The Delivery, page 11
Police. He had not anticipated this, but of course they would be here. In all of his time in the city he had never had a problem with police. Never spoken to police, or been spoken to by police. He had been good always, obedient, at least when it came to traffic and rules. But if the policemen saw him here, they would question him (and why wouldn’t they question him, why wouldn’t they ask the strange, reedy boy-man—so clearly a refugee from the inner city—where he was heading and what he was carrying?). The bags, that is. The bags. And his mind flicked over to the bags, heavy on the bike’s handlebars. He had left the bags with the bike. He had left the bags with the bike! Oh—
They were still there. But he would need to be more cautious from now on. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been. (It astounded him now, in the aftershock of panic, that he could ever have been so stupid as to have left the bags in this way. What if someone took them? And if someone had come along and taken the bags, what if they looked inside; what would they have found? His mysterious cargo.) He looked down at the laden bicycle. He passed a clinical glance over the bags. He felt a deep urge to reach into one of them and just … A look. One look. Who would know? Out here? The thought prompted him to peer around. No one was watching him. Cars inched forward and were released through the booths in a kind of listless rhythm, drivers focused on the road ahead. No one came in or out of the restrooms. He snatched a bag off the bike, lifted it, tried its weight. He put it down on the pavement and prodded it with a finger. It was clearly double- or triple-bagged, and his poke didn’t yield much information. He tested the knot at the top of the bag, where its handles had been interlocked and pulled tight. Too snug to undo. He would have to rip or otherwise cut into it if he wanted to see inside. He knelt down, leaned over, and brought his face up close to the plastic. He could not see inside. He sniffed it. Nothing. Smelled like a plastic bag. He got up and walked in a circle once around the bag, thinking about cracking into it, next steps, and just then his phone buzzed.
N.’s number on it. A message:
—he asks u there yet
(And I will imagine her adding, perhaps, a note of concern—for the bags of course—but, as read here by the delivery boy, concern for his welfare, concern for his own person. Something like …)
—hurry
(Such that, then he might believe) it was as if she had known; known that he would be tempted. By the bags. She knew. Always seemed to know, and tenderness welled up in him, ran into the fear, diluting it. He flicked the phone off.
The delivery boy gave each of his legs a shake, regulated his thoughts, crouched again, unlocked the bike with rapid if still-shaking hands (hands shaking from newly inflamed ardor, adrenaline, fear … who knows), stood, and pushed out.
* * *
He was breathing in big gusts. Many of the vehicles he had pedaled around in that crowded toll plaza now blurred past him, disappearing behind the curve ahead. As more went by, he tried to compensate for the drafts they left behind by leaning toward them. He kept his head low to avoid getting dirt in his eyes. He was cleaving so close to the shoulder of the road that his right ankle brushed continually, over and over, against the wet grasses and weeds alongside it. He was pedaling, yes, giving the mechanism another breather. Now, even when not in use, he could feel its troubling heat. So he pedaled and pedaled. And exhaustion fell over him like a blanket, yet he recognized that he could not flag; least of all now; not when he was so close. So he thrust forward, a marathon runner, a polar explorer (a soldier). He bent his head to the work, subordinated his entire being to the task, and did not look up again for another long period, perhaps hundreds of pedal-lengths long, hundreds of occasions where the wet grass teased at him; hundreds of whimpers, wheezes; hundreds of moments of discomfort and pain. He worked his way onward past a series of chain motels (vacancies) and petrol stations (self-serve) and cheap roadside eateries (shuttered), passing way markers that measured distance in a language of colorful squares and red stripes, like small nautical flags. A large (yellow) school bus came alongside him then, its tires tossing pebbles. It slowed in traffic, and a bunch of schoolboys released the catches on their windows to yell at him. He looked steadfastly forward as they did so. Then the traffic thinned and the bus pulled out. He could hear the laughter cut off abruptly by the closing windows. Another car came up, and someone threw a can. Later, a flicked cigarette arced by. He watched it bounce once, spraying embers onto the shoulder and landing in the grass. Farther on, there was the body of a large brown-striped animal in the breakdown lane. The body was flattened, large gashes running up both of its sides, revealing the meat, red, within. Flies had gathered. He steered around it, looking away, and then he looked down again. (He had seen two examples of such an animal, looking out guardedly from the branches of a scrub pine in an old zoo back in his homeland. The conductor had taken them there for a school outing, and, as they wandered between the cages, the girl with the French horn had held the delivery boy’s hand. One of her fingers had curled, and tickled his palm. Her hand had been surprisingly small, light, and dry. The nail, a bit sharp. The delivery boy hadn’t known whether she had curled her finger on purpose, but he didn’t want to even breathe, lest she remove it. The conductor had lectured on the animals’ countries of origin. He had also insisted that they visit the bird pavilion, so that he might notate their songs on a large pad of staff paper. They brought lunch in bags, as the food vendors had all been shuttered. No one wore a badge on their lapel anymore, by the time of that outing, and many of the fanciest animals had been removed from the zoo altogether. The ones that remained were common, and seemed sickly, wary.)
When, later, the delivery boy looked up, he saw a green road sign, which, as it grew, became legible: MANOR GROVE. He stood up out of his saddle and dove forward. Then the exit itself appeared out of a long bend, and he took it, coasting, then, down its generous curving hill (the choreography implicit in the setting perhaps reminded the delivery boy of the formal dances held long ago on the marble floor of the old public hall … except that, no, I am wrong: he was much too tired for nostalgia at this point) and the exit bottomed out at an empty intersection with a traffic light—red—a red that was beyond meaningless (and indeed meant something different out there in that district: that one was still allowed to turn), and without waiting to look even to see if there was oncoming traffic, he swung right onto the new access road, stopping only once on the shoulder, to wipe off the screen of his device with his sleeve, and retape the device to the handlebars; and he followed the map toward his destination, and then, around him, the streetlamps clicked on.
The road meandered through a gentle valley. As he rode, the scenery became more refined. The trunks—leafless, wormy with vines—that bordered the highway stood straighter then, as if waking from a disordered rest. The air was softer, blurrier, and smelled of pine and wet fern (and it was quiet enough then that the delivery boy could have attended to the prosody of his bike: its whirs and clicks, catches and releases. Instead he listened to the wordless yet frightened and hectoring voice in his mind, which quoted without acknowledgment from the sound of the tires on the road: Nnnnnnnn …). For a period, a small, rocky stream ran a parallel course on his right. Then he saw his first mailbox (his first mailbox like this one, ever). Then another. So on. Driveways that disappeared into the woods. More roads like these. Then the road became bordered, on both sides, by wide lawns. Then more trees. Then the lawns again, some of these fronted by enormous and ornate entrances, gates with names written on them in wrought iron (1. Winnecock. 2. Shadewoods. 3. Blighton …), large hedge arches, or guardhouses—sometimes twin guardhouses on either side of a gravel entrance, these paths leading through boxwoods and privets (a few had long allées of sycamore or elm) to the portes cocheres and roundabouts of the largest houses the delivery boy had ever seen.
The mansions of Manor Grove. Elaborately roofed, gabled, turreted; girdled with balustrades, moated with meticulous shrubs. He tried not to gawk, to resemble too closely the robber or refugee he surely looked like. He hunched over as low as he could, and leaned in for another push.
* * *
Farther on.
(Farther still.)
He alternated pedaling and coasting. Pedaling and coasting. The estates swam past. While coasting, he pulled out his phone. Looked down, and then up, very quickly. No cars on the road. No obstacles. He passed a squat stone cycloptic country church that sat upon a small rise like a toad. It followed him with its single eye. The delivery boy remembered (and this memory took no longer than a moment; was over before he knew it had even occurred) another outing to a church, in his homeland: the conductor had taken them there for an organ recital, and the delivery boy recalled how, suddenly, the quiet of the sacred space had been obliterated by sound; how the congregants had all looked up. Those bright echoes. As the children in the orchestra listened to the fugue unspool, the delivery boy had been struck by the instrument’s capaciousness: how it was entirely all-encompassing and self-sufficient; which is to say that an organ could be, as needed, a flute or a trumpet or a siren; whisper, idyll, explosion … (Whereas I am, now, more attuned to the fact that a fugue—any fugue—contains, packed within its preliminary notes, the hereditary material for every note that follows. The conductor may have, on that same day perhaps, imparted this same lesson about fugues to his young pupils; but I don’t know for sure. In any case, the music had ended, and when it did, the delivery boy heard the notes hang in that vast space like particles of dust.)
* * *
He pulled over then, between two roadside trees, hidden behind one of their enormous trunks, which he leaned his bicycle up against.
On the map, there were no blocks, but rather rough patches of land, divided unevenly like jigsaw pieces by access ways and private roads. He saw that he was almost there. Almost. He saw his destination, a small red pin spiked into the background at the end of what looked like a small cul-de-sac. So close.
He heard a bird call above him; a crazily melismatic and ornamented aria. Another bird, deeper in the copse behind, responded in similar, if paler fashion. He savored it. This moment. It was not a moment to let pass without ceremony. At least without some recognition of its importance. (The conductor would tell them to take big breaths at such times—to prepare for the stresses and stimulations of big finales; “Crescendos,” he would say, “always begin quietly. This should go without saying, as this is how crescendos are marked. Piano, first, rising to forte. But when we see such a marking, our first inclination is to play loudly. Immediately loud. It is always true. Given this knowledge—this foreknowledge—that there is something big coming, we anticipate, then jump the gun. I don’t know why. But it isn’t your fault. It is human nature. But we may also be trained out of this habit. What I would like to teach you now, is that when you see the word crescendo, it means, in fact, play quietly.”)
The air smelled of lavender and lawns. A sprinkler somewhere was whirring. Clouds of midges haunted the roadside like preying spirits. He lingered. The sun was still in the sky, but behind the trees, so that everything was shadow but the sky itself. Like the day was struck in two, and night and day coexisted. Single yellow beams broke through in places, glinting and ricocheting off wet greenery.
The delivery boy heard a car go by, slow, and crunch onto gravel, hundreds of yards away. The birds went silent. A transformer buzzed overhead. The sky, which, for the last hour, had been arrested in a state of reddening suspense, now yielded to darker shades, giving the feeling of an encroaching end. He thought of N. and once again wanted to message her. To say, I made it.
He stretched instead, bending over his feet, arching his back, pulling a leg back behind him.
A low rumble, which grew louder. Then a row of open-backed trucks went past, carrying equipment for cutting grass, trimming leaves. Workers in rough clothes crowded into the cabs, squatting alongside the machines, or sitting on the flatbeds, their legs dangling over the sides. A line of these trucks, like a parade. No one seemed to notice him there among the trees.
He waited, then they were gone.
It was the end of the shift.
Time. For him as well. He scratched an ear. Vigorously rubbed his face. Let out a little whistle. Then the delivery boy hopped back on his bicycle, smiling.
He’d pedal the last bit. He’d always known this was how the last leg would go. It would be triumphant. And he would be like a Thoroughbred, rounding the lathering final lap. As he pushed off onto the road, he heard a wail, stopped, pushed the bike with both feet until it and he were behind the tree again, and then he waited. The wail grew louder, and he saw the red flashing light wash over the street before him, and then the police car screamed by him. He winced at the noise. Then it rounded the corner and was gone, leaving a fading contrail of siren behind it.
Satisfied that it was finally safe, he rolled on.
The road meandered. There were no other cars. This was now, truly, the countryside. The first he had seen of anything this rural since before the vessel. Forest. Fields, cordoned off by rustic wooden railings. Wildflowers. A silo poking up near the top of a gentle hill. A stand of birch, contravening the dark. Pockets of wet and heavy silence. Cicadas, in electric phases. No more sirens (though I can imagine the police waiting for him at his destination. Waiting with cuffs, and truncheons).
He biked faster, and at a bend in the road, something emerged, which resolved into a street sign. He slowed his bike, to ensure that the road was the correct one. Satisfied, he pulled off to his left onto a country lane, and pedaled to where the pavement, abruptly, ended. Trees picketing the dirt road on both sides, an orchard, a dirt road penetrating its heart. No more numbers. No houses. Yet he was so close now. His phone was chirruping the fact. His breathing grew more shallow. He looked around, and saw nothing. (He had pictured, in his mind, at the beginning of the delivery, it ending at an impressive, gated mansion at the end of a long road. The approach was to be a processional. A victory march; full of pomp.) He pedaled on, though traction was difficult. Small, prune-ish apples lay scattered along the roadside. The road began to narrow, further, and further still. It was now a mere path, not wider than a city bicycle path. This, he thought—allowing, for the first time, his sunken suspicions to surface a bit—was worrisome, and he took a single hand off the handlebars and felt his collar. Damp. The bike lurched on a rock, he put both hands back on. The trees merged in toward him. A branch stung him; he ducked, still pedaling. Another branch. It swiped at his arm. Another. The sound of crickets merged with the growling of his tires. Every muscle complained. The ground grew more and more uneven. He peered forward, and then he saw something up ahead. This would be it. Had to be. A fence post, barely visible in the vesperal gloom. He slowed. Approached. A log lay across his path, fronting a wall of green. It was the end of the road at last.
And there was nothing there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The delivery boy peered into the darkening orchard, and saw
(A picnic.)
(No.)
(Sorry.)
(That doesn’t go here.)
(But still.)
(It was the fall, and I was with my parents. Beer foam on my mother’s upper lip … She wiped it away, cross, then amused. My father, and his walking stick, knobby like a pretzel, its pommel worn smooth. A scratched metal compass; a waxen map. We bent over it. His hands … fluvial veined, mountainously knuckled … I kicked rocks down the road … ferns, patches of fringed and elaborately vented mushrooms in between tree roots … A climb, a clearing, the sun, a view, the return … the orchard again … the darkening orchard … and then … no.)
(There is no picnic here. It’s gone.)
* * *
The delivery boy peered into the darkening orchard, reached for his phone, and double-checked the address.
There it was: the pin on his phone’s map. Right next to it: a throbbing dot. He was there. Here, he thought, enlarging the scene until it was clear that the dot was right next to the pin. The customer must be here. This was the place. Yet, it could not be. He turned a full circle. He squinted. He said a tentative hello to the murk, knowing as he did so that it was futile. He read through all his texts again to see if he had missed anything, periodically stopping to swat a bug. It all seemed correct, yet clearly was not. Panic rising, he stood astride his bicycle, the chain heavy on his chest, his leg stinging, the sweat evaporating uncomfortably from his cool forehead. The handles of the doubled plastic bags were stretched thin. He got off. Maybe, just maybe, his destination, his customer—the Supervisor’s special customer—lived off the road? Beyond this dark copse, maybe just over that rise? He thought he had seen the vestiges of a trail, and so he wheeled his bicycle, stepping between trees, walking it, the tires bumping along the rock- and root-covered ground—as foreign a movement for him after his long ride as that of stepping onto a swaying vessel. The hill became steeper, the undergrowth denser, the terrain rockier, and the delivery boy knew that he would need to carry his bike. It seemed wrong, carrying the bike that carried the bags (a violation of natural law: the conveyance conveyed, a transitive delivery), but he had no choice. So he lifted it. Slightly; experimentally. The power-assist was heavy, as was the bicycle itself (not to mention the bags on its handlebars). He bent his knees low, and endeavored to jerk the bike upward like a weight lifter. It took him several spastic attempts to get it up onto his shoulder, but eventually he succeeded. He stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, the crossbar digging into his clavicle uncomfortably. He swayed a little on his feet. Then he began to trudge. One foot after the other. The mud squelched and sank a bit under his weight. It was heavy going, and he had to stop frequently to lean on a tree and catch his breath. His legs were shaking. He reached firmer ground, larger rocks. Steeper. Low branches investigated the spokes of his tires, and he had to yank the bicycle free, tiring him further. Still, despite the huge effort it cost him, he managed it; he endured, portaging in this manner until he was up and over the hill, where he stopped, heaved the bicycle up, and released it back down, leaning it up against a trunk. He looked about him again. The view was wide, if dark. He saw more trees in all directions. Somewhere in the distance, the orchard gave way to real wilderness, with its higher, spikier skyline. Beyond and far down below there was a glint of light on what looked like a meandering river. But no lights, no buildings, no sign of people.
