“Yeah.”
“Being of our race you must be aware of the end of slavery in the United States. And so you must understand why I elect to leave these premises under my own power.”
Cornelius had never been more proud of his father. He knew how hard it was for him just to stand after being in bed for so long and with a new hip aching in its joint. But Herman was eloquent and dignified.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jones, but I will have to wait for the doctor’s release form.”
“Excuse me,” a voice said then.
All three heads turned to see a caramel-colored woman who had approached unnoticed.
Only Cornelius recognized Colette Margolis.
“Yes?” Nurse Boughman said.
“I’m a family friend,” Colette said, flipping open her wallet to reveal the shiny detective’s badge. “I’ve come to help Mr. Jones home.”
“I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait for the doctor,” the nurse repeated.
“No I don’t,” Colette asserted. “We’re leaving now. If you try to physically hinder me I am authorized to use force.”
“Even if you do not remember slavery I wager you understand that,” Herman said.
They took the elevator down and walked out to the street. There Colette’s lime green Honda was waiting for them. They helped Herman into the front seat.
9
“Who was that woman?” Herman asked Cornelius once he was back in his own bed.
“Just a friend.”
Cornelius had walked Colette to the door, where she kissed him then looked into his eyes as if maybe he was someone new.
“Where did you meet her?”
“Um,” the boy mumbled, “at the Arbuckle.”
“Is she one of the detectives investigating the disappearance of Chapman Lorraine? They suspect he’s been murdered.”
“How did you know about that?”
“France told me. About a month ago the police called him down to their offices. They told him that the last thing Chapman intended to do before his disappearance was come to the Arbuckle. He was such an awful human being, but still no man deserves to be plucked from his life.”
“Yeah,” Cornelius said heavily, feeling his father’s indictment. “I’m sorry France told you about it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
“Worry? Me? You can tell me anything, boy. I am your father not your ward. But answer my question, why would the police help me?”
“The detective questioned me too. She figured out about you and when I told her about your, um, predicament, she just offered to help.”
“That was very kind,” Herman said, looking his son in the eye.
“Dad?”
“Yes, son?”
“You seem... I mean for the past few months, before you fell, you were forgetting things.”
“That is true, Cornelius. Ideas had begun to fade. It was hard for me to focus. At first I thought it was our long talks that brought me back to awareness. But there must have been some medicine or nutrient they gave me that rejuvenated my mind.” Upon saying this Herman went into a fit of coughing. It was a rolling, raspy, wet cough that went on and on.
“How are you feeling, dad?” Cornelius asked when his father lay back panting from the effort.
“Not too well. My hip aches and it makes me sweat just to lay here. But I have my mind.”
Cornelius pulled up a chair and touched his father’s hand.
“There is no hiding from it,” the elder Jones said. “You saved me from indignity but the grim reaper will not be denied.”
Herman’s lower eyelids sagged open as if some preternatural gravity was dragging him down.
“Do you want me to read to you, dad?”
“No. You have taken care of me all these years when it was my job to look out for you. You read to me and prepared thousands of dinners. I have failed you.”
“But, dad, you showed me Hannibal and the empire of Kush, the Shang Dynasty and the Inquisition. You taught me how to think.”
Herman Jones smiled at his son.
“Your mother and I failed you but you never disappointed us,” he said. “You have been a good son.”
“I love you, dad. I want you to live.”
“I have to sleep for a while, Cornelius. When I wake up I will do something for you.”
He closed his eyes and was immediately asleep.
Cornelius sat there looking at Herman’s hands. They were old, intelligent hands that reminded the boy of a da Vinci drawing he had once seen in a book. The phone rang many times over the night. It went unanswered.
The night was cold. The steam heat for the building wasn’t yet turned on. The lights were out except for one bulb in the kitchen, two rooms away. This faint radiance filtered through the darkness of CC’s mind. It was like a far-off hope. He couldn’t tell then if it was fading away or beckoning a new day.
Just after eleven CC realized he hadn’t gone to work that night. Maybe the phone calls had been from France Bickman.
Around one a.m. he accepted that his father would soon die and that Lucia Napoli was gone for good; these thoughts made him shiver so he climbed under the covers with his father.
When he opened his eyes the room was filled with light. His head was nestled against his father’s side. Herman was looking down on him. Cornelius held his breath so as not to break the spell.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Herman said.
Cornelius was a child again with parents who showered love on him every morning.
“Hi, dad. I’m sorry about getting in your bed but it was cold and I didn’t want to leave you alone.”
“I was not going to die last night,” Herman Jones said. “I have a promise to keep.”
“What is it?”
“Not really one thing but three. Some knowledge, some advice and then another thing.”
“Can I go to the bathroom before you explain?”
“You may.”
He remembered that one urination the rest of his years: bare feet on the cracked tiles, corroded copper pipes poking out through the plaster behind the tank, the exultation of release, and the memory of physical closeness with his father. There was salsa music playing somewhere and the sharp smell of tomatoes cooking. A huge fly buzzed in between the screen and the window and there was a rumble in the ground, far away. The J train Cornelius thought and he laughed to himself, I’ve been too busy to notice it. When he got back to the bedroom Herman was wearing his reading glasses, turning the pages of a book.
“Hello, son,” he said in a full, strong voice. “Come sit and talk.”
Cornelius pulled up a chair.
“I promised I would do something and I mean to accomplish that end.”
“What’s that, dad?”
“First I will explain the remaining three pillars of historical inquiry, then I shall give you some personal advice, and sometime later, after I pass on, I will help you along on your journey.”
Cornelius was a child again.
“The pillars,” Herman explained, “are quite simple. The first, as I told you some time ago, is sex. We need not spend any more time on that subject. The next two mainstays are inextricably intertwined. These are technology and economics, both entities secretly conspiring to inform the relations of humans to their world. Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul speak to the phenomenon of technology and its bastard son — technique. Marx is as good an example as any of how economics rears its head in every room in the house of man...”
A decade later the boy could recite this lecture word for word.
“... The fourth pillar is the simplest and by far the most important. You need not understand sex, money or machines to know history but you must comprehend the shopping list.”