The Garden of Last Days (28 page)

At Mama’s he’d leave the girl sleeping in the truck, then go inside to change into his work clothes and make coffee and get some ice for his pack. He hoped smelling the coffee wouldn’t wake Mama. It’d be good to go sit on her balcony and sip a cup, put ice on his wrist, and think. A church is what he was seeing now. Someplace holy to leave this girl. Someplace close to the ditch out on Lido Key.

His eyes burned and he slowed for the turn into the old folks’ village where Mama was lucky to buy what she did. They never had much but Mama had always been good with her money, squirreling it away whenever she could, hoarding a little pile over the years that got a lot bigger once Eddie died. He’d had more insurance than AJ would’ve thought, Mama as the sole beneficiary, and he had two grown kids up north somewhere who didn’t come to the funeral. The daughter, Nancy something, sent flowers.

He drove slowly down the paved road. On both sides of it was a four-foot lane of mulch lit up by ground sconces two or three inches above the grass. Late nights after the Puma, driving back to his mama’s place when he only wanted to be going home instead, the lights always made him feel welcome, beacons to guide him. And right now it was good to have them there and he slowed to under ten miles an hour, pressed the window button with the elbow of his hurt arm. Warm air filled the cab. He could smell the river through the mangroves. The lane curved south and his headlights swept past the ruins of the castle owned by the man Bradenton was named after, the good Dr. Braden and his dream to live on this place, the poor sonofabitch, this whole spread—nine hundred acres—his sugar mill, his castle he’d built himself from poured tabby—sand, lime, crushed shells, and water—only to be overrun by the Seminoles and then, years later, burned half to the ground in a fire. Tourists came to see it, these great crumbling walls overgrown with flowers and shaded by cabbage palms, spattered with gull and pelican shit. But these long weeks living with Mama, AJ never did go take a close look, even when driving by; it was too much
of a monument to tripping over your own feet and landing in a load of shit. It reminded him of his own stone house out in the slash pine off Myakka City Road where his son and angry wife lived, his only consolation being that he’d done his job by them and hoped to be back there in that solid little castle again one day.

But tonight, when his truck lights lit up the ruins, it was Caporelli Sr. AJ thought of,
his
castle falling, AJ the wily Seminole about to take a piece of it from his rich, lazy ass.

Now he was into the clearing, a wide lawn sloping down to where the Manatee River met the Braden. Up ahead was the dimly lit and sleeping complex of condos and mobile homes. It was just after 2:00 a.m. and he flicked off his headlights and drove in the yellow glow of the lamps along the ground. Nearly every condo had an exterior light shining over their front doors, old people, he noticed, more worried about break-ins than anybody. In front of every other building was a carport, its latticed roof laced with thick and flowering bougainvillea. Each one could hold two cars and he pulled into the third one down on the right alongside Mama’s Buick.

In the quiet of the complex his engine sounded loud and wrong and he shut it off quickly, turned to see the top of the sleeping girl’s head, her hair parted straight down the middle. Did her mother part it for her and brush it just right? Did she feel like a good mama then?

His eyes ached. He needed cold water on his face, a cup of hot coffee in his hand. The child’s shoulders couldn’t be more than ten inches from one to the other, and they rose and fell with her breathing. It’d be real bad if she woke right now and started bawling but he couldn’t leave her head like this, her chin touching her chest. He got his door open and slid outside, then opened the access door and with three fingers of his good hand lifted her head up and leaned it into the padded corner of the car seat. Damp strands of hair covered her face, but he didn’t dare move them away. The night had cooled a bit. Her feet were bare. Balled on the floor behind the passenger seat was a Caporelli’s Excavators T-shirt Cap Sr. had proudly handed out from his F-350 like he was giving him a cash bonus. AJ grabbed it now,
shook it off and smelled it—cotton and dried sweat and old diesel. He leaned in and draped it over the car seat tray, tucking it in lightly around her shoulders, draping it down over her feet. And again there was that sweet feeling rising up in him that he was doing something good for a stranger, though since Cole had made him a dad he didn’t see other people’s kids as strangers anymore anyway; true, before Cole, he’d never really noticed them; they were like the barking of a dog you hear but don’t listen to so don’t think about. But now, every little kid he saw—the loud ones in the Publix trailing their mamas’ shopping carts, the quiet ones strapped into minivans he passed on the highway, the ones in front and back yards in neighborhoods he drove through, the ones he worried would chase each other into the busy street—especially them—they were all his; he loved and worried about them all, every single one.

FOR MANY MOMENTS
, when the lights became bright and the music ended and the protectors began motioning for all the kufar to stand and leave, Bassam assumed the time for closing had come and he was relieved, for after leaving the small black room he could not summon the discipline to go, to walk from this den of Shaytan and drive east for Tariq and Imad.

No, again he was too weak.

He sat at a table in the far shadows against the wall so that he might watch more dancing for the mushrikoon, so that he may see again what the black whore showed to him and what he did not have the courage to ask April to see. He had never seen one so closely before and still he trembled from it, his hatred for these kufar rising with the knowledge of his own weakness.

He leans against the Neon leased by Amir. He smokes a cigarette
and he must calm himself for the red truck keeping him in this place is only temporary.

He had watched the young ones dress, watched them step into undergarments which still showed their backsides. He watched them pull on their black or red or silver brassieres, pushing their nuhood into them without feeling. The lights were bright upon them, and he could see on one a red rash behind her knee, on another the flesh of her rear area was dimpled when in the darker light it was not, on another—the one from China or Cambodia who had touched his shoulders—there was a raised scar on her arm as if she’d been burned or removed an inked symbol from her skin.

They were so plainly of this earth and they were not what waited for
him
. No, do not forget this, weak Bassam, do not forget for you and your brothers there wait women more beautiful than could ever be made here, women picked by the Creator, the Merciful, the All-Knowing Sustainer and Provider, do not forget He has chosen for you women who have never lain with a man.

And is it not better to go to them pure himself?

At the bar two whores smoke cigarettes. He makes himself think of cutting their throats, how the short blade must be forced into the skin below the jaw. The artery there. He does not care if they feel pain, for anyway it will be brief, and he does not worry of their souls burning for they have brought it upon themselves.

But to kill bodies he has never lain with—this is what weakens him.

MAMA KEPT HER
condo cold as a crypt. Said it helped her breathe better. Sleep better. AJ usually didn’t like it, but standing in the dark hallway, his keys in his good hand, the door closed behind him, it was like cool water in his face waking him up and clearing his head. He listened for Mama’s breathing in her bedroom. She’d never snored till her lungs started to go and now she had to wear that oxygen tube which day and night gave off a slight whistle that got louder when she slept. Or maybe it didn’t get louder, just seemed it when there were no other noises in the air. He heard her now, a rising whistle and falling wheeze that was the sound he’d almost grown used to these last few weeks.

He had to hurry. Couldn’t chance the child waking up only to get scared and start crying and he wished Mama’s place wasn’t in the rear with no windows facing the carport. There wasn’t an all-night coffee place anywhere near here. If he didn’t get some soon he wouldn’t
make it till morning and goddamn if he was going to nod off and get in a wreck with that little kid in his truck.

He was just going to have to make it here. Get some ice for the pack too. He stepped into the darkened TV room where each night he slept on the foldout couch. If he went to the Puma she always set it up and made it for him. It was there now, and Mama had dragged the coffee table to the foot of it. He just wanted to stretch out and rest awhile. He dropped his keys on the mattress and sat on the low oak table Eddie’d built her not long before he died. It wasn’t her birthday or their anniversary or anything but he used to do that sometimes, build her some shelves or a birdhouse or planter and he’d sand it, urethane or paint it, then present it to her as shy and proud as a boy, his face red, his glazed eyes darting from her to what he’d made, then back to her.

AJ sat on it, his hand and arm pulsing fire through his bones. He kept it pressed across his chest and with one hand got his boots untied and off pretty easy. He put them up against the TV and stood, heard a cry. He held his breath and listened. The cry came again and he moved quickly down the hallway for the door, heard it spaced evenly from the last—too evenly. He stopped. It was coming from Mama’s room, just a variation of the whistle, that’s all. Still, he had to go check on the girl.

He opened the door and hurried over the carpeted hallway in his socks down the short stairwell to the window in the entry. Cotton curtains of stitched golf clubs hung over it and he parted them and looked out at the carport. From here he could just make out through his windshield her bare feet sticking out from under his T-shirt. They were so small and unmoving. He opened the front door and stuck his head out. There were the running fans in the AC units, the ringing night quiet. But no sweet little girl stirring.

Hurrying back into the cool darkness, he thought how she
was
sweet, and he pictured being able to keep her. A playmate for Cole. A living doll for Deena to love and raise. And at that age—what was
she? two? three at the most?—you could take a kid to a new family and after a couple years they wouldn’t even remember the old one.

In the kitchenette AJ fumbled for the button on the stove’s hood and pressed it, dim fluorescent light spreading over the burners. He dropped a filter into the Mr. Coffee, flipped off the lid of Mama’s Eight O’Clock Colombian, and dumped in enough for a whole pot. He held his hot wrist to his chest and could see he’d have to put the glass pot in the sink because he couldn’t hold it
and
turn on the tap; just a few hours with one working hand and his mind was already adjusting to the new order. That’s what worried him about leaving Cole: kids got used to things faster than anyone, the cells of their brains and bodies multiplying and dividing all day and night, taking in new information and new food and growing up and over and through things like the wildflowers overrunning Dr. Braden’s ruins. When he saw Cole again, would he come running? Or would he be shy and not remember how much fun the two of them had always had, would he forget how sometimes after work AJ would carry him out to the tall wire grass and throw him up toward the sunset, his boy’s small face alight with fear and joy as AJ caught him under the armpits and let himself fall back into the high grass, the two of them laughing and wanting to get up and do it again? Would he have forgotten that?

AJ poured water into the coffeemaker, slid the glass pot under the filter and flicked the switch. It might take a while to sue Caporelli and then collect. Months probably. But he’d be on workers’ comp and unemployment. He’d go to that anger class for Deena, then move back home. He wondered how she’d take the news of the windfall heading their way. Would she like the idea of adding that second-floor master bedroom and deck? Or would she just want to sell and go buy some place bigger and better? Maybe a house closer to the water, a stuccoed one-story out on one of the keys. He might get enough for that. Wasn’t going to get much done on his place till his bones healed anyway and it’d be just the three of them all day long together. They could get in the truck and drive up and down the coast looking at
places. They could go out for lunches at waterfront restaurants. They could play with Cole on the beach, watch the sun slide into the Gulf. It’d be a whole new beginning for them. How could Deena not be happy then?