| | Most afternoons there would have been other runners using the cinder track behind the University, but because of the drizzling rain I was alone.
I had already run ten laps, and was in a good rhythm, puffing out a wet cloud of breath every three strides, when I saw the teenagers come around the far end of the grandstands.
"Mister!" There were three of them. It was the orange-haired one in the torn green army coat that called to me. "Hey! Mister!"
I stopped running, and walked with my hands on my hips as the three came nearer.
"There's some guy under the bleachers!"
"So?" I didn't like his high-pitched voice, or the way he stood too close.
He scratched at the sparse orange whiskers on his chin and said, "He looks dead."
I was not about to follow those three under the grandstands. "Well, call the police."
He stopped scratching and stared at me in dumb shock. Then he glanced back at his two partners and one of them snorted, as if on cue. When he turned back to look at me --a thin, balding, university professor-- his expression was one of disdain. "No way."
"Then I can't help you," I said. I stepped around him, letting my elbow clip him on the arm as I resumed my run.
As I ran the backstretch of the quarter-mile track I glanced back and saw the one in the army coat leading the other two toward the grandstands. He wore heavy black combat boots and stomped across the wet ground as if trying to injure the earth. His annoying voice crossed the distance, "Why's he come here? This is our neighborhood!"
I wondered if he was talking about me, or the man beneath the grandstands.
When I was running in front of the stands, I thought I heard something, and looked behind me. There was no one there. I kept running, trying to regain my easy stride. Then I heard something again, and stopped. I looked into the dimness beneath the grandstands, and listened. Without any awareness of having made a decision, I vaulted silently over the waist-high chain fence beside the track and ran to the near end of the stands.
I caught sight of the teenagers beneath the stands. Throwing side-arm, their wrists snapping, the three were firing stones at a man tightly curled on the ground. Then the one in the army coat and boots ran up to the body and kicked it hard. I hunched forward and ran beneath the stands. Just as he was about to kick again, I lowered my shoulder and slammed into his side. He crumpled to the ground. I spun off of him, rolling on the ground once before I could get up. I jumped towards him but he scrambled backwards like a crab, got onto his feet and lurched away. He ran, stumbling with one arm pressed to the ribs I had slammed into. The other two threw their stones at me, missing wildly, and ran after him.
I went over to the curled up body and knelt on one knee beside it. He was wrapped in a long black wool coat and when I shook his shoulder, I did it without any hope that he would be conscious. When I rolled him onto his back his black eyes were locked open, staring into space. Beneath his matted black and grey hair there were gashes, but none of the wounds bled. More than a dozen stones were littered around the body. I lifted his wrist, the skin was blackened with dirt, thickened and cracked from sun, rain, cold. There was a smell of unwashed animalness. Even though my hand was shaking too much to detect a pulse, I knew he was dead. As I placed his stiff arm across his chest a book fell out from beneath the long coat. Absently, I picked up the book. I held it tight with both hands as I went to find a telephone.
That was when I saw the dog. He was flattened in the rough grass near the rusted metal supports of the bleachers. He made no sound, not whining or whimpering, but watched me.
I knelt in the cold earth and called him to me.
He came, limping.
It was after midnight when I gave up trying to sleep. I dressed, putting the unopened book in my coat pocket. The moment I opened the door, the dog came out from under the kitchen table, whenre he had gone directly upon arriving in my apartment and had not stirred from since. When I hesitated, the door ajar, but not passing through it, he sat down, looked up.
"Just how far you think you'll get with that limp?"
He was panting lightly.
"Christ," I said. "Already I'm talking to you." I picked him up and carried him to my car.
I drove aimlessly around the city. I felt alert, yet also drowsy from the sounds of the rain beating on the roof of my car, the rhythmic slapping of windshield wipers, the swish of tires over wet pavement. The dog sat up in the passenger seat beside me, panting easily, sometimes looking at me when I turned the steering wheel. I thought of the paramedic that afternoon. "That's a Corgi," she said. "Great dogs."
I had only grunted.
"People think a Corgi is a lap dog." She said. "No way. They're all dog." She was kneeling, massaging the quiet animal's large triangular ears. "One hundred percent dog. They fetch, bark, flop down in mud puddles. They were bred to herd cattle."
"Cattle?" I looked down at the dog; it couldn't have weighed more than thirty pounds; its legs raised its long belly no more than four inches from the ground.
"That's why they're so low," the paramedic said. "The cattle can't kick 'em. You should see these guys at work. They have great heart. Great heart."
I drove to the University and parked in front of the old stone building where I have an office on the fourth floor. When the guard saw me coming, he unlocked the glass doors. "No umbrella?"
"No, I drove."
He saw the dog trailing at my heels.
"Hey, pooch. didn't know you had a dog, Professor."
Not certain of the rules, I asked, "Is it all right to bring him in?"
"Oh, sure. Sure. Who's he going to bother? He's one of those terriers the Queen of England's got, isn't he?"
"A Corgi. They were bred to herd cattle."
"No kidding!"
I did not turn on the lights in my office. I sat at my desk by the window, staring down at the darkness of the empty park across the wet street.
The dog lay on the carpet, his body against the wall to my right, watching me with an endless patience. I thought of what had happened after I had telephoned the police. I remember thinking it odd how a fire truck had arrived first, and how the half dozen firemen milled about the corpse, not attempting resuscitation, until the ambulance arrived. It was the paramedics who put the body in a blanket and onto a collapsible gurney. Finally, two uniformed police officers arrived. The female officer said nothing, but wandered around looking at the ground, kicking once at the stones near the corpse, while the male officer asked me a few disjointed questions, not writing anything more on his note pad than my name, telephone number and a few words of my descriptions of the three teens.
"Do you think he was dead before they threw the rocks?"
"Yes," I answered, relieved to hear aloud the question I kept asking in my thoughts.
I was chilled from my run and felt conspicuous, dressed in running clothes yet holding a book, and with a dog shadowing my steps. Yet the cop had not asked about the book, or the dog. Maybe it was the professional indifference of the police, firemen and paramedics, as understandable as it may have been, that made me not tell them of having found the book on the dead man, of the dog not being mine.
The cop watched the paramedics preparing to slide the gurney into the ambulance. "So you think he was dead awhile, then?"
"Yes," I answered, caught off guard by his repeating the question.
He grunted softly. I knew anything beyond a yes or no was unnecessary, but I needed some kind of reassurance that the three teenage goons had not murdered the man, had only desecrated his body. So I spoke my thoughts aloud, "His hand was cold. His arm was stiff. The wounds from the stones weren't bleeding. I think his heart had stopped long before they-- before they attacked him."
The paramedics closed the ambulance doors. "Well," the cop said, flipping the note pad closed, "It's the coroner's job now."
I turned on the desk lamp and took the book out of my coat pocket. It was a small, heavy book with a sewn binding and hard black covers. I fanned the pages, more than a hundred, each page filled entirely with very small, uniform handwriting. The writing was made in pencil, and in blue, black or red ink. I stopped on a page and stared at the writing. While the symbols used were the letters of the alphabet, they did not form words. The letters were out of order, scrambled.
I began turning the pages slowly, scanning the streams and groupings of letters made in such precise, patient handwriting. Was it gibberish, or could the letters be arranged in a code? It was only as I examined the impenetrable writing that I began to understand that perhaps all that was left of a life, a singular, spontaneous life, was the book in my hands.
All night I tried to decipher the code, but by the time the rain became visible in the grey light of dawn I had only tentatively identified the letter E, the most common letter in the English language. I went home, remembering to walk the dog before entering my apartment. I realized I would need to start carrying platic bags. I wondered if I should buy a leash, if I would have the dog long enough to justify the expense. I decided not to, as the dog seemed to have no interest in anything but shadowing my steps, going where I went, waiting when I stopped.
I a long shower and slowly dressed. I did not feel entirely myself. Finding the dead man, taking his book, his dog, discovering the coded writing and then attempting to decipher it, had tilted my equilibrium. All that day I went through my routine of classes, advising students, and attending meetings with a skewed sense of secret guilt: I had taken what may have been his only two possessions. Yet, when the night came and I was again alone in my office, with the dog again laying against the wall and watching me calmly, I began working with a clear, enthused energy, to decipher his strange writing.
Sometimes I would look up from the book and stare at the dog. More than once I had to stifle half-formed words I was about to address to the animal. It was well past midnight when I had decoded all the vowels as well as the consonants L, S and T. In the process of decoding these letters I had translated dozens of single words, but I was consciously keeping myself from tying these words together, from decoding phrases or sentences. I wanted to know what the coded words said, yet I dreaded that when I unlocked the mystery, the laboriously encoded words would prove to be only senseless ranting.
I took a break, and wandered in the halls of the empty building, the dog gliding silently behind me, allowing just enough room between us for me to turn abruptly without stumbling into him. In the Anthropology Department lounge I gave the dog a bowl of water. He drank without hurry, yet seemed grateful for my attention. I found a half pot of cold coffee. Hunting up a clean cup, I heated the coffee, then carried it as I continued walking the halls, muttering to myself between sips of the hot coffee. When I returned to my desk and glanced at a page of the book I suddenly saw, clearly in the stew of coded letters, three more consonants.
"They were right there in front of me," I said to the dog before I could stop myself. I stood a moment, pointing into the opened book, staring down at the dog. "right under my nose," I mumbled.
In the next two hours everything fell into place and I decoded the entire alphabet.
Then I stopped. I did not begin translating the text. I seriously considered not translating a single page. I picked the book up, feeling an urge to run out of my office and throw the thing into the first bin or dumpster I came across that would be emptied before I could change my mind and try to retrieve it.
But I sat down. Sliding my fingers through my thinning hair, I felt the same nauseous dread I experience each time I am about to write an article or a book after weeks, months, sometimes years of contentedly researching.
I realized the dog had stood up. He was watching me.
"I feel sick to my stomach," I said to him. He lay down then, and his breathed sighed out from him. It was the first sound other than his light panting that he had made since I found him. I don't know why, but I whispered, "You'll be all right."
Tonight I stood in Times Square staring at the signs in the window of a store that sold tee shirts and false identification documents. Many times I have come here but never entered. I wanted certainty that this was not a place the police captured undocumented people. I have been here three months. I feel desperate. My health has deteriorated from the drain of fear. I ache for the home I cannot return to. A week ago I had a dream half in English. The soft words of my language struggle with harsh English for my thoughts. Often I dream I am being hunted chased over a high edge. I have learned I must have a license to drive and a Social Security card to prove identity. Yesterday I memorized the Social Security number of a man writing a form at the shelter. He was near me in age but with more brown skin. This English was foreign to him as well but he did not have much education and for that I think him better protected than me. I cannot control my thoughts. I went into the store and bought a driver's license and a Social Security card. Only as I write this now do I understand how important these documents are. My hands are shaking. The aloneness staggers me.
"Please come in."
The detective was a stout, pale blonde woman in her forties. She stood behind a cluttered desk and waved a hand at the metal folding-chair beside it.
"I understand you have some concerns with our handling of this case?"
"Yes," I answered. "I spoke with an officer last week and was told that identification papers of some kind had been found on the deceased. Now I'm told that no relatives have been located."
"That's correct. We have been unable to locate any relations to the deceased."
"But if there was identification, wouldn't it be a rather routine--"
"Not necessarily." She glanced away from me and moved a sheaf of papers from left to right on her desk. I was certain her hesitation was over whether or not to tell me something. I sat quietly, but would not look away from her. Finally, she said, "The documents found on the deceased were not legitimate."
"Fake?" I did not have to pretend surprise. Having the secret story I had decoded suddenly proven true was a shock. "Why? Why would--"
"It's more common than you may realize."
I asked about fingerprints. She told me how only a small percent of the population is fingerprinted and on file; criminals, military personnel, government employees, some patients of mental hospitals. A search had shown no matches.
I was silent.
The detective looked straight at me and said, "We've disseminated a full description over the network. There are no individuals being sought fitting the deceased's description. We've also thoroughly reviewed release records for area shelters, and mental care facilities." She lifted another sheaf of papers, went to move it, then put it back down in place. "There are not always answers."
"In the autopsy," I asked. "Was there any sign, any evidence of alcoholism, or drug use?"
"Neither was indicated in the coroner's report." She lay her hand on top of a folder and I wondered if it contained the actual report. "Not every homeless person is an alcoholic or addict. Mental illness is just as common. The cause of death was determined to be hypothermia. Basically, exposure to the elements, and chronic malnutrition."
"What will happen next?"
"The fingerprints, a photographic record, vital statistics of the deceased will be kept on file. Should there be an inquiry, from another agency, or possibly a relation of the deceased, that information would be accessed."
She stood up, coming around the desk. I had no choice but to stand and move with her to the door. "You should know," she said. "We've interviewed residents from the neighborhood but have been unable to locate any of the three individuals you described. If we should, we would need you to identify them. You would be willing to do so?"
"Yes."
"I regret that there is not much more we can do." She went with me down the hall, escorting me to the exit of the building.
"Detective, I wonder, would you please tell me the name on the identification?"
"What is your interest in that? It would only be an alias."
"He died with no name, no history. Even if it's an alias, the name on the identification would be something..." I hadn't words to explain my own vague feelings, that it was important to name him, to try and separate him from every other anonymous death.
"I'm sorry. We can't release that information."
I stood outside, bright sunlight making me squint as I looked back at the detective. "Will there be funeral services?"
"In these cases, with no relations, no estate that can be determined, the deceased will be cremated at city expense. There will not be a service."
"What if I wanted to pay for a burial, a funeral service? I would assume all responsibility, make the arrangements, whatever was necessary."
"I will check into it."
"When can I have an answer?"
"Within a week."
I have gotten employment as dishwasher. But still I fall into hurt moods that last through weeks even while I work and study and manage small talk with coworkers. I have lost mass and never feel the strength I took for granted before the accident. Every day I awake and face truth. I am shipwrecked in this world. I am more alone than any man any voyager in history. Rescue is inconceivable. I am on this island until I die. Shipwrecked in time. I will die more than 800 years from my home.
I stopped and checked my translation of this entry: it did say 800 years. I had assumed, as I read, that he had illegally immigrated to this country. Now, as I skipped among the passages of the encoded journal, I saw him as a man mad with the delusion of being some kind of shipwrecked time traveler. I could not help but recall the times I had passed derelict men perched on park benches or sitting on sidewalks, urgently scribbling onto scraps of paper. Had he been one of them? Why did he write, what made him write? How much of what I had decoded was real? How much madness? Why, if he could manage to write this cryptic, coded journal, why hadn't he been able to take even minimal care of his own life?
I have done well in the seven years I have been on this island. I have managed to cross to the west coast. I am more fluent and comfortable in writing this English than speaking it. Their spoken language carries meaning at angles to their written language. I think back to the accident how I almost died like a wounded animal exposed to the weather. The first weeks I was near blind with fear. I can feel again the unreal relief when I learned to use the church kitchens the public shelters. I feigned muteness and imbecility. I did not feign shyness. I had never endured such constant fear. I was nearly destroyed by my cowering from everything. Everything. My ignorance was so complete I could not safely walk among the city or speak or even imitate the language of speech and body necessary to survive in this world. Every moment awake or asleep was life threatening. I was a man as they around me. But my isolation was profound. I was of another time.
I stood near the open grave, the rain hitting on the small canvas awning over me and pooling on the cropped grass of the cemetery. The dog was beside me, standing, panting roughly. He had seemed agitated even before we had entered the cemetery. I wondered if he could smell all the death, the old, the new, the one among all the dead that he had shared living with.
Every night for a week I had read and re-read his words. Again and again, he had written that he was shipwrecked. Soon, the metaphor of shipwreck stuck in my thoughts, influenced my mood, and made me see in the lives around me the playing out of the same patterns of loss, isolation, and struggle to recover. Despite my belief that his eerie journal was no more than fevered ravings, I never doubted that his life-struggle had been real.
As the day of his burial approached, I felt a desperate need to free myself from the journal, to not carry its secret alone. In the end, I wrote a letter explaining how I had found the book, translated its coded story. I had the book cataloged and placed in the University library, with the faint idea that someone in the future would discover it, spend nights, as I had, brooding over it.
My head aches from the effort to decipher and answer the ceaseless communication these people demand. I am impaired because not born into this language culture and time yet I must conform to it. How long have I before my reason is crushed by the relentless pressure? I never will move among these people confident my body is not betraying my alien self.
"Excuse me? Excuse--"
For a moment I did not recognize the stout woman in a beige raincoat staring at me. It was the detective.
"I don't mean to..." She didn't finish the thought.
I made room for her beneath the awning. She glanced at the dog without comment, as if he seemed natural beside me, then she stared at the grave.
"Some people lose their past," she said. She spoke so quietly I had to lean close to hear. "Family, friends… for some it isn't enough. They slip away."
She faced me and said, "You wanted to know the name on the false identification."
I nodded.
"Alexander Selkirk. For what it's worth." She put her hand out to me, "I'm sorry I couldn't do more."
I shook her hand, shocked by the touch of her wet-cool skin. How powerful our sense of touch is; it has no equivalent, no substitute.
I stayed under the awning, the dog never laying down, until the darkness made it impossible to see the grave only ten feet away.
Then we left.
#####
David Boyne is a writer who once lived in Oregon where it's dark and rains a lot. He now lives in Southern California.
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