Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

I dunno. Maybe something a little less explosive. I gotta focus on it awhile first. Once I nail down the exact spot where it’s buried I’ll concentrate on how to get it out. One step at a time, Professor.

Have you considered the possibility that the map is a fake?

You mean the one you copied the copy from? The original?

Yes. The original.

That’s like asking have I considered the possibility that you were lying to me.

Exactly.

Why would you lie to me about something like that?

Why, indeed?

I mean, I can see it if you were trying to keep the treasure all for yourself so you drew me a phony map that sent me to the wrong place to dig for it. But if you wanted the treasure all to yourself, why tell me about it in the first place?

Exactly.

Unless there wasn’t any treasure in the first place or even an original map to copy from. And you only wanted to make fun of me. And make yourself feel superior.

The Professor says, I wouldn’t do that to you, Kid. But his smile tells the Kid that’s what he’s done. The Kid stands and turns and walks back to his camp and his dog and parrot.

PROBABLY THE KID SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED to own a dog or a parrot. They are helpless dependent creatures, neither of them very healthy, and both unable to function normally especially Einstein whose wings were broken at Benbow’s and tied back so that when they healed and the strings were cut he’d be unable to fly more than a few feet at a time. He’d never be able to escape to the trees above Rampart and breed with the parrots there and spend his days cadging dropped bread and leftovers at the sidewalk cafés, squawking with the flocks of other escapees and their offspring and gawking at the humans down below. And Annie’s like an old lady on a walker, frail and slow and cross. They are rescues is how the Kid sees them but in spite of his limited abilities to take proper care of them he still believes they’re better off under the Causeway with him than they were at Benbow’s.

He wonders if the Professor can give him a lift over to the Barriers to Paws ’n’ Claws the pet food store on Rampart or maybe he’ll hold on to his dwindling cash reserves and hit Bingo’s Wholesome on the mainland for a Dumpster dive. There’ll be three-day-old organic chickens and marrow bones for Annie and plenty of nuts, crackers, and berries a day too stale for the yuppy vegetarians but perfect for Einstein. The Kid used to dive at Bingo’s twice a week at least because of the abundance of the leafy greens that Iggy so loved. But since Iggy went down the Kid’s only been diving at Bingo’s once.

He figures if he can restore Annie’s health she’ll be a serviceable watchdog who can at least stay awake while he sleeps and bark if someone tries to sneak into his tent or cut his bike chain. A little food, kindness, and respect can do wonders for an animal of any kind. It worked with Iggy. It kept him close by and attentive and loyal and fiercely protective which was what got him killed of course but will keep him always in the Kid’s only memory of being loved. In a sense Iggy is responsible for what little capacity the Kid possesses for loving others.

You might think the Kid’s mother loved him — she certainly thinks so — because she bore him after all and had no help from anyone else in raising him. She wasn’t cruel to him or violent and for many years she provided him with food, shelter, and clothing and she offered him companionship from time to time when there was no one else around, no boyfriend or some guy about to become her boyfriend or another guy on the way out. She wasn’t on meth or crack, just weed and the occasional blow. Mostly he remembers her going out the door in the mornings for work at the salon, his box of Coco Pops on the kitchen table, slightly sour milk in the fridge, school lunch money next to his plate. Then he remembers her coming home after afterwork drinks at the Bide-a-Wile with her girlfriends from the salon, putting a microwaved box meal in front of him while they both watch music videos on MTV, and then she puts on her makeup and tight jeans and sleeveless tee with the good cleavage and heads back to the Bide-a-Wile or someplace else where she’s agreed to meet up with her girlfriends to begin the night’s prowl.

That was when she had no boyfriend or as she put it, No beau . Once she found herself a beau he usually moved in with her or at least moved into her bedroom and kitchen and took half the couch in front of the TV. The Kid would hole up in his bedroom with Iggy and his computer so he wasn’t seeing her any more when the beau was around than when she was out looking for one. It was a pretty boring lonely life for the Kid whether his mom was with a beau or without, whether she was at home nights and Sundays or on the prowl. Until he was almost eleven, that is, and clicked his way for the first time onto porn sites. After that if he got bored and lonely it was only the porn that was boring and making him lonely but by then it was working on him like a drug that created a need that only it could satisfy and brought with it a need for more of the same.

Officially then until he was eleven or twelve and could take care of himself more or less the Kid’s mother was neglectful because she left him home alone unattended so much of the time. Unofficially she might still have loved him. People do that sometimes — love somebody they appear not to notice is alive. But she was the kind of person for whom love was only a word and a tone of voice and a ready-made set of facial expressions and body movements. As long as she employed the word and made the right faces and provided the appropriate hugs, kisses, and whatever else was required of her body to support her use of the word she believed that she loved her son just as she believed she was in love with many of the men she brought home and had sex with. They believed it too, her son and some of the men who shared her bed. For a while anyhow. The men that is. For a day or two. Sometimes weeks. Her son however believed for years and years that his mother loved him. Even now he believes that she loved him all his life right up till he became a convicted sex offender and then she stopped. Which the Kid thinks was understandable.

The night he was busted in West Calusa Gardens after they finished interrogating and booking him he called her from the police station to explain why he wouldn’t be coming home unless she could put up a twenty-thousand-dollar bail bond. She demanded to know what he did. She didn’t ask him what he was charged with.

Nothing, really.

If you didn’t do anything, why did they arrest you, then?

On account of the way it looked. I did something really stupid.

Then you did something. And they arrested you for it, and now you want me to bail you out with money I don’t have.

Well, they said you could put your house up if you own it.

Who’s “they”?

The guy who set bail. The judge, I guess he is.

You’re not innocent. You’re guilty of a crime, and you want me to risk my house just to get you out of jail. What kind of crime did you commit? Was it drugs? It better not be drugs, mister. ’Cause if it is, you can forget about me bailing you out. You can forget about me bailing you out anyhow, since you’re not innocent. Was it drugs? Did you rob somebody?

No, it was a sex crime.

Oh, Jesus!

That’s when she hung up. It was the last time he spoke with his mother. At his trial he looked for her in the audience which was made up mostly of the families and friends of other people being tried that day and their lawyers but she wasn’t there which he understood because by then there had been at least two lengthy articles in the Times-Union about child pornography and a five-part series on the nightly TV news about protecting children from sexual predators prowling the Internet. He didn’t blame her for staying home.