Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

Think of a question that’s answered with “yes.”

Trinidad Bob scratches his head in puzzlement. Yvonne peers around Bob and Benbow at the Professor and says, Ah, how about, “Okay if I visit the Kid in his pup tent on the beach on the far side of the trailer?”

The Professor smiles and pulls a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and lays it on the counter. Correct. She beat you, Bob. But here’s a couple of rounds’ worth. A bonus prize.

Yvonne reaches into the cooler and pulls out two cans of Miller and sets them on the counter in front of her. Trinidad Bob does the same. Benbow pockets the twenty. He says, You may not be a cop. But you ain’t no Vietnam vet.

The Professor moves away from the bar and starts walking toward the Airstream. Well, I sure wasn’t getting I-and-I at Woodstock the third week in August of 1969. So I must’ve been getting stoned and laid in Vietnam.

Benbow calls after him, Here’s an answer, fat man! “BOHICA”!

The Professor stops, turns, looks over at the quiz master, and coolly smiles. He tilts his head back a notch and crosses his arms over the bib of his overalls: What’s “ Bend over, here it comes again”? Don’t worry, Benbow, nobody’s gonna get fucked this time. He turns and shambles on.

Trinidad Bob says, Did he get it right, Boom?

Shut the fuck up an’ drink your beer.

Yvonne says, He ain’t no cop. But he ain’t no Vietnam vet, neither.

How do you know that?

He’s too fuckin’ fat.

What is he then?

I dunno. A fuckin’ professor. Like he said.

Yeah, like you’re a cabdriver, Yvonne.

Trinidad Bob laughs and slaps his palm on an imaginary buzzer. I got it! “How does Yvonne make a living?”

Benbow says to Yvonne, Gimme, and extends his hand palm up.

Yvonne pulls two twenties from her pocket and passes them over to him.

Trinidad Bob laughs. How does Benbow make a living?

Just shut the fuck up, Bob.

The big gray parrot in the cage squawks and says, Shut the fuck up, Bob!

A PAIR OF WHITE-BREASTED TERNS DANCES along the shoreline. Farther out a cackling gang of gulls spots a cruise ship passing slowly from the Bay through Kydd’s Cut into the Atlantic, wheels, and speeds off to hunt and gather in the ship’s garbage-strewn wake. The Kid has pitched his tent and dropped his duffel and cooler beside the crumbling concrete breakwater where Benbow’s property meets the sea, a spot of bare ground with a clear view of the city and the Bay and in the distance the Causeway and the Barriers. The Kid’s bicycle leans against the spindly crutchlike limbs of a nearby screw pine that’s large enough to cast a platter of all-day shade over the nylon tent. It’s an intelligent almost picturesque campsite.

A little exposed to the wind however. The Kid squats in front of his butane stove and with one hand cups his lighter flame against the blustery offshore breeze and struggles to get the stove lit. The wind keeps blowing his flame out, forcing him to start over: turn off the gas, pump up the pressure again, turn on the gas, shield the Bic, and flick it. The Kid curses— Shit, shit, shit! — and lets himself fall backward into a sitting position on the ground and stares angrily at the cold windblown stove.

He ate half a watermelon for breakfast and a chunk of raclette cheese and most of a box of Kashi seven-grain stone-ground crackers for lunch but he specifically wants hard-boiled extra-large organic eggs for supper, at least two from the box of eleven perfect brown eggs plus one slightly cracked egg that he grabbed last night along with the watermelon, cheese, and crackers out behind Bingo’s Wholesome Foods. He’s got a craving for healthy food and knew he needed a nutritional break from his usual diet of Cheetos and canned stew. He rode his bike over to the mainland after dark arriving early at the Dumpster an hour before the store closed catching a primo spot where the hungry and the homeless Dumpster-divers line up by the chain-link fence behind the store all waiting as patiently and politely as the paying customers inside with their overflowing carts at the cash register. When the store closes and the workers shut off the lights and go home the scavengers one by one scale the fence each in his turn.

With rare exceptions they honor the three rules of Dumpster diving: first-come first-dibs; never take more than you need; leave it cleaner than when you arrived. Since you can only take what the Dumpster gives, you can’t control your menu much. But everyone on the streets knows that upscale shoppers and the people who prepare their food are fussy about their diet and in a nice convergence of economics and marketing the high-end organic and natural foods stores like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Bingo’s throw out more and better food — especially fresh produce, meats, fish, bread, and dairy products — than the big chain supermarkets like Publix and Price Chopper. If there’s a single cracked egg in a dozen the entire box goes into the Dumpster. If one avocado is bad the entire bag gets tossed. A spot of mold on a cheese wheel disqualifies the wheel, one head of lettuce with rusted tips ruins the crate, and a few bruised apples in a basket spoil the basket. The day before their sell-by date whole boxes and trays of baked goods, milk, hamburger, chickens, even steaks and chops get thrown out. It’s a feast of imperfect but perfectly edible organic and all-natural pesticide- and preservative-free groceries.

Back when the Kid was gainfully employed he had enough cash in hand to pay for his food and though no one ever told him he knew there was a fourth rule in the Dumpster-divers’ code: If you can afford to pay at the register inside, do it. Leave the castoffs for those who have no choice but to forage for food or starve. Now that he’s been fired and has no prospects for future employment he’s decided that even though he’s still got a few bucks left in his pocket it’s okay to hit the high-end Dumpsters and fill his pantry. With no more than what he can carry back in his bicycle basket however — the watermelon, cheese, crackers, and eggs. Enough for two days, possibly three. If he can get his fucking stove lit so he can cook some of these eggs.

The Professor approaches the Kid slowly from behind, unseen. He’s wary and anxious and not sure why. He has no reason to be afraid of the Kid and is confident that the fellow will eventually consent to be interviewed on the subject of his present circumstance. How a citizen of Calusa becomes homeless is common knowledge. At least among Calusans who, like the Professor, view homelessness as a social blight, who regard it sociologically as a community’s debilitating, possibly fatal disease and who, when naming its causes, point to alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness. Commonplace observations. It’s not as easy, however, to identify how a citizen of Calusa becomes a convicted sex offender. It’s the combination of the two that intrigues the Professor — men who are both homeless and convicted sex offenders — and their growing numbers here in Calusa and across the country. It shouldn’t be hard to get the Kid talking about his homelessness. But it may be difficult to get him to tell the truth about what he did to end up a convicted sex offender. He’s bound to be evasive about that. They all are.

Once again the Professor feels like an anthropologist who has ventured deep into the jungle and has stumbled upon a survivor of a tribe long thought to be lost or exterminated. He mustn’t frighten or anger the lad. He needs to be sensitive to the Kid’s cultural norms, even though he’s mostly ignorant of them. He can’t project onto the young man his own middle-class, academic cultural norms and assumptions. His first task will be to obtain the fellow’s trust, to overcome his understandable suspicion that he’s being objectified in the Professor’s eyes, that he’s viewed as a curiosity or as part of a social science research project, rather than as a human being.