“I’m serious, man. We can’t screw this up.”
With no recourse, Jean-Jacques left the wallet and phone untouched. It wasn’t until they were already on the subway that he decided he’d erred. He should have insisted, or found an excuse to turn back to his room. Now I’ll have to put hands on this clown and bring him in myself, he thought. Like a citizen’s arrest. Not that he minded. It felt good to have his knuckles raw again, stinging with the work of violence.
The entrance to Revolution Park was marked by granite columns adorned with carved faces of bygone men. Bronze eagles perched atop the column tops, one with wings tucked, the other’s outstretched. The Front had left this place alone during the war memorial bombings because it didn’t venerate a foreign war. It still seemed a stupid distinction to Jean-Jacques. There was no such thing as clean war, wherever it got fought. They were all dirty. Why did Mayday want to pretend otherwise?
“Some battle during the American Revolution was here,” Emmanuel said. “Killed a lot of British with cannons. Goddamn cannons.”
“Says on that plaque the Americans still lost.”
“So.” Emmanuel shrugged. “Won the war.”
Traces of almost-light had begun to speck the horizon. They crossed an open field to a dirt path through trees. A half mile or so down, the road diverged into two forks. Emmanuel and Jean-Jacques went left. Forest dark snuffed out the almost-light and midges buzzed at their faces. A bird warble filled the air. Then down a muddy slope, up another muddy slope, across a running trail. Gathered around a small barrel fire were a group of people in rags who didn’t bother to look over as the cousins approached. Homeless enclaves deep in the bigger parks were nothing new but Jean-Jacques hadn’t ever seen one before.
“Is rite always back here?” he asked.
“We ain’t there yet, homie,” Emmanuel said. “And no. Always changes. My first one was in a high school gym.”
Jean-Jacques was considering a quick leak to super-speed his way back to the running trails to borrow a jogger’s phone when the sound of engines rose from the surrounding park forest. Three all-terrain vehicles rumbled up to the firelight, all hitched with long utility trailers.
“Get in,” a voice shouted, all drill sergeant force and conviction. “Hoods on.”
Burlap sacks lay across the seats of the trailers. Jean-Jacques followed Emmanuel’s lead and put a sack over his head so he couldn’t see where they were being transported to.
Bureau’s wrong about these fools, Jean-Jacques thought. They’re nutters, sure enough. But there’s nothing amateur about their operation.
They drove about fifteen minutes, hard east, best as Jean-Jacques could tell. The all-terrain vehicles never got above ten miles per hour, but the autumn wind still bit in the half dark. The dank smell of a person in rags next to him drifted into his nostrils and Jean-Jacques swallowed away a swig of throat bile. Not for the first time he thought he was getting too old to mix late nights with young mornings.
The vehicles stopped and they were told to remove their hoods. Jean-Jacques blinked back to clear vision. They sat in a low meadow, raw sun spilling over a hillside. A set of chewed-up plastic chairs had been placed in front of a small pond. A stream hissed with rushing water while midges continued to buzz at his face. Jean-Jacques smacked one from his neck and hopped off the trailer side.
There were about three dozen people in the meadow beginning to greet one another with hugs and blessings. Big, round Lamar Pierre emerged from the crowd and slapped Jean-Jacques across the back.
“Welcome, Saint-Preux. Peace be with you.”
“And also with you.” Jean-Jacques hadn’t been to Mass in well over a decade but still the refrain came out. He shook his head. “Huh. That’s still in there.”
Pierre laughed. “They beat me in the name of Jesus,” he said, citing a vodou song from slave times. “They burn me in the name of Jesus.”
Jean-Jacques nodded at the reference. “Seventy percent Catholic, thirty percent Protestant, one hundred percent vodou.” Before Pierre could take the old joke as a sign of comradeship he added, “Don’t leave much room for the church of Mayday.”
The other man crossed his stubby arms, the omnipresent three-arrowed lapel pin rising up his jacket. Through the murky dawn he looked older than his fifty years. Jean-Jacques felt certain he’d finally rattled him. But then Pierre smiled and raised a hand to Jean-Jacques’s shoulder.
“Nothing better than converting a skeptic.”
Jean-Jacques raised a non-eyebrow and asked if Pierre wanted an update on the plan for the V-V Day Parade. Jean-Jacques hadn’t done shit, but Emmanuel had taken the mission to heart—he’d tapped into the Haitian community and found a disgruntled bouncer who’d worked parade security in past years. They had three years’ worth of parade security plans because of it, and were going to walk Fifth Avenue themselves to identify any soft spots.
Pierre shook him off, though. “No business here,” he said. “Rule of rite.”
The lack of specifics and group paranoia were beginning to wear on Jean-Jacques. That both were serving their intended purpose made it even worse. He was about to instruct the Mayday lieutenant to trust him when a soft chime sounded through the meadow, then another, and another. Bodies began massing toward the pond. The rite was upon them.
* * *
Jean-Jacques remained standing, following his cousin’s lead and facing the pond. Some older people took the plastic chairs in the front. With the arriving light, Jean-Jacques saw that not everyone at the gathering was homeless; some were deadbeat bohemian types who belonged in Gypsy Town, some were students with loose khakis and backpacks, a few others were middle-aged business folks in crisp blazers and slacks. A thin, wizened man wore a motorcycle jacket with a bunch of different military unit patches Jean-Jacques figured from Vietnam. He even counted four other black people there, not including Pierre and Emmanuel. Whatever Mayday rite was, it had attracted something like a cross section of Empire City.
The ceremony began with a blond-haired girl in an Empire State track sweatshirt singing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” Her voice drifted through the meadow like a scratchy requiem. She changed the line “Land where my fathers died” to “Land for which my brother died,” which made another girl with blond hair and an older woman with blond hair clasp one another’s shoulders. Many of the people around Jean-Jacques grabbed hands and hummed along but he kept his hands and his silence, too.
The song ended. Jean-Jacques smacked a midge on his neck. Bug guts stained his fingers. The man with the motorcycle jacket switched places with the girl. A large burn the tint of old copper covered much of the man’s jaw and upper neck.
“This is a poem,” the man said. “Some of you here helped me write it. It’s for the boys, the ones who didn’t come down from Hill 937. I call it ‘Praise to the Victors.’ ”
It was not a good poem, as far as Jean-Jacques could tell. It didn’t rhyme, it didn’t use big words, it didn’t use imagery in interesting ways. But it had power, the kind that came from telling something straight and telling it true. Hill 937 sounded savage, like hell on earth. Jean-Jacques started picturing the faces of the fallen he’d known through his twelve tours. Good men, mostly. Good soldiers, mostly. Then he stopped. I’m here for the Legion, he thought. Duty looks forward, not back.