Denis Johnson - Fiskadoro

“News come,” Flying Man told him right away.

“I thought so.”

“Dat news when say today.”

“Yes,” Mr. Cheung said, completely terrified. “I thought so.”

“Bear good. Bear bear good.” Flying Man clasped his hands above his head. His goodwill and happiness were overpowering.

In Mr. Cheung’s view the chief obstacle was that his wife Eileen was at the vendors, and he couldn’t leave his aged Grandmother Wright at home alone. “Most of the orchestra can’t come, I’m afraid. But Fiskadoro will be here soon, any minute.” He wrung his hands. “But I don’t think it’s a very good idea. My grandmother is here. She can’t be left alone.” He looked from one man to the next, over and over, in the weak hope of finding a face that shone with some small light of comprehension.

“Oxra,” Flying Man told him. “Yah! News come.”

Beyond them, Mr. Cheung saw several others, all striped with paint and hung with feathers, standing in the dirt street in front of his house.

It wasn’t so much a fear of their wrath as a deep reluctance to make ripples in the pool of their contentment, finally, that kept Mr. Cheung from refusing their wishes.

He’d made no preparations for this day, hadn’t mentioned it to the others of The Miami Symphony Orchestra, hadn’t said a word about it to anybody. The fact that Fiskadoro was coming here today was just a lucky coincidence — it happened to be the boy’s lesson day.

Mr. Cheung hoped there wouldn’t be any kind of tragedy. He profoundly hoped that this ceremony didn’t involve the eating of raw meat, or sexual perversion, or some manner of blood sacrifice.

“I think I would like my grandmother to come along, too,” he said. “Could we carry her?” He demonstrated by joining his hands together as if rocking a baby.

Fiskadoro took the beach route down to Twicetown, clutching the briefcase called Samsonite to his chest. To his left was nothing but the beach and a thin strip of lowland tangled with cypress and brush. Beyond the brush, parallel to his progress and hidden by the growth, was the road to Twicetown. He was late, but he failed to hurry. He walked on the wet sand near the water, and kept turning around to see what his footprints looked like getting smaller and smaller behind him.

Eventually he came to the place where paths led away from the Gulf over crude bridges of heaped rocks through the bog and into Twicetown. He’d walked this road with Mr. Cheung for one of his history lessons. His teacher had told him that the town — and in many ways, although several sections of it were lifeless now, it remained a town — had been known, in the other age, as Key West. But during the End of the World it had been saved twice and had earned itself a new name. A missile blew up like a firecracker, but a dud missile only brought good luck.

Mr. Cheung had explained these things to him, but he hadn’t yet told Fiskadoro where he was — if this was the land of death, a land that came after the land of death, or some other place entirely.

After Twicetown’s more desolate section he passed along the edge of commerce and entered a gauntlet of vendors. They had a lot of things for sale, but Fiskadoro hadn’t been told yet if he was entitled to have any of them.

At one table he recognized a boy named Sanchez, but he couldn’t remember the rest of the name. Before him on his collapsible table Sanchez showed off a pile of valuable items — scuba knives, combat boots, tennis shoes, watches, a set of three kitchen pans, one resting in another in another — waving over them the wand of a geiger counter that obviously had no power and counted nothing. People stayed away from him. Only a few allowed themselves to show interest, slowing down a little but not stopping.

In this life Fiskadoro had seen Sanchez twice before — once on a morning after a party celebrating a baby’s birth into the Army, when he’d found Sanchez sleeping on the dirt of a path with sand crusted in the corners of his mouth and his nostrils ringed with dried blood; and another time, at the party celebrating Belinda’s burning, when this Sanchez had peed on the fire in front of everybody, and later fell in the sea and had to be pulled out. Sanchez’s mother had cried, and his father had driven him away and told him never to come back to the Army.

Fiskadoro stood looking down at Sanchez and trying to remember his whole name.

“Yeah,” Sanchez said, in a slick way that Fiskadoro disliked listening to.

“You looking better today,” Fiskadoro told him. “Face ain’t dirty.”

“Es ain’t what I ask you,” Sanchez said. “I ask you what you want, how much, and come on make a move.”

Fiskadoro freed one hand from the task of holding the briefcase and knocked on the table as at a door. “What’s you name in the real situation?” he demanded.

Obviously Sanchez recognized him. He was sober now, and a look of apology passed over his features. “My name Harvard Sanchez,” he said, and then, recovering some pride, he added, “relate to Los Desechados Sanchez family, even Leon Sanchez. He my father, Leon.” Harvard Sanchez looked at Fiskadoro, squinting his eyes as if Fiskadoro were down at the end of the street. “I don’t remember you too good,” Harvard confessed.

“That’s because of I eat something make everybody forget me,” Fiskadoro explained.

“Es ain’t what I ask you. I got buttons. How many you want?” He was referring to radiation-sensitive badges that made travel possible through the contaminated regions. He waved the wand of his geiger counter over a small pile of them that glittered like so many coins.

Fiskadoro just didn’t like the way this man talked. He seemed to be issuing some kind of challenge. “I be going in someday. Not today,” Fiskadoro said.

“Not to day," Harvard Sanchez said contemptuously. “Today ’bout the last day. Quarantine end any minute. Bob Marley gone coming, Jah gone coming, everybody coming. Buy now.”

“I mean it what I say. Soon.” Fiskadoro wished he was going into the contaminated regions tomorrow, so he could show this man just who, out of all these people, was ready for danger. He knew that anyone who saw the City became a great person. “Even tomorrow,” he said suddenly. “I be go tomorrow.”

“Mañana!” Harvard Sanchez said. “Then you need buttons. How many? Come on. Everybody going la beach now. Big time today. Let’s go. Can’t wait. Buy now.” He gestured at the people going past. Everybody seemed to be headed in the same direction. All along the street the vendors were packing up their tables.

“I got buttons mi casa. I got buttons,” Fiskadoro said, moving on quickly, almost against his will.

He felt completely defeated when Harvard Sanchez shouted after him, “Fish-man!” Not least of all because it was his name.

When Fiskadoro reached his teacher’s house he found a whole lot of Israelites, black people with painted faces and wild shiny black braids of hair — feathered and animal-skinned Israelites who didn’t know how to talk — carrying Mr. Cheung’s grandmother away in her red rocker. Mr. Cheung was directing and encouraging them cautiously. Fiskadoro stood in the street.

His teacher noticed him and came over. “Fiskadoro,” he said.

“Si,” Fiskadoro said.

His teacher clasped his hands together over his belly, and then unclasped them and flung his arms wide. “These Israelites are going to have a ceremony. I’ve agreed that we’ll play some songs for them.”

“We got the music,” Fiskadoro said.

“Exactly, exactly. You understand.” Mr. Cheung looked a little ashamed of himself.

The Israelites moved past them carrying Grandmother Wright in her red chair, three on each side. Grandmother looked straight ahead. Her feet hung down in thick blue socks.