Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

One by one the returnees to the Causeway are introduced to the Professor by the Kid. The first is the Rabbit because the Kid can actually call him a friend unlike the others whom he thinks of as neighbors is all. Acquaintances. People who if he saw them off-island he’d only acknowledge with a nod and otherwise avoid. Also he’s worried about the Rabbit because he’s old and the last he saw of him a cop was whaling on one of his legs with a club the size of a baseball bat.

The Rabbit is wearing a thick blue cast and boot on his right leg, the leg without the anklet the Kid notices, which is lucky. He hobbles along with a metal crutch toward the water with a bamboo fishing pole in his free hand.

Yo, Rabbit, wassup?

The old man turns and checks out the Kid and his huge companion in a three-piece suit and tie and he frowns with puzzlement and slight irritation. Who the fuck’s this? he says meaning the Professor who smiles through his beard at the Rabbit and extends his right hand and introduces himself by name and title.

The Kid says, The Professor’s okay, he’s doing some kinda research for the university. Go ahead, Professor, you do the talking.

The Professor more or less repeats what he told the Kid earlier about eliminating the pretexts for the police raids political and otherwise by organizing the residents beneath the Causeway into a law-abiding community that meets the Calusa city and county sanitary and safety regulations. He explains the need for a meeting of the current residents and the composition of a binding charter that will include a set of rules that all who choose to reside here must sign and obey. Also the formation of at least two committees, one to provide physical safety and protection of property and the other to be responsible for sanitation. They will need an executive committee of at least three persons that will make and administer policy with an executive director or chair of the executive committee who will act as spokesperson for the residents.

The Rabbit stares at the Professor for a long moment. Finally he says, I gotta catch a fuckin’ fish for my supper . And starts to hobble away.

I told you it was a dumb idea.

The Professor calls after the Rabbit that everyone will meet in one hour at the Kid’s tent but the Rabbit ignores him and makes his slow limping way down to the edge of the Bay where he takes over a folding metal lawn chair abandoned there and tosses a few bread crumbs into the water to attract his supper and baits his line with a balled chunk of white bread.

The Professor asks the Kid if he thinks the Rabbit will show up for the meeting. The Kid thinks so but only if he manages to catch a fish by then. He’ll probably come out of curiosity if nothing else. He points out that the Rabbit has a good sense of humor and will come for a laugh. The others — forget it.

Undeterred the Professor heads for the next closest person who turns out to be Paco, and the Kid reluctantly follows. The Professor tells the Kid that he recognizes the man from Benbow’s and the Kid shrugs whatever. Paco’s pumping iron. He’s always pumping iron when he’s not riding his motorcycle or getting laid although the Kid’s not sure he gets laid as much as he claims or if he’s just making it up so you won’t think he’s one of those buff beach-buddy types with a tiny dick in a G-string who only wants to be looked at and not touched. He’s lying on his back on his weight bench which is a board held up by two cinder blocks doing presses with his homemade weights that he built from a boxcar axle and steel wheels he stole from the rail yard. His tattoo’d arm and shoulder muscles are like illustrated drawstring bags of coconuts. His abs are like writhing pythons. To the Kid he’s a cartoon character. Harmless and not very bright. The only complicated thing about him is the fact that he’s a sex offender. The Kid isn’t sure of the nature of his offense — the Rabbit figures he’s into giving blow jobs to teenage boys. That’s complicated, the Kid thinks: a guy built like a superhero from a video game likes hookers but still wants to suck teenage dick so he uses his huge muscles to attract the only kind of people who think a body like his is cool and sexy. With his ankle bracelet exposed as if he thinks it’s a come-on to teenage boys. Maybe it is. Maybe in combination with the muscles it turns them on. The Kid can hardly bear to look at Paco’s body. And it’s always out there to look at, shirtless and wearing cutoffs. When he introduces the Professor to him the Kid looks off at the Bay.

Paco clanks his barbell to the ground and sits up, checks out the Professor and when the Professor extends his paw to shake Paco takes it in his and gives it a crunch. The Professor crunches back and Paco winces in pain.

You don’t want to hurt my hand, bro! Paco speaks with a slightly tinted Spanish accent and though he looks like a café-au-lait Cuban or maybe Dominican the Kid suspects the accent is faked and Paco is really an all-American white guy with a tan. The chalk white brush of a mustache looks dyed and the Kid for the first time notices that he’s wearing eyeliner. Also his hair, glistening black, long and tied back with a rubber band, is way too black. Definitely a bad dye job. Maybe the only person he’s interested in turning on is himself, like his own looks instead of other people’s are what give him a hard-on and that’s why he looks the way he does.

Paco says to the Kid, What you doing down here, man? I thought you was squattin’ over at Benbow’s.

My parole officer made me split from there.

I can dig it, man. Them guys is too wiggy when you get down to it, y’know? But here, man, is living like animals, no?

Yeah, like animals.

So, who’s this dude, amigo? What’s up with him? I seen him at Benbow’s. Them guys thought he was a cop. He a cop?

He’s some kinda professor or something. The Kid doesn’t want to talk about the Professor. He’s the only civilian the Kid knows right now but he’s getting a little sick of the man. He takes up too much space, uses too many words, has too many theories and ideas. The Kid doesn’t want the Professor’s ideas and plans and words and his size to become his, the Kid’s. He likes living without any plans, not talking much, keeping to himself and making his life as small as possible.

The Kid tells the Professor he should explain what he has in mind for the men who live under the Causeway and he steps back a ways and looks off in the distance again: the Bay, seagulls, boats, the skyline, cruise ships, stacks of gray clouds coming in from the east promising rain.

Paco says sure he’ll come to a meeting if it helps get this place cleaned up and keeps the cops off their backs and the Kid and the Professor move on to the others. The Kid is surprised that Paco didn’t blow off the Professor’s plan and is even more surprised when Plato and P.C. and the others agree to meet together. Even Froot Loop who claims to be a surrealist whatever that is and Ginger, a redheaded black guy in his thirties whose main activity is pushing a pick through his Afro and checking out his freckles in a handheld mirror in search of skin cancer he says because his Irish father and his brother died of melanoma.

And then there’s Lawrence Somerset who the Kid thought would not have to come back to the Causeway because of his political connections. But once you’re a convicted sex offender all your connections to society are broken no matter how much money you’ve got in the bank or how many houses you own or how big your boat is or how much power political or otherwise you used to have back when you were committing sex offenses in his case on little girls and buying kiddie porn and probably distributing it to other villains. That’s the word the Kid uses when he thinks of Lawrence Somerset — villain. It has the right old-fashioned association with a black top hat and a black suit and a long tweaked mustache and big white teeth with fangs that appear when he smiles like a vampire.