The Train of Small Mercies (27 page)

If the police arrived now, Lionel's suit, ripped and bloodstained in two places, might win him a more compassionate assessment, but the police were also just as likely to take them all in and let a judge sort it out in the days ahead. That would be the end of Lionel's job, for starters, and what came after that was too much to let register as even a flicker in his mind. Lionel jumped off the man and ran left of the bigger man, who lunged for him but without full vigor. Lionel snatched his bag and began sprinting back in the direction he had come. The drumming of his shoes against the sidewalk drowned out the ringing in his ears, and he tried not to meet the stares of those who stopped in their tracks to watch him.

When he had charged hard for two blocks, he looked back to see if anyone was following him—police officers, either of the two men, a bystander who hadn't approved of the outcome. There was no one, but if a police car crossed in front of him now, they'd stop him based on his appearance alone. He then darted into an alleyway, wrestling off his jacket. Though he knew it was a pointless gesture, considering the ruined condition of it, he took care to fold the jacket once before pushing it into the bag.

The most important thing was to lie low, to let an hour or more pass before he stepped out again. He pulled a wooden crate out from a stack of them and found a way to sit down on it, letting his head rest against the brick wall. He eased off his shoes and examined his hands in the dim light. His right hand was badly cut across the knuckles, but nothing more. It was his first night in Washington, and he had wanted so little from it: to talk with Adanya for even a minute or two, to stroll around the city after a cheap dinner. Lionel hadn't been in a real fight since he was in tenth grade, but as an artist he had spent countless hours plotting fights and drawing them. Every once in a while one of his heroes lost a fight, and when he did he would slink away into some place of hiding and nurse himself back to health. Dark Matter, who as a custodian in a nuclear power plant had been exposed to nuclear radiation and could turn his skin into an unbreakable alloy, was once beaten so badly by the Sledgehammer that he had retreated into hiding for a solid month until he could recuperate. But such setbacks were rare in Lionel's world of heroes. Mostly they never had to explain a pulpy face after a beating, and if they had to limp around for a day or two, there was no one around them who questioned what was wrong. All his heroes were loners. Their choice was always to fight. But how did they live with that month after month, year after year? Lionel wondered now. It was a question he had never asked himself before.

W
hen she stepped into the lobby, Maeve was eager to tell Mr. Hinton about the nurse's husband, though now she remembered that in her daze she hadn't thought to ask his name. But instead of Mr. Hinton, Maeve found that one of the bellboys was in his place. He couldn't have been much older than she, with a touch of acne on his chin, and the fact that he had kept on his little red cap—a monkey's hat, she decided—made her even angrier that he was standing there.

Seeing the young girl's pretty face, the bellboy stiffened his posture and cocked his head slightly at an angle he thought served him best. “Hello, miss,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“I was looking for Mr. Hinton,” she said. “Is he not here?”

“Mr. Hinton finished up a while ago. But is there something I can do for you?” He smiled a little too eagerly, and this put Maeve in no better a mood.

“No, that's all right,” she said, and turned away. She would see Mr. Hinton in the morning, before checkout. But then, she couldn't be sure that he worked on Sundays. Standing, Maeve felt a little wobbly and decided she should lie down before she collapsed again. But if that unpleasant elevator man was still on his shift, she would take the steps to the sixth floor, no matter the risk.

Instead, the elevator opened to its empty walls. She had eaten only a little soup at a restaurant in Union Station that wasn't very good, but now she wondered if she should have forced herself to eat more. When the elevator came to a stop, the jolt made her stomach drop. Inside her room the air conditioner sounded even worse, but now she was grateful for the cacophony of its well-worn parts. She turned on the television set and sat on the edge of her bed, kicking off her shoes. She hoped to find some news report of the funeral train, but there was a baseball game on one channel, and a western on the other, and she was too tired to do any more searching. She pulled herself back onto the bed a bit more, and she thought again of the doctor from the station and how in that first moment his voice had reminded her so much of her father. Right before she drifted off, she remembered a story her father used to tell. Maeve had been sick with fever, and she had slept the better part of two days when she awoke to find him by her bed, holding a wet cloth to her forehead.

“Well, hello there,” he said.

She smiled weakly, not ready to speak. But he could see that she was in the mood to listen. When was she not? This particular story always started like this: “Did I ever tell you about the time Frankie Farland caught the nuns sleepwalking in the cemetery?”

L
ionel stepped back onto the street, keeping his head down, but also constantly glancing over his shoulder, staying alert. Black Justice never let anyone take him by surprise, and since Lionel had created all the character's sharp instincts, it was critical that he apply them himself this night.

Lionel had a street address, but it was on the other side of town. He knew enough that in the nation's capital it could be hard for a black man to get a cab, and for over twenty minutes, cab after cab passed him, many with empty backseats. More than once Lionel caught the expression of a white driver looking him over as he drove—the on-duty sign lit above—and wincing, or shaking his head in dismay at the very idea of stopping for him. Lionel kept walking. When a breeze picked up, the city still smelled faintly like a bonfire.

Eventually, a cab driven by a black man caught sight of Lionel's outreached hand and turned around to pick him up. He could only see Lionel's left side, which was unhurt, and Lionel kept his face turned so that his right side was out of view. He thanked the driver for stopping and gave him the address. Almost immediately Lionel saw another pay phone, and it pained him all over again to not hear Adanya's voice.

When the cabdriver eventually came to a stop, they were in front of a single-story building that had been in need of repainting twenty years ago. Lionel paid the driver, and when he got out he was confronted all over again with his injuries. He stood for a while, appreciating the silence. Once inside, the laughter coming from the far end shot out like a car backfiring, which made him all the more mournful. He rounded the corner of a cinder-block wall, and there, among a dozen bunk beds, were the men from his crew, hovering over a game of cards. The air was heavy with sour smoke. He could see Buster Hayes dealing out a hand, and Big Brass was to his side, hoisting a bottle of beer for the last swallow. It was Big Brass who saw him first.

“What in
the
hell?” he said.

Buster Hayes finished delivering the cards, and his mouth twisted downward.

The rest of the men turned around, and they gazed at Lionel as if he were wearing some costume they couldn't discern.

“I got into a little trouble,” Lionel said, and tossed his bag on what appeared to be an available bed.

Buster Hayes pushed back his chair and walked over. He was in his T-shirt and work pants, his suspenders down by his knees, and as he walked he made a clicking sound in his jaw.

“You got into a hell of a lot more than a
little
trouble,” he said. He took hold of Lionel's head as if it were a piece of produce, turning it from side to side. “Just wanted to stroll around,” he called back to the other men. “Young buck said on his first time in the city he just wanted to walk around and maybe see the sights. Now look at this shit. Did you get mugged?”

“Not exactly,” Lionel said.

“Did a white man do it?”

Lionel shook his head.

“Uh-huh. Just fighting, then.” He released him and began to walk back to the game, but stopped and approached him once more. “I know your father raised you better than that. Your father the only reason you have the damn job, and you want to be out
brawlin'
?”

The men moaned in unison.

“This is one damn mess,” Buster Hayes said.

Lionel was trembling slightly—out of pain, out of nervousness, fatigue. “I'm sorry, Mr. Hayes,” he said in too weak a voice to please Buster Hayes. “All I wanted to do was get a little bite to eat, call my girl, and get some sleep. That was all I wanted to do. But I got caught up in something, and it got physical.”

Now Big Brass came over for an inspection of his own. He was puffing on a cigar, and made sure Lionel could hear the sound of him chomping on the bit.

“‘It got physical.' That's a damn shame,” Big Brass said. “Let me ask you this: How you think you going to show up for work tomorrow and work like that? Passengers don't want to be served by someone look like he been sparring with Joe Frazier. With a face like raw meat. Good God Almighty. Mr. Chalmers, can you make any sense out of this?”

Mr. Chalmers put his cards down and blew out cigar smoke in a big gust. He looked at Lionel carefully, stroking his chin for effect. “All the young man had to do was come back here and surrender some of that first day's pay in a friendly round of cards. I don't rightly see how we can bring him aboard tomorrow, lessen the Lord plan to work a miracle on that face between now and six A.M. And maybe He will. But I wouldn't bet my hand on it.”

Buster Hayes scanned his face once more, in case he had missed something earlier. “Nothing to do but go to sleep, young buck. In the morning I'll talk to the office and see what they want to do. We'll tell them some damn shit. Say you got hit by a policeman's stick, but of course, if I tell them that, they're going to think you were trying to burn some
other
building down, so I can't do that. Let me think on it. We'll figure something out. I don't know what.”

“Thank you,” Lionel whispered, and turned to consider the rows of bunk beds.

“Take the last one, there,” Buster Hayes said. “Up top. Mr. Chalmers is below you, and Mr. Chalmers don't sleep on top of nobody.”

“Except Mrs. Chalmers,” another porter from the cards table called out to gut-busting laughter.

Lionel unzipped his bag with the intention of washing up, and when he turned to look for the bathroom, the men went back to studying their unpromising hands of cards. He stepped into the small bathroom, where a single bulb cast a dull light over the scratched-up tile floor and two shower stalls and two toilets. The bulb might as well have been a power plant for as loudly as it hummed.

Lionel glanced in the mirror and quickly turned away, not yet ready to confront just how rough his face was. If he couldn't work the return leg of the trip, would someone in the main office let him heal up and give him a second chance? There was no guarantee of that. Even so, his parents would be ashamed that he hadn't shown the good sense to walk away from those two thugs. He could hear his father's voice now:
That's my name you carrying around with you, and you fixed it so that you couldn't even work your second day on the job? Because you had to fight some hoodlums over a girl you didn't even know? When you got a steady girl? Boy, you showing us we've done nothing but fail with you.

The men around the table were still complaining about or chuckling at the problem rookie who had just joined their ranks. Lionel wanted nothing more than to have Adanya cradle him right now, to hear her say “Hush” in a voice as soothing as a soft blanket. Maybe he was going to have to go down there and marry her, come back to campus that fall as husband and wife. He would do that; he would do anything for her. Having a baby didn't mean he couldn't still study or work on his comic books. Adanya wouldn't let him stop, anyway. But everything felt so unfamiliar and unsteady right then, surreal. It was like a comic he'd been working on he called the Night Avenger, about a night watchman in Harlem who fell asleep during every shift, and when he woke up he was someone else—and always in peril: an escaped prisoner being chased by guards; a messenger fighting off a gang of kung fu assailants. And just at the moment he was about to be killed, he would wake up again in the dark and quiet bank. Only, when he returned home each morning, he would bear the scars from each violent outing. In his fog, that was all Lionel could hope for now—to wake up and find himself having drifted off while on break on the train.

Lionel's wants in life were relatively few, but leaning over the sink, trying to clear his head, they felt remarkable and unrealistic: He wanted to be back in Winston-Salem with Adanya. He wanted to make it through college and make his parents proud. He wanted to stay as far away from Vietnam as possible, and he wanted to go his whole life and never again be called
nigger
, to never have any man—white or black—put his hands on him. And he wanted to bring out his own drawings and characters to an audience of readers who had never seen black superheroes before, never even imagined that in a white world they could exist. But with so much evil in the world, why couldn't Black Justice and Dark Matter and The Boulder help with the fight? Didn't the world, now more than ever, need all the help it could get?

M
r. Hinton reached into his pants pocket, his fingers running over a row of jagged metal edges, and picked out his house key. When he stepped in, he flipped on the porch light and was dismayed to see so many new dead bugs inside the light fixture over the door, the bodies like smudged fingerprints.