Lost Memory of Skin

by Russell Banks

  The Kid doesn’t quite sit where he’s told; he squats three feet away ready to stand up in case the Professor reaches out and lays one of his meaty paws on his thigh. He still doesn’t quite get the Professor’s interest and deepening involvement with the men living under the Causeway. Unless he’s a sex offender himself only not convicted. Although for the Kid it’s very hard to imagine a guy that fat having any kind of sex life at all, even in his head. He knows about chubby-chasers, guys who are into sex with fatties, but they usually aren’t fatties themselves. And the Professor’s not just fat, he’s two or three times fat. He’s enormous all over and wears clothes that make him look even fatter than he is as if he’s trying to warn people off his mountain of flesh. His three-piece suit and buttoned-up shirt and wide necktie strangling his neck with a Windsor knot the size of a fist and his hard leather brogans are like body armor. Plus his beard and long hair enlarge his head and make him look like he’s wearing a hair helmet.

  Whaddaya got?

  What you’ve been waiting for, my friend.

  The Professor pulls a folded sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket, carefully unfolds it and passes it to the Kid.

  The map! Very cool. Very very cool.

  It’s only a copy of the original. A copy of a copy, actually. The original is in Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress, where I expect no one except for me has seen it in two hundred years.

  The Kid gives it a once-over, then a closer look, then gazes a little wistfully out across the Bay to the Calusa skyline and beyond to Anaconda Key and west to the Barriers and the stacked hotels facing the ocean there. He’s trying to place the map of the island onto the world that surrounds him. The map is hand drawn and to the Kid looks old-fashioned enough to have been made by Captain Kydd himself even though it’s on a standard sheet of typing paper but like the Professor said it’s a copy of a copy. The original is probably an old sheet of parchment and much larger and faded by time.

  The island is shaped sort of like a diving whale with its mouth wide open as if about to swallow a much smaller island. The smaller island has the words SKELETON ISLAND written next to it. The mouth of the whale looks like a bay, unnamed like the whale-shaped island which has a second segment attached to its backside as if a shark were riding piggyback on the whale or maybe it’s the whale’s baby and the mother whale is diving for a chunk of food for her baby. There are other words written on the map: CAPE OF YE WOODS, SPYEGLASS HILL, NORTH INLET, SWAMP, WHITE ROCK, and so on, and in the water surrounding the island are numbers indicating the depths, the Kid figures, none of them over 14 and most of them low numbers, 3, 4, and 5 and so on.

  Pretty shallow waters, the Kid observes to himself. Maybe Calusa Bay didn’t used to be as deep as it is now since they dredged it out to make the Barrier Isles and the Cut between the Barriers and Anaconda Key for deep-water freighters and cruise ships to come and go. Maybe back then two hundred or more years ago this place didn’t look like it does now. He’s sure the sky was the same huge blue dome spreading from horizon to horizon from the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean in the east and south and in a vast sweep overhead to the endless Great Panzacola Swamp on to the far side of the swamp to the Thousand Islands and west of the islands the Gulf of Mexico. The sky never changes. He knows that the land between the horizons was flat as a table from shore to shore barely two or three feet above sea level with low sandy ridges and mounds heaped up in places here and there by the hurricanes that for centuries roared out of the Gulf and the Caribbean every summer and fall just as they do today. There were no buildings anywhere then—no skyscrapers, no hotels, no miles and miles of condo developments, gated communities, suburban ranches, and bungalows. No geometrically laid-out fields of sugarcane, vegetables, strawberries, citrus orchards. No mile after mile of drainage and irrigation dikes and canals carrying off the waters of the Great Panzacola Swamp and the overflow from the huge lakes in the central portion of the state. No highways, cloverleafs, bridges, overpasses and underpasses, no causeways. No Claybourne Causeway for sure. No Great Barrier Isles. No Mirador Hotel & Restaurant, Rampart Road with its boutiques, cafés, restaurants, tourists, and hustlers. No airport or Boeing 747s cutting across the sky. No cars, trucks, buses rumbling back and forth day and night between the mainland and the Barriers. No Barriers even, because they’re man-made. No people! Mainly that. No people and everything they’ve done to the land and the water and all the animals that live on the land and the creatures that swim in the waters and the birds that fly above.

  The Kid is imagining his city the way the pirates under Captain Kydd saw it when they first sailed into what’s now called Calusa Bay. He doesn’t know their story or the history of this place but with the map in his hand he can imagine it. They’d approach the mainland from the east-southeast sailing up from the Caribbean atop that deep green current called the Gulf Stream. They’d be on the run after pulling off a set of daring raids in the waters off the coast of Hispaniola, their ship loaded down with bars and coins of stolen gold. The Kid would’ve climbed to the crow’s nest atop the mainmast, sent up by the Captain to keep a sharp lookout: Keep your starboard eyeball on the glass for ships sailing north behind us, lad. And use your portside eye for the dear old harbor on the east coast of the mainland. That dear old harbor would be Calusa Bay though it’s not yet named and isn’t on any maps yet, not even the Captain’s.

  Between the string of low-lying coastal islands and the mainland a meandering river that drains the mainland dissolves in a marshy delta and empties into a broad bay so that when you enter the bay your first sight of the mainland is of a long green line dividing the sea from the cloudless sky. It’s midday with a light breeze out of the east and where the bow slides through the low waves the water glitters like silver coins. After decades of pillage and flight Captain Kydd knows these waters better than any other man. He takes the wheel himself, orders the mainsails down, and brings his ship straight in toward shore as if he plans to run it aground on the offshore mangrove islets. It’s high tide and from above in the crow’s nest you can see the narrow cut between two of the islets, a channel deep enough at high tide and just wide enough to let the ship slip past the islets into the broad blue-green bay.

  The waters on the seaward side of the mangrove isles are thick with schools of silver fish surging and turning in huge sweeping motions, wide rivers of fish just beneath the surface so closely crowded that you can drop a bucket into the sea and bring it back filled with flopping gasping fish. You can drag a weighted basket across the sandy bottom and a minute later pull it back to the ship and dump dozens of large spiny lobsters onto the deck. As the ship approaches, flocks of birds—anhingas, pelicans, cormorants, egrets, and herons—rise from the mangroves into the sky where they thicken into layers of birds and spread out until they block the sun and cover the sea and ship below in darkness as if evening has come on. Herds of sea cows, enormous lumbering manatees, part for the ship, making room for it to pass from the sea into the bay, then gather behind it into a massed crowd of animals, hundreds of them, gently watchful, trusting, and almost politely deferring to the ship.

  All sails are furled now and the crew has been sent to man the lifeboats and tow the ship slowly across the bay toward the mainland. As the Kid rows, he looks back over his shoulder at the lush flowering trees, the jacaranda and lignum vitae and the flame-colored poincianas and the forests of thatch palms and palmettos and groves of slash pine spreading inland from the sandy shore. There are sea grapes and along the islets where the streams empty into the bay white, red, and black mangroves float on their stilts.

  Captain Kydd stands in the bow of the lead lifeboat. The first mate sits in the stern manning the rudder while the Captain indicates with his one good arm where to aim the boat. There are eight men rowing, their backs bent to their destination, and though the Kid doesn’t want to be seen slacking off every now and then he turns in his seat and steals a look at where he’s headed. They’re moving north in the bay a f
ew hundred yards off the mainland, slowly towing the ship toward what appears to be a large low-lying island at the far end of the bay. He spots a protective shelf of land with hills high enough to look out over the tops of the mangrove islets one way to see if danger is approaching by sea and over the tops of the pines and palms and lush flowering trees the other way to see if danger is approaching by land.

  From the top of the highest hill which the Captain has named Spyeglass Hill you can survey the entire island. It’s shaped like a whale with a shark riding its back. The mouth of the whale is wide open and about to swallow the smaller island. The ship has been anchored in the shallow waters on the leeward side of the smaller island. When the tide turns and the waters empty from the cove turning it into a mudflat the ship’s hull will be exposed to the sun and air. One crew will go to work scraping it free of barnacles and sea worms. A second crew will cut trees and construct a small fort atop Spyeglass Hill and a palisade in case they are attacked either by the murderous Indians or by a contingent of European or American sailors. A third crew carefully selected by the Captain for their loyalty to him will carry from the ship his treasure—trunks and wooden cases filled with gold bars and coins, jewels and precious stones, a ton or more in all—sweating in the afternoon sun, lugging the booty from the ship across the mudflat into the jungle to a spot near the center of the island that only the Captain knows how to find, where there is a cave that he has used for years as a hiding place for his stolen cargo. The cave is like an enormous vault known only to a handful of men who have been sworn to secrecy in exchange for a promise to share out the treasure when the time comes for the Captain to give up piracy on the high seas and return to land and a life of respectable law-abiding luxury. The Captain holds five shares of the treasure and the five men he’s chosen to divide it with hold one share each.

  Who are the five? The Kid believes he is one. X marks the spot and the Kid puts his finger on it and says to the Professor, Here’s where they buried their treasure.

  Correct. But where is the island?

  Right here, man. Right where we’re standing.

  The Professor chuckles. He’s amused that the Kid seems to have taken seriously the map that the Professor drew from his memory of the map drawn by Robert Louis Stevenson to illustrate his novel Treasure Island. Amused and a little disappointed. He meant it as a joke and a tease. But is it funny if the Kid doesn’t get the joke and doesn’t realize he’s being teased?

  No, seriously, dude. I bet we’re standing on Captain Kydd’s original island. What’s left of it.

  How do you know?

  I just know.

  You could be right. But from the map it could be anywhere. I’ve seen a dozen islands that correspond to its approximate shape and contours. From Nova Scotia to the Caribbean to the South Seas. Captain Kydd anchored at hundreds of islands and harbors like this. The Professor squints and studies the map as if searching for something he may have missed in all the times he’s studied it. He says to the Kid, Of course, he probably passed by this bay, Calusa Bay or whatever it was called then, more often than any other. And no doubt there was an island already here when they dredged the Bay for the soil to build the Great Barriers and put up the Causeway to connect the Barriers to the mainland. So it’s certainly possible, my friend. Yes, Captain Kydd’s treasure may well lie beneath us.

  More than possible, man. It’s fucking here. I can feel it.

  How do you plan to locate it?

  I don’t know. Maybe I could use one of those forked sticks people find underground water with. I have the vibe on this, Professor.

  Dowse for it? Why not? But assuming you locate the spot where it’s buried, how do you propose getting it out from under this concrete island and the Causeway overhead? Dynamite?

  I dunno. Maybe something a little less explosive. I gotta focus on it awhile first. Once I nail down the exact spot where it’s buried I’ll concentrate on how to get it out. One step at a time, Professor.

  Have you considered the possibility that the map is a fake?

  You mean the one you copied the copy from? The original?

  Yes. The original.

  That’s like asking have I considered the possibility that you were lying to me.

  Exactly.

  Why would you lie to me about something like that?

  Why, indeed?

  I mean, I can see it if you were trying to keep the treasure all for yourself so you drew me a phony map that sent me to the wrong place to dig for it. But if you wanted the treasure all to yourself, why tell me about it in the first place?

  Exactly.

  Unless there wasn’t any treasure in the first place or even an original map to copy from. And you only wanted to make fun of me. And make yourself feel superior.

  The Professor says, I wouldn’t do that to you, Kid. But his smile tells the Kid that’s what he’s done. The Kid stands and turns and walks back to his camp and his dog and parrot.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PROBABLY THE KID SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED to own a dog or a parrot. They are helpless dependent creatures, neither of them very healthy, and both unable to function normally especially Einstein whose wings were broken at Benbow’s and tied back so that when they healed and the strings were cut he’d be unable to fly more than a few feet at a time. He’d never be able to escape to the trees above Rampart and breed with the parrots there and spend his days cadging dropped bread and leftovers at the sidewalk cafés, squawking with the flocks of other escapees and their offspring and gawking at the humans down below. And Annie’s like an old lady on a walker, frail and slow and cross. They are rescues is how the Kid sees them but in spite of his limited abilities to take proper care of them he still believes they’re better off under the Causeway with him than they were at Benbow’s.

  He wonders if the Professor can give him a lift over to the Barriers to Paws ’n’ Claws the pet food store on Rampart or maybe he’ll hold on to his dwindling cash reserves and hit Bingo’s Wholesome on the mainland for a Dumpster dive. There’ll be three-day-old organic chickens and marrow bones for Annie and plenty of nuts, crackers, and berries a day too stale for the yuppy vegetarians but perfect for Einstein. The Kid used to dive at Bingo’s twice a week at least because of the abundance of the leafy greens that Iggy so loved. But since Iggy went down the Kid’s only been diving at Bingo’s once.

  He figures if he can restore Annie’s health she’ll be a serviceable watchdog who can at least stay awake while he sleeps and bark if someone tries to sneak into his tent or cut his bike chain. A little food, kindness, and respect can do wonders for an animal of any kind. It worked with Iggy. It kept him close by and attentive and loyal and fiercely protective which was what got him killed of course but will keep him always in the Kid’s only memory of being loved. In a sense Iggy is responsible for what little capacity the Kid possesses for loving others.

  You might think the Kid’s mother loved him—she certainly thinks so—because she bore him after all and had no help from anyone else in raising him. She wasn’t cruel to him or violent and for many years she provided him with food, shelter, and clothing and she offered him companionship from time to time when there was no one else around, no boyfriend or some guy about to become her boyfriend or another guy on the way out. She wasn’t on meth or crack, just weed and the occasional blow. Mostly he remembers her going out the door in the mornings for work at the salon, his box of Coco Pops on the kitchen table, slightly sour milk in the fridge, school lunch money next to his plate. Then he remembers her coming home after afterwork drinks at the Bide-a-Wile with her girlfriends from the salon, putting a microwaved box meal in front of him while they both watch music videos on MTV, and then she puts on her makeup and tight jeans and sleeveless tee with the good cleavage and heads back to the Bide-a-Wile or someplace else where she’s agreed to meet up with her girlfriends to begin the night’s prowl.

  That was when she had no boyfriend or as she put it, No beau. Once she found herself a beau he u
sually moved in with her or at least moved into her bedroom and kitchen and took half the couch in front of the TV. The Kid would hole up in his bedroom with Iggy and his computer so he wasn’t seeing her any more when the beau was around than when she was out looking for one. It was a pretty boring lonely life for the Kid whether his mom was with a beau or without, whether she was at home nights and Sundays or on the prowl. Until he was almost eleven, that is, and clicked his way for the first time onto porn sites. After that if he got bored and lonely it was only the porn that was boring and making him lonely but by then it was working on him like a drug that created a need that only it could satisfy and brought with it a need for more of the same.

  Officially then until he was eleven or twelve and could take care of himself more or less the Kid’s mother was neglectful because she left him home alone unattended so much of the time. Unofficially she might still have loved him. People do that sometimes—love somebody they appear not to notice is alive. But she was the kind of person for whom love was only a word and a tone of voice and a ready-made set of facial expressions and body movements. As long as she employed the word and made the right faces and provided the appropriate hugs, kisses, and whatever else was required of her body to support her use of the word she believed that she loved her son just as she believed she was in love with many of the men she brought home and had sex with. They believed it too, her son and some of the men who shared her bed. For a while anyhow. The men that is. For a day or two. Sometimes weeks. Her son however believed for years and years that his mother loved him. Even now he believes that she loved him all his life right up till he became a convicted sex offender and then she stopped. Which the Kid thinks was understandable.

  The night he was busted in West Calusa Gardens after they finished interrogating and booking him he called her from the police station to explain why he wouldn’t be coming home unless she could put up a twenty-thousand-dollar bail bond. She demanded to know what he did. She didn’t ask him what he was charged with.