James Sallis - Eye of the Cricket

He ranfingers across a permanent stubble of beard. Dry skin flaked off onto his shirt.

"Griffin…"

His eyes strayed again, grappled after footholds somewhere among things of the world, river, meal, clouds, sun,

" 'In the darkness things always go away from you. Memory holds you down while regret and sorrow kick hell out of you,' " I prompted.

"Well, that's the truth for sure." He scooped up what remained of the vegetables, a greenish paste nearly as appetizing as baby food from the jar. "Don't guess you'd have any more a these beers?"

He well knew I did. I tore the next-to-last one free of its webbing.

"Obliged."

We sat quietly together. Plane, boat and train gone now. Sky, river, tracks and street all empty. Closest thing to silence you'll find in a city.

"Guess, some point or another, you musta had hell kicked out of you too, be my guess," he said.

"You'd he right."

"Sure I would. Good beer." He held up the can. "Don't mean to be hoggin' it, mind." He handed the can to me. I drank and returnedit He set it down again in the niche he'd made for it. "You from around here?"

"Coming onto thirty-five years. Not much more than a kid when I moved here. Guess it's home by now."

"Guess it is. Never spent much time anywhere else myself, mind. Love this goddamn city. Ain't always been easy, though. Ever' few years, city gets to lie a real motherfucker. Mess your mind up good. Break your heart."

"Yeah."

We sat quietly side by side. The sun was beginning to set New Orleans doesn't go in much for twilight. Sun there on the horizon one moment, light still good, ten minutes later it's nighttime.

"We've met before," I said. "You don't remember."

He shook his head.

"Hotel Dieu. You'd been beaten pretty severely. Everyone thought a truck had run over you. I don't know when this was-a while back-but you were pretty bad off. They weren't sure you were going to make it for a while there. Then you left. Just got up one day and walked out."

"Can't say as I remember any of that. Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"Sounds like it might be important to you. Sorry I can't help." He held out the beer can. "You want the last of this? Dance with the one you brought?"

No.

"You had a book with you. At the hospital." I rummaged in my bag and pulled it out. "This one."

He took it from me, looked at the cover, then turned it over to read the back cover. Held it like a deck of cards, fanning his thumb along the edge back to front, riffling pages. Several pages all but separated themselves.

"Later, when you asked, I left my notebook with you."

I exchanged book for notebook. He browsed through, turning pages at random.

"That's your writing. All but the first four orfivepages."

"Yeah. Could be, I guess. Not so's I canremember, mind you. Definitely strange. Places I recognize in here, people I know I've come across, sure. Not much to tie it all together though, is there?"

"Not a lot. But you doremember the book, the notebook, writing in it…"

"Maybe. Hard to say."

He held the beer can against his ear as one might a seashell.

"Not much I can depend on these days. Too much of it gets away from me. Just slips away and I never even know it was there." He held up the empty can, looking at it. What does one do with a thing like this? "Hotel Dieu."

"Supposed to be called University Hospital now, but no one does."

"Something back there in the shadows for sure. Be a hell of a time pulling it out, though. Nudge it into daylight, stand up straight, tell us about yourself. You were there, you say."

I nodded.

"I remember I was pushing my boat up the Nile. All these little sucking kisses on my skin where leeches were attaching themselves. I was living off some hard, bitter-tasting fruit off trees on the bank and the raw flesh offish with teeth like razors that I snared in nets improvised from old shirts. Had these big grins on them."

His own drunkboat, his own African Queen.

"All these people were after me. They wouldn't give up. Never even knew who they were. See them, feel them, back there behind me. Someone pulled a tube out of my throat."

"You were on a ventilator for a while. A breathing machine. I was there when they took you off."

"All at once I had to breathe again. Had to go on. Before, it had been so easy."

"Always that choice."

"We spoke, didn't we? Something about a missing son, old man looking for him. Everfind him?"

I shook my head. "No."

Night had not so much fallen about us as it had toppled there, collapsed, capsized. Lights lashed up from boats on the river, others stabbed at the darkness from cars racing past on Leake Avenue behind us.

"Someone else brought news-or no news. They drank together."

"Right. The detective and the old man, the father who'd hired him. In a bar on Decatur. Detective's come to tell him his son is dead."

" 'Nothing to help us but a few hard drinks and morning.' I do remember that. You the one read it to me?"

I shook my head again.

"Someone else, then. I was terrible sick, some kind of flu, burning up one minute, freezing the next. Let go in the bed a couple of times I know of at least, too weak to crawl out. Guess he probably cleaned that up too, in between reading this book to me, spooning soup down me. Had to be a week at least, I was like that. He must of read that book to me cover to cover half a dozen times."

"Don't suppose you remember what he looked like."

"Not paying much attention at the time. Not quite there, right?

Couldn't get outside myself. Young man's what I see now I look back on it."

"Black or white?"

"Black. Like you. Mostly his eyes I remember."

"His eyes."

"Brown. With green floating around somewhere in there, never could say just how or where. Like yours."

"Ever hear his name?"

He thought it over. "Sorry. Can't recall his ever using one. Not much use for names, situations like that."

"He never introduced himself? Hi, I'm Carl, I'll be your waiter for today?"

"He could have. Like I say, I was pretty far gone."

"Never heard another staff member speak to him, maybe call him by name?"

He shook his head. "I think I'dremember. Whole thing's etched in my mind. Like a dream, doesn't make much sense, but you can't shake it off, can't get shed of it. I thought I was dying. Held on pretty hard to whatever I could grab on to. Strange times."

Dark now was absolute.

"One more beer, you want it," I said.

"You don't?"

"Got your name on it."

"Why not, then."

First he rolled it along his forehead, then popped it open and drank.

"One thing," he said.

"Yes?"

"Never thought of this before."

I waited.

"When I first started coming out of it. Most of it's kind of a blur, you understand, what happened when, the order of things. All jumbled up together. But now I think about it, there was this one time I came half awake-early morning, late evening, no way to tell-and someone's standing there over me saying, You're going to be okay, you hear me, you're going to be okay, it's just a matter of time now.

"I remember reaching up, things still not too clear. Didn't know him. Could be one of those who'd been chasing after me. My hand's huge up there, blots out the whole sky. I try to ask him. He takes my hand and bends close over me.

Now his face fills the sky. Can't make out what I'm saying.

" 'David?' he says, 'You're asking after David? He's gone on. Sicker ones than you here now, mate. But not to worry: we'll take good care of you.'"

Welcome back.

Yeah, I guess you could say the same to me. But neither of us's ever really been away, have we?

Abyssinia, right. Turns out it looks just like Metairie, except with camels. We drag our worlds along with us and we can't let them go, can't get rid of the damned things. Trapped animals have better sense. They'll gnaw a leg off and crawl away. We just tell ourselves that once we get the furniture inside our heads rearrangedit's going to be a new room, a new world. Sure it is.