Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

“Eliminate the pretext,” the Kid says. How the fuck do you do that? It’s a fuckin’ open sewer down there. Half those guys who end up there are junkies, the other half are total losers, drunks and nutcases or just fucked-up in the head like. ..

Like who?

Well, like me, I guess.

I don’t believe you’re fucked-up in the head, Kid.

You don’t, eh? What do you know about me? Other than what you got off the Internet. And what I told you yesterday. None of that might be true, y’know. Except what’s on the Internet about me being a convicted sex offender. That’s true. As far as it goes. But it don’t go very far, does it? Believe me, I’m fucked-up in the head. Just like the rest of those guys down there.

The Professor pulls over and parks the van on the shoulder at the farther end of the Causeway. He gets out and follows the Kid, who’s carrying the parrot in its cage, and Annie down the steep, zigzagging pathway to the concrete island below.

Be careful, Haystack. One slip and you’re in the Bay, and I don’t think anybody here can get you out.

The Professor chuckles. “Haystack.” He likes the Kid’s sense of humor. He thinks it’s the key to his personality structure, the way in. It’s the only apparent opening the Kid has kept to the outside world, evidence that he still has an opening to the outside world. With enough support and encouragement, the Kid will be able eventually to widen that opening on his own and gain sufficient control of the world so that, for the first time in his life, he’ll feel powerful. Powerful enough not to need to demonstrate to himself that he has control of children. And animals. Iguanas, dogs, and parrots.

The Professor sits down on a tractor tire next to the parrot cage and, as instructed by the Kid, holds on to Annie’s collar while the Kid returns to the van for the rest of his belongings. The Professor’s theories about pedophilia are rapidly evolving. When a society commodifies its children by making them into a consumer group, dehumanizing them by converting them into a crucial, locked-in segment of the economy, and then proceeds to eroticize its products in order to sell them, the children gradually come to be perceived by the rest of the community and by the children themselves as sexual objects. And on the ladder of power, where power is construed sexually instead of economically, the children end up at the bottom rung.

The Kid may indeed be fucked-up in the head, but it’s because he’s a weak, relatively powerless member of a society that is fucked-up in the head. It’s led the Kid to believe that, except for him, there’s no one in the community who has less control over his or her fate than a child. A female child, the Professor surmises. He’s confident that the Kid is not sexually attracted to males. Although it wouldn’t alter his theory or change his equations a jot if the Kid had a predilection for male children. Because it’s not about sex, and it’s not about gender; they carry no weight in the equation. It’s about power. Control. Dominion. Dominance? Well, yes. When you feel you have nothing and no one you can dominate, you turn to children. And when children have been transformed into sexual objects and you have no other way of controlling them, you dominate them sexually. Thus the obsessive interest in pornography, the literal addiction to it: for the pornographic narrative is always a tale of dominance. Of men over women; of adults over children. If the Professor has lost himself in theory, a thing inconceivable to him, the Kid is lost in fantasy, a thing the Professor is now quite sure of.

When the Kid has lugged all his worldly possessions back down under the Causeway to his old campsite and has dutifully repitched his tent where it was before, he looks around him at the sad wreckage and desolation of the place and sighs and sits heavily down on the cast-off tractor tire next to the Professor. Most of the shacks and tents and polyethylene tarps have been restored to their earlier disheveled state. A few cook fires are burning in the distance. The place smells badly of human urine and feces. A scrawny gray cat spots Annie and changes its path to avoid her, but Annie seems not to notice. The parrot Einstein squawks twice and fluffs his feathers to get rid of some of the dampness of the place. It’s early afternoon but has already grown dark down here. A tinny radio speaker in the distance plays a country tune. Someone has a portable TV going and is watching Martha Stewart’s show, an irony not lost on the Professor, but not noticed by the Kid. To him it’s just part of the background noise, mixed with the quiet rhythmic slap of waves against the concrete pilings that hold up the Causeway, the rumble of vehicles passing overhead, the screeches of scavenging gulls, and the occasional dull honk of a boat horn from the Bay. There are a dozen or more gray figures moving about in the gloom, but they keep to themselves and are silent — the Kid recognizes several of the men out there by shape and posture and walk, but none of them comes to greet him. It’s as if he and the Professor and Annie and Einstein are invisible.

The Professor asks the Kid if he can make the parrot talk. He’s not heard the bird speak — not at Benbow’s and not in the van or here, either.

Not much. I think he only talks with that guy, Trinidad Bob. Actually, I never heard him talk with Trinidad Bob, either. He’s a loser parrot, I guess. A loser dog and a loser parrot. I don’t know why I took them with me. I guess I was just missing Iggy so much, y’know?

The Professor points out that Annie seems to be genuinely attached to him, and if he feeds and shelters her, she’ll prove to be a useful watchdog who will protect him and guard his campsite when he’s away from it.

The Kid says, No, man, she’s too fuckin’ old and feeble.

The Professor doubts she’s as old as she looks. She’s just malnourished and sick with mange and suffering from having been physically abused. She needs to be examined and treated by a veterinarian. Both these creatures need to be seen by a veterinarian, and once restored to health, they’ll make fine and faithful companions.

The Professor makes his first offer. He’ll carry both the dog and the parrot to a veterinarian in his van and pay for their treatment, even including having poor old Annie, who’s probably not that old, spayed and de-fleaed and X-rayed, if necessary. She may have broken bones or damaged internal organs. Einstein too needs to be properly fed and kindly treated. In short order they will be like family to him. He will be like the head of the family.

The Kid likes that idea. He smiles. Hey, what about the map? The treasure map!

Ah, yes. The map. It’s in my briefcase in the van.

The Kid says not to worry, he’ll get it. He jumps to his feet and scrambles up to the Causeway. A few moments later he’s back, looking puzzled and downcast, with no briefcase.

It’s gone. The fuckin’ briefcase. Where was it?

On the backseat.

Well, it ain’t there now, man. Some asshole stole it. We shoulda locked the van, Professor. The Kid is close to tears. It’s my fault. I shoulda locked it.

The Professor stands and places a hand on the Kid’s bony shoulder. No, it’s my fault. I wasn’t thinking. But don’t fret, son. There was nothing irreplaceable in it. Everything’s backed up on my computer.

Nothing irreplaceable? The map, Professor! What about the map? Was it the original? You don’t have that backed up on your computer, do you?

The Professor says no, it was a copy he drew of the original map ten years ago in Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress. But the Kid can relax, the Professor says he has a photographic memory and can redraw the map exactly, even though he hasn’t examined it closely in a decade.