Against Nature

by Casey Barrett

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked in his ear.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “My associate is not well.”

  “If I have to ask again, this arm is broken.”

  A siren interrupted our street-fighting drama. “Put your hands up,” said a voice from inside the car. “Release him.”

  I did as instructed. A pair of uniforms scurried out with guns drawn. We were forced to our knees, with hands behind our heads. A pedestrian approached, told the officers that I was acting in self-defense. He was a scrawny college-aged kid who said he watched the whole thing go down. He said he was taking tae kwon do, and that he recognized my moves. The cops asked us to explain. Neither side had much to say. Before the boys could get irritated and take us in for disturbing the peace, another call came in. Shots fired in Times Square. They told us to go our separate ways, waited to see me cross the street, then sped off.

  When I doubled back, they were gone.

  Chapter 3

  When I was twenty years old, I spent thirteen months behind bars for dealing weed. I was hustling all over Manhattan, making some decent money, when I got stopped coming off the 4 train at 59th Street. Over a year in Rikers for a drug that’s now been decriminalized in most states, a drug that’s about as harmful as a cheeseburger. It should have been probation, maybe some community service, but I was a kid with a sullied last name and a shit attitude.

  My second week inside Rikers I was approached by some white supremacists who implied protection. I don’t know if they could have protected me or not, but I told them to piss off. Then I tried to befriend a fat black kid named Darreus, who was doing time for crimes similar to my own, and seemed even more afraid than I was. When I sat down across from him in the cafeteria his eyes went wide, like he knew exactly what I’d set in motion. I remember him glancing over his shoulder at the white table in the corner and refusing to meet my eyes. Darreus stared down into his food and grunted one-word answers to my clueless questions. Later that evening Darreus was raped and I was beaten unconscious by those racist fucks.

  After being treated for concussion, internal bleeding, broken ribs, jaw, nose, and collarbone, I was returned to the general population. At my first meal back I emptied my food into the lap of my main stomper and swiped the metal tray across his face. The memory of the blood that splashed from his nose still thrills me. It was the dumbest and bravest act of my life. I blacked out from another beating soon after. Deemed a “death-wish dunce” by the guards, I spent the rest of my stay either in the prison hospital or in isolation, which I suppose was my subconscious plan all along. You hear how the deprivation of solitary drives men to madness, but I found it rather peaceful. Better than the anxieties of being around fellow inmates, and the constant fear of rape and assault. I heard Darreus hung himself in his cell some months later. There are only so many nights a man can be sodomized against his will. At the time I couldn’t figure why he didn’t fight back. Resist, kick, bite, anything but compliant, even if it means a near-death beating—at some point the guards have to protect you, if not from your assailants, at least from yourself. The box is brutal, it saps the sanity, but it’s safe. In any case I was released with the resolve never to return, and determined to teach myself skills that would help me defend myself against future attacks.

  Enter aikido. I earned my black belt with daily trips to the dojo. For five years I never missed a day. Even out of practice it still filled me with confidence in the face of most any threat.

  The threat I learned to loath and fear more than any other during those months inside? White supremacists. They’re worse than any Blood or Crip or Latin King. They’re the lowest form of humanity, the very worst of America. You see them on the news and all you can think is: Who raised you? What pathetic in-bred disgrace of genetics produced such idiots?

  I like to think I have a high tolerance for all manner of sin and bad behavior, but nothing fills me with more revulsion than racist white trash. There’s nothing supreme about the white race—I had my family as proof.

  I was roiling over these memories, allowing the old rage to return. Who was this Oliver? Who was his anonymous keeper? His warning that Cass and I should be careful, that some things aren’t worth it? Consider the challenge accepted. I stared out the window of the bus and watched the wasteland of Jersey sweep by.

  The landscape turned green and hilly and newly lush as we connected to the New York Thruway and made our way past the suburbs and into the Hudson River Valley. My contact with Cass over the last twenty months had been sporadic, before ceasing entirely after Elvis died. I didn’t appreciate being abandoned in a time of need. She loved that hound as much as I did. At the time I considered it unforgivable when she refused to make the trip back to the city to help me bury him in the garden. I told her as much; it had been our last contact until her ill-timed text the night before.

  Juliette had every right to her fury. I’d told her about Cass. Tried to put a detached spin on our relationship, but women see through that nonsense. She knew what we shared. She refused to believe we never slept together; it was impossible for a woman of Juliette’s appetites to fathom why not. She knew my partner meant more to me than she ever could, and that was not easy for her to accept, no matter how fat the envelopes she left. I considered the cash I’d accumulated over the proceeding months. It was nothing to her, but it would set me up for a while. I’d spent little while holed up at chez Cohen. I was a kept boy, a literal pool boy for her kid. I worked for that cash. There were plenty of nights I could have done without her carnal demands, but I’d been up to the challenge every damn time. It only cost some dignity.

  Well, good-bye to all that. It was already a dream fading from memory, a peaceful interlude between the natural states of chaos that defined my life. I’d miss Stevie though. The little fucker was a funny kid. A sharp, sly sense of humor for an eight-year-old, and smart too. If I ever had a son of my own . . . Jesus, Duck, really? Deluded bastard you are.

  I untangled my headphones from my jacket pocket and connected to my phone and spun through my library of artists. I needed something with a loveless edge. Found some Libertines. Turned up “Can’t Stand Me Now” and listened to Pete Doherty wail about how “the world kicked back a lot fuckin’ harder now.”

  It sure kicked Victor Wingate in the ass—until he went right over the edge of a waterfall and died on impact. Dead or not, the guy had something I envied. He’d won the affections of Cass. I didn’t think it was possible. Or in my arrogant haze I considered it only possible with myself. I always thought she’d come around someday. I understood her, like no one else. At some point Cass would grow jaded of the kinky freaks that lined up to pay for her beatings at the dungeon. She’d need an honest relationship, one built on friendship and mutual unbreakable bonds. Like, in our case, a pair of bullets we’d taken for each other, at different moments in our damaged lives. Even as she never allowed a single kiss, never even that extra bit of eye contact that said she was considering it, I never doubted that I was the one for her. The alcoholic’s ego, it’s unsurpassed.

  Instead my partner abandoned me and fled to the country and found someone else. A has-been writer, nothing special to look at, based on his book jacket photo. So he’d won the writer’s lottery when his one book was turned into a movie, a good one no less. Probably set up the lucky prick with a nice spot in the woods, all paid off, with the leisure to write as little as he pleased.

  The bus stopped in Kingston and the driver informed us that we had ten minutes before continuing on upstate. There was a diner across the lot from the bus station. I walked over in hopes of a liquor license. Alas it was only beer and bad wine available at the Dietz Stadium Diner. There was a loose collection of fat locals spread in the booths, a few travelers grabbing a quick bite at the countertop. I leaned between two of them and ordered three bottles of Beck’s. Downed one in a couple gulps, burped it out in silence, sucked at the second. With three minutes to spare I slipped the third gre
en bottle in my bag. I left a twenty on the counter, and limped back to the bus.

  At the nadir of the McKay case, my left Achilles was severed with bolt cutters, at the hands of an evil old friend. I could no longer point my toes or rotate my ankle, which made swimming especially difficult. My kick was ruined. I kept vowing to get back into the water on a regular basis. The doctors informed me that would be the best rehab of all, but I’d lost the feel and that’s an elusive thing to get back. Besides, I’d been getting my chlorine fix through my lessons with Stevie. I wasn’t doing much more than standing in waist-deep water offering some pointers, but it was better than being dry.

  That same case also left me with a number of scars down my face, courtesy of an X-Acto knife and the bite of a raving Ukrainian lover. I grew out a beard and tried to forget about them. Clean-shaven it looked like streaks of tears burned down my cheeks, but the scruff covered the worst of it. Juliette offered her plastic surgeon, if I ever wanted to try to laser them away. I told her I liked the reminders.

  I cracked my third Beck’s as the bus rolled out, picking up the Thruway again, pulling me to Cass and all the intense baggage that came with her. We exited at the town of Saugerties, took a wide left and a quick right, and the countryside opened itself. The Catskill Mountains rolled along the western horizon. The magic-hour light touched them just so, giving the hills a blue glow that could stir even a banker’s black-and-white soul. I understood in a guilty instant why Cass had decided to stay. It was everything the city was not, green and open and quiet, with the money—what there was of it—well hidden behind gravel drives. The coach drifted to a stop in front of an inn called Kindred Spirits. I remembered a painting of the same name, in the New York Public Library, and had an unpleasant flash of memory from richer boyhood days when my mother would walk me through the grand spaces of the city, pointing to masterpieces of art and architecture. I banished it, took a last sip of the Beck’s, and staggered to the front, thanked our driver and stepped off into the spring evening. She was waiting alongside an old white Land Cruiser.

  I cursed the lump in my throat, the familiar ache in my jeans, the Pavlov’s response. I moved toward her. She was wearing a long-sleeved black dress, black boots. Straight dark hair framed her porcelain face. All that was missing was the long black veil. Her painted red lips tried to turn up into a smile. They only got halfway there.

  “You made it,” she said.

  “You knew I would.”

  “It’s good to see you, Duck.”

  She came in for a hug. Our first contact in twenty months and I felt nothing but a cold weariness from her. Our cheeks touched; we kissed at the air. She released me, took my inventory.

  “I like the beard,” she said. “It suits you.”

  “Covers some scars.”

  She nodded, lips pressed at the memory. I looked over her shoulder at her new ride.

  “What happened to the Benz?” I asked.

  “Had to trade it in,” she said. “Couldn’t handle the mountain roads in winter.”

  “You loved that thing.” So did I. An ’81 silver sedan, 300SD turbo diesel, burgundy interior. A classic. She ran it on vegetable oil, cared for it like a pet. Traded it in? It seemed criminal.

  She shrugged. “Straight trade with a local collector. He’ll take good care of the old girl.” We walked over to the Land Cruiser. I had to admit it had a certain rugged appeal. “Besides,” she said, “I’ve fallen for this beast just as hard. An ’85, two hundred thousand miles, and never had a single issue. These things are legend.”

  That was as deep as we could go, car talk for the reunion. She pulled out of the lot ahead of the bus, turned right, and headed up the mountain. The beauty of it kept me silent. She wove up through the pass, past the towering green and flowing streams and waterfalls falling heavy with the winter melt. Spring came late to these parts. Patches of fading snow were still visible. I rolled down the window and let the cool wind rush over my face. A pack of hikers huffed up the side of the road to their car. Above, ribbons of white clouds decorated the darkening sky. The whole scene had an air of unreality, like a stage set, waiting for an unseen director to shout “Action!” and send a pair of sleek sports cars barreling down the mountain in a high-speed chase.

  “I met Victor down in Woodstock,” Cass was saying. “Getting coffee at Bread Alone. I was holding a book and he complimented me on it. It was by Jim Harrison, he was a fan. It turned out we both have family in the U-P.”

  “I thought you were from . . .” I stopped, and realized that I didn’t know. Cass had never been one to share personal history.

  “Baltimore,” she said. “That’s where I grew up. But I had an aunt and uncle with a place way up north on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Spent some summers there. So did Victor. His grandparents had a cabin in the U-P, not far from my cousins’. He was older than me, so we couldn’t have overlapped, but I don’t know, that’s how we got to talking.”

  Waiting in line at a Woodstock coffee shop, holding a paperback, and already the bastard knew more about her than her partner of how many years? Partners that had seen the worst together, come close to dying more than once.

  “What was it called?” I asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Harrison, what book were you reading when Wingate picked you up?”

  She gave me a sideways glance; let it pass. “It was called The River Swimmer,” she said. “I’ll lend you my copy up at the house if you want. It made me think of you.”

  “Shocking.”

  Cass made a face as she accelerated past a struggling pickup in the right lane. “You do realize I’m the bereaved here? Stop acting so hurt. It’s weak.”

  “Know how you feel about weakness in men.”

  “Yeah, they deserve a beating.”

  “He like that?”

  She ignored my baiting. Took the hairpin turns with practiced grace, slowed at a passing waterfall as we crossed a narrow bridge. “Up there is Kaaterskill Falls,” she told me. “It’s beautiful, but hikers have become a nuisance. A few fall and die every summer.”

  I stared out the window and missed the city. I wasn’t interested in sweating and trudging through dirt and rocks to gawk at vistas. Give me a dim-lit bar, good music, amber swirling in my glass. I was a city kid, nature meant darkness and discomfort, and I’d had my share of both. I thought of Stevie, glazed on video games in his grand apartment, old Duck not even a memory. Thought of Juliette down the hall, splayed across the bed, toying herself to orgasm in my absence. Or maybe she’d already found my replacement. I resolved to call and apologize.

  As the mountain crested, Cass slowed and signaled left and we turned into a wooded enclave. On a low pillar there was a sign that read ASHER GREEN, PRIVATE. We crossed a stone bridge over a rolling falls and a view full of déjà vu. A pair of lush green mountains divided by a narrow slice into a deep valley; out beyond, a view to forever.

  “This is where Asher Durand painted his masterpiece,” Cass said.

  “Kindred Spirits,” I remembered aloud, like the inn down mountain.

  “Impressive, Darley. How’d you know that?”

  “My mother was big on culturing her kid.”

  Cass nodded, filed it away. She stopped before a gate, rolled down her window, and punched a code into a keypad that raised a restricting arm. We drove past small shuttered cottages. Some seemed to hang precariously from the edge of the mountain. There were no cars parked before them, no signs of light or life within.

  “This place was built as a summer community,” she said. “Back in the 1880s. Most of the homes have been passed down through generations, and no one’s ever bothered to winterize them. Seems like such a waste. But we loved it empty. It was like the park was just for us most of the year, like our own private ghost town. Victor liked to leave in July, the one month when all these places come to life.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Too late I realized I’d never bothered to offer my sympathies. “Sounds
like you were happy.”

  “I was,” she said, emphasis on the past tense.

  She drove us up two more winding hills past more empty homes until the woods thickened and all that was left was a two-track road shaded by heavy limbs and new spring growth. A pair of wild turkeys came rooting out of a fern patch and then disappeared at the sound of the car. Inevitable free association: whiskey. Wondered if she had any.

  “We’re the last house on the left,” she said. “Nothing past us but a couple thousand acres of state park. Right up here.”

  She slowed, turned into a drive, and stopped in front of a gabled Victorian home. The bottom half was covered by a wraparound porch and tree bark siding; the second floor in cedar shake with dark green trim beneath a roof of sharp angles. The entryway was framed by a spiderweb’s pattern of twisted mountain laurel. A dim antique light hung overhead. The prevailing aesthetic seemed to be gothic children’s tale. Behind the home, lights glittered far off in the valley.

  “C’mon in,” said Cass. “I’m sure you could use a drink.”