“Sounds
Lord of the Flies
.”
“The underground protects them on the way out, so why not on the way in?”
“How do you see them at night when they’re so small?”
“They’re like tiny ghosts, especially in the moonlight.”
“So we go out there in a canoe?”
“We’ll need a couple of coolers and some nets, a couple of flashlights.”
“I can’t run, man. If we get caught, there’s no way I can run.”
“Forget it, no one’s gonna see us. Nobody gives a shit. The last time I saw a cop down here was about a year and a half ago when Mr. Clab’s coffin went on a voyage. Remember, they found it on the beach next to the marina?”
“The cop said there was an underground stream beneath the cemetery that washed the box out to the bay.”
“You see,” said Len, “there’s your proof of what I’m saying.”
Len and Marty sat on the damp ground beside the spreading myrtle bush at the second bend in the gut. There was a breeze. Between them lay a pair of lit flashlights like a cold campfire. They were dressed warmly with hats, gloves, and scarves. Beside them were coolers and nets. Len took out a joint and said, “We gotta wait for the moon.”
“Why?”
“The tide. The moon’s gonna rise in about five minutes, nearly full, and in a half hour it’ll be a good way up the sky and big as a dinner plate. The eels will come in with the tide.”