Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,38

one reach a tiny hand into his ghost flesh and twizzle its fingers around. Dro screams in agony, but I can barely hear it beneath the ngk shrieks. And then he’s quiet. Because he’s gone. The ngks finish whatever sick cleanup ritual they have and then turn their hungry eyes to me.

And I’m gone. I don’t know if I’ve ever moved so fast in my entire short, weird half-life. The stairs are a blur beneath my uneven legs. The door slams behind me. I’m through the hallway out onto the street, Riley a quivering pressure against my back. I’m surprised I didn’t go straight through the glass windowpane on the way out. I keep going, tearing around the corner in an oblivious frenzy, up the block, ’round another corner, and then straight on into the night.

I pause at Eastern Parkway, where cars are still bustling back and forth. It’s a comfortingly large thruway. There’s trees, big apartment buildings. A little up the way, I can see the Brooklyn Museum, brightly lit on this cold, cold night. I collapse on one of the benches lining the shadowy jogging path beside the service road. Every breath reignites the fire into my chest. Riley lies flickering beside me: still there but only barely. He doesn’t have much left in him.

There’s only one place I know where he’ll be sure to heal, and unfortunately, it’s back in the direction I came from. I exhale a frosty curse into the winter night, hoist Riley on my shoulder, and slump back down Franklin Avenue toward Mama Esther’s.

PART TWO

At the crossroads

where her spirit shocks

she comes sweeping

through the night,

spirits and hounds

baying behind her.

her wings keep me warm.

three jackals

watch with me.

I am the gate

demons and vanquished gods invade

then pass into this world to get to you.

—Gloria Anzaldúa

“Canción de la diosa de la noche”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

After the sounds of the city night faded to ambience, the predawn creaks and cracks of this old house kept me company. Some plaster would crackle above me and to the left; then a few dozen seconds would slip by and a clack would sound out across the room. I used to trace imaginary lines between each tiny beat, draw constellations in my head from pop to clank. Then an old engine somewhere would sigh to life, fans spinning, belts whirring past. Its entrance was always a grand pronouncement, but in a few minutes it would blend with the scattered night orchestra.

The best, though, my all-time favorite, was when someone in the adjacent building would take a shower. The piping was connected to Mama Esther’s, so as soon as they turned on the faucet, you’d hear the torrent of water race up one wall, across the ceiling, down another side, and then rush off toward the neighbor’s. You could imagine the water joyously swooping across the building, up and down pipes and finally exploding out of someone’s silver faucet. I thought about how the building was very like a living thing, how a whole system of ticks and tocks and whirring sounds and circulating fluids kept it all in working order, flushed out the garbage, spread life through the pipes. The clicks and clacks and murmuring rush of water became a song, a call-and-response with my own slow-beating heart and the fluid rushing through my pipes, and the song was about life.

But now I’m too worried about Riley to fuck around with found-sound symphonies. Mama Esther plays her part, the old ghost, carrying on and dithering over Riley’s depleting shadow. I play mine too, waving off her concern for me, slumping glumly in the corner while she works on him. I gaze on with dazed interest as those huge, see-through hands slide over my partner, working that ancient magic, pulsing life back into him.

And Dro. Dro is gone. I can’t linger in that emptiness too long or it will swallow me.

At some point in the night, Mama Esther rouses me from a half-assed nap to send me on my way. “There’s nothing else that you can do for him, Carlos. You already saved his life.” A flicker of doubt in her old eyes: provided he lives . . .

And it’s true. After she leaves, I just stand here in this room that I know so well and try to chart the odd progress of my life up till this point. It’s mostly been a series of encounters with the dead, a few wild drunken nights, and many long walks across Brooklyn. And now the man who