Back to Blood: A Novel

by Tom Wolfe

  The scenery was not the lush tropical show she thought it would be. There were plenty of palm trees… and plenty of sea views… but where were all the estates she had pictured? There were a handful of small houses, which Norman had said were called “casitas”—casitas! She had to come to exclusive Fisher Island to see casitas!?… although she had to admit they were a bit more elegant, if a casita can ever be called elegant, than the ones in Hialeah.

  They came upon a few large houses with nice green lawns and big banks of shrubbery and gorgeous flowers—bougainvilleas?—but the island really seemed like a big compound of apartments. There were a couple of boring modern apartment towers glass glass glass glass sheer facade sheer facade sheer streaked facade, but there were also lots of lower apartment buildings that looked older and more elegant… painted white… lots of wood… You could imagine them to be part of a tropical paradise, but it would take some doing. Then—

  Wow! Now, there was an estate! A huge manor house—wasn’t that the term, manor house?—at the top of a hill, with landscaping too grand and too glorious to take in from a moving car like this… huge banyan trees, the ones that looked absolutely prehistoric, with their twisted multiple trunks and immense limbs reaching up higher than any tree’s she had ever seen—

  Norman clearly enjoyed knowing it all. The place had been a “Vanderbilt estate,” but today it was the Fisher Island Hotel and Resort. Norman motioned toward it as if it were his. The pleasure he took in this stuff got underneath Magdalena’s skin. It was all part of… something… she couldn’t stand.

  Not far beyond the hotel they arrived at the Fisher Island Marina. Now, this place was impressive. More than a hundred boats, many of them real yachts, were docked in slips—Norman called them slips—many close to a hundred feet long, and some much bigger. The whole scene radiated… money… even though Magdalena couldn’t have begun to break it down into categories. There were so many employees going onboard the boats and coming off and walking along the wooden… wharfways?… between the slips. There were so many flags, so many playful names lettered toward the front of the gleaming, grand white hulls, Honey Bear, Gone with the Wind, Bel Ami, so many plump, smooth, buttery, bejowled owners—or that’s what she took them to be—whom Norman greeted ever so casually, ever so amiably, with his Hi Billys and Hi Chucks and Hi Harrys and Hi Cleeves, Hi Claibornes, Hi Claytons, Hi Shelbys, Hi Talbots, Hi Govans—::::::but they’re all Bucks and Chucks, aren’t they—americanos! The whole lot of them!::::::

  At that moment Norman said, “Hi, Chuck!” Another Chuck! Chuck and Buck! A big, meaty, red-faced man came over… clad in a work shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a baseball cap, both bearing the legend FISHER ISLAND MARINA.

  “Hi ya, Dr. Lewis! How you hangin’? Oh, I’m sorry, ma’m.” He had just noticed Magdalena, who was standing behind Norman. “Didn’t mean that like it sounded.” Didn’ mean ’at lack it sayundid.

  His big face turned even redder. Magdalena had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Chuck?” said Norman, gesturing toward her. “This is Magdalena, Miss Otero. And Magdalena?… Chuck. Chuck’s the dockmaster.”

  “Real pleased to meet you, Miss Otero,” said Chuck.

  Magdalena smiled faintly. This Chuck was not just a plain americano. He was a thoroughbred. He was a real cracker. Her hostile feelings rose again.

  Chuck said to Norman: “You goin’ out?” Ayot?

  “Thought I’d give Magdalena her first cigarette boat ride,” said Norman. “Come to think of it, the tank may be low. We’re going a long way.”

  “No problem, Dr. Lewis. Just take her on over there by Harvey on your way out.” Jes taker on ovair by Harvey on ya way ayot. His voice got on Magdalena’s nerves.

  ::::::There has never been a Latino named Harvey, either.::::::

  Chuck turned about and shouted, “Hey… Harvey!”

  Norman chuckled and puffed out his cheeks and brought his arms out to the sides and rounded them at the elbows and made two fists and said to Magdalena, “Chuck’s a monster, isn’t he?… and about the nicest guy in the world.”

  When Magdalena saw Norman in that monster pose, it gave her a queasy feeling. ::::::Yes, and you’re brothers, aren’t you?:::::: She wondered whether the two of them, so different in many ways, realized they were members of the same tribe… yes, a queasy feeling. She just wanted to get away from Fisher Island.

  Norman led her out onto a narrow wooden dockway and pointed at a boat in one of the slips. “Well, that’s it… It’s not the biggest boat in the marina, but I can guarantee you one thing. It’s the fastest. You’ll see.”

  It appeared small next to all the other boats, but it was sleek, modern, very streamlined. It looked like speed. It reminded her of a convertible. It had no top. And the cockpit was small, like a convertible interior. Up front were two bucket seats. What did they call the driver? She didn’t really know. The pilot, maybe? The captain? Behind the driver there were two rows of tan leather seats with white and dark-red piping. Or would they put actual leather in an open boat like that? It looked like leather, anyway. The small cockpit made the hull seem much longer than it was. The hull was white with a six-or-eight-inch tan streamlined stripe outlined in red sweeping from front to back on both sides. Up near the front, within the tan stripe, some bold but no more than three-to-four-inch-high white letters, outlined in the same red, said, HYPOMANIC. The letters were slanted sharply toward the front.

  “That’s the name of the ship—the boat—Hypomanic?”

  “That’s a kind of an inside joke,” said Norman. “You’ve heard of manic depression, right?”

  Tersely: “Yes.” That really ticked her off. ::::::I’m a registered nurse, and he wonders if I know what manic depression is.::::::

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve had lots of patients with manic depression, bipolar disorder, and to a man—there’ve been some women, too—they’ll tell you that when they’re in the hypomanic stage—hypo means lower” ::::::Oh, thank you so much for letting me know what hypo means:::::: “when they’re in the stage before they start doing and saying crazy things, they say it’s absolute ecstasy. Every feeling is magnified. Anybody says anything remotely funny, they’re off into gales of laughter. A little sex? One little orgasm, and they think they’ve experienced the kairos, the all-in-one, ultimate bliss. They feel like they can do anything and walk right over anyone who tries to give them grief. They’ll work twenty hours a day and think they’re achieving wonders. They reign in traffic, and the guy behind them starts blowing his horn, and they’ll jump out of the car and shake their fists at the guy and yell, ‘Why don’t you stick that horn up your ass and play “Jingle Bells,” you faggot!’ One of my patients told me he did exactly that, and the guy didn’t dare confront him, because he thought he was dealing with a maniac—which of course he was! The same patient told me that if you could bottle hypomania and sell it, you’d be the richest man on earth overnight.” He gestured toward the lettering on the boat. “And there you have my ‘cigarette boat’… Hypomanic.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “They’ve been around a long time. There are all these stories about how they used to use them to smuggle cigarettes because they’re so fast. But I don’t know what idiot would go to the trouble of smuggling cigarettes.”

  “How fast?”

  Norman gave her that smile. He was pleased with himself. “I’m not going to tell you—I’m going to show you. But you see how far the hull extends beyond the cockpit? That houses two Rolls-Royce engines, and each one has a thousand horsepower, for thousands of pounds of thrust.”

  Long pause—

  ::::::But that’s like two thousand pounds, and two thousand pounds is a ton… I wonder if that boat even weighs a ton… and there’s something about Norman that’s… not very stable. Why am I letting myself get into this? But how to ask him… ::::::

  —finally: “But doesn’t that make it hard for the… driver?—is that the word?—to handle all that—I mean,
so much power?”

  Norman gave her the sort of twisted-lip smile that says, “I already know the bottom line. You don’t have to go through a whole lot of indirect questions.”

  “Don’t worry, kid,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. If it’ll make you feel any better, I have a captain’s license. I couldn’t give you a number, but I’ve been out on the bay in this boat lots of times, scores of times. I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll go out, but the moment it doesn’t feel right, we can turn right around and come back.”

  She wasn’t reassured, but like most people, she didn’t have the courage to say she lacked the courage. She smiled in a sickly manner. “No, no, no. It’s just that I’ve never heard of such a powerful… speedboat?” ::::::Is speedboat too puny a word? Will that annoy him?::::::

  “Don’t worry,” he said again. “Just hop in. We’ll take it easy.”

  Norman hopped in first, with a single vault over the railing, into his hypomanic vessel, then gallantly supported her as she climbed over the edge. He took the wheel, just behind the windshield, and she sat next to him. Sure felt like leather…

  He turned on the ignition, and the engines came to life with a terrifying roar before he throttled them back. It reminded her of boys with motorcycles in Hialeah. The roars seemed to be what they lived for.

  Norman slowly backed the boat out of the slip. The engines made a low growling sound. Now Magdalena thought of a woman who lived near her in Hialeah. She used to take a pit bull out on a leash. The dog seemed to be as heavy as she was. It reminded Magdalena of a shark. It had no brain at all—just a pair of eyes, a pair of jaws, and a sense of smell for blood flowing in human beings’ arteries. It eventually killed a five-year-old girl by ripping one arm clear out of the rotator cuff and gnashing half her head off, starting with a cheek, an eye, and an ear, and proceeding to drive its teeth through her skull. Afterward, many neighbors confessed that they were just as terrified of the mindless beast as Magdalena was. But no one, including her, had the courage to come forward and say she was deathly afraid of the brainless pit bull.

  And so it was again with Magdalena as the motors of the brainless Hypomanic growled a low growl a low growl a low growl a low growl a low growl on a leash on a leash on a leash… and the Hypomanic slowly headed toward the marina’s exit and Harvey the cracker Harvey the cracker Harvey the cracker…

  So Harvey the cracker pumped fuel into the cigarette boat. Even just listening to the engines idle, Magdalena could tell they must consume gasoline at some astounding rate. She shuddered. The beast was brainless. Harvey the cracker was brainless. The licensed captain of the vessel, Dr. Norman Lewis, was not brainless. He was unstable. She had sensed that in his behavior before the 60 Minutes interview—but he proceeded to be a rock on the show itself and a brilliant tactician. But now fear had dismantled his record in her eyes. If he did something unstable in this ridiculous overpowered rowboat, he would not be able to talk his way out of it.

  The mouth of the marina, leading out into Biscayne Bay, was actually a space between two walls built of rock that rose up six feet out of the water and stretched across the entire marina. As they passed through it, ever so slowly, Norman turned toward Magdalena, pointed at the walls, and said, “Anti-surge!”

  It was close to a shout. Even at this speed the noise of the engines, plus the noise of the boat traffic on the bay, plus the wind, even though it wasn’t much, meant Norman had to raise his voice pretty high to be heard. Magdalena hadn’t the foggiest notion of what anti-surge might mean. She just nodded. By now the blank spots in her vocabulary were no longer very high on the worry ladder. She had no fear of venturing out on the bay. Her father owned one of the motor craft that were mounted so proudly upon boat trailers all over Hialeah. She gazed out over the water through her dark glasses. It was the usual great sunny-day Biscayne Bay waterscape, with tiny glints of dazzling sun dancing ever so lightly across the surface in swarms… and yet her spirits were sinking sinking sinking… She was at the mercy of a… hypomaniac! That was what he was—at the very least! He thought he was invincible! That was how he had demolished the Grand Inquisitor! But the sea was no place to feel invincible. And she had let this happen! Pure weakness! She had been embarrassed to say, “I’m afraid—and I don’t want to go.”

  At that very moment Norman, both hands on the wheel, gave her a devilish look and cried out, “Okay, kid—HANG ON TIGHT!”

  With that the growling engines broke into an explosive roar. The roar wasn’t a sound—it was a force. The force went through her body, rattled her rib cage, and shook her from the inside out. No other sense could register. She had the feeling that if she cried out, the cry would never be able to leave her mouth. The nose of the boat began to rise. It came up so high, she couldn’t see where they were headed. Could Norman, at the wheel? Would it do any earthly good if he could? She knew what was going on, even though she had never been on a boat like this before. This was supposed to be the… great moment. The entire boat was riding on its tail. Well, whoopee. This was supposed to be exhilarating. Girls were supposed to scream from the thrill. Magdalena felt the way she had in her early teens when boys insisted on showing how daring they were at the wheel of a car. She had never felt anything but nervous because of the drivers’ blank and empty youth and the pointlessness of their goals as hell drivers. Norman was forty-two, but she felt exactly that way. Oh, blank and empty middle age! Oh, pointless goals! When would this be over? Didn’t Nestor’s Marine Patrol go after fools like this? But the thought of Nestor left her empty, too.

  Finally, Norman let up and the nose came back down. He yelled to Magdalena, “How about that?! Seventy-two miles an hour on the water! Seventy-two!”

  Magdalena didn’t even try to say anything. She just smiled. She wondered if her expression looked as feigned as it felt. The main thing was not to show so much as a hint of exhilaration. One little hint—and he was bound to try it again. The nose was back down, but the Hypomanic didn’t cut through the water the way other boats out here did… It didn’t glide the way the sailboats did… Look at that one! So big! Could it be a… yacht? In Magdalena’s imagination, a yacht could only be a very big boat with huge sails… On this dazzling day, all sailboats were flashes of white cloth upon a bay… a-dazzle with sun explosions off every little chop on the surface from here to the horizon… not that she could dwell upon any particular part of it for long… Norman’s idea of cruising in his cigarette boat was to go fifty-five miles an hour instead of seventy… still so fast, the boat twitches and skips… and skips along… hypomaniacally bounces… and bounces… The hypomaniac at the wheel skips and bounces over the surface of the water… whips past every craft Magdalena got a glimpse of. A smile of self-awe took over Norman’s face. He kept both hands on the wheel… He loved turning the boat this way and that way… this way to pass oncoming boats… that way to pass the boats he kept overtaking.

  Nobody they went past in any direction seemed as exhilarated by the Hypomanic’s wild rush as Norman was. His passenger wasn’t, either. Only Norman… only Norman… People on other boats squinted, glowered, shook their heads, gave the hypomaniac the finger, the forearm, up, up, the thumbs-down, and shouted angrily, judging by the expressions on their faces. The crew of the Hypomanic could not hear a word they said, of course. Certainly not Norman, there at the helm of his cigarette boat. He leaned forward in his upholstered pilot’s seat, living out a happy fantasy.

  Then he could resist no longer. Two more times he turned toward Magdalena and shouted, “HANG ON!”… grinning as if to say, “Want more thrills? You’re with the right man!” Two more times he let the throttle out as far as it would go. Two more times the nose went up and the sudden forces drove Magdalena back and deeper down into her seat and made her feel like a fool for getting into this in the first place. Two more times the boat shot forward with hypomanic lust for superiority and showboating. Two more times they shot past anchoring boats with speed blurs. The second time, the speedometer hit e
ighty miles per hour, and Norman thrust a fist of triumph into the air and shot a quick glance toward Magdalena. Quick, because not even the hypomaniac dared keep his eye off where he was going any longer than that.

  When he finally throttled down and put the nose back on the water, Magdalena said to herself, ::::::Please don’t turn toward me and break into your big grin and say, “Guess what speed we hit!” and then make a face that begs for an awed reaction.::::::

  He turned toward her with his self-awed grin and said, “I can’t believe it myself!” He motioned toward the gauges in front of him. “Did you see that?! Am I kidding myself?! Eighty miles an hour! I swear, I never even heard of a cigarette boat reaching that speed! I could feel it! I bet you could, too!” He beamed another awed-reaction opportunity her way. ::::::Give him anything but that, or he’ll do it again. He’s feverish with Pride.:::::: So she gave him a compulsory stillborn smile, the kind that would freeze any normal man. To Norman it was nothing more than a cool breeze.

  The cigarette boat covered the twenty miles to Elliott Key just like that. They knew they were there, not because they could see the key… but because they couldn’t. The key itself was obscured by a promiscuous congestion of boats, reaching out at least a half mile… appeared to be thousands of them—thousands—some of them anchored, some of them somehow lashed together side by side, as many as ten in a row. Little dinghies motored about amid the bigger boats… What was that? It turned out to be a kayak, with one boy standing at the prow, paddling. A boy and a girl reclined behind him, each holding a plastic cup.

  Music from God knows how many amped-up speakers rolled across the water—rap, rock, running rock, disco, metro-billy, reggae, salsa, rumba, mambo, monback—and collided above a loud and ceaseless undertone of two thousand, four thousand, eight thousand, sixteen thousand lungs crying out, shouting, shrieking, caterwauling, laughing, above all laughing laughing laughing laughing laughing laughing the stilted laugh of those proclaiming that this is where things are happening, and we are in the heat of it… There were motorized boats with two and three levels of decks, enormous boats, and you could see, far and near, the forms of people hopping up and down and flailing this way and that—dancing—and—