Denis Johnson - Fiskadoro

Keeping left, Mr. Cheung entered a pocket of industry, passing the bottle factory and the candle factory, both of them closed now and awaiting the time when some flurry of demand would call forth a great man to pry the boards from their windows and take them through the cycle of confused life and premature death generally enjoyed by businesses along the Keys. There were other buildings in the neighborhood that had never hosted any such resurrections and inside of which the machines hulked inscrutably, scaring away the people who might have lived in them. Even Mr. Cheung walked past these places with a dread of something that lurked here hoping to churn people into grease.

William Park-Smith was waiting for him on the road out of Twicetown, resting in the shadow of a brick wall behind which grass grew up through an old foundation. He had one of his combat boots off and his face down in its mouth, apparently inhaling the odor of leather.

He hopped up to join Mr. Cheung, walking along lopsidedly with one bare foot. “Do you think we’ll get the clarinet?” he asked.

“It isn’t about the clarinet,” Mr. Cheung said. “It’s about my pupil Fiskadoro, who’s returned now.”

“Yes, yes. But I thought of the clarinet.”

With nothing to talk about, Park-Smith developed an ear for the enticements of vendors, delaying the whole trip several times only to buy nothing in the end, until the two musicians passed beyond the fringes of town, beyond the vendors and then into the region where the asphalt gave out and the dirt thoroughfare, heavily trafficked with nomads and beggars, cut through a kind of beach jungle interrupted by the rubble of buildings. Park-Smith stopped and took off his other combat boot, then walked along barefoot beside the Orchestra Manager carrying a shoe in either hand.

He wished that Mr. Cheung would chat about a few matters. The walk seemed longer without any conversation to relieve its sameness. The Manager was very preoccupied. He lived too much inside his head. “We’ll require, you know, to spend the night there,” Park-Smith concluded, acknowledging the lateness of the hour — the sun was low in the west. “Won’t tomorrow be soon enough?”

“It’s urgent. The young brother Drake came to me this morning.”

“Yes, yes — you sent him to me.” Immediately Park-Smith was worried. “Don’t you remember?”

In another hour they reached the Army. The fences that once had separated the compound from civilian Florida had long since disappeared, and the coconut and date palms that seemed to gush from every square meter of unpopulated earth overcame the dwellings, so that the habitation blended into the countryside around it. Now it was sunset. Among the trees the shade was no longer shade, but darkness.

Behind Fiskadoro’s house, just offshore, an old fishing boat hovered in a violent, rusty light, attracting villagers. And there was Martin, known lately as Cassius Clay Sugar Ray, standing in water up to his bare knees and resting a hand on the anchor line. The late hour gave to the beach an ineffable wanness. The boat and the people seemed small and far away.

“He has a boat now?” Park-Smith said when he recognized their half-brother.

Mr. Cheung stopped and looked. “We should have guessed,” he said. “They traded a boat for the book.”

“The Nagasaki book!”

“We should have guessed.”

They were only a few meters from Fiskadoro’s door, but they waited to greet Martin — who was waving to them as he marched through the water hefting a sun-bleached canvas duffel bag — because in any situation it was always best to find out, first of all, what Martin’s presence might signify.

“The white bodyguard,” Park-Smith said, seeing that Martin was accompanied.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Martin shouted as he and the white man approached. He dropped his duffel bag on the sand and patted Park-Smith’s shoulder and said, “How is our father?” He shook Mr. Cheung’s hand and said, “How is our mother?” It was an old joke; both of these people were dead.

Martin indicated the white man, who rested a rifle across his shoulder. “Sammy Goodman. Tony and Billy are my brothers, good men. Sammy Goodman is a good man. I am called Cassius Clay Sugar Ray. I am a good man.”

Mr. Cheung said, “Your new name has reached me.”

“You traded a boat with the Marathon Society?” Park-Smith asked. Martin only smiled as if he didn’t understand the question, and Park-Smith said, “Perhaps?” But Martin only smiled.

“Why did you come today?” Mr. Cheung asked.

“A lot is interest me,” Martin said, “about the boy Fiskadoro, your once pupil.”

“What?” Park-Smith said. “He was kidnapped. He was returned.”

“A person have told me Fiskadoro is not the same.”

“Of course not,” Mr. Cheung said. “An ordeal, he’s had an ordeal.”

“A person have told me very, very not the same.” Martin picked up his burden and they all went in.

Inside, the quonset hut suffocated under layers of odors — smoke, mildew, mackerel both fresh and putrefied, fruit rinds dwindled to a state of fermentation — and at first Mr. Cheung stayed close to the door and the fresh air. Villagers waited outside in the dusk, keeping their voices low.

Martin lit a candle by the bed and moved around the place lighting others, making a big show out of each match.

Fiskadoro, the cause of all the trouble, lay in bed in the next room with a grey sheet full of holes pulled up to his chin, and the mother sat on an old car seat with her hands straight-armed onto her knees and her shoulders curled, hiding her breasts. She was in shock. So was the boy. Fiskadoro’s hair was caked with a thick even layer of mud that made him look large-browed and bald. He wore a headband of tiny shells. He had holes in each ear, top and bottom, with strings tied around through each hole. Mr. Cheung had seen such insignia among the swamp-people. He came close to the bed and peered down, “Fiskadoro. We want to lift up the sheet and have an examination.” Fiskadoro looked right at him, but didn’t acknowledge. As soon as Mr. Cheung drew the sheet back and saw the massive scab like a barnacle on the boy’s crotch, he realized what had happened.

He’d been half-expecting it and remained unblinking, but Martin and Park-Smith started dragging the breath down their throats.

“Can you remember an accident, Fiskadoro?” Mr. Cheung asked his pupil.

The boy didn’t answer.

The white bodyguard Sammy spoke up. “I promise you he don’t remember.” He glanced at the mother, as if perhaps he didn’t like talking about it in front of her. “They fix it up so the boys don’t remember.”

“Who?”

Martin said, “Sammy and me have visited to these people. Sammy many times. He saw and he knows.”

“They take this memory-juice,” Sammy told them. “First you remember every single thing in the world, then you don’t remember a-tall. Zip. Nothing. Nada,” he added in what was evidently a polite attempt to get the point across.

“They have a big ceremony, lot of days long, when it’s time to—” Martin pointed at Fiskadoro’s crotch and sucked the breath through his teeth.

“Subincision,” Mr. Cheung said. He drew the sheet back up to the boy’s chin.

“Horrible. Horrible. Horrible,” Park-Smith said.

“What they do,” Sammy said, “they take the boys supposed to get cut up like this, and they recite out a whole lot of things to say — these old men recite it out at the boys all day long. Then sundown every day they take all this stuff and grind it up with something —blood, Jesus, I don’t know what- all—”

“Mushrooms,” Martin said, “and a one blue pill.”

“—and when these boys drink it down, Sir, I swear they recite it all back, remember every word.” The small man’s white face was amazed. “I mean it takes all night to get it said, and these little — brown kids, they don’t never miss a beat. Next night it’s the same thing, only different speeches to learn. Three, four nights running they’ve got them out there in a clear spot by the village, cleaning out their brains, is how I’d say it, and then they get crazy and, Sir, I ain’t lying, those young boys rip up their own peckers with a jagged rock. I ain’t lying. Couple days after that, these same boys can’t tell you their own name, plus I hate to tell you what they sound like every time they go to piss out a drink of water.” He looked at the mother. “They heal up after a while,” he told her.