Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

HE USED TO go out there to see his uncle and aunt and cousin and sometimes stay overnight with them. More than thirty years later the cousin was killed there when he got into an argument with a hustler. The hustler was selling drugs; his cousin told him there were kids around so peddle his stuff somewhere else. The hustler told him to mind his business if he knows what’s good for him. His cousin said, “Why’d you come to Coney Island to sell your crap? This used to be a good place; my folks and I used to come here to an apartment every summer and you could walk along the boardwalk even late at night without guys like you screwing it up for people.” “Get lost, will you?” the hustler said. There were witnesses; they listened from a few feet off, didn’t butt in. “In Coney Island,” one witness said, “you don’t stick your nose into anything today. That’s the mistake this fellow made and that’s why he got killed. What used to be the old days hasn’t been those days for decades, you could say, so why’d he think that drug pusher would listen to him?” His cousin persisted: “Look, I want you to get off the boardwalk and stop selling your poison or I’m calling a cop.” “And I told you to walk backwards,” the hustler said. “Now get moving, stay out of my business, or you’re going to get very hurt.” “So you’re not leaving?” his cousin said, and the hustler looked around, said to the small group of people watching them, “Do you hear this chump? Can you believe anyone would be so stupid? Where’s he think he’s telling someone this? Okay, because he drew a crowd and I can’t deal with him in private, and also because his breath stinks, I’ll go, but you tell this dope he’s finished, finished.” His cousin followed him till he was off the boardwalk, the hustler turning around every few seconds to stare back and point at him and say things like “You’re dead, mister. You might think you’re alive because you’re breathing, but you’re as dead as they come. So take the last of your deep breaths because there aren’t going to be any later. If you didn’t hear me I’ll repeat it. You want me to repeat it? Then believe it. I bullshit nobody.” Some people came over to his cousin and patted his back and said, “I can’t believe it, you stood up to that bastard. But you better get going the opposite way from him; that guy’s a killer if I ever saw one.” “A blowhard, that’s what he is,” his cousin said. “Drugs he has to sell to little kids or to big stupid ones who then turn on and screw up little kids? I caught on to him right away. I’m walking by, just taking in a day at the beach before the real season begins, and hear him with his nickel-bags line to these kids passing. ‘Nickel bags, nickel bags, joints,’ and some other crap that kills you but only goes by its letters, TNT or something. You know, when I was a kid I used to stay here summers with my folks,” and someone said, “Yeah, we heard.” “Then you know what I’m talking about: it was nice, lively, safe then. You could sleep on the beach on very hot days, send your kids into the ocean for a midnight swim, even, if there were no jellyfish in the water, and nobody would touch you. Girls could go in alone too, if they maybe only got a few whistles, the older ones.” “Those days,” someone said. “You can’t bring them back and, much as I admire you for what you did, you shouldn’t risk your life trying to.” “Who was risking?” his cousin said. “If there was going to be any trouble, it would’ve been then. But I could see he wasn’t that kind of hustler. When they don’t talk or only say very little and just look at you like they want to slice you in half, then you could be in trouble and then I’d walk the opposite way, or till I saw a cop.” Next morning someone found his cousin’s body under the boardwalk about a half mile from where the incident with the dealer happened, his throat slit and pockets torn and necktie pulled around his neck and hanging over his back, but when he was a young man he used to put Gould on his shoulders and walk him at night along the boardwalk for a mile or so, give him money to play skeeball, treat him to the bumping cars and merry-go-round lots of times, buy him soft ice cream and saltwater taffy and a big salty pretzel and always a souvenir to take back to the city, a miniature metal Parachute Jump or a pennant with CONEY ISLAND and a picture of a Ferris wheel or the Steeplechase ride on it. Gould went to see his cousin and uncle and aunt a couple of times a summer, usually late June before he left for camp for two months and during the Labor Day weekend. The ocean wasn’t clean then. Sometimes shit floated past, human shit, and condoms. But when there was nothing like that around, though he always kept his eye out for it when he was in the water, it seemed okay to swim in. What he liked best was getting in front of a breaker and being knocked off his feet and tossed around. Once, he really was tossed around, couldn’t get his footing when he tried to, swallowed lots of water, and thought he’d drown, when his cousin grabbed his hand and jerked him out of the water and ran with him to the beach and set him down on his stomach and pumped the water out of him, and then, when Gould was sitting up and breathing normally again, held him in his arms and said, “Oh, boy, what a scare. I never should’ve let you go out that far. But you wanted to take chances and I thought, He’s not my kid, and taking chances is good for a boy, so let him, but never again like that when I’m in charge.” Gould got sick one time there, violent stomach pains, vomiting, high temperature; it was around eleven at night and his aunt said, “You want to take the subway back home? I’ll call your parents and tell them you’re coming,” and he said yes, had been screaming he wanted to go home, feeling he didn’t want to be this sick in someone else’s apartment, thought he’d die if he stayed, that only his mother could take care of him when he was like this. He was practically delirious, it turned out, going in and out of it, he means. He doesn’t know the details of what happened after that; he knows he spent the night there, eventually fell asleep, and went home by himself the next day. His aunt must have called his home and his mother must have said something like, “Are you crazy, send him home so late when he’s this sick? Put him in a tub of cool water, or rub him with rubbing alcohol, but get the temperature down. Then, if his stomach can take it, give him an aspirin.” His aunt, who usually looked after him well, sort of panicked then; he could tell from her eyes and voice: she just wanted him out of the house. His cousin wasn’t home at the time, so maybe he got back later after a date or movie or meeting some friends — though Gould’s folks used to talk about how he never had many friends and the only women he saw were whores — and his uncle had stayed in their apartment in Brooklyn closer to the city — same place on Avenue J his cousin had lived alone in for about fifteen years till he was killed — as he had to be at work early the next morning.

Now Gould takes his own kids to Coney Island. Did it the last two Junes too, and late in the month, since there was a better chance then, before they left for Maine on the first, the water would be warm enough to swim in. He always brings the kids’ bathing suits but not his own — he just wants to read on the beach, in the shade if he can, while watching them. They haven’t gone in to swim yet, but the last two times they did put their suits on in the decrepit toilet-and-changing building on the beach and wade in up to their ankles. “The water’s filthy,” his older daughter said the last time, and he said, “Why, anything floating in it?” and she said, “No, because it’s brown, not like the Maine ocean,” and he said, “That’s the sand stirred up, your feet in it, all the activity in the water or something, or the surf’s just rougher here and that’s doing it, but it’s okay to swim in. In fact, there’s much less pollution emptied into the ocean around here than there was when I was a kid and used to come to Coney Island, so the water’s probably cleaner now than it was then and maybe, because New York might be stricter with its pollution laws, cleaner than the Maine water. You can’t imagine what they used to empty into the ocean then,” and she said, “What?” and he said, “Things, terrible things,” and she continued to look at him that she wanted an answer, and he said, “Toilet paper. Human feces, even,” and she said, “What’s that?” and he said, “Body waste from people. All right: shit, but not anymore.”