Lost Memory of Skin

by Russell Banks

  It would be more pleasing to him, however, if he could pop the Kid’s real name into the conversation unaided. Relying on the National Sex Offender Registry feels a little like cheating, not that different from his students’ reliance on Wikipedia and other search engines to research their papers. It’s not exactly plagiarism, especially if they acknowledge the source, which they seldom do, but it is lazy and topic specific, so the students rarely learn anything beyond the narrow subject they’ve typed into the subject line. And what they do learn about the subject is no more reliable or authoritative or detailed than what the little colored squares reveal about the Kid’s offense. Yes, his mug shot may come up from under a green box, and maybe he will turn out to have been convicted on a certain date of “second-degree sexual abuse” against an unnamed victim who was eleven years old at the time, let’s say. But was the victim a girl or a boy? Was he or she a family member, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger? What exactly did he do to that little girl or boy? Was it a first offense? Was he alone? And why did he do it?

  From his past study of the sexual offender laws of his home state of Alabama, he remembers that a person commits “sexual abuse in the second degree” (1) if he subjects another person to sexual contact who is incapable of consent by reason of some factor other than being less than sixteen years old; or (2) if he, being nineteen years old or older, subjects another person to sexual contact who is less than sixteen years old, but more than twelve years old. The Professor also remembers that in Alabama sexual abuse in the second degree is a Class A misdemeanor, unless that person commits a second or subsequent offense of sexual abuse in the second degree within one year of another sexual offense, in which case the offense is a Class C felony. Calusa’s not in the state of Alabama, but the Professor believes the definition is boilerplate for most southern states. He can check it easily enough. The Professor calls to mind the Internet address of the statute: Code of Alabama/1975/13A-6-67. Acts 1977, No. 607, p. 812, §2321; Act 2000-728, p. 1566, §1.

  “Kid” is an alias, I take it.

  You could say that.

  Is it a first name or a last?

  Both.

  Sort of like Kydd’s Cut, then.

  What d’ you mean?

  The deep-water channel out there running between the Barriers and Anaconda Key. Kydd’s Cut. It leads from the Bay out to the ocean.

  News to me.

  Supposedly, the famous pirate Captain Kydd used it when he was prowling the Spanish Main and Calusa was his base of operations. All the other channels between the ocean and the low mangrove islands that were filled in and are now called the Barriers were too shallow for a ship to enter. The only way in or out of the Bay was through that one channel, which Kydd could easily defend with the cannon emplacements that he located here on Anaconda Key and over there by the high-rises on what’s now called Bougainvillea Shores.

  No shit. The Kid has finished his eggs. He lights a cigarette and extends the pack to the Professor. Smoke?

  No, thanks.

  Quit?

  Never smoked cigarettes.

  Yeah, well, I’m in the process of quitting myself. Tell me more about this Captain Kydd dude, the pirate. How’d he spell it? Like, was it K-I-D, or what?

  Variously, as K-Y-D-D and K-I-D-D. A few documents have it as K-I-D-D-E. He was Scottish, born around 1645, a commoner who ran away to sea at a young age. He was executed in London by the British crown in 1701. Actually, he was executed twice. The rope broke the first time, and they had to do it over. Then, as a warning to would-be pirates, they locked his body in an iron cage and hung it from a pole over the Thames River to rot. It hung there for twenty years until it finally disintegrated and the remaining parts fell into the river.

  That’s hard, man. The fucking Brits. They’re fucking hard.

  He left among his papers a piece of a coded map of the island where he buried his treasure, but no one’s been able to figure out where the island is located. Some think it was off Long Island, others say it’s Oak Island in Nova Scotia. There’s even a possibility he buried his loot on an island off the coast of Vietnam, where he sailed late in his career. On his map the body of water that surrounds the island is called the China Sea, which most people take to be code for Long Island Sound or the Bay of Fundy. But some of us believe it may refer to the actual China Sea, Nan Hai. Which would suggest the island of Cu Loo Hon or possibly Hon Tre, off the coast of Vietnam. I got a little bit involved with that myself back in the early 1980s.

  No shit? Have you seen the actual map? Does it have like, “ X marks the spot”?

  I’ve seen the map. There is indeed an X. But no scale, so you can’t tell if it’s a big island or a small one. The truth is, Captain Kydd’s treasure could be buried in any one of hundreds of islands from the Bay of Fundy to the waters west of Madagascar. It could even be buried right here on Anaconda Key.

  Now you’re shitting me, Professor.

  No, I’m not. Kydd’s map fits nicely over the topography of Calusa Bay and Anaconda Key as they existed in the middle of the seventeenth century, when no one was living here, other than the Calusa Indians and the last of the Panzacolas. From time to time Captain Kydd and his men came ashore for fresh water and to trade for food with the Indians, heal their battle wounds, and repair their ship. Every now and then an old coin or shoe buckle or bullet shows up at a construction site, confirming the presence of Europeans here long before there was anything like a permanent settlement in this part of the state, which didn’t happen till the mid-nineteenth century, as you know.

  I didn’t know. I thought Calusa was always American. I mean, except for when the Indians were here. Before Columbus an’ shit. I thought the Europeans only started coming here recently. You know, like tourists and models and movie stars and wannabes. For drugs and sex an’ shit and to make commercials and movies and TV shows. Those are the only Europeans I know about. Except for us Americans and black people, the ones who are also Americans, I mean, I thought everyone else in Calusa was from places like Cuba and Nicaragua and the Caribbean islands like Haiti and Jamaica.

  No, before the Americans there were Europeans here. And Captain Kydd, who was from Scotland, was one of them.

  Cool. So what was Captain Kydd’s first name?

  William. They called him Billy.

  Billy? No shit? Billy Kydd? The original? Like Billy the Kid?

  Well, no. He came later.

  Oh. Yeah, sure. I knew that. The Kid looks out to sea with a dreamy, fearful half-smile on his face, like an adopted boy who’s just been handed the name and address of his birth father. After a long silence in a voice barely above a whisper he says: I hate the idea of going back to living under the Causeway, y’know. I like it here. It really is almost like a deserted island. Except for Benbow and them.

  You want me to speak to Benbow on your behalf ?

  There’s still my parole officer. She calls herself my caseworker, but she’s really just a glorified cop.

  Maybe since you’re so out of the way here, so far from schools and playgrounds and so on, she’ll cut you a little slack.

  I guess it can’t hurt. Sure, go ahead and talk to Benbow. If I could stay out here on the Key, maybe I could sniff out ol’ Captain Kydd’s buried treasure. What d’ you think?

  The Professor rolls onto his side and placing both hands against the ground, shoves his huge body into a standing position. I have a copy of Captain Kydd’s map somewhere in my files. I’ll get it to you. But first I’ll have a chat with Mr. Benbow.

  That would be awesome, Haystack. You want a boiled egg? I got like nine more.

  No, thanks. Not while I’m working. I’ll eat at home. Very generous of you, though.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT’S DUSK, AND A HALF-MOON HAS RISEN IN the southwest and hangs like a silver locket over the Bay. An offshore wind riffles the palms and palmettos, flips the leaves of the live oaks onto their gray backsides, and blows the stink of the sewage treatment plant away from Anaco
nda Key, across the Bay in the direction of downtown Calusa. Shambling across the compound toward the bar, now lit with strings of blinking red and green Christmas tree lights, comes the Professor. At the bar the television has been turned off, and speakers hanging in the nearby trees and under the eaves of the half-dozen ramshackle buildings broadcast a skein of Jimmy Buffett tunes about getting high in Key West.

  The unblinking gray parrot, a key part of the scene, studies the set from its cage. The poor old yellow dog lies in the sand by the bar, licking water from a bowl, completing the scene. Trinidad Bob is mixing a blender of margaritas for a man and two slender young women in miniskirts and silk T-shirts. The man is in his middle fifties and looks like Jimmy Buffett himself—shoulder-length curling white hair, evenly distributed tan, Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, flip-flops. One of the women jiggles her gold bracelets in time to the music; the other examines her purple fingernails. The man talks to them, but the music muffles his words. The Professor makes out busted condom and equity. Both women laugh. Trinidad Bob fills three glasses from the blender and serves the man and his companions.

  Out of long habit the Professor avoids taking a barstool and instead stands at the far end of the counter. He nods at Trinidad Bob and zips a thin smile at the others, which they return in kind. The lights of an arriving BMW flash over the bar, and from the car come two more men, younger than the Jimmy Buffett look-alike, more athletic and predatory, casting their gaze around the compound as if in search of potential prey. There are four or five cars in the parking area now, in addition to the Professor’s van, the pickup truck, which probably belongs to Trinidad Bob, and the taxi, where Yvonne sits smoking in the passenger seat. She has the door wide open, a newspaper in her lap, her dress pulled up to advertise her long legs to anyone who happens to pass by. The two newcomers check her out, shrug, make a slow circle of the compound, and eventually approach the bar.

  The Professor tells Trinidad Bob he’d like a beer, a Corona.

  Bob places a frosted bottle in front of him and asks, What can I get ya?

  The Professor says, I see we’re drinking from bottles now, instead of cans.

  What changes at Benbow’s when it gets dark?

  The Professor says, The prices, too, I suppose.

  What else changes at Benbow’s when it gets dark?

  The Professor looks over the four men and two women at the bar and says, Auditions.

  What’s happenin’?

  The Professor pulls a five-dollar bill from his wallet and pushes it across the counter. He asks Bob if Benbow’s around. He’d like to have a private chat with him.

  Trinidad Bob grabs the five and stuffs it into the cash register drawer. No, you hafta give me an answer first, then I’m s’posed to come up with the right question.

  Oh, right. Try this one. “In the trailer.”

  Where’s Boom-Boom Benbow?

  You’re tonight’s winner. Congratulations. The Professor slides him another five and carries his beer across the sand to the trailer and knocks at the shut door. A few seconds later, the door opens to Boom-Boom Benbow, holding a long-stemmed balloon wineglass half-filled with red wine. He’s heavily cologned, head freshly shaved, and wearing a crisp white guayabera shirt and tan slacks, tasseled black loafers. He looks like a small-time film producer with plans for a dinner meeting with potential financiers at a Dominican restaurant on the mainland. Or a man who runs a midlevel escort service. He takes a sip of wine and waits for the Professor to speak.

  I’m interested in having the Kid stay out here in his tent for a while.

  How interested?

  Enough to pay his rent for him.

  I expect you plan on coming out to visit him every now and then.

  Correct.

  This ain’t exactly a whorehouse, you know. You can’t keep your boy here.

  I know. How much a week?

  This is a place of business. The kid’s a convicted sex offender. I don’t want cops and social workers crawling all over the place. I already hadda talk to his caseworker or whatever the fuck she is.

  I’ll take care of the caseworker. The Kid will only be here for a while anyhow, until I find him proper housing and a job. Maybe you could put him to work a few hours a day a few days a week.

  I don’t need helpers. Unless you feel like paying his fucking salary too.

  Depends. How much will you charge for his rent?

  Let’s say two hundred a week. Up front.

  And his salary?

  Ten bucks an hour for cannin’ the empties and raking the place and whatever other janitorial duties I think up. Let’s say two hours a day times six days a week. That’s a hundred and twenty bucks a week. Three-twenty a week for the package.

  Make it an even three hundred.

  I still think you’re a cop. Except it’s usually me paying the cops, not vice versa.

  I’ll be back in the morning with the first three hundred. You needn’t mention my involvement to the Kid. Let him think you’re merely a warm-hearted benefactor taking pity on him.

  Your call.

  Thanks.

  Stick around and party awhile, Professor. The night’s young.

  Can’t. Got to get home to the wife and kids.

  Yeah. Sure.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PROFESSOR’S SEVEN-YEAR-OLD FRATERNAL twins are named Rani and Biswas. His wife is named Gloria, but from the day they met he has called her Glory. She’s his pride and glory, he tells her. She’s small and conventionally pretty and knows it’s an indirect, self-deprecating reference, tinged with irony, to his obesity, though she would never say it to him or even to herself. She takes it as a compliment. When he is exasperated by something she has done or said, attempting to soften irony with affection, he lapses into his marshmallowy Alabama accent and calls her Glory-Glory-Hallelujah. As in: Glory-Glory-Hallelujah! Please stop asking me so many questions about the distant past. Damn! Why do y’all insist on hearing from me a narrative y’all can never personally evaluate or corroborate?

  I’m not insisting. I’m just—

  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. What folks cain’t observe, folks cain’t measure at all. And what we observe, we disturb by observing and thus cain’t measure accurately. The only reliable information about our lives that’s available to us comes to us indirectly via algorithms based upon data generated by our bodies’ auto-response systems. The rest, Glory-Glory-Hallelujah, the rest ain’t nothin’ but fantasy and fear, darlin’, nothin’ but self-serving delusion and illusion.

  Oh, please!

  Life is a dream, m’dear. It ain’t that y’all don’t need to know my distant past. It’s that y’all cain’t know it. No one can. Not even me. It’s why they call it the past, m’dear. It’s more like the future than it is the present. And y’all never think to ask me about the future, do you now?

  It’s not your “distant past” I’m asking about, for God’s sake. And I don’t need another lecture about your philosophy of life. All I want to know is where you’ve been so late.

  She expected him home in time to drive the twins to their flute lesson at 5 P.M., so she could prepare dinner for them and they could eat together as a family, and here it is nearly eight and he has missed dinner altogether, and the kids and she once again have found themselves eating alone in front of the TV.

  Gloria is a librarian employed at a branch of the Calusa County library system out on the Barriers and is the reason why the Professor has ended up serving on the library board of directors: her descriptions at home of her working conditions and the overall incompetence of her colleagues and superiors convinced him that the entire library system was woefully mismanaged by the cadre of elderly civic do-gooders who sat on the board. There’s not a professional book person, educator, or scientist among them, he noted. The Professor, although a social scientist, rather than a so-called natural or theoretical scientist, was all three. He put his name on the ballot, sent out e-mails to the membership listing his qualifi
cations, and was promptly elected by an overwhelming majority.

  Of the four candidates running for the position, one of whom was the eighty-seven-year-old incumbent, the Professor’s résumé was easily the most impressive. Included among his many qualifications were his summa cum laude (Phi Beta Kappa) bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College and his master’s degree in American studies and doctorate in sociology from Yale, his membership in Mensa and the Prometheus Society, his many professional publications and the several anthologies of monographic studies of homelessness that he has edited, his rank of senior tenured professor at Calusa State University, his position as deacon for the First Congregational Church of Calusa, and his volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity.

  Which is pretty much everything his wife Gloria knows about him too—at least all she knows about his near and distant past. That plus the few additional bits and pieces of what he calls data that he’s conveyed to her in a seemingly casual way during their courtship and the nearly nine years they’ve been married: that he is an only child, and his father worked as an accountant for U. S. Steel in Alabama; that both parents were killed in an automobile crash when he was in his early twenties off doing fieldwork in Lima, Peru, and he has no other living family members that he’s close to; that he traveled widely for many years doing independent research for private foundations in Asia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, before settling down to academic life in his middle forties here in Calusa; that he was never previously married nor, as far as he knew, has he fathered any children other than Rani and Biswas (a datum offered in a jocular fashion that implies a possibly hedonistic period in his youth).

  The reason I’m late, then. The usual reason. Research. I’ve befriended a young homeless man who’s one of those sex offenders I told you about who are living under the Claybourne Causeway. I was arranging to interview the fellow. He’s naturally suspicious and needs to be courted a little first. He’s camped out on Anaconda Key for now. I went there after finishing my Saturday stint for Habitat.