GEORGE W. BUSH WAS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IN 2003, WHEN LEVIN AND Carl and Terrance set out for Liberia, and he was still president of the United States when Levin returned home alone.
Bush stayed president. Then there was an election that Levin barely noticed, because he submerged himself in work.
Levin didn’t do anything to get home. It just happened. MODEL found a dazed white man digging in the rubble. He was digging with his fingertips, desperate to get the crushed cinderblock wall off Carl and Terrance, as the light was just starting to show over the eastern hills, digging frantically until the skin came off his fingertips and his hands were covered with his own blood.
Levin couldn’t remember what language they spoke, thinking back on it, when they told him to stand and put his hands on his head, or at least that’s what he remembered them saying, later. First put your hands over your head. At least they didn’t shoot him on sight. Perhaps it was better. Perhaps they spoke Kreyol, and he understood them because he had learned some Kreyol by living for three weeks with Terrance, but perhaps they spoke English. They would have asked him for papers and looked for a dog tag. Someone hit him about the head when he didn’t respond. He was just at the beginning of his submerging, the long period in which he wasn’t able to respond to that or too much else, the period of living in a mist, in the shadow of a life.
They took him to Buchanan first. He must have said something in American English. They must have recognized from that and from his name that he was an American citizen.
In Buchanan there were State Department types and military who didn’t believe him at first. The whole story was just too incredible, just too incredibly naive and stupid to be true. But then a guy talked to another guy who talked to another guy, and someone turned up the marines they had met that night at the hotel restaurant in Monrovia, who told them, yes, there were a couple of dimwits who tried driving through Monrovia in the days just after Taylor blew town, and we told them they were going to get themselves killed, and we told them they were proceeding at their own risk. There were some raised voices on the phone, something about you can’t just let Americans wander about a war zone on their own without passing it up the chain and something else about letters to go in someone’s file. It didn’t matter. They had come and gone on their own. Now Carl and Terrance were dead. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but their own. They still didn’t have Julia back yet.
The embassy people looked him up on the internet. They called the hospital and Judy, who had not reported him missing, according to the precise instructions he had given her the night they left, and who confirmed that yes, Dr. William Levin was who he said he was. But they kept going around and around, because they couldn’t believe it was just as he said it was—three unarmed men in a used Toyota RAV on their own in Liberia in the middle of a war.
But despite their going round and round, that’s all there was. Nothing about his travel history raised any red flags other than Nicaragua in the 1980s, but that was old news, and no one took Nicaragua seriously anymore, not even the good old CIA.
Yes, there was the Cuba trip in the late ’60s, and they knew all about that, but even that didn’t really excite them. The Russians weren’t players in 2003. The international Marxist conspiracy had proven to be nothing more than a false start, nothing anyone had to take seriously anymore, communism having come apart fifteen years before. Al-Qaeda was where the action was in 2003. Not world socialist revolution.
So they bundled him up and sent him home. They flew him through Accra. They put him up at a cheap airport hotel, and then charged his credit card for the flight home through London. Judy met him at the airport.
And then Levin disappeared.
He didn’t disappear by running away. He didn’t drop out of sight or move to the mountains of Mexico to live with the rebels in Chiapas. He didn’t try to go to Syria or Jordan to work with the Iraqi refugees. No, Levin disappeared by going back to work every day. He showed up for his shift whenever he was on the schedule. He volunteered for double shifts. He worked holidays. He went back to teaching the same classes he had always taught. He even went back to going to meetings of the same organizations that had failed to achieve anything in forty years, meetings he knew were pointless, that he had always known were pointless but could never admit that to himself.
But his hope and his energy were gone. He walked through his life like a zombie, like a man who had already died but hadn’t been told that it was time to lie down in his grave. Levin even went back to running, or at least his body did. Same house. Same car. Same wife. Same job. Nothing but a ghost in the machine. He disappeared back into the life into which he had submerged himself in the first place. In Liberia, he had a brief moment of real life when he drove though the streets of Monrovia with those two crazy-crazy motherfuckers while Liberia was trembling with war. Now he was alone. The Levin who had lived for one brief instant was gone.
George W. Bush was still president of the United States of America.
When the first e-mail came from Julia, Levin got stirred up for a few days, but when weeks went by and he didn’t hear anything else, he submerged again. The same thing happened when the second e-mail came. The third e-mail barely roused him. He was in a permanent vegetative state. There was no evidence of cognition, of brain function, of feeling. I should go back to Liberia, he thought, and try to find Julia on my own. But Julia doesn’t want to be found. So just let me go back into my little spider hole. I’m an old guy, Levin thought, full of stupid impossible ideas. Time to give it a rest.
But then the e-mail came about Carl’s sister. A sister. Carl had a sister. In Lincoln, Rhode Island, maybe six miles away. How could he not have known, not have remembered? All that time he had been thinking only about himself. How could have he failed to think about Carl’s family?
He had called Yvonne, of course, the moment he landed. She was the first person he saw after Judy. The drive to Yvonne’s house in Pawtucket was one of the hardest things he ever had to do. But he did it right away, because he felt that he was responsible, and he needed to own up He had told people about losing a loved one a hundred times. Telling Yvonne was different. This was family. Who knew? Family is funny, Levin thought. It chooses you. It’s not a genealogical chart. It’s an emotional landscape.
Carl had a sister.
Levin went for a run.
Levin changed his route after he came home. He didn’t want to run in the cemetery anymore. Couldn’t. Just couldn’t. Only the living now. Too many dead.
It was March again. It had been March after the Station fire when Terrance broke into Levin’s car, when he had chased Terrance down Chestnut Street, yelling, “Car thief! Car thief!” at the top of his lungs. The light was back in the early mornings and late afternoons—clean, strong, beautiful light. The snow had melted from the sidewalks and streets, but the pavement was still wet and ice-encrusted in the mornings, and you could still see your breath if you ran early.
Now Levin ran in neighborhoods and in mill villages, among the bars and the bodegas and the fast-food joints so he could be with people and always see signs of life. He ran in Pawtucket, in Fairlawn and in Woodlawn, and to North Providence. He ran in Central Falls, where the triple-deckers were packed like cards, and there weren’t any lawns, let alone trees, but there was still life everywhere—strange little businesses, little upholstery shops, auto glass shops, barbershops and hairdressers. Levin remembered when Central Falls had the most bars per square mile of any place in the U.S. Now it had the most culture of any place in the U.S. Columbians, Guatemalans, Liberians, Syrians, Poles, Irish, Ukrainians, English, and Swedish, all living together in this tiny little place without trees.
Some days Levin ran down Smith Street, past the General Assembly—the great marble monument to the people’s voice sitting there on Smith Hill, corrupt and manipulated, a lonely place, crying out for the people’s attention. Then he’d run through Capitol Hill to LaSalle and Rhode Island College, the streets leafy in the spring and summer, the houses well-kept and unpretentious, and the bakeries so inviting. Some days he ran to Olneyville, which was all Spanish-speaking now, past an old lumberyard where he could smell the sawdust of fresh cut boards of oak, pine, and cherry.
He avoided South Providence. When he ran there, he didn’t see streets or people. All he saw was Carl that day in July, chasing Terrance in the red RAV4, racing down Broad or nosing through the backstreets, and Terrance when they trapped him near the port, in the chop shop with that big, smug Liberian guy.
A sister. In Lincoln. It was Lincoln. Why had he repressed that memory?
Levin ran south on Pawtucket Avenue. His knees were stiff. They weren’t going to hold for fifteen miles today. He’d be lucky to get six. Down Pawtucket Avenue. Past the drug rehab place, the chain drug store, the auto parts stores, and the tire stores. Past the hip-hop joint and the tropical fish store. The Old North Burial Ground was across the street, but he didn’t cross, and all you could really see from the street were the greenhouses where they raised lilies to put on the graves at Easter. Levin’s knees were starting to hurt now, but he didn’t slacken his pace. Let’s see how much these old knees can take, he thought. Past the map store and the shopping plaza. Down the hill. Along a mossy drainage ditch. Past the Roger Williams Memorial. Old Rog, old rebellious spirit, never comfortable with any one religion or anybody’s rules, who gives a little antiestablishment juice to this stuffy old town. Over to Burnside Park and around the statue of the general sitting on his horse. Good old Ambrose Burnside. General who almost lost the Civil War. Governor. First president of the NRA, the organization that taught America the freedom to sell counts more than peace, security, and the lives of kids, the organization that made a fool out of democracy. Lots of ghosts in this little town.
Levin’s knees hurt now. He needed to take a break. He walked to City Hall, slowly, letting his knees recover, just quickly enough to prevent the muscles of his calves from spasming up.
And then he headed home. My knees are better, he thought. I ain’t dead yet.
He walked up College Hill and started jogging. I’ll run home on Blackstone Boulevard. I can run on grass instead of pavement and be a little nice to my knees.
But there was still snow on the running path of the Boulevard.
The morning was still clear and bright. There was now steam rising from the black pavement where the sun fell on it. The other side of the street was in the sun. He was running in the shade. He crossed over.
A woman in a fur coat driving a big yellow convertible with the top down passed him from a side street and turned left onto the Boulevard.
In the back of the convertible was a big brown dog with its head over the side of the car. The dog let its tongue hang down with evident pleasure.
When the car slowed to let a pedestrian cross, the dog hopped out of the car, trailing a long lead rope that was tied to a door handle.
Then car started moving again. The dog began to run to keep up. The dog ran on the sidewalk, behind the car and keeping pace with it, the long lead jostling and waving as the dog ran.
Levin shouted to let the driver know that the dog was out of the car.
Then the car gathered speed. Levin shouted again. The driver hadn’t noticed that the dog was out of the car.
The car accelerated. The dog ran behind the car on the sidewalk, the driver unaware that her dog was running next to and behind her.
Levin shouted one more time.
Ahead of the car, a plainly dressed woman walked on the sidewalk. Many domestic workers—all immigrants—walked from the bus stop on Wayland Square to work on the East Side.
The woman walking on the sidewalk was of average height. She was simply dressed and was walking away from Levin and from the car. That was all Levin could see. She didn’t turn when Levin shouted.
The car drove along the street. The dog ran on the sidewalk. The woman walked on the sidewalk between the dog and the car. The rope which tied the dog to the car came up very fast behind the woman who was walking. There was slack in the rope but not much.
He shouted again. No one heard.
The rope hit the back of the woman’s legs. It went taut and threw the woman into the air. She fell backward onto her head.
The rope broke. The dog ran free. The yellow convertible drove away.
By the time Levin got to her, the pupils of the woman in the simple coat were fixed and dilated. Her eye’s looked like a doll’s eyes, the pupils huge and not reacting to light. They looked straight ahead. They kept looking straight ahead when Levin moved the woman’s head. There was a trickle of blood and clear fluid coming from the woman’s nose. She had a pulse and was still breathing on her own, but Levin knew the score right away. Fixed and dilated is fixed and dilated. Brain dead. Brain dead in fifteen seconds. The woman in the simple coat went from walking to work on the public street to functionally dead in an instant. No warning. She never knew what hit her, or even that she had been hit. Perhaps she felt something tug at her knee and felt herself falling and that was it. Lights out. No one home. Done deal. Dead and gone.
Levin called 911 on his cell, his hands shaking. She had a pulse and she was breathing. No need for CPR. There was nothing for Levin to do but be there on his knees next to this woman and wait for Rescue to arrive.
He raised her eyelids. Her pupils were big and round, but there was a rim of faint green around the pupils. She had green eyes, like Sophia Lauren. She wasn’t beautiful. Her features were plain like the way she was dressed, in a domestic’s uniform, and her skin was tired out, thick, and grainy. She was in her forties. Maybe fifties. She was dressed in a white frock because she was on her way to spend the day in the house of a rich woman, slowly cleaning it, moving from room to room. One moment she was a living human being, and the next moment she was brain dead. All Levin could do was to be with her, to kneel on one knee at the side of her head as she was dying, so she didn’t have to die alone. To put his hand on her cheek and forehead. To wipe the blood and trickle of clear fluid from her nose with a tissue.
They sent two police cars, two Rescues, and a fire truck. Levin identified himself and told them to scoop and run. Just get her into the ED, he said. There’s nothing to be gained by treating her in the field. He thought of going in with her, but there was no point to it. The game was over. He called the Emergency Department and let the attending on call know the scoop.
Then he went to the police station to give a statement. It was a simple statement, just one and a half pages. He wrote it out himself and made a very nice diagram, describing what had happened and how it happened. He thought he remembered two letters off the license plate, and that it was a yellow Cadillac, but it could have been a yellow something else. Levin didn’t know the names of cars. Maybe it was some kind of Chrysler or a Chevy Impala.
And that was that. All over in an instant, though the paperwork took hours. He’d never know if the woman in the car ever found her dog, or whether she would understand that, in her own way, she had contributed to death of another human being. Or not. Maybe it was just bad luck.
It was 3:00 in the afternoon by the time Levin got home. He was working an overnight shift so he needed to lie down for a little while. But he couldn’t sleep.
A sister. Carl had a sister. Carl said something that first day, something about driving home to get his things from his sister’s house. Something about Lincoln or Cumberland.
The internet, Levin told himself. If she’s out there, I’ll find her. We’ll find her together.
Carl had a sister. You live with others, but you always die alone.
He called Yvonne. Maybe she’d come with him. He wanted someone with him when he went to see Carl’s sister. You die alone, but you don’t have to live alone.