Bleeder (11 page)

“I’ll have one of those,” I say to the counter waitress. “No cheese. Fries. And a Coke to drink.” And when the food arrives, I eat, surrounded by smiling photographs of former patrons.

Across the street is a record store, and when I’m finished eating, I go there, thumb through the new releases, finger the few bills in my pocket, and leave without a purchase. I stroll a few blocks west to enter a bookshop. The stacks tower over me with books whose tattered covers promise me the world. I loosen one from the shelf and unfold it to a page of faded ink. And before its printing, I think, it was the blue ink run from a pen and set down upon a sleeve of antique-laid paper, for this is how I imagine all writers work: with fountain pens, ink bottles, and thick paper. From the store window, light peeks down the aisle and shines upon the dust motes floating midair between James and Joyce. I run my finger along the hubbed spine of one, feel the antique luxury of leather, but pass on, buying instead a worn Graham Greene paperback.

Outside in the sun again, I read the first paragraph. They are beautiful phrases, rhythmic and true. I linger at a table outside a coffee shop, drink caffeine, and imbibe the world in my hand. Nearby, a group of girls chatters, tossing their hair in fits of laughter. More girls invade the area. And they are all so beautiful with their blue and green and hazel eyes flaring in the sunlight. I stare at one in a pink top. She stares back. I smile. She smiles. My heart flutters.

For money, I work at Fort Fisher: site of a famous Civil War battle and a place that beachgoers often stumble into when their sunburns are too great
or when a downpour closes the beach. I give tours, answer questions, sell merchandise. Erected on the Cape Fear River’s mouth, this fort protected the South, guarded Wilmington, and shielded the Confederate troops inside its man-made sand mounds, which were built atop boxed wooden structures. Atop these mounds, soldiers placed lookouts and mounted cannons while they kept a fearful eye toward the river, the sea, and the Northern blockade. They constructed a ten-foot fence around them to guard against land invasion, and through the slats, they fired muskets at scavenging squirrels as practice targets for the coming battle. But all that is now gone. The fence is a reconstruction, and the sandy hills are overrun with a century of growth where Sandburg’s grass is, indeed, doing its work.

Along the fort’s beach, live oaks arch backwards as if reaching their hands for the river behind them. Bent by endless ocean winds and low to the ground, their branches offer an easy perch where I have lunch, enjoying a quiet view of the sea while the salt breeze keeps the summer’s heat from scorching me. Down the slope of sand and onto the beach, the gentle lap of waves murmurs against a shore whose blood was born away more than a century before I was born.

June. In the early evening when the colors soften and the heat cools and the day’s work has been done, I meet Dad at the Oceanic Pier. It is his first week of work in Wilmington, and, anxious to swim, he is there and already wet when I arrive.

“I can’t believe you didn’t wait on me,” I say, approaching him.

“It was too hot.” He stands to hug me. “I had to cool off.”

I lay my towel next to his, remove my shirt and shoes.

“I’m going in,” I say, striding down the ocean bank to the sea. Dad follows, and we wade out beyond the breakers, bobbing in salt water as the afternoon latens. We catch the occasional wave to shore, riding our inherited thin, flat chests as boards. And afterwards, we dry on our towels, the sun heating our backs as we stare toward the sea’s horizon.

“How are you?” Dad asks, still gazing at the ocean and the fading day. He shakes a Marlboro from the pack, lights it. Smoke curls from his nicotine-yellowed hands, spews from his mouth and nose.

“Fine,” I say. We don’t talk about HIV.

“Job working out okay?”

“Yes. I’m paying the bills at least.”

“Mom and I will help out some, but it’s time you started learning to make your own way in the world. Next year’s the year.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Do you know what you’re gonna do?”

“I’m figuring it out.” I run my hands along my legs, knocking off sand. I haven’t thought much about graduating from college, it still seeming far away, and long-term planning being anathema to HIV, so for now, I try to enjoy this summer. Life’s easier this way.

“Well, don’t let it sneak up on you. You’re gonna need a good job. And you’re gonna need insurance.” Dad looks to me. “You can’t live without insurance, Son.”

I nod that I understand. And I do. I’m just not ready for those concerns. Most fathers must talk to their sons like this, but his hammering of insurance scares me.

Dad rubs a cigarette into the sand, taps his yellowed hands along thin damp legs while the shadows of our bodies stretch down the sloped embankment and almost to the water. The sun is low; the tide is high.

“You coming home anytime soon?” Dad asks, breaking the sound of the waves and my thoughts in them.

“Soon, yes. But not this weekend. There’s a birthday party for me. Maybe the next.”

“Your mom misses you. She’s going to have a hard time with Anne leaving for college this year, too.”

“I know, but my life is here. In Wilmington.” I brush a sandy hand on my towel.

“I know, Son. It’s just a lot of changes for your mom at once. Me working out of town. Anne starting school. And you, not coming home for the summer. Go see her. You can ride with me one weekend.”

“I will. I promise I will.”

“Your mom wants to see you. She misses you.”

We sit a while longer on our towels, letting the constant wind dry us.
People stroll in front of us while the lights of the Oceanic begin to shine more brightly and the restaurant bustles with diners eager for seafood. When the sky becomes its late-day violet, we scoop our towels from the beach, shake them off, and begin walking toward our cars.

“How about the same time next week?” Dad asks.

“As long as there’s no rain, that sounds great. It’s a perfect time for a swim, tourists gone and it not too hot.”

When we near Dad’s car, he opens his door and pulls a card from his seat. “Here,” he says. “Since we won’t be seeing you this weekend, it’s an early birthday present. It’s just a bit of money,” he says as I open the card and see the cash, “but we thought that you could get a good dinner somewhere.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Mom’s got something else for you, but you know you’ll have to come home for that. She’s not gonna mail it or send it by me.”

“That sounds like her,” I laugh. “I’ll be home soon. I promise.”

“Happy birthday, Son,” Dad says, giving me a farewell hug.

And as he drives away into the fading purple, nostalgia overcomes me. I have grown up and moved out of the house. And it all happened so quickly.

June 9. Sean and I drive to the store to get the keg for tonight’s party, and in the parking lot, he shoves me a wad of green bills, commenting that everyone should buy a keg on their twenty-first birthday. Inside, the lady behind the counter asks for my ID, and I proudly produce it. She is old and wrinkled, her eyes a pruned topography of skin.

“Oh, happy birthday,” she says, coughing out of a phlegmatic lung while taking the cash I give her.

“Thanks.”

Another employee brings out the keg on a dolly, and I roll this outside and down the handicap ramp.

“Aren’t you going to help?” I ask of Sean, who idles in my truck’s cab. “This thing’s heavy and I can’t lift it myself.” He flips open his passenger door.

“Sorry, dude. I can’t touch it. I’m still twenty.” He laughs, saunters over, and hoists the keg into my truck bed. “Pussy,” he chides.

Later, my house parties. Gleaming candles are set around the place,
flickering in the corners and dancing shadows upon the walls. In the great room, the stereo booms, growing louder as the night lengthens. Two lines form along the hallway: one for the restroom, the other for the keg iced down on the small balcony. But really, one line is an extension of the other. A cup is filled, is drunk, and is then pissed out to make room for another. At least this is how I begin to see the night as I revolve from keg to toilet and so on.

The party is a good-looking crowd. The fit captain of the crew team swings his arm around a cherub-faced teacher in training; a lithe basketball scholar proves his athleticism by performing several keg stands; and a steady couple brings their argument to the party, making loud overtures of their hate for one another. Several beers into the night, however, a partygoer discovers this same couple in my roommate’s bedroom and snaps paparazzi photographs of their naked embarrassment. We laugh. They laugh, they blush.

I lay my eye upon Portia—a striking redhead with a wide and easy grin—and I absently trail her from room to room. For a time we dance together, but when she later hooks herself to a boy in a buttoned blue shirt, I give up the pursuit and find something else to occupy me. I chat with friends. I play songs on the stereo.

By 3:00 A.M., the keg is dry and the party disperses. Two bodies with open mouths drinking in the inebriated night air sprawl on the couch; another several have passed out on the floor; and my roommates’ rooms are all occupied as well. I crawl through my second-story window and sit on the rooftop, pondering the few stars visible through the streetlights’ fluorescent glow. A cool breeze rustles the nearby trees while farther away, the crickets harmonize in the night. A car shoots out of the dark, rambles along the avenue, and beams light on the night-silver trees. Soon Sean steps out of my window to join me.

“So, this is where you’re off to. Hiding out on the roof.”

“I’m not hiding. I just felt like being here.” The smell of the river drifts in the wind and mingles with the fragrance of gladiolas. A light fog puffs about us. “Twenty-one,” I tell Sean as he lowers himself beside me. “Twenty-one.”

“I know.” He nods his head, tips back his beer cup. “And you’re doing great.”

“I am.”

We sit quietly. Below us a man bicycles past, pedaling in the night.

“I got a letter this week. A birthday card from Ana.”

Sean sips his beer. “Really,” he says. “How’s she doing?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly from her. It was from an AIDS organization, PWA. It says that she’s made a donation in my name, honoring my birthday.” Sean, staring off past the elm tree that shades the front lawn, brings the beer to his lips again and takes a long draw. “Can you believe that? It was a lot of money, too.” Sean nods. “I can’t believe it. I guess that even after all the hurt I caused her, I can at least feel like she doesn’t want me dead.” And then it is out there, the brutal irony.

Sean and I can’t control ourselves. We laugh loudly. I hold my side and lie flat onto the rooftop to catch air, and it is good.

“That’s great,” Sean says. “That’s really something, you know.”

“I know. I can’t even say how it made me feel.”

“So, did you tell anyone about it?”

“No. And I’m not going to. This is just something I’ll keep to myself.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he says as he stands. He sips again. “So I’m heading back in and will leave you to your thoughts. Besides, I’ve got this little hottie that I think may go home with me.” He ducks back through the window. “Don’t stay out here too long trying to solve all the world’s problems tonight,” he shouts back before a long silence returns and the crickets chirp in the background.

A few minutes later, Sean yells up to me from the front yard, says, “I’m headin’.”

“Later,” I call back. A young blonde is leashed to his arm and they both stumble to his car.

“She’s cute,” I call out.

“Hey. What’d ya expect?” he says throwing up his arms and letting out a laugh that echoes through the quiet street.

Sean falls into his car seat, cranks, swerves away, and howls out his window as he speeds down the avenue. I watch the taillights fade.

Later, the stereo quiet, the lights out, the party over—I slip back through my window and fall into my mattress, listening to the box fan hum a sleepy breeze.

At a club in downtown Wilmington, I meet Kaitlin. She dances, and as I watch her twirl to the music, I pine for the happiness that she exudes. A few songs later when she notices me smiling, she stops dancing, sidles to the bar next to me. I drink to increase my courage and to slow my nervous heart. I give her a hard stare.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“No,” she says. “I think I’ve had enough tonight.” She curls threads of chestnut hair behind her ear and stares at the dancers still swaying on the floor.

“Okay. Fair enough.” My palms sweat. My heart pounds. “What if I just sit here and drink for you while we talk.”

“Sure, okay. But I’m getting ready to leave.”

I take another sip. “Or I could just get your phone number and see if you’re interested in going out sometime?”

She turns to look at me, her hazel eyes bright in the darklight. “Boy, you just cut to the chase don’t you?”