47
DEESH
ON MY HEAD THERE’S SUNSHINE shot toward me from around the edge of a rain cloud, and inside all of me, not just in my mind, there’s that invincible sense of a decision already made.
So I say to Gabe, “I want to go back.”
“What?”
“I want to go back to the Bronx.”
“What are you talking about, man? You’ll get your ass kicked in the Bronx. Plain and simple.”
“Then let the ass-kicking begin.”
And there Gabe goes, diving into a loss of words that threatens to last longer than his worst and bluest blue streak, maybe thinking through insights, maybe not. But I try to imagine. I imagine his gray eyes looking in. And what I imagine is that, here, in this boat with me—and inside him—there is still love for his wife, has been all this time, throughout his marriage and long before it. I imagine he loved her back when he was being hated by The Man Hater. I imagine that, for years since The Man Hater messed up his chances to teach, he’s mostly felt like hell and wanted to do something significant, something good, and I see how I, Douglas Sharp, America’s most recent notorious black man on the run, have been giving him the chance to do that good thing by asking him to help me hide. But now here I am saying, No, you can’t help me. I don’t want your friendship. I don’t want to live near you. I don’t care if you’ve been hated because I have real love waiting at home, and—hell—maybe it’s sustainable.
“You’re being very foolish, Deesh,” he says now.
“Matter of opinion, bro.”
He sighs. He goes cross-eyed but seems not to mind. Then his eyes seem fine, though he’s again gone pale.
“Then at least,” he’s saying now, “at least let me—you know—at least let me show you how to fish.”
And I fuck that up, too, by saying, “That would mean putting down the gun.”
“So? You’re about to put it down anyway.”
“Not around you.”
“Then who you gonna put it down around?”
“A sheriff or whatever.”
“You plan to have me drive you to the nearest sheriff’s station so you can walk up to the building with a loaded gun in your hand? The gun that’ll end up making your conviction a sure thing?”
“It’s not a sure thing. I didn’t shoot the guy.”
“Just put the fucking thing down, Deesh.” He flails an arm into pointing at a flat clearing past a sunlit shoreline behind us, and then he’s waving both arms more wildly the louder he talks. “Or throw it in that marsh. Nothing’s going to happen here—can’t you see I’m a dying old coot? I’m just a washed-up wannabe; I’ve failed miserably in my career and marriage and health. I have no kids, no siblings that care, no money besides the two tens and six ones in my wallet, just a mortgage on a piece-of-shit house I’ll never pay off. Hardly anyone ever hires me as a fishing guide. I’m depressed! I’m on a million meds! And you think I’m gonna kick your ass? Can’t you see I’m dead tired of hatred, Deesh? Like anyone hated eventually gets to be? That I’m done with the endless argument? Can’t you just—if you’re not going to stay in the cabin—fish with me for two minutes?”
And then he goes still, other than to row to keep us in place in the stream.
And the guy is glaring at me.
So I say, “Fine.”
And he nods but does nothing. That one word from me seems to need to sink in.
Then, as he hands me a fishing rod, I set the gun beneath my thigh, the perfect compromise, if you ask me, then say, “Let’s do this, man.”
“Remember how I’ve rigged it,” he says. He is blushing, maybe embarrassed now that he’s won, or maybe it’s just a dogged collection of side effects. “Split shot fourteen inches from the hook,” he says. “Worm hiding the whole hook except for the barb.”
And it’s right then, committed as I am about returning to the Bronx, that I realize that, push comes to shove, I like this guy. Like how, dammit, he’s still trying to teach. Like how his blue streaks made for conversation between two dudes in a boat with little in common. Like how even though he’s old, white, out of shape, and generally uncool, he isn’t the racist prick I thought he was. Like how there’s still a kid left in him. How he did want to do something to protest hatred. Maybe mostly like knowing he cares about me.
“Purple rubber worm hooked an inch and a quarter from its thickest end,” he’s saying now. “Know how to cast?”
I doubt I do. But I remember that aunt showing me how in Georgia, so I nod. Then this gear, belonging to this Gabe I will never forget, is solidly in my hand, mine to keep if I wanted it, I’m sure, and, with all of this in mind, I try. The purple rubber worm falls short of the opposite shore. As I reel in, Gabe says nothing. No praise, no criticism—nothing.
Then: “Deesh.”
“Huh.”
“You ever envision a place after you’ve left it?”
I shrug. I think, This is an extremely odd man. “I don’t know, Gabe,” I say. But the truth is I have envisioned such a place: the Bronx. I’ve envisioned it often in this boat, most every time I’ve thought of Madalynn and Jasir.
“I mean, specifically,” he says. “I mean, you ever picture exactly how it would look to someone else?”
“Can we just fish, good brother?” I ask, since I’m not sure what he’s driving at, and since right now what I’m picturing, if anything, is Jasir and Madalynn and me here, on this very same stream, maybe in a matter of weeks, maybe in a few years, maybe with Gabe teaching us all to bait hooks using this same kind of purple worm I’ve just cast again.
“I mean, a guy’s supposed to get over love, right?” he says.
I say, “You telling me you believe I should be over this Madalynn?”
“No,” he says. “Not at all.”
Good, I think. Though already what this man believes matters far less than it did an hour ago, since, dammit, I am going home. And I’m not entirely hopeless; I’m less like Gabe than he thinks. Still, now that I’ve reeled in a second time, I check my “presentation” for his sake, maybe a little for mine, too, and then I cast again, for the heck of it, a last-try-before-we-go effort if ever a guy made one, this time showing improved aim, and then I reel quickly, slowly, quickly-slowly-quickly, as Gabe’s Theory of The Big One seemed to suggest, wondering if that theory or any theory of his—or of anyone’s—is ever completely right. How could he be an expert? How could I be an expert? Who could be the expert on what a lover is or isn’t supposed to get over? The most I know, if I know anything about love, is that, right now, I want to talk with the stateliest woman any man in the city has ever laid eyes on, then get to know her son.
And that’s why now, as I reel, I feel a lot less freaked. There is only this world full of beautiful and ugly things, and I, a runaway brother casting into water smoothing down this world, am still one of them.
And it’s not long after I think all this that one of my fingertips, the one against the line just after I cast it, feels a very light tap, then another, then something more like a tug. I stand and yank the gear over my head, and then I’m still standing but trying to regain my balance, jerking both arms higher to keep what’s on the line hooked.
And Gabe has stopped rowing. We are in a calm pool. “It’s big,” he says, and he uses an oar to turn the boat to help me face what I’m doing. The fish cuts through deep water, possibly pulling us slightly. I am reeling fast—until I can’t. I kneel on aluminum, yanking, reeling, yanking, reeling, Gabe’s arms out at his sides to steady the boat, and as much as I’m charged by having a monster on the end of this line, I am now wholly committed to leaving this stream. I will, as soon as I land this fish, insist that Gabe and I return downstream so I can find a county sheriff, tell him every detail about how Bark shot the cop, then return to the Bronx to face Madalynn and Jasir, and embr
ace whatever love they might still share with me. I might be arrested; I might be questioned harshly for days; but as sure as I’m standing to reel and now yank this darting fish within three feet of me, I believe my truth will win out over Bark’s lies—this monster bass has put fight in me.
And it’s right then, as I pull the bass straight up toward me, that I hear the gun’s report, which is quieter than I would have expected, probably because Gabe’s mouth smothered the volume. Pale pink insides from his skull—pieces of a brain he’d trained to read and remember poems and teach, I realize—are sinking into the pool, the rest of him already floating on his back and begun downstream, limp and more rotund than I once figured, the gun nowhere visible, nowhere near the tackle box or on the fishhooks scattered across the boat’s blue floor. An orange prescription bottle rolls toward me as the boat spins, taking me, as it spins, downstream, too. I am sitting now. Only one oar is intact. The gun is no doubt in that pool now well behind me—I can’t see it at all and believe I never will.
But I can still see Gabe. Barely, but I can see him. He’s still on his back, bobbing, and we’re both spinning downstream, he still in the lead, me clutching the aluminum sides to keep the boat upright, the lunch bag already trapped inside an eddy, the gear gone from my hand, the rod and the reel just now underwater in sunlit riffles back there, my big bass taking it, escaping with it, headed upstream in a wisdom of its own.
48
JAN
A FILLY WARMED UP ALONGSIDE ME, her tongue hanging out despite the bit, her eyes strained to see the pinks and yellows and magentas on the dresses and wide-brimmed hats, and I thought, Get into your stride, girl, wanting to watch her run rather than worry about trying to find Tom Corcoran, but then, near the finish line, I saw Jasper, patting his forehead with a folded handkerchief as he waved at me, and he was walking toward me, his own stride so fast I was sure he had news.
Then, closer to me, he shook his head no, and Colleen appeared from beneath the grandstand and waved, but took her time walking toward us. After she reached us, she stood directly in front of me, her face too close to mine and her eyes sort of mechanical, I thought, and she said, “Let’s go see your mom,” and it hit me that, on this trip to Saratoga, she’d been treating me like I was Tug’s girlfriend—and I mean really hit me, to the point of confusion greater than my confusion about where Tom could be, since to me it was obvious that, today, Tug had as much interest in dating me as a muskie did in chomping down on an exposed hook. Of course neither Colleen nor I then mentioned any confusion, keeping to the entrenched Corcoran manner of not saying shit when anything important hung in doubt, and as she and I and Jasper walked back to the Galaxie, I wondered if there’d ever be a time when I’d know that, in actual fact, she cared about me.
And then there we were, she and I and Jasper, bearing down on the Galaxie, and my own mother, from the backseat, asked Jasper if he could take her to a church, and Jasper, as if relieved to have an option, said, “I don’t see why not.”
And now here came Tug, from the direction of the grandstand, loping steadily if not passionlessly, arms crossed, making it clear to the entire world, it seemed, that he no longer cared enough about me to as much as glance my way.
And the rational, unselfish part of me sensed this was because Tom’s disappearance had Tug despondent, but let’s be real—there was also the other part of me that wished I could be at the top of the list of the people Tug worried about.
I mean, doesn’t everyone want that?
To be considered, by at least one other living person in the world, as the body who’s most important?
49
DEESH
AS SMOTHERED BY GABE’S MOUTH as his gunshot sounded, I keep hearing it in the back of my mind. And I know he was right that any gunshot this time of year will have a warden hauling ass toward it quicker than wildfire.
So I’m back on land, walking. Again in woods, this time hoping to see a road. The gun is still in the stream, where I should have tossed it before I fished.
But the gun doesn’t matter now, I keep telling myself. I need to approach someone peacefully before anyone stalks me and shoots. I need to explain I just want to go back, so it would be stupid to run—I need to stay within myself, like I had on those sweet shiny courts in my hoop-playing days.
And it’s here and now, in these woods in Pennsylvania all these years after I ran fast breaks over those courts, that I finally realize why I loved that game. Ball’s a team sport if there ever was one. The more you play it and win and pursue championships, the more you cherish teammates whose flow and moves click with yours.
Y’all pushed that ball, I think.
Fast and together, and that’s why you won.
And that’s why you clicked with Gabe.
Old white man was on your team.
He got what you’re about. Understood your shit. Even had a term for it.
Fucking real but unsustainable.
And I walk on, crunching last fall’s leaves, trying to understand exactly why he offed himself.
Maybe what he had with his wife was never real.
Maybe that’s why he was all messed up about hatred.
And hatred of hatred ain’t enough to get by on.
Maybe you also need love.
I try to focus on tree roots, fallen branches, any birdsong anywhere, anything but my memory’s insistence on those bloodied pieces of the man’s brain sinking into that pool.
You’re in shock, bro, I think.
This is how a brother in shock feels.
But you need to keep hanging in.
You don’t need an out like he did.
Sustainable or not, that Madalynn love was real.
Get your ass back and sustain whatever’s left.
And it’s right about then that I hear something, or someone, kicking up leaves.
And from behind trees emerge four figures, two ahead and two to my left, each stone-faced and white as hell, all of their guns black and aimed square at me.
“Okay, Sharp!” one of them yells. “Picnic’s over!”
50
JAN
JASPER WAITED IN THE GALAXIE while my mother knelt between pews and prayed and Tug and Colleen and I stood in the aisle. I was beside Tug then, both of us more or less facing the altar, and I thought about my own father’s early departure, about whether my mother felt about him back then the way Colleen now felt about Tom. It occurred to me that, no, back then my mother had probably felt quite a bit differently, since here she’d been, pregnant with me, on top of still maybe feeling that swirled feeling you get when you’re with the love of your life, and the longer I thought about all this, the worse I felt, because now, with Tom gone—a supposedly responsible adult I’d actually known enough to have fondness for—a sudden disappearance like that felt to me like a very real thing.
It also occurred to me that, back then, in those days of my father’s passing, my mother had had to endure plenty of talk about her pregnancy with me, gossip so widespread it would reach Jasper and someday me, too, as well as invade my father’s heart and mind and maybe even his soul. All that speculation about whether I’d end up proving to be Ronny’s daughter—Jasper’s granddaughter—it all seemed so old-fashioned now, this whole business of how the color of my skin would supposedly tell the world which man my mother had loved most. Still, I now also sensed, by my mother’s persistence in remaining on her knees, that nothing back then had been easy for her, and I wondered, as she kept right on kneeling between those pews, if those days struck her now as being buried deeply by time, as they always had seemed to me. Today I know that, most probably, my father’s passing has always hit her as having just happened, because I now understand how, after you’ve gone through certain things, there’s this acceleration in the passage of time that can scare you almost as much as the disappearance
of anyone, but on that day, as I stood in the aisle of that church in Saratoga, I was still unaware of how quickly time passed for her. I was, you could say, far younger in my thinking at the start of this summer than I am now, prone then to focus on only myself, at most on Tug’s prospects and mine to end up together.
And then, after I thought through all these things, about mothers and fathers and the progression of time, Tug’s arm bumped mine, maybe accidentally, and it occurred to me that if Tom hadn’t won and lost the races he’d ridden and gambled on, Tug and I might be all out in love—I mean, crazy enough to marry. I knew impulses to marry at my age were unwise, especially for a woman who wanted a career, but still, right there, in that gray stone church in Saratoga Springs, I let a few dance through me.
And I think it was right about then, just after Tug’s sticky skin touched mine, that it began to really sink in that the chances of Tom returning were slim, that I’d been looking the other way when it came to why Tom was gone. Obviously he was gone because he’d gambled too much, and it was also very clear he’d lost far too much—so much he couldn’t borrow from even the cruelest of loan sharks—and I, like the rest of us, needed to deal with this.
And it was also sinking in that he’d lost to the kind of people no one should bet with in the first place, heartless, greedy men who see in racing not the beauty of speed but the chance to book bets made by people shocked by loss and therefore sure to lose more.
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