EASTER SUNDAY — THE DAY WE’VE chosen for our voyage — could be a commercial for springtime: There’s blue sky and sunshine to spare. We pile into my mom’s car, compromising on the Rolling Stones for a sound track as we rumble down the
495.
In the weeks that followed my mother’s death, I tended to associate any thoughts of the city with a gnawing, reptilian sense of dread. But today, my lady riding shotgun and a mystery almost solved, I feel energized. Some of this, admittedly, might have to do with the clouds of fragrant smoke emanating from Uncle Marvin in the backseat. Both Daphne and I decline his offers to share, me for safety reasons, her because, she says brightly, “I want to be sober for this.”
Following the conversation at Passover, Uncle Marvin, claming that “Henry Head couldn’t find a Jew in the Bronx,” had taken it upon himself to make a few inquiries. He struck paydirt when he ran Peter Robichaux’s name past an old friend in the city’s Fifth Precinct, an area extending from Chinatown and Little Italy to the East River. After some more digging, Marvin’s friend turned up the arrest, one year earlier, of a local vagrant named
“Peter Robishow.” The charge was misdemeanor assault, but the crime itself — spitting on a police officer — wasn’t quite heinous enough to impress the judge, who ordered him released without a trial.
“Robishow” had no address. Marvin’s buddy hooked us up with Reuben Brown, a homeless rights advocate in the area. Uncle Marvin cannot say “homeless rights advocate” without visible scorn. “They don’t have jobs or responsibilities and we feed ’em all the cheese they can eat,” Marvin says. “What the hell more rights do they want?” We decide that it’s best for me to call Reuben.
I tell Reuben that Robichaux — whom he calls
“Robes”—might be in line for an inheritance.
Reuben doesn’t look convinced by my story, but agrees to meet us in a spot underneath the Brooklyn Bridge on the condition that we help him distribute a few dozen loaves of day-old bread to the people who live there.
“I just want to remind you,” says Reuben, a lightskinned black man with red hair, “that most of these folks ain’t right in the head. Don’t get your hopes too high, is all I’m saying.”
“Understood!” says Daphne. Reuben nods slowly, taken aback by her enthusiasm to blast full throttle into the make-shift village in front of us, a collection of cardboard boxes, shopping carts, and rancid blankets. Despite the loaves of bread, most of their occupants hide when they see us coming.
The ones brave enough to look us in the eye do so with suspicion.
“He lives in a box?” Daphne asks Reuben, saying “box” as if it could have been “brownstone” or “Dutch Colonial.”
“Robes? No, Robes lives down under.”
“Great,” Marvin says. “A goddamn Mole Man.”
“What’s a Mole Man?” I ask.
“It’s an urban myth,” says Reuben. “A lot of these men and women, they’ve got no choice but underground. An old subway tunnel is a hell of a lot warmer than a refrigerator box. Somehow the story got started that they got their own society, with rules and laws and such. Their own civilization, if you will.
But I’ll tell you from experience, it ain’t so. Ain’t nothing civilized about living in a subway tunnel.”
Still, it’s hard not to imagine, descending into the darkness of a tunnel, that we’re entering a lost kingdom. We’re definitely being watched — more than once I catch a glimpse of white eyes against the gloomy pitch. I find Daphne’s hand, figuring she could use the reassurance, but she seems calm and happy. We could be going on a picnic. I chalk it up to effective medication.
“Is it much farther?” asks Daphne.
“Just around the bend,” Reuben replies. He’s carrying a giant aluminum flashlight, waving it at the rats that cross our path. A sudden rumbling sound shakes the walls and straightens the hairs on the back of my neck. It turns out to be a passing subway train.
“Hey, Robes, you in there?” says Reuben, aiming the flashlight’s beam through a separation in the wall. “It’s me, Reuben.” There’s a reply, a cross between a grunt and a wail, that encourages Reuben to continue. “I got some friends with me.
Friends of yours, they say.”
My eyes accustom to the room’s low light, and I can make out what looks like a human figure crumpled against the wall. Daphne approaches him slowly, one hand raised as if to touch him. “Dad,” she says. “It’s me. Daphne.”
“Dad?!” Reuben exclaims. “You didn’t tell me nothing about that.”
“Shush,” says Marvin, who’s sparking up a joint.
Reuben refuses his offer to share.
I rest a hand on Daphne’s shoulder. She brushes it away, moving toward the figure on the floor.
“Dad,” she repeats. The figure twitches, struggling to face her. It’s impossible to read the expression on his face, if there is one: Reuben is careful not to shine his light directly into the man’s eyes.
“Dad,” she says. “Is that you?”
The figure whispers something unintelligible.
Daphne continues to edge closer. I can sense Reuben stirring uneasily behind me.
Daphne’s bringing her hand to the figure’s face.
“Be careful, Daph,” I warn, without any comprehension whatsoever of what the risks might be. Daphne removes something shiny from her pocket and squeezes it, creating a vaguely familiar noise, like a beer can being crushed. When Reuben swings the flashlight toward them, I see that Daphne’s holding the bottle of lighter fluid I use to maintain my Zippo.
“What the fuck?!” says Reuben. Now Daphne’s holding a book of matches, flinging one at the crumpled mess on the floor. The pile erupts in flames.
I grab at her from behind. Her arms flail wildly.
Uncle Marvin takes a more direct approach, stamping out the fire. Daphne rewards him for his heroism with a sharp kick to the testicles, or what might have been testicles if Uncle Marvin still had them. Instead there’s a pop as she connects with Marvin’s colostomy bag, which explodes like a pinata.
The figure on the floor, still smoldering, rises and runs away. The flames spread quickly through the room. “We gotta get out of here,” says Marvin, struggling to his feet. He hobbles back the way we’d entered. Reuben and I drag Daphne after him.
It’s too dark to see the smoke pouring through the tunnels, but we’re choking on it. “Keep moving,” yells Marvin. I follow Reuben’s lead, helping to drag Daphne toward a pinpoint of light in the distance.
The light gets brighter as we reach the entrance.
The scene outside is mayhem. Dozens of people, faces blackened by soot, follow the smoke out of the subway tunnel into the makeshift village.
Reuben is struggling with Daphne, assaulting her with a flurry of profanities that continues long after I’ve shoved a few twenties into his hand. Daphne curls into a fetal ball on the ground. Marvin stands nearby tending to his ruined groin.
I scan the chaos for some sign of Robes. But all I can see is an army of charred zombies, coated in soot, grime, piss, and blood, blinking their eyes against the bright sun.
DAPHNE REMAINS NEARLY COMATOSE for the entire drive home. After we drop Marvin off, I drag her into the shower, do my best to scrub her clean, and tuck her into bed.
“What about the farewell drugs?” are her only words to me, a line from Sid and Nancy. Then she falls asleep, so deeply she snores.
I spend most of the night sitting in a chair next to the bed, watching her. I doze off at some point during the early hours of the morning. When I wake, the bed is empty and the Buick is gone from the driveway. There’s a note pinned to the refrigerator:
“Sorry.”
The call from Kings Park arrives later that afternoon. Miss Robichaux has decided to check herself back in, says a bored administrator whose greatest concern is that I pick the Buick up from the parking lot.
