Swimming in the Volcano

by Bob Shacochis

  She needed a bathroom (he corrected her jargon: head; Oh, I know, she said) and he led her to the ship’s one toilet, in a closet in the passageway between wheelhouse and cabin, and left her there to scout what sort of seating he could arrange on the stern. Just to be sure, first he poked his head inside what he once overheard a matronly commonwealth tourist refer to as the lounge—the pestilential cabin to where invariably the majority of the Carolanne’s passengers removed themselves, fair weather or foul, as if it were not only demanded of them but a rule of civilized travel, undissuaded by its formidable stench and its claustrophobic crush of humanity, partying, puking, and praying. With the channel as bad as it was today, riding on the benches of the airless cabin would be not unlike flipping through a picture book of pandemonium, page one of which he now observed, glancing around at the bodies huddled on the floor and jammed on the benches, reeking humiliation as well as dread, the first trombone groans of seasickness rehearsing in the baby-wailing, radio-blasted din, and this trip even the rare assault of malice as one of the passengers, a young islander with vaguely oriental eyes, fixed him with a silent, murderous snarl, as if Mitchell were about to trespass on property the fellow had sworn to defend to death. Hey, it’s all yours, every last godforsaken cubic inch of it, Mitchell telegraphed as he withdrew, shambling back toward the stern, the deck beginning to roll and shove, out of rhythm, with hydraulic force and counterforce. On the aft deck, horseshoe-shaped like a bandstand or orchestra pit, there were four benches, spaced by scuppers, stapled into the planking in a half circle along the rail, all but one of them empty, a white couple, husband and wife, whom he recognized from the devo community (as in development or develoflict), fully prepared to tough it out in their exposed position, dressed in hooded slickers and drinking from a cooler of Heinekin on ice at their feet. “Cheers,” they toasted, and handed him a beer.

  He twisted around, surveying the deck, at a loss. They could sit for a while at one of the other benches, but once they were out from behind Cotton Island and in open water, they’d be creamed. There was a three-tiered stack of crates of some sort, tarped and secured with a webbing of line, against the rear wall of the passenger cabin which, upon closer inspection, could be heard emitting a frantic percolation—buck?buck?buck?—and he lifted a corner of the oilcloth.

  Chickens.

  Crammed like balled-up Kleenex into lath coops. On the port end of the stack the third tier was missing, forming a high seat out of the bottom two rows, and he sat down gingerly, testing the strength of the slating, and decided it might hold one but two was pushing their luck, and he scoured around up in the bow until he found a length of one-by-six to lay atop the frame in order to distribute their combined weight more evenly, and thought with this improvement they could give it a try.

  Happily nursing his bottle of beer, he sat on the chickens as if he had cooped his conflicting selves and there they would stay, clucking harmlessly in their cages. Who had a chicken project going on Cotton, he wondered? The particulars tripped a switch and off went his mind: co-op or private? underwritten by? profit margin? overhead? return on investment over five years? free range or? Were these leghorns? Where were they going, and how soon could he eat one? The wind started to blow like it meant business, snaring Johnnie and bringing her to him, there you are, I’ve been looking all over. She had, evidently, doctored herself, tied a white scarf kerchief-style around her head, put on her sunglasses; arms, legs, and cheeks sleek with spray, her movement tense with coiled energy from having dipped into her glassine envelope of fearlessness.

  “I see what you mean about the cabin,” she said.

  “I know that expressionless mouth from somewhere, the facial structure, those perfect lobes.” He patted the nook between his body and the wall, inviting her to sit. “You’re that actress in that Fifties movie, what’s her name? what’s its name?” He was terrible with Hollywood trivia.

  “To begin with, I’m married.”

  “Well ... right.” So much for levity. “I know. Mrs. Fernandez, sit down.”

  Pinched eyebrows. Parted mouth. Speechlessness. Then, YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD, she shrieked, nailing a spike of frustration into his chest with the side of her clenched fist, enraged at Mitchell for having thwarted the sublime pleasure of confessing one’s greatest secrets and sins. She flung herself down next to him, creating a bow in their loveseat above the chickens, speaking through clenched teeth, the muscles in her lovely jaw twitching.

  “Damnit. You! You think you know everything.”

  “Come on, I looked at your passport.”

  She folded her arms across her chest, nodding angrily, I should have known. They swayed together like co-stars in a Broadway musical to the rock of the ever-more-real boat. Straight out in front of them, at eye level on the western horizon, a tangerine disk of sun fell from the ash of clouds and a road of hammered bronze appeared on the surface of the sea. Mitchell thought, thanks but no thanks, we’re not taking omens today, and, in seconds, both the sun and the road to it disappeared.

  “You let me. Admit it. You left it lying around.”

  The possibility was left unconceded; she insisted he empty his bag of revelations, but Mitchell professed innocence.

  “That’s it,” he swore, his arm around her shoulder. “You’ve cornered the market. Anybody wants a secret, they come see you.”

  She granted him this and attempted to make amends, but on terms that still seemed to require him to play the courtier, the seducer, to her shy and hesitant ingenue. She asking him to ask, he telling her to tell, until he relented, but not by giving up.

  “Why do you have a rosary?”

  Highly strange he should mention it, her mystified look told him; then, annoyed, she wiggled a symbolic distance between them on the board.

  “You’ve really combed through my belongings, haven’t you?” she said, her lips turned down, this indignity of the sort that sours its victims. “The rosary isn’t mine, it’s Katherine’s. Well, I suppose it’s mine now. Next question.”

  That was easy. “Who’s Katherine?”

  An abrupt and violent shift made her grab his arm; the boat seemed to jump a yard sideways, as if they’d been broadsided; cargo shifted with crashing, crunching noises, the boat’s timbers shivered through their flesh, and inside the tuba blasts of wind and the engine’s drumming, they could just hear the thousands of empty bottles chattering in the hold.

  “The channel. We’re into it now.”

  They looked out upon a mountainous field of intersecting waves, tasseled with spume. Sheets of soapy-looking water, warmer than air, came rinsing down the deck and he removed and stowed his shoes behind him, hoping to keep them dry. In the failing light the sea was so much bluer, the color glowing deep within its awesome shapes. Spray rained down on the yellow-headed couple planted on the bench, their whoops of pleasure barely audible in the chaos. Impervious to these unsubtle changes in the world, Johnnie concentrated on her mission of unburdening herself for a new life, dumping the heaviest ballast.

  “Let’s start again. First, I’m married, okay? Bobby Fernandez, a worthless piece of shit but at any rate I married him. God’s punishment for stupid women. He’s evil and insane.”

  “God?”

  “I hope somebody shoots him. I hope somebody already has.”

  “I take it you’re not getting along.”

  “Man, this is really funny, isn’t it, Mitch?”

  “So go ahead. Tell me about the guy.”

  “No. As of right now, you should just listen and not say anything or ask anything. That privilege has been revoked, denied, canceled. The accused will be available to take your questions after she makes her statement.”

  “If I want to know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Second thoughts are my second nature, but go on.”

  She was about to when a goat came skiing back to them in the slosh, bleating like a burglar alarm, and went down, kicking in front of the beer drinkers, who, helping it stag
ger to its feet, now had an exotic pet. At the same time, Mitchell heard a muffled flapping above his head and looked up at a bevy of storm-driven land birds—sparrows he thought—alighting one by one on the upper crates to huddle under the narrow eave of the cabin. This was beginning to be like Noah’s ark, he told himself, and as if to humor him, drops of rain splattered down. He looked to the west again to see in the distance a trio of rain squalls, and just then the sun took an encore bow for its very moody performance, sinking from sight between golden columns of liquid fire pouring from the ruptured sky. The coops flexed precariously underneath them, and it was all rather exhilarating, really, the angry engulfing beauty of it sweeping them along. The overhead rain stopped for the time being, but Mitchell set his fingers worrying at the knots fastened to the section of tarp they sat on. Either to shake him or steady herself, Johnnie clutched the bicep of his right arm with both hands, speaking to his ear.

  “Second, was I busted? You think so but the answer is no. Not to my knowledge, anyway. Okay? Number three, are we talking about a few lids of Maui Wowie, college kid capers? Wrong. I wish we were. Fourth, did I love the son of a bitch? The answer is no, never. Got that? We were living together, housemates, there was an attraction, I’ll be honest about that but it was a dark, dark thing, and the marriage—this will sound horrible but I’ll explain—was like a business decision.” When she paused he glanced up from the square knot his fingers picked at to see the color draining from her face. “Mitch, you know what, I think I might be sick.”

  “If we go to the cabin I can virtually guarantee it, but if you want, we can try.”

  Groaning, determined to finish what she had begun, she shook her head no; then afterward, she said, he could do her the great favor of tossing her overboard, for all she cared, if she kept feeling this punk. And maybe he would, he thought, for the sole purpose of saving her. A ritual to stand, retroactively, for the whole.

  With darkness falling, the Carolanne’s running lights came on; a red bulb on a pole above the cabin globed the stern in its dim theatrical aura. An empty oil drum rolled down the deck and the unflappable daredevil couple out on the bench somehow managed to field it and gave it the heave-ho, like a depth charge, off the stern. The ship’s flags cracked like pistols in the wind. He and Johnnie were getting drenched; whether from rain or twisting spume was impossible to tell. He plucked loose the last knot on the corner of tarping and they succeeded, after they had pulled the board out from underneath them and replaced it directly atop the crates, in raising the skirt of heavy cloth and pulling it over their heads, drawing their legs up inside, a shroud of red-tinted, clucking darkness, the sea a beast eating through the door, never in their lives more alone with one another than this. Johnnie shivered into his side, opening her shoulder bag, he thought for a dry shirt but that was wrong, she wanted the cocaine, offered him a share and, when he declined, licked the last of it from the envelope with her eager tongue. That’s better, she announced. I’m feeling a little better now.

  The chickens pecked his fingers.

  * * *

  Though she spoke with reckless, feverish candor, the plausibility of the life she described for herself nagged at him: he could not easily suffer Johnnie’s reality, no matter how recognizable he found its form. Drugs were a great mischief, which speaks for itself, but also part and parcel of a generational warp in the culture—his generation and his culture—which he accepted. Fine and well, but where do you go from there? Stories like Johnnie’s were infected with a perverse popularity, propelled by universal acclamation into the gloating, self-congratulatory counterfeit glamor of the myths the culture feasted upon, the romance of moonshine, the rumrunner’s antiheroics, the wild-hearted music of defiance seeping out from behind locked and guarded doors, bathtubs filled to the brim with illicit pleasure. What was it there in the puritan heart that so idolized corruption; or was it capitalism, the New England slave traders, exchanging syrup for souls, for more syrup and more souls, in an unabashed triangle of profit between continents. What was the polemic here, which ethos and ethic? Would Johnnie argue, when you try to legislate human nature, what do you expect? Dare you suggest in America that its citizens can’t trust themselves to know what’s best for them but can of course trust the state, you awaken the sleeping minuteman, the recumbent individualist, in the breast of the populace, and what you should expect is a many-layered response of rebellion, variously enacted by ideological wholesalers to true-believers, jump-aboards, apolitical middlemen, street-corner entrepreneurs, ringmasters, prophets, impresarios, and anybody else inclined to retail the liberty de jour to the vast majority of bourgeoisie who prefer to digest their rebellion symbolically, as entertainment. Was she saying, let’s shipwreck ourselves and start over? What was she telling him, describing a life contained in actions but offering few insights as to how she saw her actions in a larger context, or even what that larger context might be? People stand in line to get fucked up and who cares what the government says about it? Who cares what the government says about anything, period? You lose a few who were lost to begin with, c’est la vie.

  How callous was he going to be was a fair question. He could hear the flattery of voices from her future, where she lay pillowed in a more conventional existence, Fucking Christ, what a terrific movie they could make out of your life; honey, you should write a book, and could he, or could he not, see her brandishing a complicitous smile, sending for a ghostwriter to supply the publishers and producers, the libraries and theaters, with a fresh dose, to fill the never-ending demand, of bullshit. Sooner or later, the only heroes would be self-anesthetized losers and the only stories would be stories about failure and greed, and either this was what Vietnam had done to everybody, or else America’s vaunted, cherished antiheroes had always been frauds, clever fabrications, the titillating fantasies of future Republicans, the system’s method of jacking off. What in the devil was this malaise the president kept talking about, causing people to scratch their psychic heads and cry out, There’s something wrong with me, with us, and what, finally, was the question to the answer that was drugs.

  Johnnie didn’t pretend, perhaps to her credit, to provide either question or context, although she hinted, obliquely and unreliably, in that direction. He had known her for what now felt, in his blood, like a long time. Knew her when. Knew her as an intoxicated teenager shedding her springtime dresses, the ruffles and Peter Pan collars of exalted girlhood, watched her learn how to dance: innocence slurred, pubescence conquered. Knew her as a schoolgirl in tights and blue-jean jackets stenciled with red fists of freedom, college-bound, smelling of sandalwood, letting the soldiers ringing the Pentagon see her unsucked tits, trading Rod McKuen for Richard Brautigan, Disney for dope. But then there was a gap, an unscheduled intermission, the curtain dropping midscene, from which she reemerged outfitted in the brooding, shapeless winter wools of inwardness and alienation, and then, like the Rimbaud he doubted she ever read, disappeared.

  Nobody could make themselves up to be what she said she was, hers was a role that followed fate unwittingly, like a deer. It was all pent-up inside her and came spilling out, the distance she had traveled in her life as a consequence of what she called this dark attraction that was not love to Bobby Fernandez, Cuban-born Miami-raised Nam vet North Shore kamikaze surfer with a club card to every VIP transit lounge in every airport from Bangkok to Beirut.

  God I’m sick I have to lie down, she groaned but only slumped against him and kept talking, a rave in the hushed tone of the confessional box, burning the excess of energy she had ingested, the first time I went out with him the son of a bitch took me across the international dateline for dinner, Hong Kong, turn your fucking head, right? that floating restaurant you see in all the advertisements, he knew the guy who ran it, he knew somebody anyway, I was living in a rabbit hutch behind Diamond Head—Mitch, I was living in a rabbit hutch, thirty dollars a month—I thought, like, drugs for sure, Thai sticks, I was absolutely ready for that, silly wayward me, we st
ayed in this famous white hotel, each room came with a limousine for your private use, he said we had to go back in the morning, quick trip, right, can you do me a favor, and what do you think I was going to say to him but name it, man, he said can you carry these pearls through Customs, I said pearls, shit, what are you talking about, but that’s how straight and show-offy it was to begin with, he was starting over from scratch, not with the pearls I mean but with a network, something had gone wrong with the old system and routes, it had something I think to do with Cambodia, are you listening to me, I have to tell you this now that you’ve come for me, this guy’s a motherfucker, he’s a crazy person, the pearls were like a trial run, just to see how I handled myself, he saw right away I was no angel, not so hard to figure out, is it, but I could look and act the all-American girl, never gave her parents a day of trouble, he would never let me leave the hotels, he had buddies all over Southeast Asia, well, that’s not the half of it, he’s got friends like you wouldn’t believe, if you ask me I think he works for the government, Mitch, maybe more than one, it’s a gut feeling, he worms his way out of too much trouble, he has a Cuban passport besides his regular one, he doesn’t know but I’ve seen it so who am I to get mad at you, oh Jesus I’m going to throw up.

  She leaned away from him, bending over at the waist, her head between her knees, gagging helplessly and without relief, nothing inside, it seemed, to come out. He was experiencing a trace of seasickness himself, like low-grade flu, but it, like the crossing, had to be endured, survived, there was no on/off switch to make it all go away. Johnnie hadn’t taken off her sunglasses, even in the dark tent of the tarp: they slipped from her face to the deck and were dragged away in the swirl. Mitchell ducked out into the air to retrieve them, and did, before they washed out through the scuppers. More goats had surfed back to the stern and seemed to plead, when they saw him, their devil-slit eyes red and popping in the bloody globe of light from above, which had attracted a flurry of birds, hundreds of them, he guessed, keening like harpies in the banshee winds, making the music of nightmares. The couple on the bench was gone. The boat lurched severely down the slope of a wave that suddenly loomed up around him in the light, drooling and slathering with foam, and he reeled back under the tarp and wrapped his fingers through the slats of the coop to anchor himself. Johnnie straightened herself, tilted her forehead on his shoulder and continue her whispery speaking, impossible for her to stop, he’s the kind who when he’s drunk will say things like he knows who killed Kennedy, that’s who I married, a freak like that—he probably does too—he says he’s friends with the general in Panama with the Australian hat but I don’t know how that can be because he hasn’t even been to fucking Panama, not yet or I’d know, and listen, Israelis once came to our house, you should have seen it, it was no rabbit hutch, that’s for damn sure, and you know what Bobby did, he sold those assholes four keys of China White, like, don’t they have enough smack in the fucking Mideast, what are they doing scoring in Hawaii, we never even dealt in Hawaii, strictly transshipment, we weren’t even shooting it, I was forbidden to so I should have known better, right, when that bastard said he wanted to get Katherine and me high, but look, it all went with couriers on private planes to San Francisco and Seattle, sometimes L.A. but that meant turf wars with some very ugly people, but I was saying, I only muled from Hong Kong and Manila to Honolulu, six months was the limit, one flight a month, beyond that people you don’t want to talk to start getting nosy, we never took the same flights back, we got married I think to make a Filipino desk clerk happy, don’t look for anything to explain it all, Mitch, it’s not there, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done but Bobby was obsessed with me, out of his mind, he was handsome, I’ll say that for him, that Latin lover shit is true if you like being caged and knocked around, he wanted me to get pregnant, you know why, because pregnant women and old people in wheelchairs are the only ones who get cut any slack at Customs, but there was no way, Bobby could be smooth, so charming and generous sometimes you’d think, here’s the nicest guy on earth, but he was deranged, the guy was a monster, I got fat instead, for six months I just pigged out, you can’t fake it with pillows and ace bandages, the women know, they spot it right away, but you can put on a muumuu and stick out your belly and start waddling flat-footed and saying Oh my God, I’m never going to get knocked up again unless I can stay in bed with my feet up, you would not believe how polite everybody gets, yes ma’am, move to the front, let her through, folks, what do you want, boy or girl? Bobby loved it when I got fat. I think what he really wanted was for me to get so big I couldn’t fit through the door, Cuban men have this thing for huge asses, I’ve noticed, you wouldn’t ... you wouldn’t believe all the crap I ate. I became like this garbage disposal. If. If you’ve never tasted poi. Don’t. Excuse me, I want to die, I’m going to be sick again.