James Burke - Dixie City Jam

Pain can be a bucket of gasoline-smelling water hurled into the face, the concrete floor that bites into the knees, the hemp knotted into the wrists behind the squared wood post, the wrenched muscles in the arms, the Nazi flag coming back into focus against a urine yellow cinder-block wall, then once again the gears turning dully on a hand-crank generator, gaining speed now, starting to hum now, whining louder through the metal casing as the current strikes my genitals just like an iron fist, soaring upward into the loins, mashing the kidneys, seizing an area deep in the colon like electric pliers.

I was sure the voice coming out of my mouth was not my own. It was a savage sound, ripped out of the viscera, loud as cymbals clapped on the ears, degrading, eventually weak and plaintive, the descending tremolo like that of an animal with its leg in a steel trap.

A redheaded, crew-cut, porcine man in a black Grateful Dead T-shirt, with white skin, a furrowed neck, and deep-set, lime green eyes, sat forward on a folding chair, pumping his chubby arms furiously on the handles of the generator. Then he stopped and stared at one of his palms.

'I got a blister on me hand,' he said.

'Ease it up, Will. You're gonna lose him again,' the man with the silver beard said.

'It ain't Will's fault. All the sod's got to do is flap 'is fouking 'ole for us,' the man at the generator said.

'Electricity's funny, Will. It settles in a place like water. Maybe it's his heart next,' the man with the beard said.

Will Buchalter was shirtless, booted in hobnails. His upper torso tapered down inside his olive, military-style dungarees like the carved trunk of a hardwood tree. His armpits were shaved and powdered, and, just above his rib cage, there were strips of sinew that wrinkled and fanned back like pieces of knotted cord from the sides of his breasts. He sat with one muscular buttock propped on a battered desk, his legs crossed, his face bemused, lost in thought under the brim of his Panama hat.

'What about it, Dave?' he asked.

My head hung forward, the sweat and water streaming out of my hair.

'Answer the man, you dumb fouk,' the porcine man in the black T-shirt said, and lifted my chin erect with a wood baton. His skin was as white as milk.

'Don't hurt his face again, Freddy,' Buchalter said.

'I say leave off with the technology, Will,' the man called Freddy answered. 'I say consider 'is nails. I could play a lovely tune with 'em.'

Will Buchalter squatted down in front of me and pushed his hat to the back of his head. A bright line of gold hair grew out of his pants into his navel.

'You've got stainless-steel cojones , Dave,' he said. 'But you're going through all this pain to prevent us from having what's ours. That makes no sense for anybody.'

He slipped a folded white handkerchief out of his back pocket and blotted my nose and mouth with it. Then he motioned the other two men out of the room. When they opened the door I smelled grease, engine oil, the musty odor of rubber tires.

'Freddy and Hatch aren't the sharpest guys on the block, Dave. But armies and revolutions get built out of what's available,' Buchalter said. His eyes glanced down at my loosened trousers. He picked up one of the generator's wires and sucked wistfully on a canine tooth. 'I promise you you'll walk out of it. We have nothing to gain by hurting you anymore or killing you. Not if you give us what we want.'

A bloody clot dripped off the end of my tongue onto my chin.

'Go ahead, Dave,' he said.

But the words wouldn't come.

'You're worried about the Negro?' he said. 'We'll let him go, too. I promise I won't let Freddy get out of control like that again, either. He's just a little peculiar sometimes. When he was a kid some wogs took a liking to him in the back room of a pub, you know what I mean?'

He placed his palm across my forehead, as though he were gauging my temperature, then pressed my head gently back into the post. His eyes studied mine.

'It's almost light outside,' he said. 'You can have a shower and hot food, you can sleep, you can have China white to get rid of the pain, you can have a man's love, too, Dave.'

He brought his face closer to mine and smiled lopsidedly.

'It's all a matter of personal inclination, Dave. I don't mean to offend,' he said. He looked at the smear of blood and saliva across his squared handkerchief, folded it, and slipped it back into his pocket. Then the light in his eyes refocused, as though he were capturing an elusive thought. 'We're going to take back our cities. We're driving the rodents back into the sewers. It's a new beginning, Dave, a second American Revolution. You can be proud of your race and country again. It's going to be a wonderful era.'

He shifted his weight and settled himself more comfortably on one knee, like a football coach about to address his players. He grinned.

'Come on, admit it, wouldn't you like to get rid of them all, blow them off the streets, chase them back into their holes, paint their whole end of town with roach paste?' he said. He winked and poked one finger playfully in my ribs.

'I apologize, it's a bad time for jokes,' he said. 'Before we go on, though, I need to tell you something. In your house you said some ugly things to me. I was angry at the time, but I realize you were afraid and your only recourse was to try to hurt and manipulate me. But it's all right now. It makes our bond stronger. It's pain that fuses men's souls together. We're brothers-in-arms, Dave, whether you choose to think so or not.'

He got to his feet, went to the desk, and returned with a nautical chart of the Louisiana coast unrolled between his hands. He squatted in front of me again. In the shadow of his hat the spray of blackheads at the corners of his eyes looked like dried scale.

'Dave, the sub we want had the number U-138 on the conning tower. It also had a wreathed sword and a swastika on the tower,' he said. 'Is that the one you found? Can you tell me that much?'

A floor fan vibrated in the silence. I saw him try to suppress the twitch of anger that invaded his face. He put his thumb on a spot south of Grand Isle.

'Is this the last place you saw it?' he asked.

The red, black, and white flag puffed and ruffled against the cinder-block wall in the breeze from the fan.

His hand slipped over the top of my skull like a bowl. I could feel the sweat and water oozing from under his palm.

'You going to be a hard tail on me? Are the Jews and Negroes worth all this?' he said. He slowly oscillated my head, his mouth open, his expression pensive, then wiped his palm on the front of my shirt. 'Do you want me to let Hatch and Freddy play with your hands?'

He waited, then-said, rising to his feet, 'Well, let's have one more spin with army surplus, then it's on to Plan B. Freddy and Hatch don't turn out watchmakers, Dave.'

He walked past the corner of my vision and opened the door.

'It's going to be daylight. I need to get 'ome to me mum, Will,' Freddy said.

'He's right. We're spending too much time on these guys,' the man named Hatch said. 'Look at my pants. The burrhead was swallowing the rag I put in his mouth. When I tried to fix it for him, he kicked me. A boon putting his goddamn foot on a white man.'

'We're not here to fight with the cannibals, Hatch,' Buchalter said. 'Dave's voted for another try at electro-shock therapy. So let's be busy bees and get this behind us.'

I hear the rotary gears gain momentum, then the current surges into my loins again, vibrating, binding the kidneys, lighting the entrails, but this time the pain knows its channels and territory, offers no surprises, and nestles into familiar pockets like an old friend. The hum becomes the steady thropping of helicopter blades, the vibrations nothing more than the predictable shudder of engine noise through the ship's frame. The foreheads of the wounded men piled around me are painted with Mercurochromed M's to indicate the morphine that laces their hearts and nerve endings; in their clothes is the raw odor of blood and feces. The medic is a sweaty Italian kid from Staten Island; his pot is festooned with rubber spiders, a crucifix, a peace symbol, a bottle of mosquito dope. My cheek touches the slick hardness of his stomach as he props me in his arms and says, 'Say good-bye to Shitsville, Lieutenant. You're going home alive in 'sixty-five. Hey, don't make me tie your hands. It's a mess down there, Loot .'