The Fisher Boy

by Stephen Anable

  “Sir…please,” Andy said.

  “Where is the bouncer?” Brian whispered.

  Of course Tristan and Roger Morton were now nowhere in sight.

  The man sidled up to the two lesbians’ table. As he held out his pamphlet, one of them enunciated, “NO THANK YOU!” Stunned, he meekly tucked his remaining literature into his pocket and shuffled out of the restaurant.

  The audience cheered. The lesbian who’d spoken took a stylish bow.

  “She got the biggest hand of the evening,” Roberto muttered.

  “Onward and upward,” Andy said, struggling to re-establish momentum.

  “Hey, bring back that guy with the pamphlets!” one of Ian’s friends yelled. “He was the funniest thing in the show!”

  “Yes, you in the rear,” Andy was saying, grateful for an upraised hand. “Tell us your coming out story.”

  “It was back at school,” the voice began. Was it Ian’s posh North Shore drawl? It was so thickened by drink that I was unsure.

  “It was long ago and far away…”

  Everything inside me was shutting down.

  “…At the late, great St. Harold’s…”

  It was Ian in the murk, there was no doubt.

  “…It happened in chapel, a building ordinarily off-limits to animal lusts. We were both acolytes, myself and this fellow I’ll call ‘M.’ M was reasonably attractive, but a little too sensitive and desperate…”

  He was exhuming something awful, the worst part of our shared past, the thing that almost negated his saving my life.

  “This sounds pretty good,” Brian whispered and Sam nodded. The troupe was eager to use Ian’s story, except for Roberto, who knew we’d been classmates.

  “…This poor fellow had parentage issues. His father was a nautical person and his mother more or less followed the fleet…”

  Already, my colleagues were huddling, assigning roles. “I’ll be the sensitive loser,” Justin said. “You be the guy who rejects him,” Paul told me. All the while, Andy was talking, explaining how we could have fun with this material. That’s all it was for them, just material.

  “I’m sitting this one out,” I said.

  “It’s your turn,” two people told me.

  I could hear Ian laughing and saw Roger Morton, in his vest of tiny mirrors, like extra eyes, at the bar.

  “Let him go,” said Roberto, as I ripped aside the curtain, almost splitting the fragile fabric. With Ian’s laughter still bullying my ears, I felt my fury escalate at his “follow the fleet” remark, his disparaging my mother, and I saw him long ago, in the chapel crypt, among the racks of choir robes, his laughter shiny and as hard as the brass candle snuffer he’d been holding…

  The “Coming Out Story” skit was concluding. “…YOU MEAN YOU’RE THE BISHOP?!” Justin was shouting, then the audience cheered and the actors came bursting backstage.

  “That was professional,” Andy said to me.

  “Yeah, thanks for your support, Mark,” Brian added.

  “You’re calling the next skit,” Roberto reminded me.

  Somehow, I walked back onstage, parted the curtains and put myself into the lurid energy of the spotlight. “Okay, for this next skit, we need some occupations, the more bizarre the better,” I said.

  “Mortician,” someone said.

  “Porn star.” The perennial response.

  “Astronaut—female,” one of the two lesbians specified.

  Most of the other suggestions were just as good.

  I said, “This next skit is called ‘Day Job,’ and it’s about someone whose fantasy career wreaks havoc with their nine-to-five responsibilities, for instance, a manicurist who secretly longs to be a tree surgeon.”

  “Hey!” someone shouted.

  “So let’s begin—”

  “Hey,” the heckler repeated. It was Ian, staggering through the audience in a yellow-and-black rugby shirt spotted with ketchup. His eyes and nose looked runny, like he’d been fighting flu. “How come you weren’t in the last skit, Mark? I think you could’ve added a lot of…authenticity.”

  “Where is the goddamn bouncer?” Roberto was asking.

  “I think you’ve had a few too many,” I told Ian. Then, without thinking, I repeated my gesture from years before, under the Gothic arches on the chapel’s crypt: I touched his shoulder.

  And he repeated his response, this time in public, for my troupe and our entire audience to hear—“Take your fucking hands off me, you son of a whore!”

  To my right, a straight couple was beginning a pitcher of beer. Everything felt tenuous, like the landscapes in lucid dreams; I felt that I could fly if I chose to. I said, “I don’t usually use props, but tonight I’m making an exception.”

  Then I seized the pitcher of beer and emptied it over Ian Drummond’s head.

  Chapter Six

  The next day, Sunday, I went to church as a kind of penance, to the Unitarian/Universalist meetinghouse in Provincetown. It’s right there on Commercial Street, with its white clapboards and prim spire, amid the shops selling incense and tarot cards and tit clamps. Inside, tromp l’oeil paintings gave an added dimension to its ceiling and walls, pulling niches, cornices, pilasters, and rosettes from flat, oyster-colored plaster. Suspended from the ceiling hung a Victorian lamp, all prisms and glass globes, the sort Mary Lincoln might have read by. Pews which once held whalers’ widows and sailors familiar with Cape Horn and islands of cannibals were now filled with drag queens and software executives masquerading as beachboys.

  I felt awful, for all sorts of reasons: for disgracing myself with my improv colleagues, for fleeing Quahog as soon the bouncer pried Ian and me apart. An angry friend is more dreaded than any enemy, so meeting Roberto or Roger Morton terrified me.

  And I was wary that the Christian Soldiers, or whoever was responsible for the hate crime at Arthur’s, might sabotage a service at this most lavender of congregations. So when Edward settled into the pew in front of me, a little to my left so that I could observe him without his knowing, it was somehow comforting. Upon sitting, he began to pray, shutting his eyes as tightly as a child counting while playing hide-and-go-seek.

  The first hymn was, ironically, “Forward Through the Ages,” that is, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” with lyrics editing Jesus and war out of the picture. Christian Soldiers, I thought, would haunt this service.

  And I was right. When the congregation was invited to share its “joys and sorrows,” several people took the microphone to express concern for Arthur and the “spirit” or “soul” of Provincetown. A Canadian lesbian, an Olympic kayaking gold medalist, spoke sadly about “the five men—they looked like Christian Soldiers, they had the uniforms—who screamed insults at me and at my partner from a car on Bradford Street.” Some in the church clapped at compliments to Arthur, while others whirled two fingers above their heads, in the Unitarian “gesture of affirmation.”

  Edward coughed into a tissue during the sermon, which was about hatred. The African-American minister, a lesbian graduate of Harvard Divinity School, said, “We have to look inside our hearts, to ask ourselves: Is there hatred within us too? What kind of garden are we growing within our souls? Is it full of nettles and thistles and briars? Or does it bring forth the sweet, nourishing fruit of forgiveness?”

  Were Hollings Fair’s followers the forgiving sort? Fair himself had left Cape Cod the day after his speech at the town meeting. He was needed, evidently, at his trademark church, with its concrete angel with an observation deck lodged in her halo. Were the Christian Soldiers praying at this very moment, to a god who existed solely to punish, who’d refined hell into a Calvinist theme park for their despised? And how big, we all wondered, was their presence in Provincetown? We saw men in battle gear all the time now, milling on the streets, driving trucks and cars, but were there others, incognito, in this very church this morning?

  During the moment of silent meditation, when the associate minister played his Tibetan singing bowls, I thought E
dward wiped tears from his eyes. Then a soloist from the choir sang a spiritual, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” bringing the ache of the old South into our humid Yankee church.

  After the service, there was the inevitable bottleneck at the door. Again, I worried about meeting the wrong people, but no one from Quahog materialized, thank God.

  Some churchgoers were pausing outside, taking refreshments, participating in the post-service social. Edward was unlocking a bicycle from the rack in front of the church, lifting it gently, as if to avoid the violence of metal on metal, avoid the spokes of his wheels banging others. I recognized the bicycle as Arthur’s, but Edward’s clothes were new, a blue T-shirt advertising Quicksilver surfing gear, and black denim shorts cut to advertise his body. I remembered him kissing me in Ian’s bedroom, then scurrying away.

  “Hello,” he said. “I heard you were at Quahog.”

  Had he heard about my fight, I wondered, or were he and Arthur still frightened of the telephone, of those late-night hang-up calls Edward mentioned at Ian’s?

  “How did you hear about our gig?”

  Edward was now astride the bicycle, one muscular leg on its pedal and the other straight out, his toe en pointe on the ground in its fraying sneaker. “I saw you out front of Quahog before the show. Two friends of Arthur’s went, Elinor and Ginny. I saw them in Adams Pharmacy this morning.” He described the lesbians who’d intimidated the fundamentalist with the pamphlets.

  “Did they give you a review of my performance?”

  “They said…you made quite a splash.” Was that his wit or the lesbians’? We both laughed.

  Talking to Edward, especially about Arthur, was an oddly formal experience in which every gesture, every phrase, seemed governed by some vast, vaguely hostile code of etiquette. He was protecting Arthur from intruders, so it seemed, the way Montezuma’s emissaries sought to bribe away Cortez with gifts of quetzal feathers and jade. Then, abruptly, he became accessible: “I’m sure Ian deserved it.”

  I mentioned Edward’s early exit from Ian’s party. He’d found the swordfish “tough as an old shoe” and the chutney sour. Then, blushing, he began coughing. “Excuse me,” he said, choking, while I stood there helplessly, unsure whether this was an embarrassment or an emergency.

  He dismounted from the bicycle, letting it clatter to the ground, and then rummaged through the leather pouch strapped around his waist. Retrieving an orange tube from the pouch, he turned away. He held the object to his mouth, his shoulders hunched like somebody with grandchildren. He had asthma, I realized. It was an inhaler, not amyl nitrate, Ian had seen him using in Arthur’s kitchen.

  People kept streaming from the church. “Is your friend okay?” asked a woman I recognized as the lover of the lesbian author who’d spoken at town hall.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Let me get him something to drink.” I nudged my way through the crowd to the folding tables of refreshments for the social: sticky pink cake studded with pieces of peppermint, ginger snap cookies, jugs of lemonade.

  When I returned with some lemonade, Edward was still coughing, being lectured by the famous author on illness as a metaphor for racism. Her child was sleeping through her speech in a sling on her back. “Perhaps you’re allergic to proximity of homophobia,” the famous author told Edward, then eased away.

  Edward drank the lemonade, said, “Sorry about that,” and stopped coughing. “Thank you, thanks for rescuing me.”

  I think I needed him at that moment as much as I’ve needed anyone: I still felt like the Outcast, the Idiot Who’d Wrecked the Show, so, impulsively, I offered to buy him lunch—and he surprised me by answering, “Great!”

  I chose the Café Blasé, across Commercial Street from my apartment, where white metal tables with wide, fringed umbrellas stood beneath the twisting branches of an acanthus tree strung with fairy lights. Its porch was hung with Chinese lanterns made of loose, blistery-looking paper, and, enclosing all this was a white picket fence with flowerboxes brilliant with petunias and geraniums pink as prom gowns.

  “We’ve both been virtuous, we’ve been to church,” I said, “so we can indulge.” I ordered a margarita, but Edward wanted nothing stronger than guava juice.

  He borrowed a pen from our waiter, and then filled his placemat with sketches, with enough racing cars for an Indianapolis 500. “That Ian drinks like a fish,” he said, making me self-conscious about my great big blue cocktail.

  “Margaritas aren’t my usual Sunday fare,” I said. “…Arthur was a bit soused the day of the party.”

  “But since then, he hasn’t had a drop. I’ve been very strict, keeping him clean and sober. He looks awesome.” Edward paused. “That was such an awful thing—”

  “To do to Arthur,” I said.

  He stopped sketching. The pen was broken, leaking ink onto his fingers. “And to hurt that poor dog.” He put a surprising amount of emotion into his voice. “That was so cruel. I’m an animal lover. I believe living things have the right to live.”

  That didn’t stop him from ordering a hamburger, heavy with bacon, with extra mushrooms. Considering his past, studying cooking, I thought he might choose something minimalist and broiled or full of sprouts and field greens, but I was wrong. I was midway through my grilled chicken sandwich and a second margarita before I had the courage enough to ask him the question I now realized was the reason for this luncheon. “How did you meet Arthur?”

  Edward was eating his hamburger with a knife and fork, cutting it with quick, fastidious gestures that reflected his culinary background. “I’ll never forget the day I met Arthur. But not because of anything to do with Arthur.”

  He had been hitchhiking to Provincetown. He’d gotten as far as the Orleans traffic circle without incident, receiving rides from traveling salesmen, a Seventh-Day Adventist minister, and a potter from Welfleet. “They were all very straight, very talkative, and very boring.”

  Then, at Orleans, all of that changed. His next ride was in an old beige van. Edward would always remember the grubby fake fur on its steering wheel and the web of wooden beads slung over the driver’s seat. “For my sciatica,” the driver had said. The driver himself was somewhat generic. He wore a baseball cap and those silver reflecting sunglasses that make you feel like you’re talking to yourself. He had dark curly hair and a mustache graying at the edges. His skin was olive, gritty from years at a gas station or a marina; his fingernails were black.

  He told Edward he could take him to Provincetown, but said little else. He played classical music, “lots of harpsichords,” very loud on his tapedeck; it made Edward’s ears throb. When Edward tried to make small talk, the driver shrugged and turned the music still louder.

  By the time Provincetown came into view, the pond and sand on the right, Massachusetts Bay and that line of cabins on the left, Edward’s uneasiness was calcifying into fear. Something told him to bolt at the next traffic light. Unfortunately, it was green and the driver shot through, miles above the speed limit. Edward prayed for a police car to intercept them, but they seemed to have the road to themselves.

  When they reached the exits for the East End of Provincetown, Edward screamed for the driver to stop and let him out. He knew there was panic in his voice; he knew the driver realized he wasn’t screaming just to compete with the music. For the first time, the driver smiled. Then he turned up the harpsichords, like instruments of torture.

  The driver and the air-conditioning of the van both seemed to grow colder by the moment. “He just sped through the lights, red, green, it didn’t make any difference.”

  Edward looked straight into my eyes, eager, I thought, to gauge my reaction. “He raped me.” He made it sound like a boast.

  He elaborated. The driver swerved down a side road where there was nothing but woods, the dry black pines, the scrub trees that barely suck life out of the sandy earth of the Province Lands. He parked the van and then overpowered Edward, pinning his arms, wrestling him still, and dragging him deep into the woods.r />
  Edward screamed but heard nothing except the dry hum of insects in reply. He remembered the driver’s hands, callused, smelling of turpentine, clamping over his mouth, and his feet, in new orange workboots, kicking and tearing through the brush on the overgrown trail. He remembered the man dragging him through poison ivy and having the ridiculous urge to warn him of its presence, hoping this small act of kindness might somehow temper his brutality.

  The driver was squeezing him so hard he thought he’d fractured some ribs. Exhausted, too frightened to fight further, Edward went limp and the driver gathered him almost tenderly in his arms, slinging him over his shoulder. Edward said nothing; the woods were deserted, and he’d screamed his throat raw.

  “He had a knife. I was lucky to get out alive.”

  So, bleeding and all but broke, Edward had staggered into Provincetown. He bought a meal of fried dough and salt water taffy, then spent the night on the beach, where Arthur found him the following morning in back of his house.

  Chapter Seven

  Was he telling the truth? Or was this a fantasy cooked up like his bouillabaisse, his payment for my treating him to lunch? I had no idea, but I wanted to believe him, for Arthur’s sake and my own.

  It had been three weeks since it had last rained and lawns were yellowing, farmers worrying and experts predicting a drought. But there was ample sunshine to be enjoyed, so I suggested Edward ask Arthur to come to the beach. I would drive and pick them up tomorrow at ten.

  The next day, June fifteenth, broke sunny and hot. When I stopped at Arthur’s house in my rusting Volvo, Edward, alone, answered the door. “Arthur isn’t up to Herring Cove,” he informed me.

  Bear in mind that I’d known Arthur for a good ten years, and here was this boy he’d found like a sand dollar four short weeks ago, suggesting my company was some sort of ordeal. A boy Arthur himself admitted needed a bottle of Kwell and a dozen showers before being allowed near good linen.

  “What is there to be ‘up to’ about the beach?” Was the whole town going to shun me because of one night, one mistake? “Is Arthur okay?” I asked, loudly, so that my voice would travel well beyond the front hall, beyond the China trade umbrella stand and the Rowlandson prints of gambling rakes.