Randy White - Dead of Night

I stopped him with a warning look. I didn’t want to hear it. “Then be happy. Believe it.”

He was stressed, hyper, but starting to relax-he’d filled another 100-milliliter flask with vodka, and it was down by half. He crunched ice, used his fingers to snare olives as he replied, “Six months ago, sure, I would have been happy. I was convinced I was a goner. Which is the only reason I let that ballbreaker you call a sister turn me into the televangelist of meditation.”

“Trapped you.”

“Damn right she did.”

“It’s her fault that you’re now getting rich by teaching nonmaterialism to the masses.”

“Exactly. The American way. But only because I believed the dream. Now, as far as karma’s concerned, I think I have seriously screwed the pooch.”

I said, “I don’t get it.”

He was shaking his head. I’d missed something that should have been obvious.

He stood and began to pace in small, distracted circles. “All the cash Ransom’s been laying on me lately! I woulda never bought the new dinghy, my Harley, the stereo system. Your surfboard. All my new clothes-Jesus, I just ordered two new silk suits. Plus my VW van, the Electric Kool-Aid Love Machine.

“I wouldn’t have any of that stuff if I’d known the dream was bogus. Cling to earthly material possessions? No way. I’m more than just a Buddhist monk, for God’s sake. I’m a fucking boat bum. It’s against everything I stand for.”

I was smiling. “Then get rid of it all. Go back to being who you really are. Ransom’ll understand, and everyone at the marina will be a lot happier. We’ve been worried. We like the old Tomlinson better.”

“Ransom won’t understand. Are you kidding-tell her I quit?” He whacked himself on the forehead. “The woman’s a witch, I tell you. She’s cast a spell. I’ve thought and thought and there’s no way out.”

Ransom is my only living relative, as far as I know, and I love the lady. She’s a lanky, busty, mulatto brown dynamo who wears Obeah beads braided into her hair, and sacrifices chickens, sometimes pigeons, on the full moon.

She’s the closest thing Sanibel has to a voodoo priestess. Casting a spell is something she could do.

Her father was my late uncle Tucker Gatrell. She inherited his tunnel-visioned genetics, minus the craftiness he passed off as finesse.

I would trust her with my life. I hope she feels as confident in me.

Nearly a year before, we’d been sitting on Ransom’s porch when Tomlinson tried to explain why he’d been in a funky mood. He didn’t mention the dream, not then. He said he knew his days were numbered-“I continue to inhabit this body for strictly sentimental reasons”-and now felt obligated to explore new experiences. So far, though, he wasn’t wild about the options. Maybe we could help.

“I’ve had this awakening,” he told us. “Heaven is happening. They drink rum there. Even play baseball-which is the good news. The bad news is, God has me scheduled to pitch on Sunday. Or a few months down the road. So I’m in a rush. As a spiritual warrior, I’m duty bound to touch all the experiential bases before I die, like it or not.”

He didn’t sound as if he liked it.

Problem was, he said, not many untouched bases remained.

“I’ve tried damn near everything there is to eat, drink, snort, shoot, seek, try, or experience, with the exception of bestiality, homosexuality, and living as a right-wing conservative dweeb.” He shuddered. “What an ugly trifecta. I don’t think I’m capable of taking a shot at any one of the three. My brain and my gag reflex, both have locked the gates to those particular streets…”

He drifted away in thought before finishing, “Bestiality, homosexuality, and dweebsville. If that’s all that’s left, and I have to choose…” He shuddered again. “Can you imagine me being gay? With my sex drive?”

It was Ransom who asked, “What about living as a rich man? You ever done it? That kind of change, it wouldn’t be so bad.”

Her Bahamian accent strung the words together as music: Whads a‘bot libbin’ as’a reech mon? Daht wooden be so bod!

Tomlinson brushed off the suggestion. Told her his family had been wealthy. He had no interest.

“I’m talking about you. You ever felt what it’s like to make your own pile of money? To want expensive things?”

“Materialism and greed,” he replied. “They’re contrary to Shiku Seigan, my sacred Buddhist vows to live modestly, and root out blind passion. The blind passion deal-I’m not claiming to be perfect, obviously. But living like some starched suit who only thinks about money? No way.”

The way he said it-his condescending tone-annoyed her. “That’s the way most people live, you dumb stork. You always talking that spiritual garbage. About how you relate to your brothers and sisters around the world. But how can you feel it if you never been in their shoes?

“Most people love money. Darlin’, you’re lookin’ at a girl who loves money. Work like hell tryin’ to make it big, and it ain’t easy. Most of us, we like to buy nice things. But not you. What you’re really tellin’ me is that you’re too good to live like the rest of us. Sayin’ money’s dirty is the same as sayin’ people like me are dirty. You ain’t spiritual. You a snob.”

That got to him. He sat there with lips pursed, eyes drifting, twisting a strand of bleached hair. After a moment, he spoke as if talking to himself. “Hmmm, an interesting concept. Learn to empathize with greed and materialism by experiencing it. You gotta live it to understand it. That’s what you’re saying, Rance. I never looked at it that way.”

“You nothin’ but a boney ol’ stork of a snob,” she repeated, sensing an advantage.

“Know what? You might have something. Damn it all… I am a snob. I’ll say something like, ‘I want to understand why people love shopping malls.’ Or those big-ass, gas-guzzling cars? What’s it like to touch a hundred-dollar bill and feel emotion? Work nine to five just to buy monogrammed hankies-that’s a weirdy. Pay money to blow snot all over your own initials.

“I pretend to be interested in what drives materialistic people. But I’m not. Not really. I choose not to understand their behavior because it’s beneath me.” He slapped his knee. “Wow! I see it now. What an asshole I’ve been.”

Ransom’s expression read, There! You finally admitted it, as she said, “People out there trying to make a buck, buy a fine car, but you talk about ’em like they’re fools. Try it your own self if you want to understand. See what it’s like to risk your butt startin’ a business, knowin’ it might fail, lose everything. On the other hand, you might make it big, too. Maybe you might like it, being rich.”

“Feel what they feel. Hmmm. I like that.” He was warming to the idea. He stood and began to pace, letting it happen in his brain. “In Buddhism, we have what are called ‘the Three Precepts.’ The Three Precepts of Materialism might be… self-indulgence, self-promotion, and… selfishness? Yeah. Fits. What you’re suggesting, Rance, is that I might come to better understand self-less-ness if I experience the flip side. Selfishness. A very, very heavy approach…”

“No,” she said, irritated, “what I’m tellin’ you is to stop mopin’ around, get off that dead ass of yours. Find out your own self how hard it is to build a pile of money.”

Tomlinson had drifted into another world, trying it on. “Self-indulgence. Self-promotion. Selfish desire. The Three Ss. Yes. The symbolic trinity in a nation of gold cards. Perfect. The dollar sign, after all, is nothing more than the letter S transected by vertical lines-three symbols. Get it?”

As I said, “Oh, sure. I’m right with you,” my cousin told him, “Tomlinson, you a hopeless fool. I’m talking about money, and you already confused. Talking like you gonna start a new religion or somethin’, not your own business.”