“And me? What am I missing?”
“You? That’s easy. You always lookin’ for that perfect spin. You know, like when someone skim rocks on the water and wanna make that flat stone jump really far and then bounce ten or twelve times — that’s what you always been after. Like when you would only say a few words instead of a whole sentence. You did that, on and off, for six months. It was like you was lookin’ for the one word that would say everything. And because you don’t have that one answer it’s like you don’t have anything.”
“And you, Eddie?” Sovereign asked. “You don’t seem to be missing a thing.”
“I’m the worst one, Sovy — the worst. I don’t have an anchor, man. I was born so free that I could leave my family behind on a whim. I robbed that bank with those two fools and thirty-six hours later I was laid up with a mamacita learnin’ Spanish and drinkin’ mescal. I left my whole country behind and didn’t even give it a second thought.
“No, Sovy, you, me, and Z been on that Yellow Brick Road for our whole lives — singin’ and dancin’ and worried ’bout that Wicked Witch.”
“But you and Z got families, man. You got kids.”
“You somebody’s kid, JJ. You got a brother and sister and a mother that you don’t never see.”
Sovereign looked out the front window, past the elderly chauffeur. He wondered if maybe all that had gone wrong in his life wasn’t his fault — not exactly. He wondered if the decisions he’d made were just extensions of paths laid out well before he was born. Maybe there was some gene from the father of his father, the man whom no one knew. Maybe it was the death of his grandmother delivering Solar to an impotent father.
But all of that had changed with his blindness. The loss of sight had erased the world and now what he saw was not the same. Blindness had reclaimed his family, as much as possible. Blindness had brought love and passion into his life.
“You grinnin’, Jimmy J,” Drum-Eddie said.
“I guess even the psyche has an immune system,” Sovereign replied.
They drove for hours, finally reaching the airport at Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Sovereign paid for their tickets with a debit card and they went to the gate to wait for the plane to LaGuardia.
Somewhere in the middle of the drive the brothers went silent. They sat next to each other, enjoying a physical closeness they hadn’t known since their teens. At the airport they maintained this fraternal quiet.
Eddie found a Spanish-language newspaper on an empty chair and Sovereign perused the folder that Zenith had given him. Thomas Thomas was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Berliner whom Zenith had met at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The boys, Gerhard and Zeus, were a year apart and as different from each other as two brothers could be — at least physically. One was tall and copper colored while the other, Zeus, was short, the hue of French roast coffee. There were eighty-one photos of the boys, separate and together, mostly laughing, in places all over the world. Often their father was standing with them, looking proud in some distant way.
There was only one photograph of Zenith. In it she was sitting with Zeus on her lap. The boy was maybe eight and quite drowsy. Zenith was looking off into space — distracted, tired. You got the feeling that if she saw the camera she would have turned away or stopped the picture from being taken.
Sovereign wondered why she included this snapshot in the collection. Then he realized that the sheet with the picture of Zenith had five photos affixed to it — all the other sheets had four. He wondered if Tom Tom, or maybe one of the boys, had secretly inserted this picture to give Sovereign a glimpse of his sister’s life.
The more he thought about the uniquely placed photo, the more it seemed as if his suspicion was right. It was Zenith’s intention to show her life without exposing herself, but the flesh and blood behind the images betrayed her, showing her life for what it was — the product of a melancholy kind of love.
Feeling satisfied with his prognosis, Sovereign smiled. At the same moment Drum-Eddie’s phone made the cry of an amplified whale song.
“Hello?” Eddie said into the tiny cell. “Yeah, yeah... Sure thing... Uh-huh... Bye now.”
“Who was that?”
“Bureaucrat.”
“What does that mean?”
“When’s the plane due in?” Eddie replied.
“Not for another hour.”
“I’m’a go to the toilet. I’ll be right back.”
After fifteen minutes Sovereign got up to look for his brother. He went into three different men’s toilets accessible in that section of the airport. He looked under stalls. He called out, “Eddie!” But his brother was gone again, as he had been all those years before.
The plane came to the gate and disgorged its passengers: New Yorkers mostly, down for business from the look of their clothes. When the passengers on his flight boarded, Sovereign was the last to get on. Next to him was his brother’s empty seat, a kind of visual reminder of the space he’d carried around since his brother left the first time, since his grandfather had taken his life while Sovereign bought soda.
While they were still on the ground Sovereign felt sorrow over Eddie’s abandonment. But when the jet built up velocity this feeling evaporated. As they gained altitude Sovereign felt a growing jollity in his chest, legs, and arms. He was happy to be on the move, going somewhere.
He grinned, lay back, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.
“Excuse me, sir.” Someone was shaking his shoulder. “Sir.”
Sovereign woke up and looked into the eyes of a young, mocha-colored woman. She seemed worried.
“Have we landed?” he asked.
“Yes. You were out the whole flight.”
Sovereign leaned forward to get up but was held back by the seat belt. He unbuckled, took in a deep breath, and lurched toward the front of the plane. He passed the pilot, copilot, and two more female flight attendants on the way out. They were all staring at him — probably angry, he thought, that he was making them wait.
Halfway down the enclosed exit ramp Sovereign thought of Eddie. He missed his brother but was not sad. Then he remembered the photo album. He’d put it down on the seat next to him. He turned to go back to get the eighty-one pictures and the one of his sister...
“Mr. James,” a man intoned. The voice came from the exit of the ramp, an airport official, Sovereign thought.
Turning again, Sovereign was approached by three men in business attire. Two of them grabbed him by the arms, pulling them together at the wrists at his back.
The third man said, “You’re under arrest,” as handcuffs were snapped shut behind him.
“My photo album,” he said. “I left it on the plane.”
“Come with us,” the mouthpiece of the trio said.
“What’s the charge?”
“Patriot Act.”
“They arrested you for what?” Lena Altuna asked when Sovereign was finally allowed a call — twenty-five hours after his arrest.
“My brother,” Sovereign said. “He was wanted for a bank robbery thirty years ago. He left the country but comes back from time to time. The government says that he’s using forged papers and so they’re after him on some kind of national security charge.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“He came to my house and said that my mother was worried and wanted to see me. We went down to South Carolina to visit her and were supposed to fly back together. I came alone, though.
“What I need you to do is to tell the judge and Toni that I’m under arrest and can’t make it to trial.”
“Where are you?”
“Federal courthouse in Brooklyn... I think.”