Denis Johnson - Fiskadoro

He saw himself pitied tenderly by future admirers. How Fiskadoro had suffered in the hard time of his youth! Eventually, in the real situation, all the people dancing there across the sand would be remembered as fools.

And his sentiments were so out of control, he felt so sorry for those who would someday feel sorry for him, and so keenly grateful for their future understanding, that even walking around by himself on the dark beach he was embarrassed. He was afraid he might bring his thoughts into a ghost-life right now, and people would have a laugh to see his private dreams parading through the air around his head.

He had nothing to do but wander over to the gathering of other outcasts, the men circled around a wood-fire, absent-mindedly combing sticks out of the sand with their fingers and talking about nothing much. These were the people he had to count himself among, the boys without girls, and the older men who did in fact have women but who now, at an advanced stage of domesticated wisdom, usually tried to keep away from them.

Fiskadoro was shocked to see a new person holding forth before his friends. Everything went away from him except the face of this famous man, the wide flat nose with monstrous nostrils, the African hair and bushy eyebrows made twice as thick by their shadows in the firelight.

“. go out there and catch fish,” the man was saying, “or you can go out there on the sea and catch Allah. Catch the destiny.”

Allah, destiny — it was just what Fiskadoro might have hoped this man would say: something that was real and true and not stupid and not small.

Fiskadoro sat at the circle’s edge, up on his knees to get a clear view of the man over the heads of the others. There were almost a dozen young men here, all listening quietly and pretending not to be totally unnerved.

It was incredible that this personage should appear on West Beach. He was known to be a rich man, somebody connected with the gamblers, a dealer in goods and substances. But he had a crazy side to his nature that made him fail, because of completely irresponsible actions, just as often as he succeeded. Failure made his legend more appealing. He was supposed to be related to A. T. Cheung, but he looked nothing like Fiskadoro’s clarinet teacher.

Dropping his talk, the man stared at Fiskadoro. The others made room, and the boy joined the circle of listeners as if commanded. The man was speaking of the great things he’d done. He was telling them how he’d become a legend.

“Bob Wilson brother, Michael Wilson, he had the power of moving dice, and so the gambling men they kept him in chains. They kept him incognito on the North Deerfield, way up past the contamination. That’s why we had to go. That’s why we lost two men. They were good men. Their business for them that day, it was to die.

“Remember this that if you are a human man, when you scratch your nose you ass gone start itching. Same thing, same way, what Allah say: ‘Every hardship is followed by ease. Every hardship is followed by ease.’ Say it twice that way.

“Something else it say that I thinking about right now, for the women who commit adultery. You know que dice adultery?” He passed his hand undulating over invisible waves in the fire. “Somebody all night long with your wife. Or even in the morning, or the afternoon. It say about a woman like that—” He closed his eyes and sang, with deep feeling and a tense throat, “ Confine-them-to-their-houses-till-death-over-takes-them-or-till-Allah-finds-another-way-for-them.”

The mouths dropped open. It was all Fiskadoro could do to contain himself. He crossed his arms tightly to keep his chest from exploding.

“Confine them to the houses,” the great man said. “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. Well well, I don’t remember now.

“I am not blind. My wife laying down with James Melroy from the Twelve Shacks below Marathon. Gone all night and all morning. You think I don’t know that so hard right here in my heart? You think I don’t know that until ten-thousand-dollar fine? Fugdat shit.” He looked directly at Fiskadoro. “I am Cheung’s half-brother. Got the Negro blood inside me. My newest name Cassius Clay Sugar Ray,” he said. “The First.” His black kinky hair was so long it was beginning to lie down, and he wore several necklaces. He could easily have been taken for somebody from over the swamps. “But the secret of my being is just that I leave alone the most personal thing,” he said to all of them in general. “I do the thing that’s for my business.

“The boats put out after the fish. It been their business. But my boat stayed behind. My business never in no Gulf that day. My business never up by Marathon. My business with the Atlantic Ocean. Bob Wilson brother. Gamblers.

“My business told me: Go out in the fog. Keep walking. Walk through fear. Fear is a door! On the other side”—he pointed—“Fiskadoro meets Fiskadoro.” He swiveled his arm, pointing his finger at another: “Glen gonna meet Glen.”

The boys and young men were more and more astonished by every one of his words. Some of them trembled visibly, and their teeth clacked with fear.

“I don’t need fifty rules. I don’t need twenty rules. I don’t need ten rules. Every day have one, two, three problems. Every day have one, two, three rules. That day my rule come to me like, Do your business, fool. Leave alone the most personal thing today!

“When my head gotten clanging because of my personal wife laying around naked and tangle up with James Melroy in the Twelve Shacks, my rule come to me like, Do not kill a wife, do not kill a man who you can call him by his name, James Melroy. Personal is crazy! Go do your business!

“But I was afraid of my business. I was afraid of to be seen. Everybody would question to me, Where the wife now, my pal? Is she visit up to those shacks below Marathon? You know James Melroy live up those shacks, isn’t it now? Maybe somebody was ask me like this: Brother, you gonna ’bout to visit up there and shoot that man? I was afraid of them see me go in my boat and say, That man, he is not going up toward Marathon. That man, he is a frighten coward.

“But I telling you, Allah is there. His words are ‘Courage’ and ‘Obey.’ I was afraid of to be seen? — in the blinding sun nobody wasn’t see me. I was afraid of questions? — questions never draw no blood, but yes except inside the stomach of a frighten coward. I went out. I walked through fear. I meeted myself. I did my business. I obeyed the rules for the problems of one day. Now I got business in every place on the Keys. I don’t worry about who was my wife then. I don’t know her name.

“But she know my name now. Every day. Every day she call on me. Every day she come crying and beating her face. And I say, If I knowed your name, stranger-woman, I surely be go speak to you. But I don’t speak to you because of I don’t know your name.”

They waited in silence. He picked up sand and let it drift away between his fingers. The shapes of the young men, flattened out by the firelight, seemed to shift when the wind plagued the flames. Whenever the drift of smoke turned around and came at a man, he ducked his face thoughtfully into the crook of thumb and finger, covering his eyes and nose with his hand.

It began to seem they might not be permitted to hear about Cassius Clay Sugar Ray’s business of that day, which had made him famous everywhere. The boys and young men got anxious. One tossed a smooth rock into the fire. Others said, “Hm! Hm!” but couldn’t fathom how to prod him into going on. Finally one said, “Tell it to us ’bout the words of Allah.” A couple of others said, “Right!” “That’s right!”

As if he’d never spoken the words in his life before, Cassius Clay Sugar Ray repeated, “Bob Wilson brother, Michael Wilson, he had the power of moving dice, and so the gambling men they kept him in chains. They kept him incognito on the North Deerfield, way up past the contamination. That’s why we had to go.