Peter Abrahams - Lights Out

The path led through a grove of four or five sawtooth-leaved palms to a small house painted in broad vertical stripes of red, green, and black. A curtain hung where the door should have been. Eddie knocked on the doorjamb.

The house was silent. Eddie knocked again. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone here?”

No answer. He brushed the curtain aside and went in.

He was in a small room with a cement floor and unfinished wooden walls. There was nothing in it but an icebox, a card table, two card-table chairs, and a rusty bicycle leaning against the wall. “Hello?” he called again. Silence. He opened the icebox. It was empty except for an oblong yellow-green fruit of a kind he didn’t know.

Eddie crossed the room, entered a short hall with two doors off it, both closed. He opened the first. A bathroom; he shut the door, but not before the smell reached him. A ball of nausea rose up inside him. He stood in the hall, took a few deep breaths, kept it down. Then he opened the second door.

He looked into a darkened room. A strip of tar paper hung over the single window, but there were coin-sized holes in it, and golden rays of sunshine poked through, spotlighting a Bob Marley poster taped to the wall, an L.A. Lakers sweatshirt rumpled on the floor, and a man lying on a bare mattress, eyes closed. A fly buzzed in the shadows.

Eddie had seen AIDS before. There was lots of it inside, although the victims were usually removed by the time they reached the point that the man on the mattress had come to. Eddie went a little closer, gazed down at him.

Was it JFK? Eddie couldn’t tell. The image of JFK in his memory was blurred, and what was left of this man bore it no resemblance, other than in race and sex. The man wore only a pair of white briefs; on the mattress near his still hand lay another oblong yellow-green fruit, with one piece bitten out. As Eddie watched, a shudder went through the man. The expression on his face, which had been peaceful, grew anxious. His eyes opened.

He saw Eddie. “I in a dream about L.A., doctor,” he said. “Universal Studio, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm-I be knowing all these places in my past traveling life.”

It was JFK.

“I’m not a doctor,” Eddie said.

JFK looked him over. “No problem,” he said. “Intern? Resident? Fellow? I got it all down, toute that jive, the hospital jive, man. Fellow the best. You looks like a fellow.”

“You don’t remember me?”

The eyes, big as a child’s in that hollow face, gazed up at Eddie. “What hospital you be from?”

“No hospital,” Eddie said.

“No hospital?”

Eddie shook his head. “Maybe you remember the wild pig.”

Pause. Then JFK smiled. “Boar, not pig,” he said. “Hemingway himself, he come to hunt the wild boar on this very island.” JFK’s teeth, probably just normal teeth, looked extrabig, extra-healthy. That they would long survive him, Eddie knew, was only a function of the hardness of teeth; but there was something macabre about that smile, as though JFK’s teeth were mocking the body they lived in.

The smile faded. When JFK spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I remember that creature. Cook him up real nice. Onions, garlic, pineapple, herb. The herb what does it.” He paused, then spoke again, quieter still. “I remember you. You done lost all that hippie hair, but I remember you.”

JFK turned his head away, toward the tar-papered window with the rays shining through like the blades of gold swords. The room was silent, except for the buzzing of the fly. Then JFK spoke: “Don’t be having the idea JFK is a gay man. Needles. Needles be the source of my disease.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes,” Eddie said.

Slowly his head turned back. “No difference?” he said.

“No.”

There was another card-table chair in the corner. Eddie pulled it up, sat by the mattress. The big child-eyes watched him. “You lose your trial, man. That right?”

Eddie nodded.

“Same thing be happening to my brothers. Dime he die in Fox Hill. Franco he get shot in Miami. And me… soon I shuffle off this earthly skin.” His eyes went to the Bob Marley poster, lit with golden rays. The words on the poster read: “One World.” There was a long silence. JFK’s eyes closed.

“Can I get you anything?” Eddie said.

“Water,” JFK replied. “For my thirst.”

Eddie went into the stinking bathroom. A dirty glass sat on a shelf above the sink. Eddie turned on the tap. Rusty water trickled out. After a minute or so it cleared slightly. Eddie washed the glass, rubbing it clean inside and out with his fingers, then filled it.

He returned to the bedroom. JFK’s eyes were still closed.

“Water,” Eddie said.

Not opening his eyes, JFK said, “You know we all ninety-nine percent water? All humanity? So it be the water have this disease, not me. All I be needing to do is piss out that sick water and fill up with clean. Abracadabra-problem solve.” His eyes opened. “You believe there truth in that?” he said.

“I’m not a doctor,” Eddie replied, coming to the side of the mattress and extending the glass.

JFK tried to sit up, could not. He raised his hand. It shook. “So weak, man,” he said. “I was never in this life a big strong white hunter like you, but…” His hand flopped down at his side.

Eddie sat on the mattress. He put his hand behind JFK’s head, feeling the dampness in his tightly curled hair and the fever in the scalp beneath. He raised the glass to JFK’s mouth. JFK’s lips parted. Eddie poured in the water, slowly. JFK’s Adam’s apple, prominent in his fleshless neck, bobbed up and down. He drank half the glass, then grunted and shook his head. Eddie lowered him back down.

JFK breathed rapid, shallow breaths. “Down to ninety-eight percent now, man. Maybe ninety-seven.” His breathing slowed. “Water, water everywhere,” he said. “How true it be, those things they say in church.”

“Water, water everywhere’s not from church,” Eddie said.

“Sure it is,” said JFK, “sure it is. The gospel truth I strayed away from all my born days. Like my brothers, Franco and Dime.” His eyes shifted to Eddie. “You be different from your own brother.”

“In what way?”

“Not the same.” He licked his lips.

“More water?”

JFK shook his head. “Too hard,” he said. His eyes closed.

“You were in New York,” Eddie said.

JFK nodded, barely.

“You saw Jack.”

He nodded again.

Why?”

“Old times,” said JFK. “And him so rich, I be wondering if he could spare a little material advance for old JFK.”

“Did he?”

“Fifty dollars. U.S.” A faint smile appeared on JFK’s face.

Fifty dollars: exactly what Uncle Vic had got. It must have been Jack’s standard handout. “When was this?” Eddie asked.

The smile vanished. “Two years ago. Maybe three. The sickness already have me in its coils then, but not so strong.” He opened his eyes, looked at the Marley poster, then at Eddie. “You be in Switzerland at the time.”

“Switzerland?”

“Doing finance.”

“Who told you that?” said Eddie, rising.

JFK shrank back on the mattress. “Your brother. I aks about you. Feeling bad about how you lose your trial in the distant past. And that what he say. Switzerland.”

Eddie reached down and took JFK’s head in his hands; not hard-at least, he didn’t think it was hard. “Are you listening to me?” he said. “I want you to listen carefully.”

JFK licked his lips. “I be listening,” he said, almost too softly to hear.

“Then get this straight. I just got out. I did fifteen years for a crime I knew nothing about. Your crime.”

“Fifteen years?”