Ghost Lights

10

It was time. At the holding facility T. would be waiting for him. Turned out the place was an easy ten-minute walk from the hotel: the receptionist drew a crude street map on the back of a piece of stationery.

The humid air of the streets was heavy with a gray smog; cars here still ran on leaded gasoline. Simply because no one had yet passed a law to prevent it. As a result children breathed in the toxic fumes every day and gradually lost brain function.

It came to Hal — a curious thought, because he was not given to theories of the supernatural — that their ghosts must linger here, the ghosts of those children before they were impaired. Even as the living children went on, growing into adults of limited intelligence, so must the ghosts linger beside them, pale images of what they might have become.

How wrong Tom Paine had been. Not overall, but in the sound bites. “That government is best which governs least.” If only.

Ahead of him a thin boy stepped out of the darkened doorway of a building. Hal felt an impulse to apologize to this boy in case he was one of the retarded ones. Not that Hal himself was personally responsible for the lead in the gasoline of this foreign country, but in the sense that they all were, that individuals were culpable, especially individuals like him, secure and comfortable and well-educated, for all of the rest of them. . but now the boy must be confused, because he was not moving out of the way. Hal would have to step around him, down over the curb, onto the street and up again.

He moved to step into the street, smiling apologetically in case — since after all he was the interloper here, not the boy — it had been rude on his part not to do so in the first place. He noticed, in the boy’s rising hand, something thin and gray. Then the boy stepped up to him, and the boy’s hand was on his pocket; at the same time he felt a pain in his side, and was already on his way down to the dirty sidewalk before he could say anything. Falling into sharpness, or the sharpness was crumpling him. It happened so smoothly that as the boy ran away, a small bundle in his hand — a wallet? — Hal was still feeling beholden, as though he owed him an apology.

He was a child, after all. You wanted to protect them despite the bad behavior, knowing that all hurt animals had to flail. . it was bad, it was surprisingly bad, but the sharpness faded, actually washed itself out a bit. It softened and covered him as he lay, doubtful, stricken by confusion. Was he supposed to be doing something? Was there something he could do about his situation? He was part of the world’s momentum, part of its on-and-on functioning, its inertia that was neverending. The pilot had said it, and it was true, finally. He himself was responsible for the boy, and by extension for this, for the sharpness and the spreading bewilderment. He had played by the rules — he had always played by the rules, even when, for a second, he considered breaking them and then decided not to. His life had been bracketed by rules, enclosed by their tidy parentheses; he had gone along in the forward motion, he had done nothing to stop it.

Warmth flowed over the sidewalk — his own, he felt in a wave of dismay. Had he disgraced himself? But it was thick — blood, not urine.

The sidewalk heated under his side and his arm but he himself grew colder despite the weather, his legs and stomach icy. He had thought it was so cloying in this place, so humid. Just a minute ago. . how quickly it all flickered. Time was not in step with humans, in the end. It went too fast and too slow: and yet people expected it to guide them and shelter them.

And the boy was gone. Hal was alone and he almost missed him: come back, he thought. Boy? Anyone?

He tried calling out, but lacked the force or the breath. His voice dwindled.

His face against the sidewalk, then turning to lie on his back while the snake twisted in him — he saw the pain that way, an image vaguely inherited somewhere: a black and white snake with a diamond pattern — or no, the diamonds were not white but a sickly yellow. The image flicked past him, a snake slithering through his own blood. He felt a lick of panic, but then he was calm. It wasn’t real, after all.

He would have to wait till someone came to help him. That was what happened, with these incidents. People came to help you. All life was based on this, the social compact. It would not let him down, would it? He himself had held up his end. Not that he was a saint. But he was not a bad guy. It was fair to say that, more or less, he had held up his end.

Sometimes you had to wait first. That was all. T. would be fine without him; there was no bail, so all he had to do was walk out. Possibly, even, he would walk out and find Hal. Rescue him, in a role reversal. At this point he was only a few blocks away.

But the flow — he was soaking. Could he stop the flow while he was waiting?

He felt around with his hand, felt his side where the heat was coming from. He tried to block it, pressing his hand against the wet slick, but his arm was so weak.

The boy might even be retarded. One way or another damage had been done to him, that was certain. If it was the wallet he’d wanted all he had to do was ask. No show of force was needed. It was Hal’s official policy to give up money quickly whenever mugged. He had never had to invoke the policy, however.

If only the boy had asked. . he felt a twinge of self-pity. Casey would poke at him with affection, needling. He had it all: he had legs. What right did he have to pity?

Above him a streetlamp winked on. He could not tell if the moon was out. When the moon was full you could not see the stars. Once he had seen the Milky Way. When was that? Long ago, he thought, before he got old. . there was paradise in the Milky Way, in its seeming infinity.

When they came to move him, loading him onto a stretcher, he would make sure he got a look at the sky beyond the buildings. The stars would be even better, but in a city there was too much ambient light to see the stars clearly.

He heard sniffing. There was a dog next to him, nuzzling his face. The way it tossed its head slightly, nudging with the long wet nose, was endearing. He had to squeeze his eyes closed against the tongue and at the same time he tried to reach out to pet it, but his arm was shaking too much. . a black dog, a mutt in the Labrador family. Now it had moved down from his face and was lapping at something. He was afraid — yes. Lapping up his blood. He did not blame it for this, though it was a strange sensation: the dog bore him no ill will. We lick what we can, was the motto of dogs. Was it any different from when they licked the salt off your hands or your face?

He recalled T.’s dog, dog on three legs. This one was here, the other was back at home waiting. Dogs all over the world.

It was a comfort. He might be gone, he himself might be gone, but everywhere were the dogs, with their faithful dispositions. It seemed you could rely on them. The dogs were a kind of love, given freely to men. Their existence meant you did not have to be alone. For if, in the end, you found yourself alone, completely alone, and it was chilling, you could look for a dog. And there, in the dog, would be love. You did not have to deserve a dog. Rather a dog was a gift, a gift and a representative. What a dog was was simple: the ambient love of the world.

The dog moved off after a while — or rather, at a certain point it was not there anymore. Hal thought he might have fainted and missed it leaving.

If he still could, he decided, he would get his own dog. When he got home he would go out and get a dog of his own. A dog from a shelter, a dog that needed someone.

He could hear people laughing, possibly in a nearby bar or restaurant. He had always liked going to bars and restaurants; he should go to more of them. Take Susan along with him. Although he might be dying. If so, he couldn’t take her to any more restaurants. But he was sorry for his behavior, so trivial and selfish. Whatever made her happy. . have some paralegals. There, there. Have yourself a paralegal or two.

Really, I mean it, he told her. He would pass out the paralegals like cigars at a birth.

He was so sorry now that he had left her alone, left her alone years ago and never looked back, when all he thought of was Casey, worrying. He had never intended to leave anyone, it was the last thing he would ever have intended, but it turned out he was the abandoner.

This was shocking. It was just like the wound. It was a wound in himself, like the hole from stabbing. Only now did he look down and notice it: he himself did the abandoning.

Of course poor Susan needed company. She should never have been abandoned.

He hoped the laughing people were in a restaurant, celebrating something with lanterns strung up and deep warm colors that were welcoming. He was almost — almost — at the table himself. There were reflections of lanterns on his own glass, which he would raise to the crowd. If they could see him.

He was sorry for the boy, the stabbing boy, but then the boy, he recognized, was also his daughter. Not that Casey had ever stabbed him. He corrected himself, as though someone was listening. It was his feeling he meant, his feeling. . as soon as they were past, perceptions took on a transparency. There was an impulse, it fled, and then he saw what the impulse meant. He saw through the obfuscations of his own mind, through the dodges of his remorse and his wishful thinking, and behind it all was a vision of his daughter.

It was Casey he wanted to apologize to, not the boy, and it always would be. When you were born, he could say to her, I was born too.

This appeared to him in the light of a new idea, though it was not. I was born then because it was true, as soon as you existed, that I only existed to care about you. From then on I myself was nothing.

And you know what, sweet girl?

I was happy that way.

“It was you who made me necessary,” he said.

It came out as a mumble. He wished he could hold her close in perpetuity, as he had wished so often when she was small. He was astonished, when he thought about it, that every man was not a criminal before he was graced with a child, astonished that any man was good at all before that. Many of them were not, actually. Statistics told the story: most vicious criminals, the warriors and ax murderers and gangbangers, were young men. Except for the rare among them who were born nice, they needed a child to civilize them.

And yet, of course, they should not be granted the privilege.

He would tell her: It was you who gave me the reason for my life. Before you I was proud — proud and empty. I had no idea what it was like to beg the world for mercy and not be heard, never be heard at all. But still to go on begging, unheard. I knew nothing.

And then I failed you.

He would say this clearly, making sure she understood how fully, fully acquainted he was with his failure. He had failed to protect her, failed in his one genuine calling, being her father. He did not accept this, in the sense that he repudiated it, but he knew it all the same. You could know something and at the same time reject it, no contradiction there. I failed, he would say to her, I failed at the moment when you were hit and after that moment I would never stop failing.

And it was you who suffered for my failings.

That was the problem of the religion he’d been born into. Christians, he thought: his parents had been two of them, but he could never bring himself. He had lived and now was dying an un-Christian, quite pleasantly godless. . for the problem with the story of Jesus was simply this: it was a reversal, it was a perfectly backward version of the story of humankind, a mirror image of the world. For in reality itself, as opposed to the holy script, it was not one man who suffered and the rest of the world that was saved. It was the whole world that suffered for the sake of one man.

He could make the stipulation now, he could indulge in bombast now that he was, so unexpectedly, becoming dead. The whole world suffered and bled for all eternity, through all of human history, so that a minuscule, paltry few could have leisure and joy and the liberty of wealth for as long as they each should live. There is no doubt, the poor are the sacrifice, he thought, and he remembered this knowledge like a sight he had seen — all the poor and the untended and powerless. Together they are Jesus on the cross, bleeding so openly, bleeding for all to see, and thin like Jesus too, their arms and veins opened.

And yet the rich, especially the very, grotesquely rich, that fraction of a percent that make up the one man that is saved, blithely deny the truth of this, though it is perfectly obvious and as transparently clear as glass. The rich may worship God or they may pretend to but they are kicking Jesus to the floor daily, kicking him viciously and stepping on his face.

Because the poor are Jesus, in their billions. Plain as the nose on his face. . and he himself, neither Jesus nor Judas but someone in between, was dying.

But maybe it would be all right in the end, or in the end beyond the end. Maybe somehow a second chance would come for him. And next time he would make sure she was not injured at all. He would take her away to a safe place and there she would be kept separate from accidents. . there had to be a shelter like that for her, even for both of them. As simple as that bar at the end of the street, beaming its warmth. Was it so much to ask? A safe place for his little girl. If bargains were possible he would give himself up a thousand times before he would let them hurt her. Let them accept him, let them accept his pathetic, meaningless sacrifice. It was paltry. He knew that, for chrissake. But what else did he have, what else could he bargain with?

And this was melodrama, he knew that too, so sue him, who cared, he was dying. And anyway the melodrama did not make it less true. . all he wanted was to hear the word yes. Yes: we will accept it. We will accept what you offer, be it ever so puny. In exchange we will give life back to your girl.

So she will always be young. And she will always be beautiful.

Whatever he did or could never do, in the end it was she who had formed whatever he was that was worth being. It is the child who makes the parent on this earth, he would say to her if she was here to listen, not the other way round. The child was more than father to the man; children were father and mother to the soul, whatever that might be. He did not pretend to know much about souls, or the idea of them. He never had. But once or twice he had thought he could hear a sound, a faint music. The spirit moves around us, falls past us invisible like air through air. . all we are sure we have, all that we know, is the suspicion of its presence.

And if he did ever see it, if he ever caught a glimpse of this passing soul, it was because she let him: she let him see the world was full of hurt things. The world was made up of these shifting beings, of glancing pain between them as they moved — these solitary worlds that inhabited the total, the millions of small worlds that made up the host. That was where the pain came from, he thought, it came from the friction between worlds, the brushing past, the shiver of contact — the touch of feeling and unfeeling. The pain and grace of the temporary.

She showed him and he got to see, but by then it was already too late. By then his own world had become very small, and in his own world only the one hurt thing mattered.

He had forgotten all the rest. He never even saw them.

Small, my girl, oh small, small, small. You see? The world shrinks around us: we give it all up for you. We close our eyes to it, we shutter them, we give it away though it is not ours to give.

For you we give up the world.