Denis Johnson - Fiskadoro

“His teeth grew.

“ ‘Old women run half those games,’ I say.

“Blood spilled outa his eyes.

“ ‘Those old women, they never hearda you,’ I say.

“He scream like I hammering on his feet. I felt sick to die, I been so chicken in my guts to hear a man make that type noise. Bob Wilson he got faint unconscious on the floor in his clattering chains and locks.

“But the biggest big gambler, he knew I go be reporting out the facts. He got calm inside his face. And I tell to them all, ‘You gone kill us. You gone turn us into ghosts right now.’

“They say, ‘That’s right.’

“ ‘You gone keep Bob Wilson brother in chains.’

“They say, ‘That’s right.’

“ ‘You gone talk about that hootchy and that kootchy down to Cuba. And everything I say, gone stay be true forever: Twicetown games just belong to everyone, no percent out of it for you big North Deerfield gamblers.’

“They didn’t say a sound.

“I say, ‘If you deliver us three back down to Twicetown, we gone take your message that you control all the games. We gone bring your percent, and we gone have Bob Wilson magic brother controlling some dice sometime once in a while for you. ’ ”

Cassius Clay Sugar Ray looked around him at the faces in the flames, going green and blue in his sight, possibly, as had the faces of the gamblers from North Deerfield. “When Bob Wilson wake up and found out he ain’t dead yet, I told him, ‘The Mainland-Keys Alliance for Trading, we now in session!’

“I laughing and crying both at once, but those gamblers say, ‘You gone go back alone by yourself, nigger-person. We keep these two white boys till you come on back to here with a new report.’

“I say, ‘All right.’ I repeated to them, ‘Fugdat shit!’

“They took off my chains and locks and put me back on the Guerrilla. I be sure go die, they all knew about it, plain and obvious. But the biggest big gambler say, ‘My name is Ernest Bodine. Would you like a Bible?’

“I say, ‘Yes Cap’n,’ but he say, ‘I haven’t ain’t got one. But I give you the Koran of Mohammed.’ Then he made a sinful sound, ‘Moooooo-hammed! Ha ha!’ like a cow.

“I said, ‘Fugdat shit!’ But I took the book and I readed part of the page one to him, so he can see me as a schooled aficionado of words.

“They set my sail and push me out into the corriente on the Ocean.

“If ever I need to come about only once, I not never gone make it. I need the luck of Allah with the wind, to sail one person alone to Twicetown in the Guerrilla. But I didn’t know Allah then, I didn’t have no information about who was Allah. The corriente took me out till the land she been far away on the edge of the world. And next thing, before I knew what, this land we live on and walk on she be gone , gone from outa my eyes, and I there on the Ocean of agua y nothing but agua.

“Five days and four nights I sailing on, and I ain’t can’t never come about without no mates to help me. I make my best way to go south and west, but time I make east with the corriente, time dead west, sometime the forces turn me around and head me dead up to the Pole Star. Half-liter of water in a bucket disappeared. It rain and I catch a few drops in my hands. A few more drops in the bucket. I going fast. Thirst dry me up flat like a rag. North. South. East. West. A simple person, a little coward, on the Ocean.

“I tell to the Pole Star, ‘Who making you take me there?’

“When the boat gone west and the sundown look at me like a big eye, I say, ‘Who are you?’

“And I go down on my knees on the deck to pray: ‘You there up high! Heavenly Eye watching this trouble! Put your secret message in this book!’ ”

In the light of flames, Cassius Clay Sugar Ray held out his two hands together, the palms up, like the open pages of the sacred Koran.

“The line my finger pointed say, Would you deny these blessings of the Lord?

“I say, ‘Scuse me what? What blessings?’

“One more line down the page, it said me again, Would you deny these blessings of the Lord?

“I say, ‘Look at the sea all around! This is me I go drowning! Who talking about any blessings?’

“But one line, two lines, three lines — all over the page I see been Allah’s one message for me: Would you deny these blessings of the Lord? It say that on those pages of the Koran thirty-two times. When Allah make a message, you don’t get no question.

“Now I gone ask to you this,” he said: “What that message mean?”

The men and boys around him knew he’d been carried on uncharted currents over the Ocean and washed up against the rotted pier at Plantation, above Key Marathon, and they knew the story of how he’d been carried in a hammock by the Plantation people into Marathon, a completely transformed individual bearing a book about Allah and news of an Alliance for Trading that would make a storm of business over the following decade, until boredom, laziness, and the easy life among laden fruit trees beside a generous sea made work seem too much trouble for the citizens of the Keys. Only the Gambling Alliance remained in effect — also the legend, always larger — and they knew these things by heart, but they didn’t know what the message meant, Would you deny these blessings of the Lord?

“It mean, Give thanks,” Cassius Clay Sugar Ray explained. “It mean even in the middle of the Ocean, give thanks to Allah. It mean, Dance with your partner. Get it while you can.”

Cassius Clay Sugar Ray sensed they didn’t need to hear the end. “Live in total faith!” he insisted. “Would you deny these blessings of the Lord?” he asked. His own excitement seemed to confuse him to the point that he didn’t know anymore what he was saying. “Every minute of my great deeds I felt the fear. I was tasted puke in the back of my mouth.”

The men and boys were a little embarrassed now, because this last statement had the ring of a thoughtless departure from the usual text. In a moment, however, as everything he’d told them took its shape in their minds, their embarrassment left them. They considered his submission to fate, to what he called Allah; they admired his dangerous flaring honesty in talking about his wife and her lover and about personal fear in the middle of brave deeds; and they felt that he hadn’t lowered himself, exactly, so much as raised them up.

Still, the events of this night, so different from the usual boredom, cheap talk, and staring into flames, were upsetting every stomach, and the men and boys were already trying to forget this encounter even as it came to an end. They’d always been confident that the sea would bring home a warrior, that the sand would whirl into the shape of a President, and that from time to time in their lives people would be met with who would show them the way. But they’d expected to meet these figures only in dreams.

Cassius Clay Sugar Ray’s two bodyguards — Uncle and Sammy, both small men, neither of them very fearsome, almost as well-known on the Keys as their employer — had been watching the dancers, and now they came to get him. Cassius Clay Sugar Ray shook hands all around and got ready to go back, under their protection, to his new home in Marathon.

One of the bodyguards, Sammy, was a white man who wore long pants and even rope sandals, like a big business-owner, and he said to Cassius Clay Sugar Ray, “Shake it, Boss.” Cassius Clay Sugar Ray smiled as if he didn’t understand, and kept on giving out pieces of dried fruit to the others from a bag he carried around his waist. Sammy said, “We got moves to make.” It irritated Fiskadoro that Sammy’s tone of voice seemed tainted with some faint failure of respect.