Outer Banks

by Russell Banks

  After her death, however, and following hard upon the visit from my sons, there commenced my period of illness. It introduced itself to me modestly enough, so that, unawares, I did not protect myself against it, because, as yet a man of time is inevitably inclined, I saw each new affliction as separate and independent from the other and saw not at all any sequence or heaping up, and surely I did not suspect that I was entering upon a whole and lengthy period of illness. Therefore, when there came into the corners of my mouth and upon the bridge of my nose a small number of boils and hard chancres, I was not alarmed or even especially discomfited by them, and so I merely waited for them to leave as they had come, silently and in the night and without apparent cause.

  They did not leave, however, although individual boils and chancres did sometimes soften so that the pus beneath could break through and drain from the sore, which sore, when it had fled, would seem to reappear in another part of my mouth or nose. During this time I also contracted the disease called favus, which is characterized by small yellowish crusts on the scalp with raised edges and depressed centers. The crusts have a peculiar odor, like that of a mouse nest, and the hairs in the encrusted areas become brittle, loosen, break and fall out, so that when the inflammation has passed, there are left blotches of baldness across the scalp. This condition did not seem to me a disease at the time, for while I had the disease I was aware only of the itching, which was irregular, and I did not discover the bald patches until sometime later. The peculiar odor, because it was indeed so like unto that of a mouse nest, I simply attributed to the presence in my cell somewhere of a mouse nest. Furthermore, I was also then suffering for the first time from a condition known as dry seborrhea, which affects the foreskin of the penis and is characterized by itching caused by an accumulation of a cheesy material consisting of body oils mixed with dead cells and other tissue debris, and thus I was somewhat distracted from the favus infection on my scalp.

  The reader should keep in mind that I did not at this time know what was yet to come, and therefore each new affliction I regarded as the last in a series. When I had developed boils, I did not know that favus would follow and that dry seborrhea would follow the favus. Nor did I know, when the dry seborrhea had cleared somewhat, that I would soon be afflicted by neuralgia, the chief symptom of which is extreme pain that comes on in paroxysms and severe twitching of the muscles of the affected part, in my case the cheeks of my face and the muscles surrounding my mouth. These symptoms took expression as a sudden grimace, practically an openmouthed but silent laugh, despite the pain, and thus I was often thought to be enjoying some private hilarity, when in fact I was not. To further confuse people, one of the boils from my mouth had relocated in my right ear, to be followed by another in my left, and soon the swelling in the canals had become sufficiently extensive to cause a temporary but total deafness, so that I could not know what was being said to me and thus could not answer questions with regard to the incongruity between my facial expression and the absence of anything particularly humorous in my immediate situation or surroundings.

  Along about this time I began to reason that there was a connection between my various afflictions, however tenuous, and I grew fearful, yet none of my diseases were such that they could be cured by any treatment other than rest and cleanliness, which were my habits to encourage anyhow. Unavoidably, one affliction seemed to lead to another, so that one night during my sleep, the neuralgic twitching of the muscles surrounding my mouth caused me to bite into the meat of my tongue accidentally, which in a short time became inflamed, swelling the tongue exceedingly and leading to an ulcerated and very tender condition and also several abcesses there. This condition brought on a constant and copious flow of saliva and also made it difficult and very painful to speak. In a few days I observed that my gums as well had become infected, for they had grown spongy and tender and had puffed out and sometimes bled and from time to time oozed pus from between my teeth. And still there was little I could do to cure myself, except to provide myself with rest and cleanliness.

  Here I became sufficiently ill that the jailor at last brought a physician unto me, for there had appeared on the skin of my chest several large thickly encrusted areas of a purplish color. These masses of granulated tissue and tiny abcesses, bathed in a thin film of pus, had come from within my lungs, the physician thought, and indicated a condition he named blastomycosis, which he speculated had been caused by some type of yeast infection somewhere in my body. When I had told him of my dry seborrhea, he chuckled and said that it surely explained the cause but gave not a hint for the cure, for there was no cure, except to treat the affected areas of the skin with certain chemical solutions, which he dispensed to me and which I assiduously applied, bringing about a small measure of relief. I was left, however, with a painful cough and more or less difficulty with breathing, and with chills and sweats in alternation, and an indisputably foul-smelling sputum, these all coming as a result of the lung infection, which the physician told me might in time abate of its own volition.

  I lay in my cot for most of my days now as well as the nights and no longer moved outside my cell. The pain from my lungs and from the boils and divers other sores as had appeared across my body and from the neuralgia and the diseases that filled my mouth and stopped up my ears, and the continuous itching in the various parts of my body, made me shrink inside myself like some dumb animal cowering in a corner, and I began to fear that I might be compelled, by my commitment to my life time’s period of penance, to live this way for a long time, and this brought me to conclude that my will to atone was being tested by the dead. I believed that the dead were trying me because there had come into my spirit during these weeks a longing to join them that was exceedingly strong and that was not altogether spiritual. Against this longing I brought forth numerous scriptures and remembered teachings from my youth and all my powers of reason, for this was now a clash that rang out continuously in my mind with all the noisesome fury of a great clash between armies. I know that I often wept and groaned aloud and thrashed helplessly through the long nights.

  It was now that the physician began to attend to me daily, as if he did not expect me to live, and it was in that way that I learned of how the abcess in my lungs, when it had somewhat subsided, had created a certain amount of scar tissue adhering to the walls of the entry to my stomach, causing these walls to pull away and form a sac, which he called a diverticulum and which unavoidably, as the sac increased in size, filled with slivers of food. And when the particles of food decomposed there, the sac expanded still further until it had grown to the size of a tobacco pouch and had caused a foul odor and much pain and vomiting. As a joke, the physician told me that the best cure was starvation, for no matter how little I ate or what I ate, there was bound to be some small particle that would be drawn into this ever enlarging pouch. For several days thereafter I did indeed wrestle with the temptation to cure myself by starvation, but after a while I was able to overcome this test also and thus agreed to follow the physician’s instructions and attempted to keep food from entering the sac by laying myself in such a position as to place the sac at a level higher than the entry to my stomach, with the mouth of the sac pointed downward, which is to say, by lying on my right side with my head and shoulders on the floor and my hips and legs on the cot. Thus I was able to take a small amount of nourishment, mainly in the form of dry crumbly cereals so that the few grains which, despite these precautions, nevertheless got into the sac, could be drawn out daily by the physician with his rubber tube and pump.

  But the cure for one affliction is frequently the cause of another, and because my diet was now restricted wholly to sips of water and bits of dry cereal, I soon developed the symptoms that accompany the absence of acid in the stomach, abdominal pain, headache, ringing in the ears, and constant drowsiness, a condition which additionally led quickly to pernicious anemia, which brought with it extreme weakness, breathlessness and heart palpitations. My skin all over my body, such of it as
was not inflamed with boils and various sores, was a lemonish color, and my feet and hands had puffed out grotesquely. It now seemed to me that I would surely succumb to the temptation to die, for to live meant only to contract yet another, more nearly fatal disease whose cure seemed to be a still worse disease. When I slept, which was only in brief spasms, I had furious dreams, and though I wished for those among the dead to appear to me there and to advise me and I often cried out the name of my wife or of John Bethel or of my parents, none from the dead came to me then. Only the living appeared to me, in my sleep as much as when I was awake, my physician, my jailor, occasionally a curious prisoner who might have heard my groans, until I was no longer able to tell when I was not sleeping from when I was not awake, for in both states did these people appear to me in wildly threatening postures with their faces horribly distorted, as if they themselves had contracted all my diseases and had grown as grotesque to look upon as had I myself.

  Now there came upon my body a great fever, which lasted for about ten days and nights and brought with it profuse night sweats and continuous headache, and when it had abated, left me weaker even than before, with certain of my other afflictions somewhat worsened, such as the neuralgic pains in my face and the coughing and the various symptoms of the pernicious anemia. The physician who had taken a sort of scientific interest in my case, for it presented him with many ongoing puzzles, could not at first diagnose this fever, until there had followed several more episodes of about ten days each, coming as if in waves, each one leaving me afterwards weaker than before. These waves, he said, were characteristic of undulant fever, an uncommon disease among the population as a whole but not uncommon among those who are known to deal with the dead, for it is contracted and spread chiefly by having come into contact with a similarly infected body or carcass, but because the germ often lies dormant for years, it is very difficult to trace the path of contagion. Thus, since my calling long ago had been as a coffin-maker, the physician had swiftly concluded that I doubtless at some time long before my imprisonment had dealt with an infected corpse, and it was only now, in my weakened condition, that the disease had made itself known to me. There was no cure for the disease that the physician knew of, but the symptoms could be treated as they appeared, and because he was interested in the course of the disease and in containing its spread, he determined to stay close to me and treat me as kindly as he could. He thought that he might thereby learn something about the disease so as to be able to devise preventive measures against its future occurrence, especially among the prison population.

  From my own perspective, that of the sufferer rather than that of the detached observor and attendant, the wave-like ebbs and flows of the fever created in my life a paradoxical series of troughs of easefulness, for when my body temperature rose, the numerous pains I had been experiencing throughout my body would seem to diminish, so that the higher the fever went and the longer it lasted, by that much was I released from the pain of my boils and other skin afflictions and the neuralgia and the lung abcess and the pain of hunger caused by the diverticulum and the several other related agonies of that time, so that I came to welcome the approach of each new wave, each new undulation, of the fever. Though afterwards I was left each time as weak as a newborn babe, I was able for a few hours to experience considerable clarity of mind, and despite the inflammation of my tongue and my infected gums and teeth, I was able to speak with a remarkable clarity.

  During the attacks of fever, however, I was not aware of anyone who happened to be in my presence, nor was I aware of the passage of time, so that I had to be shown with a calendar how long each wave had lasted and told, with notes from the physician, for I could not understand his speech due to my deafness, who had attended me and what had been done for my comfort, information I desired so as to be able, during my periods of lucidity following the wave, to show my gratitude. In this way I learned of the physician’s sustained efforts to cool my body by applying alcohol soaked sponges and the regular baths he provided for the removal of the stools and urine that I emitted while feverish and unable to care for such functions myself. I also learned that my jailor, too, and even his superior officers had taken an interest in my condition and had posted an assistant jailor to keep watch over me, so that at no time was I without someone keeping vigil.

  During the first few onslaughts of fever, I felt as if I were in a dream, although I knew I was not sleeping, and there came to me numerous faces from among the dead, and they would speak soothingly to me, as if to strengthen me in my resolve not to resist life so as to keep my penance. In this way I was encouraged by my father and my uncle, and also my first wife and on another occasion my second wife, both of whom knew from their own lives how difficult and painful it often is not to resist living. There also came to me Justice Hale, who had died during the second year of my imprisonment and who now appreciated the wisdom of a faith that in his life time he had merely been willing to tolerate (which raised him above his brother judges, however, for none there were among them, except Justice Hale, who had been willing even to tolerate dissenters), and he too encouraged me in my resolve to exchange my life for John Bethel’s death, for he reminded me of the foolishness of my desire in the beginning of my imprisonment to bring my case to a legal point.

  Then there followed several more waves of fever, and no longer were the dead presenting themselves to me. In their stead came the faces of the living. First there came my second jailor Jacob Moon, who was wearing now a handsome pin-striped business suit instead of his old gray uniform, and he too tried to comfort me, but his words were of a different order than had been those of the dead, for he kept telling me that I should not fall into despair, for soon I would no longer be among the living. And my wife’s cousin Gina, in the company of my five children, all of whom looked upon me with great sympathy and said that I had suffered enough and should give myself over from this penance. Mingled with these were the faces of my present jailor, and sometimes his assistants, and even sometimes that of my physician, and they were all saying to me the same thing, that I should let myself die now, for my sufferings had gone on long enough for many normal life times. There even came to me one of my own brethren in the faith, my friend of long ago who had counseled me to leave off the making of coffins and turn my skills to the manufacture of glass-fronted cabinets, and he once again gave me his sympathetic counsel, because of his love for me, and again it was counsel that denied my understanding of my own love of the dead, for he urged me to leave off my determination not to resist life.

  Until there came at last the waves of fever in which there appeared to me the faces of both the living and the dead, and I could not tell one from the other, the living from the dead, although I knew them all, and they all counseled me and cajoled me and showed me great sympathy, and I loved them all for it and was grateful to them, even to those among them who said nothing, some living and some dead, who merely with their presence showed a concern for me, the Justices Bester and Twisdom of long ago, and certain of my brethren, and the infant born dead to my second wife, and many of my fellow prisoners, the party boys and the athletes and the philosophers, and even the knife boys and madmen who had wanted to do so much violence. Some among these were dead, and some were yet living, and the dead among them urged me not to come among them, to hold fast to my penance, and the living among them urged me to depart from them now, to join the eternal dead. And their voices were like a chorus that harmonized their differences and sent up a song of such precise beauty that I wept uncontrollably, for I loved them all so very much.

  THOUGH MY IMPRISONMENT continues, my relation of it cannot. I must bring it to a close. I have composed it during the interludes between the attacks of the undulant fever. My strength for this composition, despite the effects of my illnesses, has been given to me by my coffin, which was presented to me at last by the prison authorities when it seemed to them that I would soon die of a disease that could be spread chiefly by handling an infected corpse. For this r
eason, they came into my cell during one of my attacks, when I was not aware of their presence, and placed my body into a simple but adequate wood coffin, so that when the wave of fever had passed over me and I knew again where I was, I found myself lying in my coffin. My joy was great at this, and to the astonishment of my physician and the jailor, I was immediately given sufficient strength to use the periods of lucidity that followed each new attack of fever for the purpose of composing this relation. I asked for pen and paper that very day, and also a board to prop against the sides of my coffin, and as I lay there, I began to write. In no other way during my life time have I been able to tender this much mercy to the dead, as I do now, with this relation of my imprisonment, for it has been composed expressly for the use of the living, to whom I must now say Farewell.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RUSSELL BANKS was born in New Hampshire, in 1940, to a blue-collar family. His tumultuous relationship with his father led him to steal a car and briefly run away from home at age sixteen. He later enrolled in Colgate College on a full scholarship, the first in his family to attain higher education, but dropped out a few months later in a case of what he calls “turbulence.” He headed south, resolving to join Castro’s Cuban revolution. “It seemed like a noble thing to do. In the late 1950s we had very few political heroes, us young folk, us kids … We could project romantic, altruistic, idealistic, political feelings onto [Castro and Che Guevara]. I was running off to try to make it real.” He hitchhiked as far as Florida, but soon ran out of money. “Then I’m moving furniture in a hotel and trying to survive, and pretty soon I forget about Castro.” Banks later ended up dressing mannequins at a Maas Brothers department store.

  By age nineteen he had married, and by twenty he had fathered a child. By age twenty-one, he was already divorced. Living in a trailer park in Florida in the 1960s, pumping gas and doing odd jobs, Banks, inspired by Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, first contemplated being a painter. “Writing isn’t one of those things, in a literate culture, like music or painting, where the gift is obvious at a young age. My obvious gift as a boy was in painting. I could draw well; I had the gift genetically. I didn’t know whether I had any particular writing talent at all. I set out to be a painter in my late teens and gradually discovered that I was writing, as one discovers one is breathing—and so you feel you must be alive! The discovery, the definition, came after the activity.” But his new identity didn’t come easily. “I was doing something that seemed a self-destructive kind of compulsion. Wanting to be a writer seemed to be a terrible waste of a life to my family and to me.” At a writers’ conference, he met migrant worker-turned-novelist Nelson Algren, who “gave me permission. He never told me how to write. But he said, ‘You can do it, kid, and it’s worth doing.’ ”