Stuart Dybek - I Sailed with Magellan

“Admit what?”

“The truth, just say it out loud: Ladies and gentlemen, I admit it, I love Kashka.”

“No, it’s not fair.”

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, he had his chance. He didn’t want to see the movie anyway.”

I disappeared under the sheet again and began to snore. Suddenly, I felt him land on top of me. He’d jumped from his bed onto mine and was trying to strangle me through the sheets while kneeing me in the back.

“Hey, take it easy,” I said, “or Captain Roopus will hear.” But he wouldn’t stop. “This is gonna cost your scurvy ass another hundred points.”

That made him punch all the harder. He tried to gouge my eyes through the sheet. “I don’t care what you do,” he said.

“Sir’s gonna hear.”

“I don’t care.”

I squirmed loose, grabbed my pillow, and smashed it in his face, sending his head thudding off the wall.

“They’ll hear that for sure. Better get in your own bed.”

Mick was half-crying. “I don’t care. I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell about the Point System. I’ll tell I saw you playing with matches.”

He tried to break away toward the bedroom door. I grabbed him by his undershirt and tried to wrestle him down, but it tore away.

“I’m gonna tell you ripped my T-shirt.”

“No tell, no tell, Mickush,” I pleaded.

“Don’t ush me.”

He managed to open the door and slip out with me still pulling on his arm. “No tell, no tell,” I kept whispering. It was too late to force him back. We were halfway down the dark hallway. The fluorescent light in the kitchen was still on and lit up the end of the hall. Their voices carried to us. Mick stopped.

They were arguing. We could hear them very clearly. Moms was already at that point when her hands shook; we could hear the tremors in her voice. When what she called her “nerves” got bad enough, her lower jaw would tremble, too, as if she was on the verge of a fit. She would continue trying to talk even though she could no longer control her voice, and it sounded as if she was gagging on words stuck in the back of her throat. Her attacks of nerves had begun a couple years earlier. Usually, they’d come on at night. I’d wake to her walking the apartment in the dark, talking to herself, praying, crying. Sometimes, thinking us asleep, she’d enter our room and sit shaking at the foot of my bed. Once, Mick woke, heard her crying, and began crying, too, so now when the attacks came she’d lock herself in the bathroom and turn on the water taps.

“You gotta get ahold of yourself before you’re in the same boat as your brother, Lefty,” Sir was saying. “I’m gonna call that phony-baloney doctor and tell him I’m taking those da-damn pills he’s giving you to the police.”

There was a crash like a dish breaking. “I-yi-yi c-c-can’t stand it,” Moms gagged out.

“He’s turning you into an addict,” Sir said. “You take the pills and act like a zombie, and without them you fall apart.”

“Y-y-you ever t-t-try li-li-living without any sympathy? I-yi-yi can’t stand it.” Something else broke.

“Go on, act like a da-damn nut and break it all so I can work harder to support us.”

“I’ll give you all the points back. I’ll take you to the movie,” I whispered. “Come on back to bed.”

Mick followed me, both of us creeping back to the room. I closed the door, and it was dark again. We climbed into our beds and lay there not saying anything.

I was nearly asleep when the whining started from across the gangway. At first it was just there, a night sound like the crickets, sirens, and freights, but it grew louder and sharper and I realized I was feverish with sweat and sat up.

“It must be their new dog,” Mick said.

“Jesus, what’s the matter with him? I never heard a dog sound like that.”

We tried to look through the screen again, but all we saw was the bulb behind the bedspread. Then we heard Kashka’s voice.

“Janush, stop beating on him.”

The whining went on.

“That sonofabitch, that dirty bastard. He’s torturing that puppy in there.” I threw myself back in bed and started punching the pillow until the whining stopped. In the quiet I could feel my lungs heaving and realized I’d been holding my breath. Then the whining started again.

“Why’s he doing it?” Mick asked.

“I’ll get him for this, the sonofabitch. I’ll steal that dog and burn their goddamn house down. I’m not kidding. I’ll wait till the bastard’s passed out drunk and get him with a brick. I’m going to call the Humane Society tomorrow.”

“For shitsake, Jano, stop beating the goddamn dog,” Kashka yelled. She sounded more irritated by the noise than anything else.

“You said you wanted him mean, not like the other one, didn’t you?” Jano answered. “This is when you gotta get them if you want ’em mean.”

He kept at it as if proving his point. There was an even worse sound, like a choking squeal, and I could imagine Jano holding the dog up by the clothesline they kept tied around his neck while his hind legs danced off the floor.

“Shut up!” Jano shouted, and it was abruptly silent.

“Maybe he killed him,” Mick whispered.

I pulled the nylon stocking from my head and peeled my undershirt off and put it on the radiator. It was soaked through with sweat. I lay back down and waited, my insides braced for the whining to start again. It was quiet, but I couldn’t relax.

“Want to have a Radio Show?”

“Okay, you start,” Mick said.

“Hello again out there, ladies and gentlemen, this is your friendly announcer, Dudley Toes, coming to you live from Dreamsville in the heart of Little Village over station KRAP, brought to you by Kashka Marishka’s dee-licious melt-in-your-fat-mouth Frozen Rat DeLuxe Dinners!”

“And Jano’s Hard-on Pickles. The only pickles especially made for shoving up your nose.”

“Thank you, Mick the Schmuck, and now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get the show on the road with the thing you’ve all been waiting for. Hey, ladies and gentlemen! Wake the hell up! I said the thing you’ve all been waiting for!”

Applause, cheers, boos from Mick’s bed.

“And here it is! The Great Singing Competition between the world’s two greatest singers — Tex Robe and Boston Blackhead!”

“I’m Tex Robe,” Mick said. “I made it up.”

“But you made it up for me. And I made Boston Blackhead up for you. There’s no reneging on Blackhead, old buckaroo. Now shut up till it’s your turn, or you’re disqualified. Right, ladies and gentlemen?”

“Right, right, right,” the ladies and gentlemen answered from the sides of their mouths.

“And here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Tex Robe singing the great new hit ‘Saxophone Boogie’!”

Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah,

Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah,

Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah,

Oh man, that music’s cool!

You hear the saxophone

When you’re sittin there at home,

Hear that saxophone

And know you’re not alone,

Hear the saxophone

When you’re sittin there in school,

Oh man, that music’s cool.

Saxophone Boogie, yeah yeah …

“Let’s hear it for Tex Robe, ladies and gentlemen!”

Thunderous applause.

Then it was Boston Blackhead’s turn. The ladies and gentlemen cheered again. Some booed and hissed. Boston Blackhead began to sing in a quavery, haunting voice, the voice of a ghost, of an ancient mariner.

“Oh no, ladies and gentlemen, not that, any song but that,” the master of ceremonies implored, but it was too late. There was no stopping the song, the same song that Mick had been singing on and off over the past months, ever since I’d brought a book on explorers home from the library, and, adrift on our beds in the expanse of darkness, we circumnavigated the world. Instead of returning the book on time, I’d hid it along with a flashlight behind the radiator, and after the house was quiet I’d read in a whisper about the five ships and two hundred and seventy-seven men who’d set sail, about the Patagonian Giants with their strange words— ghialeme for fire, settere for stars, chene for hand, gechare for scratch — words we began to use, as in “I hear you gecharing your balls, matey.” They passed the Cape of Desire, the Cape of Eleven Thousand Virgins, the Land of fire— ghialeme — under the Southern Cross, past the Unfortunate Isles, the Robber Islands. There were doldrums, shipwrecks, mutinies, demasting storms. “My men die fast, but we approach the East Indies at fair speed …. I know a ship can sail around the world. But God help us in our suffering.” Their ankles swelled enormously, their teeth dropped out, the flesh of penguins stunk in the hold, they soaked the leather wrappings from the masts in seawater for days, ate sawdust and wood chips. Three years, forty thousand miles, only eighteen men returned.