The Garden of Last Days Read online

  “I’m hungry.”

  His numbed wrist rested against the door handle. Every time he slowed or sped up or made a turn, the ice pack slid off onto his leg and he had to press his knees to the wheel to hold it steady and readjust the pack with his good hand. He wasn’t even going to try to sip the coffee from the holder. He never did find a cup worth a shit for driving and had settled on a red plastic one from Busch Gardens with no lid and already a third of it had sloshed out all over his truck carpet. He needed to stop and get a proper cup. He needed to stop and get this girl a snack so she’d get quiet again and the Benadryl could kick in.

  “Please, I’m hungry. And I’m thirsty.”

  “I heard you, hon.”

  In the darkness he drove under live oaks, Spanish moss hanging down like nagging reminders of something he’d forgotten to do. He passed by scrappy yards and small houses, everybody in them asleep, probably curled up to someone they loved. He’d never gotten tired of that with Deena. Even after she’d gained all that weight. Even after nights of bitching and screaming, it’d all be over by one or two in the morning and they’d just be echoes in his head and she was a soft, warm body he’d curl up against, his nose in her hair, his hand and arm on her soft hip. Whenever he dreamed of Marianne, he never did get that far with her—the way he saw Deena, like she wasn’t just a woman but home itself.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  At the turnoff to 301 the lights of the Mobil station shone whitely and there was a convenience store section and he bet they had coffee brewed in there. He checked his gas gauge. Quarter tank left. He’d get coffee and gas and buy this girl a snack. But did he want that? Wouldn’t that absorb some of the Benadryl he’d given her? Wouldn’t that make it harder for her to go back to sleep? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t have her hungry and going on and goddamned on.

  He pulled up to the pumps and cut the engine, the ice bag slipping off his wrist onto his leg. He tossed it onto the leftover twelve-pack on the passenger’s seat.

  “I want a Shush Puppie.”

  “A hush puppy?” Mama used to make them when he and Eddie would come home with fish, wonderful cornmeal and eggs and green onions rolled up in a ball and fried in hot oil in an iron skillet. He smiled and opened his truck door. “They won’t have hush puppies in there. Does your mama make those?” His respect for Spring maybe rising just a bit, picturing her frying a meal for her girl.

  “No, Slush Puppie. Can I have a Slush Puppie, please?”

  A fucking slush. Well Cole liked them too.

  “Yeah, you can have one.”

  He swung the plastic tray up over her head. She was a cute little thing, looking up at him with her tiny face, some of her fine hair sticking to her cheek.

  “I want grape.”

  “Okay.” He was about to lift her out of the cab, then remembered the gas. “Hold on, honey. I’ve got to buy gas first, ’kay?”

  He started to close the access door but then left it open, pulled the nozzle free, uncapped his tank, and began pumping. He could see her through the hinge-crack standing there, her head not even reaching the tops of his bucket seats. She yawned and rubbed her eyes with her fists. She stepped closer to the door’s opening and looked at him through the tinted glass. “I want Mama.” But she didn’t cry. Just looked at him like she was almost mad at him, that it was his fault she wasn’t with her mama right now. And she had a point there, didn’t she?

  “You want a grape Slush Puppie, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Just a minute then.”

  How bad could Spring be if her daughter missed her this much? Maybe other than being a lying whore and taking her baby to a place no kid should even know about, she was all right. You did what you had to—no, bullshit; there was that woman in Oneca a few years ago who beat her eleven-month-old with a stick and even then, the baby would come crawling back to her, to his mama, to the only hope he had, the same place that gave him nine broken bones. And Spring should fucking thank him for taking the time to drive this girl away. She should get down on her knees to him. But she won’t. The best he could hope for was to scare the living piss out of her.

  The pump clicked off. Almost thirty-four dollars and that wasn’t for a full tank either.

  “I want a Shush Puppie, please.”

  His arm pain had moved permanently to his neck and head. His eyes ached and the swelling in his hand had gone down but not much. He’d have to ice it again, longer this time. Stop somewhere so the pack would quit slipping off his wrist. He should just drive right to the marina across from the temple. Park his truck near the palm trees and protected mangroves and ice it for a good hour. He’d have that much time before he had to carry her over. And as he carried her now, careful to hold her at his side away from his bad arm, he enjoyed smelling her hair and feeling the slight weight of her. She wasn’t afraid of him and that made him feel good. Like he was the kind of man he knew he really was, the kind who’d never have papers on him from a judge keeping him away, but a good man who’d been wronged.

  Taped to the door of the Mobil Mart was a poster for a boat show in Tampa. After the hospital and calling a lawyer, after a day and night’s rest, that’s the first place he’d go. And wouldn’t it be fun to take Cole with him? Wouldn’t Deena maybe want to come too? To the coast city to look at big gleaming boats?

  HIS NAME WAS Sergeant Doonan. He’d told April to sit up front and buckle herself in, and now she sat there on the other side of his computer screen and radio while he drove her without her child, without her Franny. April’s nose was stopped up, her throat sore from screaming and crying, and it was as if each white line passing under the patrol car was taking with it her intestines and stringing them out along the road in the dark, leaving her a shell of muscle and bones with a heart that wouldn’t stop pounding for what she’d done and for what she hadn’t done and for what she couldn’t do now—hold her and keep her safe, and God, Oh God, please God, just find her.

  “We will.”

  Did she speak? Was she talking? She looked over at him, his glasses halfway down his nose, this grandfather taking her home to wait for a call because there was nothing to do now but get out of their way and let them do their work. And her car was evidence, the picture of her and Franny ripped from the yarn it’d been hanging from, lying on her seat like she and Franny had been the target of somebody who knew them both when she’d been alone here; there was just Jean. And there were people back home.

  “Here you go.” The cop’s hand held out a tissue. His watch was gold. The hairs on his wrist grew around it, his voice deep and strong, not like an old man’s at all. She hadn’t known she was crying again. She took the tissue and pressed it to her closed eyes, but in the darkness was Franny’s face when she slept, her eyes closed, her eyelashes impossibly long, her hair pulled back from her cheek, then a man’s hands under her chin, a knife, a belt, duct tape, an old blanket and weeds, a muddy ditch, gasoline and flames, Franny underwater, her open mouth—Oh God, Oh God, this moan rising up from deep beneath the scar April had let the foreigner touch, as if selling her child’s place of origin had violated her beginning and so fated her end, dissolving her, cursing her, making her disappear.

  THE KAFIR OFFICER holds Bassam’s license. He looks from it to Bassam, then at the license once more. He turns it over. Bassam’s heart beats too forcefully inside him for the cash still strains the seams of his pockets. Will the policeman ask to see what he carries? And what will he tell him? In the kingdom they would have stripped off his clothing by now, taken all that is his. They would torture him until he told everything. Until he gave up everyone. Bassam’s mouth is dry as smoke, and he is afraid when he speaks his tongue will stick slightly, revealing him, and he makes a silent du’a to the Mighty to protect him.

  “What’re you doing on the Gulf Coast?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “Where?”

  “Venice.”

  “What do you do in Deerfield Beach?”


  “I am student.”

  “Where?”

  “Gainesville.”

  “So why’re you in Deerfield Beach?”

  “I have a job for summer only. Pizza.”

  “You make pizza?”

  “Transport it.”

  “Pizza?”

  “Yes.”

  “You deliver it?”

  “Yes, I deliver.”

  “Did you see a small girl tonight?”

  “No, only women. Many women.”

  The officer smiles weakly. He hands to Bassam his license. “You’re freetogo.”

  “Excuse, please?”

  “You’re free to go.”

  Bassam looks at the kafir, at the rash on his throat from shaving, at the dark hair upon his arm like his own. Freetogo. What does this mean?

  “Go ahead.” The policeman motions forward with his hand, the same motion Ali al-Fahd would make when in Bassam’s earlier life he wanted him to hurry, and now he understands and turns and leaves this den of Shaytan, brightly lighted now and dirty.

  In the parking area there are more police vehicles than before, their flashing blue lights, the air cooler and smelling of the exhaust of their running engines, but there is a lightness in the air around him, and Bassam starts the Neon and closes his eyes. All praise is for Allah by whose favor good works are accomplished. He shifts the auto into reverse gear and backs slowly over shells from the sea, his eyes upon all the policemen behind him, some standing beside their autos, others seated inside, none of them watching as he pushes the shifter and disappears.

  He drives south, the yellow light of the tall sign in his mirror growing smaller. The screams of April. So very like the screams of his own mother, how they came much later, after his father washed Khalid’s body, cut and broken and bruised, in the required order of ablutions. For the final washing he added camphor to the water, dried his body with a towel, covered it in white. At the mosque his mother recited with the others the salaat-l-janazah and she did not weep for she knows the soul of her son is with the Sustainer. Khalid’s grave lies not far from a grove of fig trees and there was comfort in knowing they had buried him before one full day had passed.

  But later, after the three days of mourning, she could not hide her cries. They came always behind the doors she closed. Her face was pressed to pillows but her sounds could not be softened. They were of a woman being stabbed by a hot sword. Bassam’s sisters or even Ahmed al-Jizani, his face gray, his eyes dark and full, they would go to her but she could not be stopped. Her suffering could not be stopped, and Bassam would leave the home in search of Karim or Tariq or Imad or even a cigarette he could smoke as the bad Muslim he had been.

  Earlier, as he leaned against the Neon and smoked and watched all these kufar, these men whose nothingness will never be over, he watched April run from one vehicle to the next and the sound she made confused him for it was nearly the same as his own mother for Khalid and how can this kafir love and fear losing in the same way as a good wife and mother under the Creator in the birthplace of Muhammad? How can this be?

  Again, the confusion and weakness. How could it be possible her cries were difficult for him to bear? How could it be possible he wanted to help this April who calls herself Spring? In his fingertips he feels still the hair above her qus, but it is the long hair of her head he wishes to touch. He wishes to hold her face and kiss her lips. He wishes to look into her proud eyes. For this is as close as he will ever be to a woman from this earth, and was it close enough?

  On the cell phone, in the small black room when he sent her for champagne and cognac, he told Imad not to worry, he would return later than planned but he would return.

  But Bassam, where are you?

  The den of Shaytan.

  Where?

  This club for men.

  Why, Bassam? We must be prepared.

  I may have been followed, Imad. I came here to appear normal.

  Bassam, you’ve been drinking. You must stop and be very careful on your return.

  Yes, Insha’Allah.

  Please hurry, Bassam. Hurry, and do not waste time.

  But he has wasted time. And money. So much of it. It is this alcohol. He has become too fond of it. The feeling of freedom it gives to him, of floating above all that is here he cannot control. And it makes him more brave to talk to an uncovered kafir woman in a place of evil that holds him. When he approached her in the shadows, her body so close to his own, his heart was speeding and it was difficult to look at her face and into her eyes and request time with her alone. It was something he could not have done if he had not been drunk. Again the wisdom of the Provider and the Sustainer as taught by the imams he had ignored. They know these vodkas and beer and cognacs and champagnes, they are the colors of water and earth but they have been made in the fires of Jahannam. They only cloud men’s minds and weaken their discipline and turn their hearts to caring only for the flesh that does not last.

  That first time in Fort Lauderdale. The Egyptian feared they were being monitored, the same white minivan parked across the street of their motel for days, and he instructed them to leave the apartment laughing and smoking cigarettes, to walk directly to the outdoor beer café on the beach. They took a table near the street. They ordered glasses of beer from a thin waiter, a piercing in his ear. The first sip with Imad and Tariq, their first as well, it was sweet and bitter and the Egyptian said: “You look like girls. You call too much attention to yourselves. Here,” and he drank down the entire glass and raised it for more. Imad followed first, the foam of the beer clinging to his whiskers. Then Tariq and Bassam, and it tasted better going down quickly, his stomach full but his thirst remaining, and as he lowered his glass only to see the waiter returning with four new ones on his tray, the Egyptian scanning the cars in the street, there was the understanding that for him and his brothers this taste of the haram could only make them wiser, stronger, though Tariq was laughing and Imad looked at the Egyptian and would not touch his second until Amir swallowed his own.

  Perhaps it had made them wiser, but what good is wisdom if your resolve to use it is weakened by the same liquid that leads you to it?

  Bassam accelerates onto I-75 south. He glances at his gauges, calculates he has enough fuel for 160 or so kilometers. At the Everglades Parkway, there is only one station halfway across, and he will fill again the tank and he will buy cigarettes and Coca-Cola to keep him alert. But he has not relieved himself and needs to now. He drives into the sleeping city of Sarasota, its banks and boutiques closed and dark, its traffic lights pulsing yellow. In courtyards and rotundas there are thorn trees and palm trees and he would be hidden there, but no, he will look for a fuel station or an alleyway for there are only three days remaining and he will not relieve himself upon a tree like one from home. He will not desecrate any trees from home.

  IN HER KING-SIZE bed, her cat Matisse sleeping on a pillow not far from her face, Jean dreamed she and Harry were making love in a nightclub in front of a jazz band. He was still dead and she knew it, but he didn’t look dead. He looked like the Harry he’d always been except every few seconds he would stop and withdraw himself and look down between her legs. A spotlight from the ceiling would shine on her there, though it was a light with sound, a motorcycle engine, and it was hard to hear the music over it and that bothered her more than anything. Not Harry stopping to have a light shine on her crotch, but the engine so loud she couldn’t hear the piano and trumpet and brushing cymbals. Then Franny was on the stage, holding her mother’s hand, both of them dressed for the beach.

  Jean opened her eyes to the knocking, her dream already fading, Matisse leaping off her bed.

  “Ma’am?” It was a man’s voice, the knocking hard and insistent. Her first thought was the hospital, that they’d come for her whether she wanted to be there or not. But this was no way to wake her, her old heart jumping as she pulled her robe from its hook and stuffed one arm into its sleeve, then the other. On her bedside table, the time glo
wed green: 3:47.

  “Ma’am?”

  She moved quickly down the darkened hallway, tying the robe closed at her waist. The flood lamp above the kitchen door had come on and standing there in its harsh light was a policeman and April. Her hair needed brushing and her eyeliner was smeared, her cheeks damp. Clutched to her chest was Franny’s backpack, and Jean couldn’t get the door opened fast enough.

  “What? Where’s Franny? What is it?”

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were sick. I thought you were sick!” April was crying, her shoulders heaving, the tall policeman’s arm around her now as he walked her into Jean’s house where she stood in her robe and heard the news—that her fears were not a neurotic condition after all but a prophecy that what you dread the most is precisely what comes for you in the dark in the form of a soft-spoken policeman and this young woman you’ve never really liked and now despise; her long hair hanging over her weeping face, her wrinkled blouse and short skirt, her bare legs and high heels and painted nails, and more despicable than anything was the way she hugged her daughter’s backpack as some sort of evidence that she’d only done her best—Jean despised her, all of her, and how cruel that he nodded and told Jean he could leave her now that he knew she was not alone. How cruel.

  Then he was gone, the floodlight switching off and the two women standing there in the dark kitchen, April sobbing. Saying nothing. Just sobbing. And to step forward and hold her would be the humane thing to do. The good and loving thing to do. But Jean didn’t move. She couldn’t. She crossed her arms over her breasts and hugged herself as if she were cold, Franny’s face mercilessly in her head now, the way she’d turned to wave at her yesterday before her trip to the beach. That almost secretive smile they shared. “Oh April, I’m so mad at you I can’t even—”

  —the back pack hit the floor and April’s arms were around Jean’s neck, her crying loud and piercing in her ear, her breasts against Jean’s crossed arms she had no choice but to uncross and drop to her sides, April’s hair smelling of cigar smoke and sweat and men’s cologne: Jean wanted to push her away, but she was close to crying too, though she fought it, Franny’s backpack pressing hard against her bare shins.