Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

P: Don’t be so sure.

K: I said “pretty” sure.

P: What did you end up pleading guilty to? All it says on the registry is you were convicted of a Class Two felony.

K: I don’t feel like going there. I gotta spend some time with my animals. I gotta get Einstein talking. I gotta encourage Annie here to act like a regular fucking watchdog. All she wants to do is sleep. Maybe I’ll get Rabbit or somebody to try and sneak up on me while I’m pretending to sleep in my tent, and if she barks give her a treat to reward her. Sort of get her started.

P: Why don’t you feel like going there?

K: Where?

P: Telling me what you pleaded to.

K: I’m not telling you, I’m telling that fucking little black box. I don’t like little black boxes. Besides, it sounds worse than what I actually did. What I’m actually guilty of.

P: Are you ashamed of what you did? What you’re actually guilty of?

K: No. Not really. Except it was stupid, like I said. But I’m not ashamed. Actually, yeah, maybe I am.

P: If you’re unsure, maybe you should tell me what you did. It may help you make up your mind about how to feel.

K: You can’t make up your mind about how you’ll feel, man. How you feel is how you feel. Besides, you’ll just think I’m like the rest of these guys down here, making up excuses and shit. Lying and blaming the victim, like they say, or I’m like the Shyster and some of the other weirdos who don’t have a moral compass, like they say, and think there’s nothing twisted about wanting to bonk little kids or wag their weenies in front of old ladies in wheelchairs. I know the difference between what’s normal and what’s weird. And I’m not making up excuses for myself when I admit that what I did was stupid, because it was illegal and I sort of knew it, but I did it anyhow. That’s not an excuse and it’s not blaming anyone else. It’s just a fact. Everybody does shit that they sort of know is illegal. Even you, Professor. Right?

P: Yes. Right.

K: So what do you do that’s illegal? Smoke weed? You don’t look like you’re into blow.

P: To tell you the truth, nowadays I don’t do anything that’s illegal. Nothing that I’m aware of anyhow.

K: “Nowadays.” So you have a shady past, Professor.

P: (chuckles) You could say that.

K: Big-time? I mean shadier than smoking weed or cheating on your taxes.

P: Big-time.

K: Cool. Can you tell me about it?

P: No.

K: You ever do time?

P: No.

K: That’s why you can’t tell me about it. Your side of the story. You can only tell your side of the story if you got caught. If the story has an ending. Right?

P: Right.

K: And your story’s still running.

P: In a sense. But yours isn’t. You got caught. So tell me your story. If I ever get caught I’ll tell you mine.

K: I hope you get caught, Professor. I’d like to hear what a guy like you did that was big-time illegal and shady, a famous professor and all, respected pillar of the community, guy in a three-piece suit and necktie doing valuable research on down-and-out homeless convicted sex offenders like me living like rats under the Causeway. I’d like to hear that story.

P: Let’s hear your story for now. Maybe someday you’ll hear mine.

K: When you get caught for what you did.

P: It won’t happen.

K: That’s what you think.

P: Tell me about it.

THE KID’S STORY ACCORDING TO THE KID:

He rode the bus south from Fort Drum all the way to Calusa without getting out except for coffee and a take-out sandwich at the bus stops and he sat alone the whole way — fifteen hundred miles and four days and three nights — depressed and angry at himself and the U.S. Army regulations against distributing pornography that couldn’t make a distinction between distribution for a profit and giving away DVDs to guys in your outfit who you wanted to respect you and be your buddies so that when you got to Iraq or Afghanistan they’d watch your back. Now he has no place to go except to his mother’s house, his old bedroom and his tent in the backyard next to Iggy’s cage. He has no job to go back to — the new guy who took over the light store after Tony Perez got killed in the robbery acted like he still believed the Kid was somehow involved even though thanks to his mother’s lie he had an ironclad alibi. No friends either, male or female, except for Iggy of course, Iggy being one of the reasons — a minor reason — for no friends since most people especially people his age thought it was weird to have a full-grown thirty-pound iguana for a pet or else they were scared of it or disgusted. So no posse just like when he was in high school and the other kids and even the teachers thought he was boring and not very bright and short and skinny with a personality that had no specialty. They never even bothered to bully him in school. He might actually have liked it for the attention if once in a while his fellow students had slammed him against a wall or a bank of lockers or stuck his head in a urinal and flushed or yanked off his backpack and tossed his books and notebooks into a toilet. A loser. That’s what he was before he joined the army and that’s what he was while he was in the army and now that he had been kicked out of the army he was even more of a loser than before.

His mother seemed to think so too. The only reason she was glad to see him when he arrived back at her door was because she was sick of taking care of Iggy. Within days of his departure for Fort Drum she had given up following his careful instructions for feeding and watering the iguana and cleaning its cage but couldn’t quite bring herself to ignore the creature altogether and had started tossing unopened loaves of white bread into the cage and the occasional leftover pizza crust and had started hoping for Iggy’s death or escape and disappearance. Several times a week she forgot to close and latch the door of his cage and managed to be both surprised and disappointed when she returned in the evening from work and saw that the cage was open and Iggy was still inside it. It was more or less how she had treated the Kid himself in recent years. Most of his life actually, even when he was a baby. She believed that she was not cut out to be a mother, that’s how she put it to her friends and lovers. Which allowed her to give herself extra credit for keeping her son fed and clothed and housed, however inadequately it may have appeared to a social worker, for example, or to someone who in fact was cut out to be a mother.

So the Kid moved back in with her. Temporarily, he figured, until he got a job and could afford a place of his own preferably over on the Barriers where you could walk along the beach or sit at one of the outdoor cafés on Rampart and let your eyes caress the shoulders and thighs of girls and young women in their bikinis and wonder about their hidden body piercings — nipple- and clit-rings and so on. But he hadn’t been honorably discharged from the army and when he applied for jobs at McDonald’s and Starbucks and the other fast-food chains and even the supermarkets and especially Walmart they ran him through the usual databases and came up with a reason not to hire him. It’s what they wanted, a reason not to hire him. He was a lousy interviewee and got worse as he went along — sullen, inarticulate, evasive — and with each interview grew more pessimistic and discouraged until he came to believe that he was worse than unemployed, he was unemployable and ought not to be hired. His message to the person sitting across from him was Don’t hire me, I’m unemployable .