21

Outside the airport in Memphis it was evening, and the air was sweet and warm and smelled faintly of perfume, or whatever it was perfume was made from: the lust of flowers, the promise that you’ve known a certain place forever and will know it forevermore. It gave him the sensation of having entered into some aboriginal scene, the stage on which, not just his origins were played, but the beginnings of the very world: so cheerful, so corrupt, all sex, and sung out loud.

There was a line of taxis waiting outside, and he hailed the first. It was painted green and grey, and there was an advertisement for a computer company on the door. I need a hotel room, he said to the driver.

Anywhere in particular?

Frank thought for a moment. You know where the main library is? I’ve been pushing a hack for thirty-three years, said the cabbie. I know where everything is.

All right. Take me to a hotel within walking distance of the library. That’ll do me.

A few minutes passed while they wheeled down Lamar Avenue: signs with pictures of Elvis Presley, neat little malls made of chain stores and car parts stores, old houses on new roads, and green growing everywhere. You need anything else with that room? said the cabbie.

What did you have in mind? said Frank, just to hear the list of available vices.

The cabbie shrugged. Maybe some company, he said. Maybe some medicine. Maybe some entertainment of some kind. Whatever you’re maybe thinking about, I don’t know.

No thanks, said Frank. I’m just thinking about getting a good eight hours’ sleep.

There was another period of silence and Frank went back to watching out the window as the city turned by. Was it the capital, Memphis? Probably. Or was Nashville, or—what were the other cities—Chattanooga, that was in Tennessee, right? And the other one, that sounded like Nashville. . . . Knoxville. Memphis was for Egypt, Chattanooga must be an Indian name. He wondered who Mr. Nash and Mr. Knox had been, and what they had thought of each other. Were they rivals in the city-fathers racket, or was one a disciple of the other? And what about their wives, their children? Sir, I am Josiah Nash. —As in, the gnashing of one’s teeth? —(Drawing himself up to his full height) Sir, as in Nashville. What brings you to town, then? said the cabbie.

You’ve been doing this thirty years?

That’s right. Thirty-three. Yes.

Do you remember, back then, probably just when you were starting, a story in the papers? Man named Selby did something to his wife. —He didn’t like to speak the name out loud; it felt minatory and blue, as if it naturally went with his next line. Killed her, I think. I’m pretty sure. Anyway, she was dead, and he was put in prison.

When was this?

Back when I was a boy.

The driver tipped his head up and looked in the rearview mirror, studying Frank’s face for a moment. Hey, he said. I’ve seen you. You’re that man in the pictures. I used to see you in magazines too. Frank thought for a moment about slipping on the disguise which was no disguise; mere denial, he’d used it before—smiling: No, that’s not me, I get that a lot—and often enough it had worked. There were many faces in this world, and it had been a while since he’d made a movie. Instead he nodded.

Are you down here for a movie? said the cabbie.

Something like that, Frank said. Do you remember the case I’m talking about?

Don’t know for sure, the cabbie said. In those days, that sort of thing happened often enough. What was it? Wanted her money? Caught her in bed with another man? Couldn’t take her nagging anymore? —He paused for a second and glanced at Frank again.

That’s what I’m trying to figure out, said Frank.

And on the cabbie clacked and guffed: Well, Memphis was a sore town, Memphis was a foundry, where the fires of history once made a sound so new it stole the century. That was once upon a time; they had covered all that over, as if it was something they were ashamed of. Mud Island, that used to be nothing but a swampy mound in the middle of the river, mosquitoes there as big as a man’s fist. Now it’s all cleaned up, parks and promenades. Memphis has come a long way in the past two or three decades. Is it better? Better for me, the cabbie said. I guess. Families come into town now, vacation, bring the kids, nothing to worry about. It’s like an amusement park—what do you call it?—a theme park. They don’t put murders on the front page anymore. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, just no one wants to hear about it. You know what I mean?

Frank nodded silently, and the cabbie glanced at him in the mirror again. I’ll keep quiet now, if you don’t mind, said the cabbie. I won’t say another word. No, sir. —And truly he didn’t speak again, until they reached a cinder-block hotel on a strip of superstores, fast-food restaurants, a mattress shop, a sporting goods store, then a dry cleaners, then a car lot, and the city going by on the road beside. The cabbie pulled into the driveway of a concrete monstrosity. This isn’t so nice, he said as he pulled to a stop, staring up through the windshield at the hotel as if he expected it to step off monsterlike down the road. We’ve got much better downtown.

We near the library? said Frank.

It’s right down there, said the cabbie, pointing toward the setting sun.

Then this is fine, thanks, said Frank, and he settled on the meter and tipped too much.

Inside, he gave over his credit card and signed his name, and the plump woman behind the desk hardly glanced at him. The place was much bigger than it looked from the outside, and he got lost trying to find his way through the corridors to his room; the numbers, too, seemed all out of order, 2212 following right on 2207, as if there were some sickly motel algorithm at work, the calculus of middle management on a bad day. 2219 was beyond that, and then the numbers started going down again, until at last he reached his own room, 2205, waiting for him at the very end of the hall. Inside it was so cold he could see his breath; he crossed the room and turned the air-conditioner off, then collapsed backward in a perfect arc onto his bed. There was nothing but news on the television, nor anything to look at in the room. He went to the window and pulled the curtains back: traffic hushing by on the boulevard, and on the far side there were railroad tracks, an endless train passing, beating on the evening air with a familiar segmented sound, like that of rhythmically dropped ladders. Men getting home at night. The idea of it made him sad and a little bit frightened—the picture of the front door of some modest house, the dirty yellow light in the hall, the wife looking worn, hardly a woman at all, and no words spoken. In time he went back to his bed and went to sleep, where he dreamed of Kimmie coming on to him in tears, her little thighs shiny, as young as she was and as out of her mind.

The next morning everything was new again; out the window the city was young, the plastic signs clean and bright, the world was working. It stung in knots, to think that his prehistory, as little as he knew of it, was someone else’s bright, banal present. He found the library listed in the blue pages of the phone book in his room, and called for a cab as soon as he’d finished his morning coffee. The day was overcast but it was warm, and by the time he reached the place his collar was damp and sticking to the back of his neck. He had expected the building to be some venerable mausoleum, a relic of upward strivings; instead, it was a deceptively small structure made of poured concrete, with posters taped to the glass beside the front door, announcing Book Week, lectures on local history, a short course on how to fix cars. There was a wire-haired terrier chained to the bicycle rack outside; he bounded to the end of his leash and snapped at Frank as he passed, missing by a yard and settling, instead, for a wet growl.

He found a shelf of dark-blue bound editions of the Commercial Appeal, took a carrel, and began turning through newspaper articles, starting from 1963 and making his way back; back to the old days, when they were just the days. Stories, stories; he was taken by the fact that so many things had happened, and had seemed new when they first occurred. Business, government, arts, sports, sciences made of glass, recipes, advice; and then so many killings; there were murders by the mile, once upon a time in Memphis; so many names, so many deaths, the police reporters and obituary writers chattering endlessly in flecks of ink, gibbering as if that made it better: a car crash, a bar fight, the Battle of Blueberry Hill.

STATE OFFICIAL SLAYS WIFE

Governor’s Aide in Passion Murder Probe
District Attorney Prepares Indictment

He scanned the page and collided right into his name, or the name he had come with: Selby’s six-year-old son Frank, who was at the home of the family housekeeper with his two-year-old sister Gail at the time of the killing. What? There was his father’s name, Walter, and his mother’s, Nicole, and there was an account of her end. —Shot, he flinched at the word. Was it possible? He read the whole thing again, but it was stranger the second time. Frank, Gail, Walter, Nicole. Shot. So it came to that: a pinch of gunpowder: she was shot, that was what happened. —And there was a photograph, not of his father or mother but of a riverbank, and beside it another of a nice brick house on a shady street, house empty, street empty, history blank.

He read the story again and again, and as the shock passed a peculiar feeling began to develop, neither fascination nor sorrow, but something that made him feel a little bit sick: the familiar humiliation of fame. Grotesque, he thought, that anyone should have ever peered upon his life and the life of his parents that way, made them into grubworms, blanched and soft and vulnerable to the careless tread of strangers. These things so easy to see. For a moment he thought about sabotaging the oversized book before him, if he could figure out how, and he looked around him to see if anyone was watching—there was no one—but such a gesture would be futile; there were other books, other libraries, microfilms, and diaries, memories, stories, stones: no way to make the past be past. He exhaled, and then slowly, reluctantly, he left the revelatory page and began to move forward again. There was no account of the trial, only the sentence of ninety-nine years. He went back before the event: a month, two months, three, four years; the governor was in the paper almost every day, Walter Selby about once every two weeks. A spokesman reported . . . optimistic . . . budget. Never a mention of his mother, and he felt a certain insult on her behalf. This politics, it was already forgotten; tell the story of the Ship of Love. Tell what shore it had wrecked itself against. He began to wonder if there really was an era that all these reporters were talking about, or if it wasn’t simply a myth, to explain and then obscure the mystery of his own origins. A young Korean woman slipped behind him, leaving a scent of crushed walnuts. What else was there? In a story about the governor’s triumphant reelection he found a reference to his father’s war record, but when he searched farther back in the newspaper, the volumes covering the months just after the War ended were missing.

Time was too much. To be these containers: it was too much. He thought about Helen and wondered if he’d ever wanted to kill her. It hadn’t been a graceful parting, though it hadn’t been too ugly either; there had just been mean days, every one breeding misunderstanding, disappointment, a resentment more chafing for the fact that they’d had to hide them from Amy: days as bitter as captivity. Maybe he’d thought of killing her, then, and had since forgotten. Maybe he should have done it, if only to prove how much he had once wanted her alive. To be the passionate son of a passionate man. No? An executioner. No? He was an heir to something more sorrowful than that.

There were no photographs in the papers of his father or his mother; names were cheap, back then, and stories hardly more expensive, but pictures were rare and not wasted on those who weren’t famous already. But there was this, in an article describing a dress ball at the governor’s mansion, on the occasion of his reelection to a third term:

Among the guests were Mr. Walter Selby, one of the Governor’s closest advisers, and his wife, Nicole; and Mr. Tom Healy, of the Army Corps of Engineers, who is overseeing construction on the Euchee Dam, and his wife, Janet. “It’s a lovely evening,” said Mrs. Healy. “It’s so gratifying to be here with our friends, celebrating the continuation of a great period in this state’s history.”

That was a start; he shut the volume and went to the main desk. Excuse me, he said to the librarian, a thin, elderly black man in a pale-green polo shirt. Suppose I were looking for someone who lived here a long time ago. . . .

The librarian looked up blinking, and thought for a bit. At length he said, Oh, O.K. I can help you with that. He thought some more, and when he spoke again he seemed to be talking to himself. Time was, he said, people came into a library to read—I don’t know—novels, books of poetry. To look at plates in art books they couldn’t afford. They came with their children; it was a luxury, don’t you know. Leisure. Lagniappe. Now all anyone wants is information. Doesn’t it seem that way to you?

I suppose so, said Frank. I’m looking for someone who once knew my parents.

That right?

It is.

Well, I’m sure we can help you, said the librarian. If they’re here, if they’re anywhere in the country, if they’re still alive, we can find them. Yes.