The trailer lay in the dunes like a derelict ship. Streamers of rust ran over its rounded, once-silver shoulders and down its dented sides to the cinder blocks upon which it sat.
Daddy had to kick the door to get it to open and once inside we were greeted with an incredible show. Dozens of mice, squealing and scurrying about, dashed for safe places. They leapt from counters and raced up the airy frayed curtains and spun around in the thin layer of sand on the table top. Daddy looked on, smiling, as if he had arranged this performance just for us.
"As always," he said, glancing at me, the youngest, "the first order of business is mice. The traps are under the sink."
While they unloaded the car I set a dozen mouse traps with cheese he had brought along just for that purpose. I put them behind the smelly couch, in smelly cabinets, up on the icebox, underneath the bunks and cots we were to sleep on.
"They seldom work," he said. "Don't much like killing the little monsters anyway. But for some reason just having the traps out seems to keep 'em in hiding. You did good, son."
That afternoon Dad and Lawrence went back to town to rent a boat, so Derald and I took a swim in the Gulf. Then Derald put on jeans (at that time he changed clothes three or four times a day) and we walked far up the beach. It was midweek and there were very few people out. A couple of fishermen battling the surf, a mother and her child, a pair of lovers. Derald was so much older that he usually spoke to me from a great distance, as if, like Lawrence, he were more an uncle than a brother.
"Thirteen, eh?" he said.
"Yeah, next week."
"That's a big one. You'll be a teenager, almost a man."
He looked at me then and a certain light entered his eyes.
"Come on," he said. "I want to show you something."
We went up into the dunes and from somewhere in his jeans he produced a pack of Marlboro's. I was astonished. Until the last year or so he had always been the good boy (Debate Club, History Club, the baseball team) a good boy with a fierce, determined depth in his eyes. He did everything with a vengeance, nothing it seemed for pleasure. If he did it he wanted to do it well and little in a boy's life came naturally to him. So he tried too hard, strained himself. Everything needed a purpose.
"Ever smoked before?" he asked.
I shook my head no.
"Well, it's time you did."
"I'm just thirteen, Derald."
"A head start then. I was almost fourteen when I started." Then his face changed and he spoke the old warning: "If you tell, I'll kill you. I mean it."
He stuck a cigarette in my mouth and lit it with a Zippo lighter that he also produced from some hidden place in his jeans. "Suck," he said. We sat there and he watched me. I could tell he had experience. He held the smoke down in his lungs and exhaled through his nose. I just puffed, like a woman my mother knew, and tried to blow smoke rings in the wind. Derald helped me, showing me how to round my lips and work my jaws, and then we just sat still, silent, like old men after a hard day's work, enjoying the scene before us: the wide and worldly roaring Gulf.
"Why do you hate Daddy?" I asked when we were up and moving again, kicking through the dunes more or less toward the trailer.
"I don't hate him."
"Well, what is it between you?"
"Nothing really."
"It must be something."
"Yeah, it's something, I guess. It's a lot of things. He wants me to be an engineer and go to Rice. He says engineers are respected and make a lot of money. He's afraid I'm going to turn out like Lawrence. More than anything he wants me to be successful. He wants me to have all the things they don't have."
"And you don't want to be successful?"
"I don't know what I want to be, not yet. Do you?"
He smiled like an uncle.
"And there's a girl," he said.
"Jenny?"
He nodded. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."
"What about Jenny?"
"He's afraid we're up to something and might try to get married or something, before our time, and louse up his plans."
"Married?"
"It happens, kid, you'll see. And it's enough to drive you crazy." He stopped and looked out at the Gulf and the immense blue sky and I just watched him. It was like he was searching for something. "All I know is I want to be gone."
"You mean we'll never see you again?"
"Sure, you'll see me again, numbskull. There'll be summers and Christmas and all. I just mean out of the house."
"What's wrong with the house?"
"It's theirs."
"What's wrong with them?"
"They're them, that's all."
Confusion must have painted my face, for he did something then he had never done before without prompting from Mom or Dad for a photograph: he put his arm around me, lightly on my shoulders, and looked directly into my eyes. He was about to say something, but embarrassment caused him to glance away. The question what, what is it? was almost out of my mouth when he said, "Hey, look," and started running. "They're back."
I followed him through the dunes, trying to keep up. And then in one of the depressions I noticed he jumped, as if to avoid stepping on something, but I wasn't quick enough. That's when the strange thing happened. Just as Derald yelled, "Watch out!" I tripped and fell and something splattered.
"Good Lord, boy, you stink," said Lawrence.
"What is it, Dad?" asked Derald, who had run to get them. We were all four standing in the dunes looking down at the carcass.
"I don't know exactly. Kind of looks like a burro or something. I've heard there were wild burros around here."
"Must have been coyotes," said Lawrence. "Or a wolf."
"Yeah, last night or the night before," Daddy said.
The burro's belly was torn away completely and most of its neck. Flies buzzed. The stench hung in the air like a cloud and it hung on me like an overcoat. They all looked at me in fact as if I were wearing an overcoat there in the hundred-degree sunshine, as if there were something special about me all of a sudden, as if I knew something they didn't, had done something they hadn't. Even then I had read about hunters smearing the blood of a boy's first kill on his face in a rite of initiation. But I was no hunter and the blood on me was not their doing.
"Are you hurt?" my dad asked.
"No, sir."
"Well, go take a bath. Hurry. And we'll burn those clothes."
When I came outside again, Lawrence had a dinner fire going in the pit. I dropped in my tee shirt and cutoffs and we watched them burn. It was almost sunset but the sun remained a hellion in the western sky, so we sat in lawn chairs on the shady side of the trailer. On this the first night we ate well: steaks and baked potatoes, French bread and brownies. Dad and Lawrence sipped beers and Lawrence sometimes lifted his bottle of whiskey.
"Go easy on that," my dad said.
"Oh, I will, I will," said Lawrence, grinning. "Don't want to waste my old buddy."
Daddy grinned too, but kept shaking his head no whenever Lawrence offered him the bottle.
"How about you, Der?"
"No, Lawrence," said Daddy. "He's too young."
"And just how old were you, Kimo Sabe?"
Daddy grinned again. "That was a different time."
"I've tasted it," said Derald proudly, and Daddy gave him a hard but playful look of disapproval.
"A taste is one thing"
"Oh, good Lord, Roger, the boy's about to go out and do battle with stingrays tonight, he's about to go off in a month or two and do battle with the State of Texas's finest eggheads. Why hell, he's a man in every way but one, and from what his mother tells me there's suspicion over that."
Daddy and Derald both groaned over this reference to Jenny.
"A little sip to fortify him won't hurt anything."
Again Daddy smiled. Then he said, "Gimme that bottle. And if you tell his mother, I'll kill you."
Daddy raised the bottle and took a drink and I could see by the way his b
ody trembled that it had reached its mark and by the light in his face that the mark was a good one. He motioned to Derald to come get the bottle. Derald jumped up, took it and then stepped back. Lawrence grinned wildly, the provocateur. "Just one little one," warned Daddy. He turned up the bottle, turned it down, swallowed, and his eyes immediately went to glass. He blinked and coughed and stumbled, and the men laughed.
"Gimme that bottle," said Daddy and up it went.
Then it was Lawrence's turn again. By now the sun was down and there was a rich sheen of dying color in the low sky. The Gulf was in its evening calm and the sound of the waves came up in a peaceful rhythm. Sparks flew from the pit and their faces were bright joyous ovals in the glow of the firelight. Lawrence and Daddy joked and recalled other good times, and then somehow the bottle was in Derald's hands again and he was drinking again and I was looking on in wonder. It was a scene the likes of which I had never witnessed. It was grand. No animosity, no back talk, nothing mean at all. The electricity of brotherhood pulsed in their veins. They laughed and teased and slapped their legs, and their eyes were happy.
Lawrence had the bottle again, holding it by the neck just above the sand as if it were a great weight, and out of nowhere I heard him say, "Hey, Wayne, how about you?"
"I don't know, Larry," said Daddy. "I mean, no."
"Just a taste," cajoled Lawrence. "Come here, son."
I looked at Daddy. Lawrence looked at Daddy. Derald looked at Daddy. Daddy looked away.
"Come on, Rog," said Lawrence. "Christ, the boy killed a burro today with his bare hands. That's cause for celebration."
"Just a tiny smell, by God, and I mean it now."
The bottle was in my hands. It had such a sturdy, such an important feel, square and heavy, and I held on tightly, afraid I would drop it and ruin everything, afraid this joy would spill out of them all if the liquor spilled. I could feel their eyes on me, feel their grins. I lifted the bottle to smell. Such an odor, like something metallic and awful, a powerful fuel. I cleared my throat, swallowed, literally gulped. Then I put the bottle to my lips, waiting, savoring, a little fearful perhaps. I gulped again and then turned it up and drank the brimstone.
The men laughed and applauded, glanced at each other.
Such a feeling! Such warmth! Such a blaze of the internal lights! Now the electricity surged in my veins too.
"Wow!" I said and they laughed again.
So it was with light in our hearts that we set out in the car for our first night's floundering. Lawrence and Derald sang a song in Spanish. The boat on its trailer behind us banged and clattered cheerfully as Daddy drove us over the rough sandy road to the bay. Salt grass and sand dunes passed in the headlights and at one point we stunned an animal beside the road, its eyes fiery green dots. "A coon," Daddy said.
"Or a killer bobcat," Lawrence put in and he glanced back at me. Derald, beside me, sniggered and poked my ribs and I poked him back. "Hey now," he said. "Easy."
We were all alone at the boat launch, which was nothing but a jagged slab of cement at the end of the road. The night was so dark, the human touch so frail here, that Lawrence had to light a lantern before we could see what we were doing. It took him quite a while and they giggled over it. Way off, it must have been miles across the bay, gleamed one yellow speck of light.
The boat was barely large enough for the four of us and all our gear. The lantern hissed, the little Evinrude sputtered and growled and moved us forward slowly along the bank. Dad kept saying that in this bay was the best floundering in all the world, but only I paid him any attention. Derald and Lawrence were still swigging from the bottle and cutting up, and Daddy had to tell them to calm down, to hush.
"Okay, Rog," said Lawrence. "He's right, Der, you're going to scare off all the fish. And all the stingrays too." They looked at me and couldn't hide their mirth. "You know, I hear tell those things get as big as this boat."
"Why, I hear," said Derald. "I hear that they especially love to devour small boys."
"After stinging them to death first, of course."
"And you know what they do with them then?"
"That's enough," said Daddy, but he was grinning too, and Derald and Lawrence broke out laughing.
This was a serious concern to me, for in all his explanations Daddy had stressed the "safety factor." The outline of a stingray, he mentioned many times, burrowed down in the silty mud at the bottom of the bay, looks just like a flounder. And if you gig one by mistake it can tear you alive and fill you full of its poison before you have a chance to get away. I had been stung by a jellyfish once and knew the pain of such an outrage. This, though, was the challenge of the thing, he said, not to be taken lightly, this the reason for doing it. You had to be exact, you had to be careful and you had to do it alone, after midnight.
My waders filled with water as soon as they put me over the side, when I stumbled in the sucking mud and almost fell. Daddy handed me my lantern and gaff. He had rigged a rope to the handle of my net so I could tie it around my waist, not let it get away.
"You work this area right here," he said.
"Yessir."
"And don't wander off. Stay close to the shore, in the shallows. We're going to fan out and work the next two coves. We'll be back for you in three hours." He looked at me closely over the gunwale. "Remember everything I told you, son."
"Yessir."
"It's a slow, painful death," murmured Lawrence, his smirking face a pale leering disc in the lantern light.
"Hush," said Daddy. Then he cranked her up. I heard their loud voices talking and laughing over the chug of the engine for a good five minutes as the boat took them away . . . .
I looked down for the first time, peered through the circle of lighted water to the bottom. I could see my boots and other things, small things, floating around down there, but nothing was clear. Minnows flashed by. I moved my foot and a billow of silt swirled up around my ankles and I wondered how I would ever see a flounder, hidden down there, who didn't want to be seen.
I decided to wade for a bit. Like a warrior I waded, spear in hand, raised for action. I went in orderly rows along the shore, doing a section at a time. Nothing; I saw nothing. Were there flounder here? I expanded my boundaries, moved farther down the shore toward the next point. For an hour, two, three, I waded, scanning the gray-green luminous water. Until I was tired.
I was cold too, my toes chilled. Out there was only the single yellow light, so far away, nothing else. Nothing above the water, nothing below it. Only me and my lantern. Perhaps it was time; perhaps if I looked hard enough I would see their light. It would grow brighter, coming for me, and they would raise their heavy stringers crowded with flounder and they would tease me good-naturedly, saying there's always tomorrow.
Something touched my leg, or I thought something did. I flinched but my boots were held fast in the mud. I raised my lantern, peered into the water, and there it was. My flounder in its hiding place. Two feet away. How had I missed it? And a big sucker too. Or maybe not. Was it a flounder? I looked closely, looked for the oval shape in the silt, the point of eye, a flicker of movement. Yes perhaps. I looked for the stingray's telltale sign: the string-like indention in the mud behind the fishy tail. But where was the tail? Was that it? Must be . . . .
Do it!
I lunged, with power, but I missed. Just barely I missed, and it came up out of the silt so fast and furious that it must have had engines. It struck me on the rubber legs and flitted around my thighs. All of this in a second, maybe two. I swung back to get out of its way and tried to run. But my boots!
Backwards I toppled like a felled tree, and I thrashed. The brine stung my eyes and my hands sank into the muck on the bottom. Everything was dark when I struggled to my feet. The lantern was gone; I couldn't find it anywhere. The gaff too nowhere. I thrashed some more, to be frightening this time, and then I raced for the shore, kicking through the water, panting for air.
So that was it; the thing was finished.
/> Where was I? It felt good to sit down, I was so tired, but what was I sitting on? And what might be lurking in the brush behind me? Killer bobcat? Don't think about it, I told myself.
Think about this: what has happened? They would laugh for sure now. No flounder, and all my gear lost; I was alone, wet, cold, frightened. Yes, they would laugh, but only if they found me. And how would they find me without my lantern's beacon to guide them to me through the darkness?
The sky was just beginning to pale when I heard the boat's motor and woke to see it a hundred yards off shore. My exhaustion had proved stronger than my fear and I had fallen asleep there in the sand.
Daddy yelled, "Wa-ayne," as if I were far away.
I waved and yelled and splashed into the water.
"Where have you been, son?" he wanted to know as I waded toward the boat.
He didn't look good. His face was haggard and angry, his cap crooked on his head. Lawrence didn't look any better. One of his shirt sleeves had been ripped from its shoulder and his hair was wild. He sat at the bow and gazed at me as if I were a suspicious stranger approaching the boat. I didn't see Derald until I was alongside. He was lying in the bottom, curled up asleep and as wet as I was. He smelled of vomit and looked the worst of all. Floating in the bilge under Daddy's seat was a seriously wounded soldier, Mr. Jack Daniel. There were no flounder hanging from stringers, no proof they had even entered the water.
Something awful had happened out there in the darkness an argument, a fight, maybe more and I could tell they were still suffering from the mystery of it, the hurt of it.
I put up my hands for help getting into the boat. Daddy and Lawrence both moved toward me, but Daddy stopped him.
"Don't, Larry, don't you touch him. I'll do it myself."
"Fine with me, Rog."
"Just stay where you are, you hear me."
"Shut up, Rog, would you?"
"You're not getting your hands on this one."
"Christ, Rog."
"Christ yourself," said Daddy.
He pulled me in and covered me with his flannel shirt. I explained what had happened to me in the night how I'd had one, a big one, how I'd done battle with it, a flounder or a stingray, I didn't know which, and how I'd put up a good fight and I told it all in a way to let them know how brave I had been. But it was mostly for myself. Neither of them laughed or smiled, neither of them spoke; they weren't interested. Their thoughts were tangled and far away, submerged in bitterness. At that moment I longed for the night again, as I long for it still: that special happiness around the fire, that electric pulse of friendship that Mr. Daniel in the glory of his gift had ignited for us. I looked at their faces harsh and bewildered yet tinged with sad regret and I saw then what grave difficulties awaited me as a man.
In An Arid Land Page 8