by Mike Bond
The blond soldier stood slowly. “You’re crazy.”
Murphy felt a sudden plunge of shame. “You get out of here. You get out of everywhere down here.”
Blood was running down the soldier’s forehead into his eye. There was blood in his mouth. “We were doing nothing, just having a...”
“You musta done something,” Lovejoy said, “to make him so mad. Be smart, mon, move on. They be ‘nother bar down the street.”
“T’row dem white boy all out!” someone laughed.
Mother Teresa was sweeping up glass. People had set up the tables and were sitting again, laughing, animated. The barefoot girls were moving tentatively on the dance floor, watching for broken glass. Lovejoy grabbed Murphy’s shirt. “Why the fock you do thet, mon? This be my place! Grace!” he yelled to a barefoot girl in a yellow blouse, “you take this crazy mon upstairs, see if you can fock some sense into him!”
Murphy rubbed blood out of his eyes. “Go to Hell, Lovejoy!”
“They soldiers goin’ be waitin’ fo’ you! You git you white ass up thet stairs!”
Grace pushed him ahead of her upstairs to a low room with a wretched mattress on a broken bed and a dejected table cluttered with empty Belikan bottles. She unbuttoned the yellow blouse, dark shiny breasts popping out, slipped down her black skirt, nothing underneath. The bed squealed and slumped when he sat on it. She found a cloth on the table and stood before him, wiping blood and beer and pieces of glass out of his hair, her breasts warm and full against his face, her cunt smell tangy. After a while he put his hands round her and kissed her breasts, down her front and buried his face in her warm bush, the hair thick and silky, and she pushed him back on the bed and came on top of him, riding him slowly saying “Jesus”, and his head was spinning and he was seeing strange places and dead faces and then it came out of him and he thought like pus, like purging some disease, and Grace a nurse, sister of mercy. How God was born, he thought, seeing the woman beside him, young and lithe, his seed inside her going nowhere, like all of us, seeing himself and Grace as God saw them, a woman and a man on a stained and sticky mattress, the floor with crushed palmetto bugs under a flyspecked bulb, mosquitoes clamoring through a torn screen, the laughter of drunks and reggae pulsing up through the boards,
He who seeks of only vanity
and has no love for humanity
shall fade away, fade fade
fade fade away
28
“WHY YOU GOT a picture of him on your wall?” Lyman said.
“You should hear his music, Dad.”
“He was a traitor to your skin, Jason.” Lyman sat on the bed, sneering at the Michael Jackson poster, a premenstrual hypnotic bitch. Had this man suffered everything, he suddenly wondered, just to make himself what people needed him to be?
His big flat hand felt strange on Jason’s knee and he removed it, brushed the boy’s fuzzy curls, made his fingers go into them. “He even straightened his hair, that guy.”
“Like Christina.”
“She can’t help it. She’s going to do anything I don’t want her to.”
“She’s a girl, Dad. She can’t be anything like you.”
“How d’you think she’s going to end up? Really?”
Jason drew up one knee, hands clasped round it, thinking. Lyman glanced down at Jason’s sneaker to make sure the sole was not dirtying the bed. “Your mother has to wash that sheet,” he said.
“Oh, yeah.” The boy put down his foot. “Sorry, Dad.”
“So what do you think?”
“About Tina? I think she’s fine. She’s nice to me a lot of the time. She takes me places, drives me to games when Mom can’t.”
“You don’t hate her for yelling at you?”
“She only does that sometimes. Mom yells at me too, sometimes, and I don’t hate her.” Jason looked up at Lyman entreatingly. “Sometimes even you yell at me...”
‘Don’t let’s talk about that now. Sometimes you deserve it.”
“I got three goals last week.”
“You did? In one game?”
“One against Harmondale Tuesday and two against Lincoln on Saturday.”
“You play forward both games?”
“At Lincoln I played defense the first half.”
“Shit! Why’d he do that?”
“Coach Larsen? He just did it, that’s all.”
“Well, you went out and showed him. You got two goals.”
“He says everybody has to play offence and defense, that we’re there to learn, not to win.”
“That’s liberal bullshit. Don’t you ever believe that. The only people who try to teach you that are the ones who want to keep control over you. That’s a white thing to do, Jason. All that counts in life is winning. Morals and laws are to keep most people in line so a few can do what they want.”
“You’ve won a lot, haven’t you, Dad? You’ve got this nice house and two cars? I don’t know anybody else who has a BMW and a Mercedes.”
“The Mercedes’s old,” Lyman smiled. “You can’t count that.” He leaned back, supported by his hands behind him on the bed. “You ever feel out of place?”
The boy took off his shoes and turned round to face his father, sat cross-legged. “With them?” He shrugged, pinched at the bedspread. “There’s lots of others at school, Dad. I’m not the only one.”
“You guys hang out together, all that?”
“Sometimes. I got white friends, too. I was just calling up Eric Baldwin, see if I can see him. Mom’s going to drive me.”
“What do they think of you, do you think?”
The boy pushed out his lips to show ignorance. Nigger lips, Lyman thought. He wanted to slap him. “I love, you, Son,” he said. “Remember no matter what I do I loved you. That we all do what we think is best.”
“I think sometimes they think because we can run faster than them we must be stupider. But I don’t think that.”
Lyman leaned forward, forced himself to brush the boy’s hair. “They used to think we were slow runners, too. But we showed them. We’re going to keep on showing them till they all end up as manual workers. Like we once were. One thing you got never to forget, is what we were. Unless you keep that in mind, all the time, you’re never going to be different, not inside your heart.” He punched the boy’s shoulder, walked out, stopped at the door. “And no matter what you think of them, or what they think of you,” he nodded up at the poster, “never water down your blood.”
“YOU USE’ TO SAY, we all pay for what we git.”
Murphy tried to speak through the pain. “I’m fine.”
“You look it.”
“Just my hand. This damn arm.”
“You head it look pretty nice too.”
“I’m getting out of your hair, Love. Heading up north tomorrow.”
“You going walk roun’ the Belize border? I’ll take you.”
“I can find it.”
“I’ll take you. Go up Cancún, get a driver’s license.”
“How much?”
“Maybe three hundred. But you ought to take a couple thousand. To have for the ticket and expenses, all that. I’ll give you some pesos, too, for the bus.”
“Just give me a grand, some pesos. I’ll send it right back.”
“Thet Mother Teresa, she real mad at you.”
“I’ll pay her for the broken table, all that. Out of what you lend me.”
“She don’ care ‘bout thet. It’s the reputation of the place, to have white boys fightin’ in it.”
“They had it coming, those guys.”
“You want a drink, or something? For your head?”
“My head just wants to sleep.” Squinting against the sun, Murphy crossed the metal-bright lawn and crawled into the hammock in the dark green shade of banana leaves. The air was like a warm bath, with the perfume of fruit and many flowers, the warble of the parrot and the susurration of birds, the rustle of th
e wind. Like Clint had said when he returned from the dead, the best way to fight pain is think of something deeper. Like the last time you lay in a hammock. When she said all those things, acted that way. Like she was lonely and afraid and you couldn’t have her but if you did have her she would be for you alone.
The breeze had died. Gulls slanted across the paling clouds. He went down to the Bay and swam out past the buoy and Lovejoy’s boat nodding softly on the swell. A fisherman was stretching nets over the gunnel of his rowboat and killing the crabs caught in it with a stick, the dull thunk of wood on wood drifting over the water. The Bay was warm, buoyant, clear as green glass sinking into black, tasting sweet with salt and dank with river mud. To the south stretched the flat green line of jungle with the hump in its middle of a buried Mayan city; to the east a red-sailed dugout sat atop the silver thread dividing sea from sky; before him a coconut bobbed on its stalk. He swam far out till the water cooled and darkened, saltier, and he kept looking down for the white shape of a hammerhead out of the agate depths; a rainbow school of needlefish shattered like glass, re-forming beyond reach. To the west the Bay narrowed, the palms and tilting white rust-roofed houses of Corozal Town reflected in its northern shore, beyond them a dark filigree of treetops against the sunset coals.
“ALL YOU NEED is a wife and kids. Thet’s all thet matters in life. Your money ain’ worth nothin’ without thet.”
“You think I don’t know that, Love? Why you keep telling me?”
“’Cause I don’ think you know it. If you did you would’n act lonely like you do.”
“So it didn’t work out with Pam. It was too soon after Nam, I wasn’t settled yet, in my head. But that don’t mean I don’t want to.”
“Good you and Pam did’n have kids. Once you got kids you got to stay with them, no matter what.”
Murphy watched Desirée setting the table, her long glossy girl’s legs, the ease of movement. “I’d like kids.”
“Whyn’t you come down here, get a place outside town? Swim every day, sail, fish, do what you want. It’s not crazy like up there, San Francisco. I been to San Francisco.”
“How many times you told me about San Francisco? You think I don’t know you been there? They still don’t want you back.”
“They don’ treat you right up there. People aren’t warm. You should marry some girl and come down here. There’s good girls right here, too, no need to go up there to find one. There’s Dorita’s daughter. Hey, Pru?”
“Yo?” Pru called from the kitchen.
“What’s her name thet girl – Dorita’s?”
“Tha’s Missie.”
“How ‘ol she now?”
“She be comin’ eighteen, finish’ school.”
Murphy smiled. “That makes her less than half my age.”
“She one pretty girl. Jes’ as nice as they come.”
Murphy stood carefully. There was nowhere that did not ache. He watched the last sunset slip from the violet sea, the first razor-sharp stars cutting through. He imagined this girl, Missie, pretty and slender with a white lace blouse and desire that burned all night. Dancing and singing her way through life. Loving her way, on every level. How much better. Instead there was Dona, the cold fire of love eating up his soul.
“Le’s eat,” Lovejoy said. “So you kin head you way up north.”
29
THE FULL WHITE MOON rose huge out of the sea, blocked the black horizon, its canyons and crevices wide as the earth. The boat motor’s snarl was entrancing, barred conversation, barred thought, left the dream of the senses where everything was possible and nothing was unreal.
The moon climbed, grew smaller. The oily sea sparkled with snakes of light. Lovejoy cut back the motor as the boat rounded a point and the electric bonfire of Chetumal leaped out at them, Murphy turned away, closing his eyes, opened them slowly. The water was like burning crude oil; the air smelt of asphalt, diesel, decay, and rain-sodden rot.
They passed to the north of Chetumal, the city lights behind them. Lovejoy angled in to shore and killed the motor, letting the hull grate on the gravelly beach. “You seen thet road? Going back to town?”
“That’s the one?”
“Thet’s it. You got maybe two hours’ walk, jes’ be at the bus station by midnight, for the las’ bus for Cancún. Remember, take first class!”
“You’re like a mother hen.”
“I want you to come back ‘n marry thet Missie gir’l. Be careful you don’ get checked by some police before you get thet license in Cancún.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Take them new shoes off, goin’ ashore. An’ keep you feet dry.”
“I have, for Chrissake.” Murphy leaned over and hugged him. “God bless you, Love.” He stepped over the bow onto the shallow shingle and gave the prow a shove out to sea. “I’ll send the money soon’s I get there.”
Lovejoy started the motor. “Jes’ bring it with you, when you come back!”
The beach was littered with plastic bottles and smelled of seaweed. He put on his shoes and broke through the brush up to the shoreline road and walked toward Chetumal, scuffing his feet on the gravel to scare away the snakes that would be basking on the road’s stored heat.
Occasionally there were houses crouched down by the sea. Once a dog barked halfheartedly. Once there was the smell of something dead at the side of the road.
More and more houses. Lights. The city ahead in dark and bright patches. Telephone lines, the sounds of cars. Dogs behind gates, lighted windows, human shapes moving behind lace curtains. Smells of pomegranates, lemons, orchids, roses, guavas. Disjointed streets with pools of lamplight, strung with wires, the ghoulish blue glare of televisions, a woman singing “Y siempre volveras.”
The bus station said Autotransportes del Caribe in blue. People stood in lines or groups in clouds of diesel smoke to board their buses. He bought a first-class ticket to Cancún and found a window seat at the back of the bus. The seat was velvety and soft. The bus smelled of oranges, disinfectant, and diesel exhaust. People were talking quietly in the nearby seats; squat dark-haired women in flowered blouses, children with gleaming hair, young mustached men in dark jackets. An unshaven old man in work trousers and an ancient tweed blazer sat beside him, took off his straw hat and put it in his lap. “Hola!” he said. He had no teeth and kept his lips over his gums. He took two oranges out of a plastic bag. “Would you like one?”
“No thanks.”
The old man put one orange back and tore the other open, separated the sections and chewed them carefully, one by one, a faraway concentrated look on his face. “It’s a long way to go.”
Murphy turned from watching the terminal, the people coming, going. “What’s that?”
“Where you’re going.”
“Como, Viejo, how do you know that?”
“I was just asking. I have traveled too, in my life. I have been all over the Yucatán. Back then, it wasn’t called that.”
“What was it called?”
“It didn’t have a name. It was where we lived. It didn’t have a road. Where we went we walked, or took our canoes along the beach. We didn’t belong to Mexico, to any other place. Solamente estámos. We just were.”
“It was better?”
“Of course. But that time’s like a dead person. You can’t ever bring them back.”
The old man went to sleep and Murphy watched the last buildings straggle past, the road then thin, straight and bumpy, the black hands of the jungle cupping round it. The steady strong roar of the engine came up from the back, lulling and eternal, as if this spindly aluminum carapace were not hurtling down a dangerous narrow road but through safe and empty night. Doesn’t matter if I die: the thought seemed maudlin but he realized it was true.
“Tulum,” the old man said. “Only forty-five minutes to Playa.” Murphy woke to look out at a scruffy station in the weak wash of a single street lamp. A clock said seven forty-five. That
can’t be true, he decided. Looking half-stunned and cold, a young man and woman with dirty long hair and variegated clothes waited for the driver to get down and store their backpacks under the bus. They gave him their tickets and climbed the stairs. There were no seats together so they sat apart. “Too bad you can’t go back,” the old man said.
“Where?”
“Playa.”
Murphy smiled at the old man’s forwardness. “That was long ago.”
“You don’t see her any more, though.”
“See what − la playa?”
“That girl.”
“Just because I’m a gringo doesn’t mean I always travel with a girl, Viejo, or that I always go to Playa.”
“What do you suppose she’s doing now, that girl?”
“I couldn’t care, compadre, let me sleep!”
“That’s not a word to use that way, compadre, unless you share somebody’s fate. It’s in Guatemala they say that.”
Murphy thought of the Mayan on the back of the flatbed truck from Orange Walk to Corozal Town: “Guatemala,” he’d said, “where is that?”
“I’ve never been there,” Murphy said.
“Yet you wear a Guatemalan serape.”
“Anything can be bought, viejo.”
“True.” The old man took out the other orange. “I myself have been bought many times over. Many women have bought me, only to sell me at a lower price later. My price keeps going down. That way I am freer and freer. When I’m worth absolutely nothing I will be completely free.”
