Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

No.

Me neither. Maybe you’re too tricky for your own good, Professor. You ever think of that?

I’m touched by your concern, Kid. Seriously.

Yeah, well, I guess the truth is I’m gonna miss talking with you. I kind of wish what’s gonna happen wouldn’t… you know, happen. Maybe it won’t. I actually hope it doesn’t. No shit. But if it doesn’t, do I get to keep the money anyhow? You know, in case you don’t end up dead. Otherwise I’ll be back to squatting under the old Causeway with the rats again.

The Professor smiles and says, The money’s yours, Kid. No matter what happens. He extends his hand and the Kid shakes it firmly. Listen to the news on that radio I gave you, Kid. And check the newspapers whenever you can.

The Kid nods, and the Professor hands him Annie’s leash. He turns away and the Kid watches him waddle slowly up the long slope toward the parking lot and his van. He watches him the whole way. That’s the last time the Kid will see the man: a huge hairy figure sweating inside the ten yards of brown cloth it takes to cover him with a suit, a man submerged in a body as large as a manatee’s, graceless, slow moving, arms and thighs rubbing themselves raw, spine and knee and ankle joints stressed nearly to the breaking point by the weight they must support, enlarged heart thumping rapidly from the effort of shoving blood and oxygen through all that flesh, overheated lungs gasping from the work of getting that enormous bulk up the incline to the parking lot, liver, kidneys, glands, digestive tract, all his organs overworked for half a century to the point of exhaustion and collapse — a man with two bodies, one dancing inside his brain, a hologram made of electrons and neurons going off like a field of fireflies on a midsummer night, the other a moist quarter-ton packet of solid flesh wrapped in pale human skin.

IF YOU’VE NEVER PADDLED A CANOE BEFORE it can at first be surprisingly difficult — you have constantly to correct the tendency of the bow of the canoe to swing in the direction opposite your paddle. At first you may try correcting the tendency by alternately dipping your paddle into the water on one side of the canoe, then switching to the other, but all this does is drive the bow from right to left and back again, and you waste a great deal of energy and time making corrections instead of moving straight ahead on your desired course. Eventually to keep the canoe from wagging its bow from side to side you learn to lean forward from your seat in the stern, dip, pull, and curl the paddle away from the canoe in what’s called the J-stroke. A beginning canoeist who is physically intuitive can figure all this out on his own fairly quickly, and if there is no strong current to fight or the water is still, in a matter of minutes he will be on course, slipping smoothly upriver through overhanging foliage, past mangroves and dense palmettos, the only sound the soft plash of each stroke of the paddle as it breaks the surface of the dark water. Overhead, bands of sunlight streak the bright greenery of swamp willows, gumbo-limbo trees, and strangler figs, drift downward past epiphytes and flowering red mangroves and end up lying across the water in flattened stripes.

The canoe rounds a long slow S-bend in the narrow stream startling a snowy egret into awkward flight. A pair of small chartreuse parrots stares down at the slender craft from high in the branches of a cottonwood tree. As the canoe comes out of the S-bend the streambed straightens for twenty or thirty yards and the canoeist sees the first houseboat tied to the trunks of three stout cypress trees. The houseboat is nearly as wide as the stream, a raftlike platform carried on tubular aluminum pontoons with a small box of a cabin set in the center, a short deck aft and another at the squared bow. As he approaches the houseboat he makes out two more beyond it, also tied to cypress trees. He brings the canoe alongside the first, steps aboard, and ties the canoe to the stern. Five minutes later he has the outboard motor started and has untied the moorings and is ready to bring the houseboat back downstream to the settlement at the estuary, where he will by then be feeling utterly competent at this, and with a certain pride he will bring the rectangular boat out to the end of the pier and pull it into a slip, shut down the motor, and tie the boat to a pair of stanchions there.

He will do this twice again — paddle his canoe upstream to the houseboat, bring the houseboat down to the dock and tie it there. The convicts cleaning up the campground and the area surrounding the store will stop in their work and watch him come and go, and on his final trip downstream to the settlement as he passes the convicts he will impulsively smile and wave to them. Look at me, guys! They will look at him, but with expressions approaching disgust and irritation, and the guard will toss him a hard angry look and with a push of the flat of his hand will tell him to keep moving, unless you want to end up alongside these poor souls yourself.

THE THINGS HE CARRIES FROM TURNBULL’S Store and stashes aboard the houseboat named Dolores Driscoll:

waterproof charts of the channels, sloughs, and streams of the Great Panzacola Swamp

topographical map of the Great Panzacola National Park

compass

fishing license

filet knife

fishing rod and reel with hooks and lures

plastic container of earthworms

mosquito netting

mosquito repellent

water purification tablets

5 one-gallon jugs of drinking water

first aid kit

sunscreen

10 cans Alpo dog food

2 pounds mixed nuts

1 pound sunflower seeds

rice

3 loaves Sunbeam bread

peanut butter

Rice Krispies

powdered milk

instant coffee

sugar

tub of coleslaw

3 large bags Cheez-Its

Tang

6 cans Dinty Moore beef stew

1 dozen eggs

1 dozen oranges

1 case Budweiser Light

6 flashlight batteries

6 candles

20 pounds of ice

10-gallon plastic cooler

white gas for Coleman lantern

1 rented one-man dome tent

1 carton Newport 100 mentholated cigarettes

When he’s paid Cat Turnbull for everything on his list he asks the old man if he can charge his cell phone battery from a wall plug he noticed when he used the restroom at the rear of the store, and Cat says yes indeed, adding that it’s probably a good idea to have a cell phone out there in case he needs to be rescued by the rangers. People wake up lost in the swamp all the time ’cause they forget how they got to where they anchored the night before. Some of ’em are just drunk, of course, or on drugs, but some of ’em are purely stupid. Good idea to mark on the topo each night exactly where you anchor. You ain’t stupid, sonny, I can see that, but you might decide to drink that whole case of Budweiser the same night or smoke too much pot sitting out there all alone in the swamp listening to the tree frogs.

I don’t touch no drugs, the Kid says. No, sir. And I never drink more’n three cans a day. I keep count of everything. Same as with cigarettes. I’m down to eleven a day, and next week it’ll be ten. Ten weeks from now it’ll be one. And then none. Quit.

That’s the military in you, sonny. Better than being a goddam Boy Scout Christian. Can’t trust those types. It’s always the damned Boy Scout Christians who get drunk or stoned ’cause they think they’re on vacation from the wife and nobody’s watching so they can do whatever the hell they can’t or won’t do the rest of the year, and either they get lost or they fuck up the boat somehow and don’t want to pay for it afterward.