Bronx Noir

The first day, late afternoon, he came to a library, was desperate enough to enter. A scruffy old branch, but he wasn’t the only human tumbleweed in it; the librarians, warm-hearted dreamers, didn’t read Wanted posters and were accustomed to men like him. They let him thaw turning the pages of a Florida guidebook. The pictures made him ache. Last thing he needed, a guidebook: pelicans, palmettos, Spanish moss, longleaf pines, oh he could rattle it off. But he couldn’t risk the trip until he wasn’t news anymore, until they were sure he was already long gone.

Then, last night, a new scent in the air, a crisp cold, a rising wind. Bundled in his bag, his tarp, and leaves, Kelly heard a hush, everything waiting, a little afraid. He slept uneasily, knowing. When he woke, he felt new weight, heard a roar like far-off surf. He climbed from his root den to see more shades of white than he’d ever known. Ivory hillocks, eggshell swells, chalky mounds burdening branches. And huge silver flakes still cascading from a low-bottomed sky. The surf-roaring wind whirlpooled it all around. Ice stinging his face, Kelly was in trouble.

Snow as insulation can work, you in the bag in the leaves in the tarp in the snow. But you can’t climb back in; you’ll bring it with you, and melt it, and lie in a freezing sodden puddle. Once out, in trouble.

A sudden howl of wind, a crash of snow off the crown of a tree. He tugged his hat low, wrapped his arms around his chest. The wind pulled the breath from him. He wasn’t dressed for this, coveralls over his greens, puffy jacket, boots—but he wasn’t dressed. Who ever was? Why had anyone ever come to live here, where casualties piled up every year? All the green leaves, the red, yellow, purple, solid or striped, small or gigantic, lacy or fat flowers all dead, the birds gone, the ones who stayed, starving. Every year you had to wait and pray, even if you weren’t a praying man, every year, that life would come back.

At home the air was soft, the struggle not to make things grow but to clear yourself a corner in the extravagance, then keep it from getting overrun by the tangle that sprang up the minute you turned your back.

Up here everything ended and you shivered, as he did now. From cold, from anger, from fear. Eight years he’d shivered, the last four in lockup. It had been a month like this, cold like this—but heavy and totally still—when he’d killed her. Would he have, back home?

No. Why? In the warmth and openness, her taunts and her cheating would have been jokes. Back home, he’d have laughed and walked out, leaving her steaming that she hadn’t gotten to him. She’d have screamed and thrown things. He’d have found another beach, another jungle, lushness of another kind.

Here, there’d been nothing in the cold, nowhere in the gray, only her.

He shut his eyes, buried the memory. His face was stiff, his fingers burning. He had to move.

Astounding stuff, snow this dense, this heavy. Your feet stuck and slipped at the same time. It was day but you wouldn’t know it, trapped in this thick, swirling twilight. Fighting through drifts already to his knees, it took him forever to get near the gate. And the gate was locked. Beyond it, no traffic moved, no train on the tracks. A blizzard so bad the Botanical Garden was closed. It wasn’t clear to Kelly he could climb the fence in this icy wind, not with gloves and not without, and not clear there was any reason. No one was making Big Macs or cuchifritos out there, no sweet-faced spinsters in the reading room.

Two choices, then. Lie down and die here, and honestly, a fair idea. They said it was comfortable, in the end warm, freezing to death. Maybe keep it as an option. Meanwhile, try for a shelter at one of the buildings. He’d stayed away from them, not to be seen, not to be recognized, but who’d see him now?

One foot planting, the other pushing off, leaning on the wind as though it were solid, he made for the rounded mounds of the big conservatory. A city block long, two wings, central dome half-lost in the twisting white. Iron and glass, locked for sure, but buildings like that had garages, garbage pens, repair shops, storage sheds. Some place with a roof, maybe even some heat, there might be that.

The conservatory was uphill from here, and for a whil it seemed to not get any closer. He almost gave up, but then he got angry. It had been her idea to come north. That she’d wanted to was why he was here, and that he’d killed her was why he was here, struggling up this icy hillside, muscles burning, feet freezing. Maybe he’d kill himself when he got back home. Then he’d never have to be afraid he’d end up here again. But damn her, damn her to hell, not before.