by George Cain
Or they’d lie around for days recovering, telling friends of the trials their so sensitive souls had been put through by some jealous lover. Even with our knives at their throats they’d move about so to rest their bodies against ours and feel us with their touch.
The island was in the middle of the lake. We forced them from the boat to a hidden wood and made them strip. Took all their valuables and beat them till we saw a boat heading our way. Next day page 2 of the News read: PIRACY ON CENTRAL PARK LAKE.
In broad daylight five young thugs attacked and beat two young men on Central Park Lake. In true Jolly Roger fashion, they rowed the men to a deserted island where they forced them to walk the plank, then beat and robbed them. The two are in good condition at Roosevelt Hospital. Police are looking for suspects.
BILL WENT ON VACATION and the group disbanded for summer. Began drinking then to kill the long summer days with nothing to do. For a few cents winos would buy you all the pluck wanted. Hid under the highway by the river. Sitting on the rotten pier swayed by the gently slapping water, the lights of Jersey reflected on the blackness like party lights. Boats bass-tooted, distant and lonely. My mind following them beyond the harbor. The loud screech of trains in the yard behind me, rubber wheels slapping on the highway above. All that movement of men and things had infected me and I dreamt of long trips and foreign places. Was young then, still possessed child’s vision, everything was beautiful and unquestionable.
Swilled hardily and the liquor settled a hot ball in the stomach, warming me all over. Watched the dirty river, oil slicks colored rainbow, old rubbers, dead rats floating upside down, wood, dead fish with white bellies. Use to swim here, me, Smitty, Tommy. Tommy drowned out there, head caught in a floating milk can. They dredged him up days later fish eaten and water blown. Barges moved slowly upriver high-piled with garbage, bits spilled into the water and hungry fish fooled rose to feed, struggling, shone all colors in the sun then vanished into gull’s beak. After a while the barges be specks passing under the bridge.
She walks to the river’s edge, moving gracefully feminine. She is woman. Turning, she spots me and I look friendly. Drawn, she comes and sits down. “I’m Carla, felt you calling me and I came.”
She’s beautiful, more than woman, sounds like a bitch, gestures, manner, perfectly feminine. Not awkward absurd like a faggot, some gross parody. Is woman, why wasn’t she born so.
“I’m sorry, I’ll go.”
“I’m Cain.”
The words leave me, neither asking or demanding, but final and past as if her staying is already done.
Am drunk and talking crazy, words from some part of self I don’t know. Her hand is soft, like a woman’s, and crazy things go on in my head.
“You’re beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful, more than woman. Why weren’t you born one. No that’s not what I mean, cause then you wouldn’t be you. You’re too beautiful to be.”
She’s still delighting in my touch, hearing long ago dreamt things she’d always hoped to hear.
Talking drunk and far away—“Your mother should’ve killed you when you were born, smothered you under a pillow. This world can only kill you.”
Kiss her, kill her, pretty boy girl. Break the bottle, watch her, know it must be done. Hurry, hurry, do it. Rising in me, like in church, growing assuming form, love warm and yellow colored. Struggling, not wanting to yield. Then it’s on me, painful, bringing tears, bursting with its warmth. Unuttered the thought leaves me and covers us in grace. I feed the glass to the river. Her fingers move over my face, feeling in my stomach. Can’t turn from her green eyes, no desire to push away, only the strange anticipation preceding the unknown. Her face comes near, life’s breath on my face, lips touching. Gone, gone as if it never were and I jump back angry and deadly, feeling a fool. For an instant, glimpsed beatific, gone and only a vacancy out of which something grows, something dark and terrible.
She throws her hands to her face, crying sounds unheard since man came off all fours. Sounds primeval, bestial, forgotten by the mind and locked deep in the animal voice box. Bitter animal loneliness. Ashamed I laugh at her misery and walk away turning around to look.
An old man, broken, bent, looking from eye’s corner sees the pretty boy girl crying. He moves slowly, cane coming near, kindly old man, white-haired, twinkle in eye, gleaming gold in his mouth, “What’s wrong child?”
Strange unanswering sounds from the beautiful lips and he comes closer.
“Beautiful child, don’t carry on so. Here, here let me help you.” Bold now, sits next to her, patting the beautiful head. Whispers to her, “Don’t cry, I’ll take care of you, come child.”
Raises her from the bench and they disappear. Kindly old man, white-haired, twinkle in eye, gleaming gold in mouth leading a pretty boy girl.
WAS SATURDAY AT NANA’S, watching the world wake from my window. Early morning, people just beginning to stir. Mr. Charles came upstreet clucking Tomorrow, bell ringing. Suddenly sirens, flashing lights and police cars shattered the morning. Ten, twenty a hundred police filled the street. They’d trapped a killer in the building across the way. He’d killed and they came for him in blue numbers. Watched him firing while bullets chipped the brownstone all around him. He was charmed, none touched him. Blue police behind cars, windows and rooftops firing madly. Two broke from a hallway and sprinted for the building, running forward, stumbled still, dead. Another behind a car stopped firing. Two more died on the roof where the pigeon coop was. Their death bloodless and swift. Spotting me in the window across from him, he smiled and waved me down to safety. The noxious fumes, tear gas, burned my eyes and nose. They came at him from all sides, round after round sounding, someone shouted through a bullhorn, “Throw your gun down.”
The smoke cleared and he flashed me a smile and high sign. Then threw down his guns, they fell five flights and clattered noisily on the ground. I saw it all from the window. They came in and stood talking. He had his arms above his head when they shot him and pushed him out the window. He fell gently, quiet, without violent movement, time froze, sickening sound of flesh smacking concrete. They let him lay there as an example to anyone who would try the way of the gun, running blood clotted in a puddle. People looked gawking and babbling about the crazy soul. Finally they came and got him, leaving only the bloodstain. Was sick all over myself, chills and fever, delirious. They put me to bed.
Looking out the window the next day saw the bloodstained walk, people stepping on it, only a few bothered to go around. The stain grew, turning bright red, covering the cars, people, buildings. Everything and body moved in it unconcerned. It climbed the walls and I screamed when it came through the window, warm and sticky.
Newspapers were full of the story of the berserk gunman. They told all, where and when he’d been born, what kind of person he was, the most insignificant details of his life became public record. Robles had overcome anonymity, for days people talked of nothing else. He’s still alive, the warm smile and signs we’d exchanged. Something more had passed between us. I knew he wasn’t crazy.
SHE LIVED ON THE THIRD FLOOR and we’d smiled and nodded at each other for years. It was cold and I was locked out. Stood in the hall window waiting for someone to come home and open the door. Saw her hanging out a window below, sensing eyes on her, she looked up and smiled.
“Hi George, locked out?”
“Cold isn’t it? You locked out too?”
She showed me the latchkey on a string around her neck. All the kids whose mothers worked wore them, but somebody was always home at our place.
“It’s cold here. Why don’t you come inside till someone comes?” Not waiting for an answer, she pulled me inside and left me standing in the living room. “Like some tea? Come in the kitchen, you can look out the front window.”
Stood in the window watching the streets below.
“Look at that.”
Turned to see what it was and she pressed up and kissed me. Taking my breath and rousi
ng me.
“I’ll get the tea, sit here.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“Because I like you. Didn’t you like it?”
Dared not raise my eyes and reveal my state. She asked me to put the dishes up, then grabbed me from behind and bit my ear. Held her away, not sure of what, and twisting, she was on me. Her wet snaking tongue fired me.
“Come on.” In the bedroom she threw us down. Gaping, she put me in and began a rhythm, faster and faster. Had to pee. Lord. I had to pee. Held on till it hurt, felt her all slippery and wet inside. It began leaking and I jumped up and ran, pulling on clothes as I went, out and up the two flights of stairs. Burst through the door and ran to the bathroom, locking myself in. Stripped, watched the white substance spurting erratically from me, leaving me tingling and tired in my muscles.
Afraid of discovery, packed my underwear in a bag and carried it to the river. Stood in the mirror for hours brushing my teeth, trying to wash her germs and saliva out my mouth.
From that time evolved an idea of girls. The compatibility and sameness existing as children were gone. Unable to ride an elevator with a female unknowing the secret dark between her thighs. The young girls sitting gap-legged in class airing their hot bold pussies—wanted to come in all them and feel their small hard tits. Where once a meeting with a girl had been pleasure, were ever after anxious times. Immediately aware of their difference and my desire.
NANDY DRIFTS THROUGH MY MIND like a chimera, not announcing herself boldly, like herself, quiet. But everything centers round her, the focus of my thought and action. Nandy, for so long I’d turned thought from her, and she’s the light in the dark. Memory of her is painful. In prison I dreamt constantly of her, longing is the most terrible pain in life. Having desire and powerless to satisfy even the slightest.
Don’t know how I came to single her from the millions of people that crossed my sight. I was thirteen and child’s innocence had gone, reality was stark and ugly. Began seeing her everywhere, school, playground, around the way. Out of politeness said hello. Hello turned to short conversations till seeing a friend and I’d abruptly end it and break away. Not wanting to be seen talking with a girl. Knowing they’d laugh. My people noticed.
“Georgie’s got a girlfriend,” my mother sang at the dinner table. She knew her name before I did.
I heard it first called by a girlfriend in the yard. Thought it a strange name, not knowing the feeling the two syllables would raise one day. To stop the banter, purposely avoided her, finding new routes to school and pretending occupation whenever we met. Passing her, her look of anticipation, greeting, then hurt and confusion as I went boisterously by with friends without a glance. Her brown eyes cut to the quick, shaming me and I ran back pulling her away from her friends.
“Hello Nandy.”
“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, George Cain.” She said it so sad, turning away with a gesture of helplessness.
In those first days, we tried to give ourselves and capture each other by relating entire histories. Recalling random memories, anything that would help the other to better know and want them. She told me of the South she was born in and returned to every summer. Something all the black kids on the block did in summer to gather strength for the cold northern winter.
“You going down South this summer?”
A place of freedom, barefoot and open. They’d come back sun-browned, fat and talking niggerish to almost Christmas. I was the only kid in the city during summer, all of my people were here.
Her influence on my life can’t be told. She fired me with purpose. Would do all things for her. Saw each other only during school. After school, she helped at home and I was playing ball. When we met, we’d tell the other of all that had happened since we’d been apart.
My life was no longer mine, but wholly bound in Nandy. Saturday, ice-skating in winter. She hurrying across the white ice, gay garb, scarf flying. Sitting in the cold bleachers, warm and happy with closeness. Her cheeks windburnt and red. Kneeling like a gallant knight unlacing her boots with numb fingers. Her hand rested on my shoulder, a queen’s gesture, while I warmed her feet. We’d walk home warming our hands in the other’s, communicating by touch and pressure. How many times we’d lie together, hugged up, afraid to let go, trying to overcome the flesh separating us and not knowing how. We cried, overcome by unnameable fears and anxieties, the pain of our love.
I GO THROUGH ONE of the magazines. Been so long since I’ve seen one. Cover picture, garishly lit street of the city. Stringed lights, cars and neon stretching into blackness, recognize it, been there many times. Color so vivid, I blink rapidly to accustom myself. Have never seen the new electric colors of advertising before. First twenty pages or so filled with uninteresting advertisements, then a color spread of a little girl’s body selling brassieres and filmy underclothes, run my fingers over the glossy sheet as if it’d turn to flesh. A reporting of news, editorials and black-and-white pictures and still I see the girl in filmy underwear before my eyes. A picture of two world leaders meeting, faces twisted into smiles and hands extended. How could anyone have confidence in their wasted faces straining to smile. An airplane crash, charred pieces and black crepe-covered dead. Gun-toting men and women, GUERRILLA FIGHTERS. FLOOD STRIKES LOUISIANA, MILLIONS IN DAMAGE. On and on it went, the world wrecking itself. Feel so far away from it all. Like in the prison, nothing bothers or touches me, am safe and secure. No matter what happens out there, will not affect what goes on here or what happens to me. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. Have I been away that long? The text and logic of the statements in the mag are incomprehensible to me and I read like a foreigner, just looking at the pictures.
Turn the page and triggering memory of a former life, am overwhelmed, instantly transported to hot desert places.
Caravans in the Desert. Group of robe-bedecked Bedouins, camel-mounted, cast long shadows on the brown sand. The clearest blue sky and white sun shining down blind me. Hot brown sand sifting over sandaled feet and the white sun warm under a coarse wool robe. Unruly camels snorting, burdened under a load of dates and figs. They smell water. Give them their head and they step up. Jig, jog, sashaying from side to side, lulls me to sleep. Whistle splits the air, calling a halt and the camels squat to let us dismount. Unpack the beast letting it water and feed. Squatting, join my silent brothers in eating.
We come to the walled city, noise and gay colors relief from the oppressive desert. Veiled women and bazaars filled with spice smells and people. Crowds gathered about the storyteller, telling tales of former grandeur. Setting sun covers the scene in a rose light. Share the hookah, sucking on the pipe. Walk the dark maze of streets and alleys full of people and noise.
Zithers, drums and tambourines sound and passing through a curtain I join them. Bitter coffee and talk with a friend. Speaking the strange tongue with open mouth and clucking tongue against the teeth. Eat my lamb meal, heavily spiced and fragrant. Cloves and peppered sauce. Tired, head home and my silent woman waits for me. She’s strong, dutiful and adores me, her man. It’s getting cool and she fires the brazier, brings tea and the pipe. Lies by my side silently awaiting my pleasure.
The End.
Abruptly returned to the present by the rude ending and view the story again, trying to recapture it but it’s gone and the magazine is again an incomprehensible sheet, making no sense.
Browse through another, pictures of tatter-clothed children, crowded stoops and dead people. Stare till recognition comes, it’s the building I was born in. The same halls, swaying banisters, forty-watt bulbs and living statues frozen in time. The scene leaps from the page. Slam the book shut. The feeling of helplessness that came over me with Rosie fills me and I remember the trip to Lincoln Center. Know I won’t make it.
“Wow. Just remembered something baby. The parole. Today’s the day I’m supposed to show for the test.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it baby.”
She throws it out of
her mind, just like that, there’s nothing we can do. Know he’ll violate me, his sense of duty. Wonder how long it’ll take to get word from D.C. Am truly fugitive now, from under their thumb, and again feel something lift from my heart and know I’m nearer freedom. They won’t go through the expense of hunting me down, just wait for what they think inevitable, another bust and they’ll stick it to me then. So sure I’ll be scooped up by their dragnet of spies and police they’ll not even bother to look for me. So long have I lived this fear that it’s second nature like their death and taxes.
Nandy restores reality. “How we going to live baby? Can’t have no life with the threat of prison hanging over us. Knowing you’re a fugitive and liable to be busted any time. We can’t live that way baby, ducking and dodging the Man, looking over our shoulder. Call that man baby, tell him something. Tell him you’ll be there Monday, tell him anything.”
Cannot believe just having freed myself from the Man, will now call him and beg to return and continue under the burden I’ve just dropped. But she’s right. Am getting old. No longer have the energy of youth to sustain me. Until this moment, everything was done for the gratification of the moment, many moments and tomorrows were due me. Acted without knowing time or the importance of my acts, how they shaped my tomorrow. My life’s history is a calamitous series of accidents that have brought me to this point. Where I who have never directed my life must now summon from somewhere the strength to do so.
I call Romo’s office. He’s not in but there’s a message for me. The test has been put off till Monday, 9 A.M., without fail. We rejoice at news of my reprieve. Cannot believe my fortune and want to hurry this last twenty-four hours. Can begin life in earnest, cannot wait to try my hand at it. Hurt all over, but anticipating and planning my life drives pain out my mind. Cannot wait to feel as I felt a long time ago. To wake up in the morning feeling good cause I feel good. Not bound in the insulation of high that prevents my touching or being touched.