Whitehead Colson - Sag Harbor

The canteen of lighter fluid was an indispensable tool in this enterprise, up there with the spatula and tongs. (He cried “Tongs!” like a TV surgeon demanding a scalpel.) He doused, he drenched, he baptized his creation with a truly fucking gruesome amount of lighter fluid. The fumes were intoxicating, strangely appetizing in their noxiousness, an anti-aroma to the aroma to come, as interlinked as the caterpillar to the butterfly. The coals were so thoroughly suffused with lighter fluid that every so often a pile preemptively ignited itself when a matchbook got within thirty yards, choosing to embrace its destiny with honor. On those occasions when a mound of coals declined to self-immolate, a single match sent it up with a spine-tingling whoosh . My father nodded to the fire and let it be for forty minutes to allow it to make peace with its god.

Every so often, one of his friends or a galoot out for the weekend came up from the beach and, watching this ritual, felt inspired to share their fire-starting techniques. “I make what I call a little ‘nest’ of newspapers under the coals.” “You should try one of those chimneys that they have now.” My father glared at them like the imbeciles they were, spatula a-dangle. Make a little nest “Whitey invented lighter fluid for a reason,” he told them. Who could argue with that?

“James! You up there?”

Mr. Turner's bald head broke the horizon of the deck. My hand whimpered in anticipation of the bone-crushing handshake. He was one of my father's oldest cronies. They went way back, to college, the late '50s, when they were part of a handful of young black men infiltrating the big-time Northeast schools. Brothers from Brooklyn, Harlem, huddling together as the Massachusetts winters, the New Hampshire winters, took a bite out of their asses. What were they doing getting Ivy League educations? They weren't supposed to be there. They hung tight with the five or six other black guys in their school, drank beer with the five or six black guys the next school over. Dated the five or six black ladies at the genteel women's college the next town over, and the other schools on the black network, road-tripping to the big dance that weekend at B.U. or Smith, or up to Montreal, where from all accounts some crazy racial utopia existed, integration of the sort that'd get you lynched in half the South. My father met my mother during that time, on the New England black-college circuit. So that's where all this begins, maybe.

Mr. Turner was also a Sag Harbor guy, son of one of the first families to come out here. I mention this because it was one of those rogue variables with the power to transform my afternoon. My father got to talking, talking got to dredging, and who knew what might happen.

“When did you get out?” my father asked.

“Last night.”

My father went to get him a drink. Mr. Turner stayed on the deck and I kept my head in The Book of Lists to ward off eye contact. Mr. Turner had his own company, selling package tours to Africa and the Caribbean. See the Motherland, get in touch with your heritage, vacation where everyone looks like you for a change. He dispatched fleets of rickety buses to chug-chug up scrabbly mountain roads, kickbacks deciding where they stopped for lunch. He negotiated deals with trinket outposts hawking authenticity in many forms, bead necklaces and fertility symbols, the omnipresent masks reflecting back the faces of sentimental longing. When you went to someone's apartment, you never asked, “Hey, where'd you get that cool African mask from?” because the answer was always, “Mike Turner's tour.” There were Kenyans driving BMWs up to their mountain villas, big satellite dishes in their backyards, because black Americans needed a little whiff. He provided a service.

I hadn't seen him since he came over to our apartment to apologize for how things went on our Jamaica trip last Christmas. He'd booked us into a crumbling all-inclusive in Montego Bay where the roaches were as big as lizards, the lizards were as big as bats, and the bats had such an impressive wingspan that you wanted to ask them for a lift back to JFK. Everybody got food poisoning one night at the crappy buffet, except for me because I was working a not-eating-salad angle that winter, inexplicable looking back these years later, but fortuitous. “I don't work with them anymore,” he informed us. “The son has really run that place into the ground.” My father had cursed his name for weeks, but after he apologized they went out drinking and it was like nothing happened. They went way back, like I said.

My father tossed him a Budweiser. “My son got himself one of those haircuts like the boys on the corner,” he said, making sure I heard.

“Corner …?” Mr. Turner sucked his teeth. “Man, all the kids have that now.”

Now I had to go out and say hi. He pulverized my hand, but not as much as usual, thanks to my recent fortifying regimen of ice-cream scooping. “Looking like a man now, huh, Benji?” he said. “You got yourself a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Shit, if I were you I'd be all over the girls they got out here. When I was coming up, shit.” He winked at my father.

6 Fake Smiles in Benji's House

To Patronize Grown-ups

On Hearing Cruel Put-down of Family Member

False Front of Invulnerability

When All Else Fails

Bizarro Form of Cognitive Dissonance

To Avoid Being Next

“That reminds me,” Mr. Turner said, lifting his eyebrows, “you know who else is out?”

“Who?”

“Mabel.”

“Mabel Jackson?”

They snickered.

“Haven't seen her in years,” my father said.

“I know she don't want to see you, boy,” Mr. Turner said.

My father shrugged. “Shit, I can't help what I am. How she look?”

“Like her husband left her ass for that young thing, what else she going to look like?”

“Back when, though.”

“Damn.”

I went inside to call Bobby. He was late. His mother told me he'd already left. He'd honk his horn any minute and I'd be free. Maybe we'd go by Devon and Erica's or something. Maybe I wouldn't even have to suggest it, he'd bring it up and I could maintain an air of disinterest. I hadn't been inside Devon's house yet, torturing myself that I missed the Hanging Out in Their Basement period, those four fabled days cut short once Devon's father got wind. Word was he was “really strict.”

“I better go down there and see what these people are getting up to,” Mr. Turner said. He shook his beer can to see how full it was.

“Come back and get some chicken when you're done struttin' through your coop,” my father said.

He checked the fire, spreading his hand over coals. “Mabel Jackson is out.” He shook his head and smiled. “Back in college, she was fine …” He stopped. He looked at his palm. “That's why you should marry a virgin,” he said. “People talk about you. You want to be out with your wife and have some fool whistling about what he used to do?”

“Right. I mean, no.”

“What you do follows you, that's what I'm trying to tell you.”

“Right.” He headed for the kitchen. Ash nibbled the corners of the coals. One of my mother's friends walked down to the beach along the side of the house, dragging a beach chair across the cracked paving stones. Early Saturday afternoon, there were distractions. A cocktail party up in Ninevah, or a birthday luncheon at the Salty Dog, but the beach was HQ. Things always ended up on the beach, in front of our house.

When I walked inside, he was getting out the chicken. CNN was on. I turned back to The Road Warrior . He didn't say anything, but I could've turned on MTV at full volume and he wouldn't have heard. Everything ceased to exist when he spiced up the chicken. His world shrunk to the size of the aluminum tray before him, a type of screen. He scrutinized the limp rows of chicken parts as his hand jagged over them. There are those among us who put their faith in marinades. For others, barbecue sauce — Texas-style tomato-based or North Carolina vinegar-infused — is the order of the day. My father didn't truck with any of that. “Salt. Pepper. Paprika. That's all you need. All you ever do need.” First one side, then he flipped them piece by piece and did the other side. As a concession to the rest of humanity, he'd brush on some barbecue sauce at the end if you asked for it, but it was obviously beneath him and a betrayal of bedrock values. Slap on some store-bought Heinz crap, to show what he thought of you.