—Stop.
—You remember how I was.
—We called you Robotman. You withdrew. It didn’t make sense. Your dad had left so long before.
—This was unrelated.
—This is when your heart went offbeat.
—Irregular. I’d been passing out, and at first the doctors called it something else, something common in teenagers—you stand up quickly, you black out, a byproduct of quick growth—but it was happening too often, I was finding myself on the laundry room floor with broken recyclables under my back, a shard of Schweppes stuck three inches into my shoulder blade.
—I remember that.
—Six stitches. It was that time at the emergency room, when we did the first tests with a tall beautiful doctor, Dr. Hilliard, who reinvented me, gave birth to the me with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, a very specific heart irregularity condition involving electricity and valves, or the dysfunction of these valves and their electricity, dubbed WPW. Most of the people who get it, she said, are—
“Wrestlers,” my mom said, wanting to make the doctor laugh. Hilliard sat down and covered the basics of the condition, an arrhythmia that was not common but not rare. But I didn’t want all the details. I wanted to know what I could and couldn’t physically do, what I could and couldn’t eat—dry foods? wet foods? only soup?—and leave it at that. Dr. Hilliard—she was something, her steady unblinking eyes, the serene but determined face of an Egyptian sarcophagus—told us that almost no one died of WPW, but some did—some did, she said while looking up from my knee, which she was squeezing like a grapefruit. Almost everyone with WPW, she said, led normal lives, outside of the occasional attack, spell, fainting or minor stroke. It concerned me in a distant way; at the very least, it would provide some suspense. There were certain cures, open heart surgery, a way to get through the obstruction—ablation, they called the procedure—but it was only necessary in the most extreme of cases. Mine was not one. Until recently, my spells were twice a year and minor, and easy to work around. But this past year has been one of slow tightening, and shock, of flash floods and mudslides—
—I remember when they told you about the WPW. You got so weird for a while. Your dad had left again—
—I decided at age twelve, after first getting the whole thing explained to me, that I would no longer express or be party to any human emotion. I watched the TV news and wanted to disassociate myself. I renounced my membership. I would be a better human by stripping myself of human weaknesses. I would be a better human by not raising my voice, by not crying, by not being angry, or sad, or annoyed, or excited. I was tired of staying up at nights waiting for dawn, wondering what would happen if I slept, who would come to kill me.
—I remember you sleeping in school.
—The idea was to solve the problems of the world via removal, withdrawal, starting with me. There was no order in the world but there would be order in how I moved through the world. I wanted to remove those elements of human behavior that led to trouble—the trouble I had seen with Mr. Einhorn, who I had known as the guy who ran the pool over the summer but who had recently been courting and touching my mother, his two fat hands on her shoulders in the kitchen in a way that did not look gentle.
—I can’t believe she dated him.
—Twice.
—You had evolved over the rest of us.
—It was easy to become a better human. First, I spoke in a monotone. I could not be excited and could not be upset. I was a visitor from elsewhere, Russia maybe, and found everything amusing, interesting, but only slightly and even then, solely from an anthropological standpoint. I was not sullen; I was predictable. I walked at a normal human pace. I rode my bicycle at an optimum speed, a practical speed, without standing up on the pedals, because to do so would imply urgency. At school events I would clap when others would clap but I would not cheer or yell. My phone calls were brief and to the point. I set the receiver down gently; I walked the stairs not quickly, not slowly; I brushed my teeth for fifteen minutes because that was what my dentist, who I admit now was not sane, suggested; I kept my head level because tilting seemed to imply too much interest; I did not pass gas or pick my nose; I washed myself thoroughly in the morning and at night. I thought of the least emotional walk I could engineer, and decided that it required minimal arm movement and long even strides.
—Are you sure this wasn’t all after the thing when your dad fell on your mom?
—That happened after.
—But it did happen, right?
—I know that I was in the middle of the living room. The carpet was shag, yellow or white. He looked like he was sleeping when he fell. I was sitting there, or standing there, and it was night. I know it was night because I saw my reflection in the black window. I looked like me, only my eyes seemed more hollow, my flesh papery.
—And?
—And then he fell on her. She was standing under the mini-balcony in the middle of the room, holding a bowl of apples. I think she was asking if anyone wanted them because they were old and bruised. And then she was under him. He fell from the balcony and landed on her. His drink crashed on the carpet and splashed. She started wailing.
—How was that possible? In the house on Oak?
—No, the house before that. There was a railing at the top of the stairs. The balcony was about nine feet up. It was a split-level house, and he was at the top of the stairs, at the railing, looking down at us both, and then he was falling down and landing on her. She shrieked and then wailed. They were a tangle on the floor. He seemed so heavy while falling.
—I still don’t understand how a man can land on a woman without breaking every bone in her body.
—She wasn’t hurt much at all, outside of a hairline fracture on her wrist. She had a cast on her arm for a little while, a cast I still have. She doesn’t know this.
—It’s amazing he didn’t kill her.
—Yes.
—And how long after that were they divorced?
—They were already divorced. They’d been divorced for years.
—How did that work? I don’t get it.
—I don’t either. I just know they were already divorced. But I don’t know why he was there.
—They were back together.
—I felt nothing when he left again. “Oh,” I said when she told me. I half-closed my eyes. I watched her weep on the kitchen floor. I watched the drool come down her chin. Tommy was in Alaska at the cannery so it was us. She came at me and hugged me and I let my arms drop to my sides. She could hold me if she wanted because she was that type, a loose weak human chaos of emotion, and from that I had graduated. She was sweating. I watched her cry again each time she told a different friend, on the phone sitting at the kitchen table, hand spiked through her matted hair. I watched as she breathed like people birthing babies breathe, in narrow streams with wide eyes. She cried again when she was throwing out all his food, from the fridge and pantry, his frozen waffles and apricots and venison still marinating.
—I didn’t like you then. But you came back.
—I know but Hand, there’s just too much of this. It’s all a jumble. It comes out at once. The librarians swarm and multiply. Why all of this? I want this cleared away. I have no use for this shit anymore. It’s sending me back.
—Replace it. Fill yourself with new things. Better things. Gold, pictures, cobwebbed feet.
—It won’t work.
—This is about your dad.
—Jesus, no.
—Where is he now, anyway?
—Still in Milwaukee.
—When was the last time you saw him?
—Seven years. More.
—You don’t know him.
—I remember only how he peels an orange with a knife, quickly, with the blade meeting his thumb, kissing his calloused thumb as he turns the orange around. He did this when I was small and he did it when I saw him last. He attacks the orange like a trapper skins an animal. He’s so good with a knife. He knows how sh
arp the knife needs to be.
—That’s what you know of him?
—I remember his Old Testament recitations. I was too young to know those stories from Grimm’s, but I remember the language, I know the wrath in those pages. I don’t know if he was a God-fearing man or not but I know he loved those pages. We didn’t go to church but he read the Old Testament and knew it well. He would read from his version, underlined in red and marked in its margins; he would read from it on our screened porch, while in the yard Tommy and I caught frogs and fireflies. From the end of the yard, in the moist tall grass, we could see his silhouette, could hear his murmuring, his occasional bursts of volume. He read his Isaiah whether or not we or anyone was there to listen—aloud he read it, swatting mosquitoes against his neck.
—That’s all you know of him.
—That’s all.
—This is about him. All this. Your rage.
—It’s not, fucker! Not everything is about something else. This is about retribution! This is about balance!
—For Jack.
—Yes for Jack.
—You want a head for Jack.
—Yes. For Jack I wanted a head. I wanted the trucker’s head. I knew the trucker’s face, his long snaking hair. My red-eyed librarians brought me his picture on the hour and on him I imagined revenge in a thousand ways. But not necessarily death. I would remove things—one leg, three fingers, an ear—I would do it slowly while reciting laws of traffic and manslaughter but I know how long I had him with me, how long it took for his face to fade and my fists to uncurl. I know how long it takes! And now I am here again. I have years of this ahead of me and I cannot do it this time. I fought my father’s ugly fucking head for ten years, his long bony arms, his wrinkled forehead, his constant winking, and then Randall Winston Jr. of United Van Lines and his oily unrepentant soul and now there is this and I cannot do it again. I need sections of my head removed. I need less memory. No memory. I need—
—You’re confusing these fuckers with—
—I’m confusing nothing.
—Will, I understand your rage but this is all about Jack. But it’ll be years before we get any kind of grip on this and—
—Fuck your head. You don’t need your head. Remove your head from its casing and throw it to the world.
—I want that.
—Throw your head to the world!
—I want that.
—Then throw! Throw your head to the world!
—Lord I tremble before you my lord—look what they have done to me, the thoughts that ride with me down the canals toward sleep, that walk with me as I walk each day—if I could I would raise their bodies to you, my Lord, for your wrath or mercy. Please pick wrath!
—Who are you talking to?
—Never before have I wanted such harm rent upon another, but here I am and this is what I want. Oh grant me this! I know forever they will be in my house, the rooms of my mind, I know this and have accepted this but while I know they will be there I want them dead there. I cannot have them breathing there! I want them in the floorboards of the basement of my soul. Can you not will you not grant me only this? For this I will forever be your servant, resolute, your tool here among the wretched. I will do for you deeds sinister or noble, in public or private, whatever the cost. Let me dear Lord bring these men to you, allow me to make them available to your rage. I will hold them upright as they are struck down. I will collect their remains if you choose to tear them asunder. I will bleach their bones if you strip them of their flesh and muscle. Out here under this sky of stone I feel I can know your rage. Oh please tell me you know rage! I want now your storms to converge, I await the blackening of your skies and the cracking of bones as you prepare for—
I opened my eyes. I could hear Hand’s even breathing. Outside humidity and crickets, the shikka shikka of sprinklers shooting through hedges and ferns.
FRIDAY
I woke up angry at Hand, though he couldn’t know why.
“I can’t do another night like that,” I said.
“What? The disco? Why?”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s go.”
“We’re going. Look at us. We’re going.”
He was shoving his stuff in his backpack. He zipped it and stood ready.
“We have to go,” I said.
Hand paused. He looked at me like a father would, when a father knows his son needs a mother.
“We’ll keep moving,” he said as we crossed the white gravel parking lot. “I’ll make sure. Let’s go.”
“I can’t go to bed tonight,” I said.
We threw our bags in the backseat.
“Fine. We’ll stay awake, find something to do.”
“Good.”
“We won’t sleep,” he said. “That’s the plan. We shouldn’t be sleeping anyway.”
We had to get out of Dakar by noon. It was our second day. We’d left Chicago thirty-six hours ago. The road was clear for us and Hand swung the radio volume right and we were delirious. The air soothed me and we bought oranges from a boy on the roadside, and pastries in Mbuu, afraid we’d see Denis’s brother. We didn’t. We ate and my hands were sticky from all the juice.
“I have a surprise,” Hand said.
We were on the coast and he turned off at one of the beaches loaded with garbage. We parked by the road, among a group of young men, all wearing light shirts and jeans.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Hold on,” Hand said, jumping from the car.
He spoke to the group for a second, and one man directed him down the beach to an older man, painting a large white sign protruding from the beach. They discussed something, and Hand walked back to the car.
“We’re going for a ride,” he said. “Quick, but it’ll be nice.”
Hand had contracted this man, Thione, to take us up and down the coast for half an hour. We had to see things from this side, he said, and there was no speed, he said, like water speed.
We set off from the beach, helping with two other men to push the boat off a narrow sandbar near the shore. I sat at the front, Hand in the middle. A teenager jumped on just before we took off. He was the navigator.
We were in a small white motorboat–water taxi steered by an older man and guided by a teenager who stood on the bow as the boat bounced, holding a rope tied to the point, standing as if riding a white and featherheaded circus horse. At our feet, the water sloshing to and fro. I leaned over the boat’s edge, watched the same point as the froth blurred by, white and blue—and I wanted to have my arm in the water. To have it lazily running through the water, like I did that day, with Helen Peters, at Phelps Lake, on that boat, both of us naked—But here it wouldn’t really be water like that, not here so fast, this wouldn’t feel like water at all but more like fast-moving pavement. The foliage went right to the water and then went up, furry and dense, squiggly with dementia.
The sea was not smooth, the ride was thunderous, as if the boat had been thrown and was skipping along the surface. Tick-tick-tick—WHAP! When the boat jumped and its flat bottom struck the hard water, my spine compressed, briefly, between expectations of flight and the boat’s great desire to come down and pound the surface, to slap it like you slap a shoe on a summit table—WHACK—and it rose and struck again, and the water blurred by and I saw it all, the white beaches, the small cottages along the shore, the miles of rocky beach, and then I knew that all I wanted evermore was WHAP!WHAP! The boat was skipping and then there would be a larger wave, or we would hit a regular wave a certain way, and the pause between when we became airborne
and WHACK when we landed we landed like a cannon and I clenched my teeth—BAMBAMBAM—for the aftershocks and I looked to Hand and the old man for a commiserative glance—what the fufu-fuck?—but no one wanted to share. They were busy, devoting their attentions to traveling, to watching the progress of the boat—instrumental in traveling is the participation in it
, the belief in progress, the witnessing of passage. And I was traveling, too, I was serious about it. In a low hard motorboat one had to be serious. WHAP! There was urgency about a boat like this, riding the coast, banging against the surface—three little waves coming: BAP-PITY! We were going somewhere. And not just moving, but moving quickly—past things that were moving slowly or not moving at all. WHAP! The only motion I knew was relative motion, the only speed that truly felt like speed was when I was speeding past things. WHAP! WHAP! A sudden veering of the boat.
—Hand you’ve saved me today, but what about later?
—I will continue to move us.
—What about tomorrow?
—I’ll move us tomorrow.
We sped through the savannah and suburbs—we’d tipped the boat man and boat boy like kings—and made it to the airport by eleven. We dropped the car in front of the rental office, gave the keys and a $50 tip to the attendant, and ran into the airport. At the Air Afrique desk, the three stunning queens, again splendid in blue and yellow and green, wanted $400, in cash, for each of the tickets to Casablanca, so I put my name on more traveler’s checks at the money-change desk—me! me! swoop! swoop!—and came back and presented the money, two inches thick, to the eldest of the three.
“Ah, so you the big boss?” she asked.
“The what?” I said.
“The big boss! You!” she repeated.
“Yes, the big boss, this one!” said another of the women.
“But it was you who wanted of the cash,” I said, in Handspeak. I was confused. I didn’t want to be the big boss.
“Some man hit the big boss,” said the third, gesturing at her face with loose fists.
Then they all laughed. For a long time.
On the plane I flipped through a magazine called African Business, featuring a profile of Sierra Leone’s Charles Taylor; in one picture, he was wearing Keds and a visor. We descended into Morocco. Which was green. As far as we could see, from the air, it was green.