The Donzerly Light Read online

  But to live he would have to remember. To...

  “Tell me, Grady. It’s your only chance.”

  ...recount.

  “I was just an ordinary guy once,” Jay said, leaden thoughts weighing on him. His recollections raced back, far back, to the old time. The real time, when his life was often sweet, sometimes sad, and always random. “I wasn’t always on top.”

  “But you got there,” Mr. Wright observed. The point of his tongue slipped out a bit and glistened his lips.

  Jay nodded, smiling wanly. “I got there all right.”

  “How?” Mr. Wright pressed him. “How did you get there?”

  Beneath the table, out of view, Jay’s bound hands began to tremble. “You know, some lives are best lived once and then buried.”

  Atop the table, very much in view, one of Mr. Wright’s hands condensed to a fist. The crunch of his knuckles cracking clicked off the cinder block walls. “Is burial what you want to talk about, Grady? Is it?”

  The threat lay there, still and waiting, as Jay focused on the big, rough hands. The one that wasn’t clenched scratched slowly at the tabletop, as if its fingers were legs ready to propel it across the table to his neck where it might...

  “There’s no way you can understand,” Jay told him. “You’ll think I’m insane.”

  “I’m an understanding sort of fellow,” Mr. Wright said with unconvincing coldness. “Try me.”

  Jay took a shallow breath and swallowed what moisture his mouth could muster and focused, trolling back in time, back to his previous life, and as dark, dead memories blossomed into clarity his eyes snapped shut like traps and his head shook defiantly, fearfully, from side to side. “Please, I don’t want to go back there.”

  “Grady...” Impatience welled dangerously beneath Mr. Wright’s words.

  “I don’t want to think about...”

  ...T H E D O N Z E R L Y L I G H T

  “...him.”

  Anticipatory furrows cleaved into Mr. Wright’s brow. “Him? Who is that, Grady? Who?”

  “Sign Guy!” Jay answered sharply, quickly, before fear could staunch the reply, his eyes opening slowly and his voice heavy with resignation, as if he’d just started across a bridge and set it to burn behind him.

  “Sign Guy,” Mr. Wright repeated softly, breathily, as though sampling the words. His gaze narrowed and ticked briefly away from his prisoner. After a moment he looked back and his fist relaxed and went flat on the table. His scratching fingers stilled. “Tell me about this Sign Guy.”

  Jay breathed, and the air seemed scented with dread.

  One

  A Mean Streak Of Humanity

  Sign Guy was a bum. But he was a bum with an angle.

  If asked on that April night in 1989, Thursday the 6th to be exact, Jay Grady would have said that the bum’s sign was his angle. But that was the folly of the obvious. The truth was somewhere south of credulity, a truth Jay would not realize for some time. And so that April night, as he stood across Broadway with a wistful smile building on his face, he could only gaze fondly at the bum while taxis passed between them as humming yellow blurs.

  By appearance he was maybe forty, possibly a little less, even, and was, on the whole, far easier on the senses than your typical New York transient. Every few days he was clean shaven, his beard never making it much past stubble, and the thrift store clothes he wore looked to have made the acquaintance of a washer and dryer at least once a week. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, which in daytime kept his tanned face in shadow, and an old army parka when the season or the night brought a chill. Blue Converse high tops, the old canvas kind, rounded out his attire.

  Like a lot of bums in the city he had a ‘spot’, a tiny piece of Manhattan to call his own. His was on the Broadway side of Trinity Church, where Wall Street started or stopped depending on one’s perspective. He would sit there all day, every day, his back to the landmark church’s magnificent stone spire and his butt planted on an overturned plastic bucket that, going by what remained of a label on its side, had once held five gallons of Ganello pitted black olives. Simply sit there on his makeshift stool, smiling serenely, keeping mostly to himself as he watched the suits and skirts ebb in and out of the concrete canyon that was the world’s financial center in a bipedal gray tide, an empty Yuban coffee can at his feet and his sign leaning against his knees.

  His sign.

  A piece of plywood maybe three feet by four, painted a bright and spotless white, and atop that stark background a message Sign Guy had crafted in bold black letters. A morsel of cryptic wisdom that was fresh with each sunrise. A new offering for the new day. Jay had passed him a hundred times coming and going to his job at Stanley & Mitchell, one of the Street’s oldest and stodgiest brokerage houses. Since his first day in the city some three months back, he had seen nearly every sign, mostly on his way home when his direction of travel took him toward the bum, though there had been a few occasions on the way in when a backfire or some other noise had made him look back as he crossed Broadway and, by happenstance, he had seen that day’s message in the morning’s cold, gray glow. Black on white. Always something to raise an eyebrow, or maybe even elicit a grin.

  But never, until this evening, something that took him back like a time machine to the innocent days of his youth. The happy days before fate’s cruel hand changed everything.

  Yes, to those happy times. Jay smiled. Smiled full and bright, with only a hint of nostalgic melancholy, and savored the day’s sign as traffic segmented the sight into bits of light and motion that flickered like an old movie. Just stood there waiting for the light to change and took it all in.

  B U Y T H E

  D O N Z E R L Y

  L I G H T

  I was how old? Seven? Eight? His head moved in an almost imperceptible nod. Seven. I was seven. I remember.

  Jay stared at the sign, remembering, the memory coming at him like a warm and pleasant breeze. Stared at those words, that nonsensical grouping of words, and then at the bum who had made them for a moment more, watching him as a very well dressed older man walked casually, wordlessly up and slipped a bill, maybe two, through the slit cut in the plastic lid of the coffee can, then continue on his way. The exchange seemed oddly uncomplicated, Jay thought, reminding him somewhat of paying the rent in grad school—a couple knocks, the landlord would open his door, and Jay would hand over the envelope. The one big difference, though, was that he had never enjoyed forking over money that, had the need for shelter not been paramount, might have been better spent on beer, or pizza, or maybe a weekend skiing with Carrie. But this man, he must have gotten something out of giving, because he was grinning from ear to ear, almost as big as Sign Guy was.

  The light changed, and Jay stepped into the crosswalk with a fellow about his age, but blue collar all the way. Probably one of the maintenance workers in one of the Street’s many office buildings. Not that he, himself, was the epitome of male model fashiondom. His suit was off the rack, as was every piece of business attire in the closet of the very modest Greenwich Village apartment he shared with his girlfriend. He could still remember his very first suit, the one his parents had made him get when he was nine for his Uncle Anson’s wedding, a Sears special that was some color between gray and brown that he had never seen before or since, thank goodness. His wardrobe now was a little farther on in the color department, thanks mainly to Carrie, but not far from Sears. Not yet it wasn’t. But it would be. It damn sure would be.

  But he wasn’t thinking of that nearoff/faroff tomorrow as he crossed Broadway. No, he was letting his recollections drift back. Back to the carefree time when he was a child. Just a kid who loved the summer and hated Labor Day because it meant the time for school had come ‘round again. A kid who thought that if you stayed out in the cold air without a coat you would catch ‘ammonia’. A kid who loved baseball, and whose father had scrounged enough money to take him to his first game, the Brewers versus somebody (they were wearing red caps—right?), for his seven
th birthday. A kid who had heard a song sung at that game, a song which his father had explained was the national anthem. An important song that you were supposed to stand for, kind of like the pledge of allegiance in school, and put your hand over your heart, and, for sure, take your hat off if you were wearing one. All the players had done that, the Brewers and the guys with the red (?) caps, and they had all held their hats over their hearts as a little man with a big voice began to sing into a microphone near home plate. Jay hadn’t known the words, but it sure seemed like everybody else in County Stadium did, because they were all singing, and singing loud. Not knowing the words embarrassed him, in a way. It was an important song, like his father had said, so he probably should have known it. But he didn’t, so he did the next best thing to singing: faking singing. He moved his lips slowly, pretending, pretty sure that no one, not even his dad, would know he wasn’t making a sound. He faked, and while his lips moved soundlessly he listened, because the next time he came to a game, or if his mother could sell enough of her knitting so that he could afford the uniform and the cleats for little league next summer (his father had also told him that the national anthem was sung before the games in little league, as well as before just about every important thing there was), Jay wanted to be able to actually sing the darn thing. Yes, he listened, and he tried to remember, and he could still, walking slowly across Broadway seventeen years later, recall one line from the very important song. A line that had puzzled him, that had made his freckled nose scrunch up with wonder. One line. The first line. ‘Oh say can you see by the donzerly light...’ The donzerly light. If it was in a very important song, he figured that it must be some special kind of light.

  Donzerly Light. A special kind of light. That’s what he had thought until his first year of junior high, when he’d stumbled across the actual words to the Star Spangled Banner in an appendix to his history book. Donzerly Light had died for him in the seventh grade, replaced by the ‘dawn’s early light’. Gone. Forgotten with ‘ammonia’ and the dozens of other silly things a child’s mind could twist and conjure from what was real. Lost.

  Until now.

  Jay stepped from the crosswalk to the curb and went no further. Didn’t turn left toward the subway, didn’t follow Joe Blue Collar who was headed that way as well. Instead he looked at Sign Guy, who was sitting there gazing across the traffic that was moving along Broadway again, looking beyond to the dark concrete canyon that was Wall Street, his hands resting atop the plywood placard tilted against his legs, fingers tapping gently on the painted surface. He didn’t look to Jay at first, didn’t even seem to notice he was there.

  And then notice he did, his head twisting slowly left, chin rising so that the streetlight shadows cut by the brim of his straw hat rose above his smile, above his slender nose, and revealed eyes that were cast at Jay with...surprise.

  “Hey there,” Jay said. His right hand came out of his pocket where it had been fiddling with the change from lunch and gave a small, polite wave.

  Sign Guy’s head tipped slightly to one side, as if the gesture was an oddity. His left hand moved from the sign and came to a point where it hovered for a moment in a loose fist in the space between himself and Jay, then the index and middle fingers straightened upward and spread to form a V. Forty some years ago, back when the Germans were Krauts and the Japanese Japs, it would have meant ‘Victory’, but this symbol that Sign Guy was flashing was born of a more recent time, of a later, very different period of conflict, and it held a somewhat opposite meaning to its earlier brethren. A meaning that Sign Guy gave quiet voice to. “Peace, brother.”

  “Yeah,” Jay said, his hand slipping back into his pocket where it began to sieve the loose change once more, coins clinking softly as his fingers dredged through them. “I like the saying you have today. On your sign.”

  The V folded back to a loose fist that settled on his knee as Sign Guy gave his new fan a slow once-over. Young, reddish-blonde hair, eyes that were lost yet eager, like those of some yearling creature venturing off into the big wide world for the first time. He held a briefcase in his left hand, an imitation leather one, and in the pit of that arm was tucked a folded Wall Street Journal. Thousands like him passed each weekday. Tens of thousands.

  Yet this one, unlike the others, had stopped, of his own accord, and was speaking, of his own accord. And wasn’t that queer. Queer and interesting. “Is that so?”

  “It reminded me of something. Something when I was a kid.”

  Sign Guy nodded at the odd young man who was still talking to him. Who seemed eager to share something with him. How very, very interesting indeed. “Is that so?”

  “I was curious,” Jay began. “I mean, I know what it means to me, but what does what you wrote mean? What did you intend it to mean?”

  “It means what it means.”

  Well, that was cryptic enough. As cryptic as what was written on his sign. But maybe that was part of its meaning, Jay surmised. Of what it spoke to. The ambiguity might be an invitation to see what one wanted to see in the words, if anything. It could mean what anyone wanted it to.

  Or it could mean nothing at all. Just the rantings of a fellow two aces short of a full deck. Harmless enough, though.

  Still, he didn’t seem crazy, Jay thought as he looked at Sign Guy, at his perpetual smile and the simple wonder on his face that he was being talked to. He didn’t have that vacuous glint in his eyes, nor the random haunt to his voice, as if the conversation might suddenly split off toward something of significance only to himself. No, just the opposite seemed the case, in fact. Jay sensed purpose in this man. And contentment. It showed in his expression, and in the economy about his manner, the frugal peace of his words. His smile seemed the comfortable range of expressed emotion. No more, no less. No swings to melancholy or euphoria. He said what needed to be said. Did what needed to be done. For whatever his purpose was.

  In a perfect world, one where money, where position did not matter, Jay could see himself in envy of the calm about this man. This bum.

  But that world did not exist. Never had, never would. Money mattered. Position mattered. This Jay Grady knew. Knew painfully better than most.

  “I work up the street,” Jay offered, and Sign Guy nodded pleasantly.

  “You’re a stock broker.”

  “Right,” Jay said, not correcting the record so that it was clear he was a junior broker, a wet behind the ears gofer (slave) assigned to one of Stanley & Mitchell’s account brokers. He did grunt work, paper work, any work that smacked of shit work because the account brokers had once been juniors themselves, as had the account managers, and the account executives, and at good old Stanley & Mitchell you followed in the footsteps of those before you in order to learn the way. The right way. The Stanley & Mitchell way. “I suppose that’s not a tough guess, considering where we are.”

  “Not tough at all.”

  Jay nodded, and the silence that followed dragged, becoming awkward after a few seconds, and outright discomfiting after a few more. Sign Guy did not look away, but Jay did, his eyes dipping toward the ground and fixing on the coffee can near the bum’s feet. Looking at this he was struck suddenly by the image of a bone-thin black man who had begged a buck off of him his second day in the city, and he remembered being disturbed by the sight of the transient’s arms. They looked like waxy twigs, so fragile that a sharp gust seemed capable of snapping them, yet they were clearly resilient enough to stand God knew how many years’ worth of pokes from this needle or that. Scars stitched up the tender flesh of either forearm like plastic zippers that allowed life to leak away. That mélange of sickening sights had churned in Jay’s gut as he walked away from the transient less one buck, his appetite, and certain illusions of the down and out.

  That encounter had stuck in his mind for some reason, and now it pricked at him like an old fracture that spat pain when irritated.

  “What do you do with the money?” Jay asked as he stared at the coffee can. The streetlight’s wh
ite glow penetrated the opaque plastic of the slitted lid, and he could make out the faded green folds of money inside. A decent little mound of it, though he could not discern any denominations. Probably ones, he figured. It was what he had given the addict his second day in the city, and what most people likely gave panhandlers. Except the rare individual who might slip the downtrodden a five, maybe to soothe a guilt or two. “Do you—”

  “I deposit it,” Sign Guy answered, his smile never breaking. If he did take any offense at the amputated inquiry, it showed not one bit.

  “You deposit it,” Jay parroted. It was one answer he had not expected—a bum with a bank account?

  “Of course.”

  It was laughable, but Jay wasn’t about to laugh, because he could remember few people who’d sounded as serious about anything as Sign Guy sounded about this.

  “Good for you, buddy,” Jay said, and again the quiet lingered. He eyed the coffee can once more. Purposefully now, though. In his pocket the hand that had been fiddling with the change now scooped it all together and fisted around it. A buck fifty, maybe, that was all. He had no paper in his wallet. None at all. Not a five, not a one. Lunch had tapped him out, and he wouldn’t be stopping by the ATM until morning. He had credit cards—too many, of course—but he doubted that Sign Guy was set up to take plastic. Wouldn’t that be a hoot if he was.

  So the change it was, and Jay’s hand came out of his pocket. He smiled at Sign Guy, but said nothing, thinking that to speak of charity might clutter the moment with unnecessary discomfort—for both of them. And why do that? The gesture was simple enough. Something had been innocently given him, a short reminiscence of childhood naïveté, and now he was going to give something in return. To that end he stepped one pace closer, and that was when the bum said something that came from somewhere left of left field.