“Like you?” I cried, a great smile forming on my face. “You horny little cocksucker of the cornstalks!” April spat a great glob of saliva into my face and hysterically shouted, “You filthy, dirty, evil old man!” I slapped her again, she spat again, I threw her onto the bed, and we made it up once more.
Now there came the weekend April didn’t go to Ames. She said her sort of fiancé’s grandmother had died in San Francisco and he had had to go out there “to plant her.” April could stay with me the whole weekend—oh, joy!—as her roommates, her “wombies,” would believe her in Ames. Two weeks later her sort of fiancé was off someplace else, digging for gold in El Dorado no doubt, and by then April had decided that for “an old fart” I didn’t look all that old (here she twisted up her nose with mock distaste) and that if I put Vitalis in my hair, which considerably darkened the gray, she wouldn’t mind my taking her out to dinner. April said I took everybody else out. “I’ve seen you with cunts I know aren’t any older than me.” I said no, emphatically no, we had a bargain, her bargain, and we’d goddam well stick to it. One late afternoon in early December I awoke to find April weeping terribly in my arms.
When I said, “What is it? What is it?” April, between the most heartrending sobs, said, “Why do you have to be so old?”
And listen to this, dear reader: without thinking, and absolutely sincerely, I said, “Yeah, why the fuck do I?”
In the next two days I told my classes that an emergency had arisen at home and that I was canceling my final week of seminars to flee home and attend to it. From that moment on my dream became alarmingly vivid.
I am on this completely jammed airplane in midflight, with fat Eugene, voraciously munching Mars Bars and lap ping his thick fingers, in the seat next to mine; and his mom, her mouth still going like a whippoorwill’s ass and mouthing indignities I can’t comprehend, seated at the window seat. In every respect but the Mars Bars it seems to be the same flight as that other one, save that it can’t be as I’m about to skyjack this flight, order it “back to where I belong,” and I am only biding my time until the stewardess haughtily informs me that seven a.m. is too early for a double vodka, as she invariably does in my dream but didn’t do, though she certainly thought of it, in “reality.” And I am nervous as can be. sweating profusely, and downright dizzy with anxiety.
Now with the stewardess, who on close inspection turns out incredibly to be my darling April, I place my order for two miniature red-label Smirnoffs, and the abruptly nasty April adamantly refuses, telling me I’m a dirty old drunk and a degenerate prick besides! This, kind reader, is my fucking moment1. Trying to act as suave as a British cabinet minister caught in a bawdyhouse, I ever so dramatically unzip my yellow London Fog jacket, reach slowly into it, furiously whip out my pistol (it is Yogi’s .22 Magnum!), shove it between the startle-eyed April’s tits, and snarlingly demand to be taken to the flight deck, in the process suavely patting April on her cute little bum and sophisticatedly remarking that “were I an anal man I’d have me some of that.” At the flight deck I direct the captain to reroute to Jacksonville to refuel and to get me a parachute. “How much dough you want waitin’?” the captain asks, quaking.
I laugh insanely. “None at all, buster.”
Whereas other skyjackers are all asweat with crackpot and wild-eyed revolutionary visions of Utopian Cubas and Algerias, to the pilot’s consternation I order him, on refueling, getting me into my parachute and taking off from Jacksonville, to follow the east Florida coastline southward, losing altitude as he goes. Oh, I am crazy all right, crazier than a shithouse rat, which does not go unremarked by the pilot, the navigator, the engineer, and especially by my sweet child April who keeps telling me that I can, after all, have my Smirnoff and asking me if I don’t have “loved ones” who will be shamed by what I’m doing. All are huddled together on the flight deck, wringing their hands, fear fully wetting their lips, mad with alarm, and begging me to give them my “destination.”
“Just say,” I say at length, and steely-voiced, “I’m going home.”
“Where’s home?” April cries.
“Home,” I say, “is inside here.” With great, grave and theatrical deliberation, I lift Yogi’s .22 Magnum and with its blue barrel go TAP, TAP, TAP against my right temple.
At Singer Island I leap. For a long time I float in free fall, face down on an eiderdown of air, twisting slowly, now buffeted dreamily, abruptly whipped now, now back face down on this eiderdown, this pillow of air, now into the ecstasy of watching the known places define themselves, the Beer Barrel, the Surf Apartments, the Seaview! Now I am shouting, “I’m comin’ home, gang! Set up a vodka and grapefruit juice, Jack! Hey, Diane, start collecting the singles—we’re gonna make us some motherfuckin’ lasagna!” It is invariably at this point that I awaken. I don’t know if I pull the rip cord or not.
So I am come “home,” back to my island, and it is Christmas, the temperature is 90 degrees, the humidity a distressing 86 percent, and yet to me this island has grown “colder” than ever. In the back of the hotel in the trunk of my beautiful Chevrolet Nova, rustier than ever, its lime-white gone almost snow-white from the relentless sun, there rests the again snugly wrapped manuscript of Pages from a Cold Island, at which I haven’t bothered to look since my return. While at Iowa I managed to bank, “bank” in my pants pocket, two grand; and were Big Daddy staying at the hotel, and lover of words and prince among men that he is, that two grand could be stretched into the year I need to remake the book. But alas, he is going; the high-rises, at which I will refuse to look when presently I walk my laps between Nigger Head Rock and the inlet, are climbing steadily; the money cocksuckers will not be stayed; and as I walk I will find myself thinking of stone houses, of Elysian havens, of last islands, of places that never were.
But enough of that. Today is Christmas, and Jack and Alex and I are sworn by Peggie to have no drinks until forty-five minutes prior to dinner, at which time we will be al lotted two frozen daiquiris, though after the meal we can, Peggie says, get as loaded as we damn well please. Peggie’s (nee Elizabeth’s) maiden name is Godwin; her grandmother came from Bath, not far from Wantage, and on her death left Peggie a magnificent set of Wedgwood, the real stuff, on which we are dining today; and the reason we are sworn to sobriety is that Peggie is rightfully fearful that drunk we might break a piece of this ancient and precious china, for which, Peggie swore, “necks will get wrung!”
When Peggie called this morning to order me to remain temperate, she told me we were having three kinds of meat, turkey, roast beef, and roast loin of pork; mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash; tossed salad, asparagus, green beans; cranberries; apple, pecan or pumpkin pie and homemade ice cream; God only knows what all. So I’ll worry about “last islands” tomorrow. What can I do on this, the Day of Our Lord, but wish everybody—all the relatives; all the good, good guys at The Head; Big Daddy and his wife; the Dianes, Rent-A-Car and -Barmaid; Toni and Gabrielle and her husband; my wop acquaintance in Panacea; my students, the Epsteins, April and other lasses in Iowa City; fat Eugene and his mom; Mary Pcolar and Rosalind Baker Wilson; and—well, just everybody, not excluding the utterly thrilling Ms. Steinem, Gloria Wonderful, or even that mouthy and canny old poseur Mr. Mailer—what can I do on this day but wish everyone an altogether lovely and peaceful Christmas and an equally joyous, productive and splendid New Year?
š THE END ›
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frederick Exley was born in Watertown, New York, and educated at the public schools there, at the John Jay High School in Katonah, New York, and at the University of Southern California, from which he re ceived an A.B. in English in June 1953. His first book, A Fan’s Notes, was nominated for a National Book Award, won the William Faulkner Award for “the year’s most notable first novel,” was awarded the National Institute of Arts and Letters’ Rosenthal Award for “that work which … is a considerable literary achievement,” and received a Rockefeller Foundation grant.
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nbsp; Mr. Exley divides his time between Alexandria Bay, New York, in the Thousand Islands region where he grew up, and Singer Island, Riviera Beach, Florida. He is now working on Last Notes from Home, the final volume of his autobiographical trilogy.
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