Boys of Life (34 page)

belong

,n\ and Rons were keeping up this loud hack-and-torth with Monica and Don. It was like I wasn't there with them, which was hne. 1 walked around the cabin looking ar sniff. There were a couple or bags of groceries—breaktast makings-sitting on the table, and a little camp e. On one of the walls somebody'd taken an old signboard that used to have an Indian's head painted on it, some hook-nosed chief in his war bonnet, and they painted over that with white paint; then they painted the rules ot the Royal Tishomingo Hunting & Fishing Club in red paint—but the white was so thin you could still see the old Indian peering through. The rules said:

; No Ladies

2. No Niggers

;. A food time uill be had by all

\t> shilling of firearms in the cabin

c. Please do not gut fish inside the cabin

r. S< i spitting or pissing indoors

7. Shut out the lights uhen you leave

& What lights!

"Here Tony, mv man"— Sonny was nudging me with the whisky bottle— "it's yonna freeze your ass out on the water."

ny's tough," Don said. "He lived up in New York City."

"New York, rk t " nng Ross. I guess he thought he was

Frank Sinatra. "City of queers and niggers," he sang in this gravelly

"My own damn daughter went to live in New York for a while,"

"That'l how I met Tonv," Monica said.

"City of queers and niggers and kikes, rig. Then he said,

"The Trilateral Commission runs that fucking city. Did you know that. 1 They elect the mayor and the city council. There hasn'r been a free election up there in years. It's all faked. Tonv, you ever come m the Trilateral Commission up there

"I never heard of it," I told him.

"They keep a low profile," he said. "They're very smart. They what they're

"Who's 1 Iced.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

"Jewish hanking establishment. Communist Party. It goes back to the [940$. Franklin Roosevelt. Their front's the Rockefeller Foundation, hut reallv they're everywhere. Infiltration. Basically it's your large Jewish population up there."

"It's true," Monica said, "halt the people you meet up there turn out to he Jewish when you £et to know them."

"And the other half," I added, "are a hunch of queers." 1 didn't mean to say that—it just seemed like the right thing. The way Monica said what she'd said—to fit in.

"See what I mean?" Rom told her. "You were lucky to meet a normal white man like Tony up there."

She smiled—her best smile, her Cherokec-Indian-checkhone smile— and what I thought just then was: It's not New York anymore. I'm not a tag. I'm just Tony Blair, that's all I am. And suddenly 1 was remembering something Carlos told me once, a lone tinw ftei I

first got to New York, how when they started putting people in the camps, hke they did to the Jews back m Sammy's hometown. 1 wasn't going to have to worry. I'd just disappear hack to Kentucky m\<\ e\ thing would he fine. Suddenly I remembered him Baying that so vividly.

I have to admit I liked the feel ot whisky in nn Itomach at seven o'clock in the morning. I hadn't gotten drunk in the moming in yi and it felt great to have it go to m\ head like that.

going out?" Don was saying. "There's a lake

•

Lin. \ le held up his muc my Own warm fireside here I'd he some kind ot tool to go leaving it " "Well, that kind ot puts the fishing up t<> us." Pon told him. "S< nn\ told us.

I g04 the feeling the) COuld talk With each other like that all lying 1 thine I he\ COuld live their whole lives that M

"Ya'll hun yelled to m •«» we went down t" the watei

l on a httle felling down piei "I'll

It 1 l m\

US- 1 1 what the problem Wtt I ^;

the lake h.id u 1 the

think k

*.is. ill ink

B O Y S O F L I F E D

with R> nny; not with Monica and her dad cither. Just

curled up drunk away K myself somewhere.

When I breathed OUt I could see nn silver) breath. Now th.it it

wm light, you could sec it was cloudy—it looked like mow or probably cold rain. Everything wat itlver-gray—my breath, and the lake and the

lk) and the tree trunks hv the edge of the water. The boat. Only nica in her red jacket wasn't gray. That spot oi bright red in the

middle oi all that gra) was the most depressing thing oi all.

"Hon was that tor blotto.'" Monk a laid once we were OUt on the lake. She liked to drink now and then, but she hated drunks. It was something 1 guess she not from her mom. "Stmko heaven back thd she laid. "What is it. 1 Seven o'clock in the mornn,

tolid fellows,' 1 Don told her. "Backbone people." "I thmk that ■ is crazy/ 1 1 said. I never said anything like

rh.it around Hon — it just didn't seem worth disagreeing with him about things. I guess that's the worst thing you can say about somebody, that you just don't have the energy to want to bother with them. It's uhv Hon always thought I was sort of feeble. He was used to having triendU

argument! with people, the kind where you agree not to disagree too much. It was the way he got on with his friends.

crvhody's crazv." Don said. "What you got to do is look at what made them eras)

"Yeah," I said. "I have this feeling Ross was crazy when he was born."

"There you got it totally wrong. Tonv. Ross is ,\ deep-down ^hk\ person who got detailed tor doing something that wasn't his fault."

I'd never seen Don spark like that, like I'd gone ,md said something that offended him. But I wasn't letting go—1 gueSfl I was pissed 'mg dragged our here to go fishing in the middle of the winter. I guess I was hating .ill of this stuff.

"\\ u mean, derailed.'" I said.

I down in the bottom of the boat, where there

r. We'd ■ .nit— but not completely.

"I mean thrown off track," he said. "I mean, like somebod\ came round and lifted him up and tossed him in a ditch."

ing on my line, i m\

it. hut it ■ I do. Th 'his oils

color.

' The I iked me. He was sitting in

□ PAULRUSSELL

the middle of the boat, fooling with the bait. "Nah," he said, "you wouldn't have."

I hadn't, either.

"Well, it was some fine restaurant," he said. "Ross is one fine cook. All sorts of your famous people ate there—movie stars, politicians. There was this register in front where you could sign, and you wouldn't believe some of the names that were in that book. Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye. Dale Evans."

I waited for him to go on, but he just sat there threading the bait on his hook like it was some kind of sewing job. Monica wasn't paying us any attention—she was concentrating on her line that fed out into the water. I don't think she wanted to listen to all this.

"So this restaurant," I said.

"Well," Don said, "he was set up. Bunch of college kids from New York City, do-gooders—came down on a bus. Got all hepped up about things. Help the Negroes, that sort ot stuff. Lord knows how they found The Delta Hut, but they did. Decided to walk all over Ross m the name of so-called civil rights. M

Monica wasn't looking at her dad, bur she wasn't looking at me either. I'd really wandered into it this tune.

"Tell me what happened," 1 said. 1 remembered Verbena's stories

about Carlos in Alabama, how he thought he could make everything

better. 1 remembered those water moccasins Monica's brother tried to

r with ,i ihotgun in this very lake. 1 don't know win 1 remembered

two things together like th.it. but 1 did.

"Well," Don -.\\<\. "What do you expect? rhere was this ugly

knows u w.is ugly- Rosa knows u was ugly, he'll be

the first person to tell you. But he was set up rot it. Now you tell me

what was i man like him supposed to do, .1 couple o( colored boys from

': trying to bust theii waj into his plao 5ee—

Th« Delta Hut « Main Street It was this place fbi

: |c who ■ erybodi It wasn't advert i

itself, it w.isn't throwing Itself in th<

ling 11 on th.it hook I here

ich left ot it "I'm not prejudiced," he ^^^\ "You kno*

iviiv ed I'm just telling you this so you

Ighi to A

B O Y S O F L I F E □

vie* just got censored our ot all the hooks, no different than what they do m Communist countries

"I don't understand," I said. "What did they do?" It was starting

to drizzle, the way a cloudy day can shade Into this fine ram without your hardly noticing it. And in tact Monica and Pon didn't seem to he noticing it. But I could tell we were going to have full'fledged rain out there.

"Those fellows," Hon said, "went in there looking to net heat up. That's niv opinion. I wasn't there. I don't know what happened tor sure, and there're titty different stones, depending. Rut it you ask me what's my opinion, that's it."

"You're telling me he went and beat up some black guys who wanted to eat at his restaurant. 7 " I said.

The cold was making us all look pretty miserable out on th.it water. Pon especially looked pretty miserable. He gave up trying to gel that bait on the hook. He threw it down on the tloor ot the boat and just sat there. We all could tell now how it was starting to rain.

"You have to understand," he told me. "This was 1964. You weren't even born in 1964."

"Well," I said, "just barely."

"Look," Don said, "what I'm saying is, here's this man minding his own business. He's not hurting anybody. And then they make a big case out of it—this bunch ot Jews from New York. Lawyers volunteering their time to help the blacks. They go and back him into a corner so he looks hke some kind o\ monster and . . ."

"I think," Monica said, "I've got i fish."

n looked over the side ot the boat at where she was tugging her line. The rain was Stinging into the water. "You got .) tish all right,"

l\>n said. "You got a big ^nc. y '

I don't know why I'm telling .ill this. I don't know why we were

even talking about it out there. It's got nothing to dn with fishing. It's nothing to d»> with sitting around out there in the freezing cold and ram, waiting tor something to happen and then nothing- i me-

body, maybe it was Ross, started shooting ofl .1 gun in the distance. Drunk and shooting .it tin cans, I guess. We were out there maybe two

how Might tWO little fish whose names I forget, and which we

threw hack in, .\nA M Itfish, which we kept, this big Ugt) tl.it

thing with whiskers and a dull shine DO its body.

When we got back, Ross had made good on his promise. Thar shack was all steamy with him cooking . black griddle. Sonny

□ PAUL RUSSELL

was passed out on a cot with an army blanket pulled over him. Ross had opened another bottle of whisky. This one was Canadian Club.

Good old Canadian Club, I thought. We used to be acquainted. We used to be good friends. I poured myself some in a coffee cup. The wind and the wet had gone and chilled me right through. I remember thinking about a lot of things—Sammy eating those tomatoes of his with some kind of delicious old man's greed, Verbena and her jimson weed, her conjure stories, and T.J., the way his birds shot off the root to then come funneling back down like water in a spout. I remember thinking about Carlos sending me out to scout those runaway kids at Port Authority to bring them back to the South Bronx, to that empty abandoned old church we were using for his movie.

It was a great breakfast Ross cooked there for us, one of the best I ever ate—scrambled eggs with hot sauce, and sausage, and salty ham and redeye gravy and cheese grits and cornbread, and of course that catfish from the lake that Monica gutted right there into a slop bucket.

It all made me want to throw up.

□ PAULRUSSELL

He looked disappointed, like he was sure I'd understand. "I want to save your soul," he said. It was the same thing I used to hear years ago in the bars in New York—only then it was "I want to tuck you." I've always liked people who are direct.

"You've got one, you know," he went on. "Your soul's beautiful. I can see it inside you, Tony. I can see it in your life. You see, there's no reason why you have to be going through all this. All you have to do is to ask God, and he'll set you free."

I could tell he really believed what he was telling me—the same way all those guys used to believe it when they said I was good-looking.

What could I do? "I hate to tell you this, Earl," I had to say, "because you're a nice guy, you've been pretty decent to me and everything, and I like you. But you got to understand one thing. This soul of mine—forget it, okay. 7 Maybe it looks to you like it's there, but it's not. Maybe in some people, and that's their business. But not me, Earl. Not me. And you know what? I don't miss it. It's like somebody missing having a long furry tail that they never had in the first place. That's the amount I miss it."

I could tell Earl wasn't believing me. He thought all this was something sin was making me say.

"Aren't you sorry tor anything?' 1 he asked. 1 le was holding thai Bible of his hke it was some kind ^\ weapon, which 1 guess in some way it was.

"Sure," I told him. "I'm som about a lo( oi things. I'd be craxi it 1 wasn't. And I'm not crazy. So yeah, I'm sotty about all oi it. But you know what.' At the same time I'm not. I'm not sorry about any oi

it. It's what happened, because something had to happen, and so win that? At least we uere alive. I 'hat's uh.it COUntS, isn't it? lb he

alive

We'd never talked hke this, and I could tell Earl wasn't undei ling .i thing I was saying to him. I hat's one thing you can always

II. I hoped it'd upset him a little. "I just want • 'ii something out oi here," he told me. He