Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

The Kid loved Iggy — maybe the only creature he has ever loved except his mother and he’s not really sure he loves her because sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between lifelong dependency and love especially for someone you can’t be sure loves you back. But he knows that from the day Iggy clamped onto his hand with his little beak and the doctor wanted to cut off his head to make him let go the Kid has loved Iggy. And now that Iggy is dead and his body is at the bottom of the Bay the Kid wants to be dead and at the bottom of the Bay too.

Slowly he turns away from Iggy’s watery grave site and walks back to his ravaged campsite. Larry Somerset’s duffel is still there alongside his own supplies and sleeping bag and clothing and his cook-kit and stove. There’s even a can of Corona beer and a bag of Cheetos left over from last night’s supper. The tent poles and lines are intact and the tent itself wasn’t torn. He’s able to reset it quickly and in an hour he has restored his camp to its original neat four-square condition. While he drinks the beer and eats the Cheetos he pokes through Larry Somerset’s bag: corduroy trousers, a Brooks Brothers V-neck sweater and two folded dress shirts, some underwear and socks, a shaving kit and miscellaneous toiletries, a pair of flip-flops and a bath towel. Also a Bible which doesn’t surprise him since guys like Larry Somerset are usually Bible thumpers and a thin leather briefcase stuffed with legal-looking papers that the Kid intends to read in the morning light as it’s nearly dark and he remembers that his headlamp batteries are weak.

On the north side of the Causeway a couple of the survivors of the raid have put the shower pail back up on its stand and have repaired the latrine which is basically a large plastic bucket half-hidden behind a floral shower curtain stretched over a tripod of bamboo poles. One of the men — a guy named P.C. who is around fifty and says in his previous life he was a high school track coach — passes by his camp and the Kid asks him what happened to Rabbit.

P.C. is a fleshy white man with a steel gray buzz cut. He wears baggy bermuda shorts and white basketball sneakers, a faded green Calusa Tarpons T-shirt and a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and is lugging a second plastic bucket to the latrine for when the first bucket is full. He looks like a suburban dad off to wash his station wagon in the driveway. You’d never think he was a sex offender but what’s a sex offender look like anyhow? The Kid doesn’t know what P.C. stands for but he’s pretty sure it isn’t “politically correct.” More likely it’s “partly correct” because he’s one of those guys who speaks with total authority about things he knows almost nothing about. Also there is something sly about him that the Kid can’t quite name. Something compulsively deceitful — like he would say it’s raining, it’s definitely raining, when you can see for yourself that the sun is shining. He doesn’t trust the guy. Not the way he trusts the Rabbit. Or even Paco and most of the other residents.

Rabbit? Oh yeah, he got his leg busted up pretty bad. They took him and some others in the ambulances. Paco just took off on his motorcycle and no one followed him on account of being so busy busting everybody else.

Anybody killed?

A heart attack or two and one guy who tried swimming to the mainland but got caught in the rip and drowned.

P.C., that’s gotta be bullshit. It woulda been in the paper and I read the paper today. I woulda seen it.

They’re keeping it quiet on account of politics. A lot of us just ran like hell. Once people heard the cop’s gun from when he shot your lizard everybody who hadn’t already gotten the hell out of here like you and me froze and behaved themselves and got hauled off in the paddy wagons. Hey, too bad about your lizard, Kid.

You think they’ll be back? I mean the cops and all?

Not tonight. This whole thing was staged for the press. The media. An election year photo op. A few days though an’ there’ll be reporters back to write their follow-ups and if they find us still here and write about it the cops’ll be all over this place again.

I thought you said they were keeping it quiet on account of the politics.

Trust me. Better pack your stuff and find a new place to live, Kid. At least till after the election.

Why do I think you’re trying to keep people from coming back, P.C.? You got your eye on one of those empty shacks?

Come morning I’m outa here myself.

Where can we go?

There’s no “we,” Kid. My advice is go alone. The same way you came here in the first place. Being homeless ain’t a team sport. And keep moving is my advice. And never sleep in the same place twice. Hey, good luck out there, my little friend.

Yeah, thanks.

You might try Benbow’s over on Anaconda Key for a few nights. It doesn’t look like it but it’s a business so he won’t let you camp there permanently. You know Benbow’s?

You’re just making it up, P.C., like everything else. Benbow’s is probably some kind of beach resort where they’ll run me off as soon as they see me start to pitch my tent. Or they’ll bust me. You’re trying to get me busted, aren’t you? You want my spot here beneath the Causeway with the great view of the Bay and beautiful downtown Calusa.

Naw, Benbow’s an old squatters’ shrimper camp. Trust me. They sell beer and smoked fish and shrimp. But guys down on their luck hang out sometimes for a week or two and nobody bugs ’em for it unless they want to make it permanent. Benbow and a bunch of old Vietnam vets run the place. Crazy guys but harmless. Him included. Other side of the South Bay Causeway. On Anaconda Key out by the sewage treatment plant. Can’t miss it. They make movies there sometimes.

What kinda movies?

I heard skin flicks, porn. Cheap shit that goes straight to the Internet. Trust me.

Yeah, right. The Kid says he’ll think about it. Tomorrow. Tonight he’s too fucked up by the death of Iggy to think about anything that might be considered his future or his past. Tonight all he wants to think about is the immediate present.

P.C. says, Suit yourself, Kid. But you’re going to need a power source to charge your anklet battery. The Greek’s generator is permanently out of business. This place is totally over, Kid.

THE KID FLICKS HIS BIC AND LIGHTS A candle and crawls into his sleeping bag. Above him shadows flutter like restless crows across the pale green skin of the nylon tent. He forgot to buy batteries for his headlamp. Dumb. Lying back, elbow bent, head on his upper arm, he lights up a cigarette. His thirteenth smoke of the day. He’ll be down to twelve next week. But who’s counting, right? At least he’s not thinking about Iggy or about being fired from his job or about having to find a new place to live. The Kid is good at keeping in cages the things that trouble his mind.

He opens Larry Somerset’s Holy Bible. It’s the only book in the tent. The Kid’s never been much of a reader and he has hoped for a long time, ever since he first heard of it, that he suffers from attention deficit disorder because in school and in the army most people regarded him as borderline retarded. He’s pretty sure that he’s not but he’s had a hard time coming up with a better explanation for what’s gone wrong with his life so maybe he is borderline retarded.

He’s not actually read the Bible before. All or even in part. His mother never made him go to Sunday school or church but he’s known about the Bible all his life of course and he respects it — just as he knows about and respects the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence which he’s also never read and Shakespeare and a few other famous writings that weren’t required reading in school and some that were but which he never got around to reading. Supposedly those are the chief books and documents where people set down in print the basic rules that you have to obey in order to live a good productive legal life. A moral life. Everyone in authority when you got down to basics concerning right versus wrong quotes from them or at least refers to them but the Kid always figured that since every rule and regulation in the world was based on them you didn’t have to read the originals.