Candlemoth (31 page)

    I
have
tried
to imagine.

    But I
cannot imagine any of it without Nathan beside me.

    Truth
be told, I don't
want
to imagine without Nathan.

    We
were never brothers, we were more than that, for in the same way that I
believed so hard that he'd died for me, I try now to convince myself that my
death will serve some other purpose, redress some universal imbalance perhaps.

    It
was never meant to be this way, I know that much, but at the time it all seemed
so innocent and simple and magical.

    
Smoke
and mirrors,
Nathan would say whenever he felt there was something he
didn't understand, something we weren't being told, something that didn't make
sense.

    Well,
the smoke and mirrors were there, and we, in our passion, our naivete and our
desire to really live, walked in between them.

    One
of us lived to speak of it.

    And
one of us… well, one of us just disappeared.

    I
knew from the moment we arrived that Panama City was a mistake.

    Father
John would ask me what I meant when I told him that later, and I would be vague
and uncertain. Sometimes you just
know,
I would tell him, an intuition,
a sixth sense, call it what you will, sometimes you just
know.

    Until
Panama City we had stayed in smaller places, towns or suburbs, but here we were
colliding with the real world once more. Seemed to me that as soon as we
arrived we were treated with suspicion and curiosity. Nathan said I'd smoked
too much weed and gotten paranoid, but I didn't believe that to be the case. I
felt people were looking, watching us, wondering what the black guy was doing
with the white guy and vice versa. Nathan had grown his hair, he wore a
headband, his clothes were a mixture of things we had traded and bought from
the beach people in Apalachee, and in Panama City he stood out like Hendrix at
a Methodist Chapter. I warned him, told him to dress down, to be a little less
conspicuous, but Nathan used words like
square
and
off-track.
He
didn't listen, he was of a mind to be what he wanted to be, and when he was in
such a mood there was no purpose in arguing.

    'The
problem with you,' he said, 'is that you're always anticipating trouble. You go
looking for trouble and it'll find you.'

    'But
I don't go inviting it,' I replied. 'There's a difference between being aware
and just being fucking obvious.'

    He
smiled like he knew best.

    He'd
started doing that, the
leave it to me
routine, and it pissed me off.

    'Look,
Danny, you gotta understand something about people. People don't naturally want
to upset their own lives. They want everything plain and simple and
straightforward. The ones who start trouble only start it because they figured
you were starting first…'

    'That
is so fucking naive, Nathan.'

    Nathan
laughed. 'Naive? You're calling me naive?'

    It
was worded as a question, but I understood the intention.

    'You
seem all set to create a problem when there isn't one,' he went on. 'There are times
when I really don't get where you're comin' from.'

    'Same
place as you,' I replied.

    'Yeah,
right,' he stated, his tone sharp and sarcastic.

    I
wanted to tell him that I had only come along because of him, that had he left
me to my own devices I would still be in Greenleaf, still be right there at
Karl Winterson's Radio Store earning some money and minding my own business. I
didn't say it, it was weak and feeble-minded, and if there was one thing I
believed this escape had taught me it was that there was no place for weakness.
Indecision was what had started the war in Vietnam; indecision was back of all
the dead bodies that lay burned and black and without identity in some place
that was once a country; indecision was what had brought me out here with
Nathan. Had I been there again, back home when he came down the path with the
letter, I would have told him
No, you make your own way now. I have a life
here, perhaps not a great deal as far as lives go, but I have time.
And
indecision was the cause of losing both Caroline and Linny.

    I
felt my fists clenching and unclenching as he spoke.

    'You
ever figure out how to have an original thought you let me know,' Nathan said,
an unnecessary and vicious comment.

    I
wanted to slug him upside the head; I bit my tongue and said nothing.

    There
was silence for some time, stilted and awkward, but eventually he turned and
smiled at me.

    'Figure
that's enough arguing for this week,' he said.

    I
nodded. 'Enough,' I replied.

    'Don't
want to fight with you, Danny, but hell, man, you gotta relax a little, okay?'

    I
nodded in agreement, but back of the agreement there was no feeling. I let it
slide, but even as I watched that ghost depart I believed that a time would
come when Nathan Verney would have to stand down against me. I vowed there
would be.

    'Truce,'
he added.

    'Truce,'
I said.

    I
found work easily, warehouse labor, simple, basic-wage stuff. Nathan tried to
get work at the same place and they didn't want to know. He said it was his
color, I said it was his attitude. He said
You go be a lowly Uncle Tom
nigger boy and see how it feels.

    I
left him alone for some time and he came back to battery. He had me cut his
hair, he bought some straight pants, white tee-shirts, a denim jacket. Next day
he got a job unloading dead chickens at a factory on the outskirts. There was a
little community, ten or fifteen black guys, and come the end of the day I'd
walk over there and watch them playing craps. They didn't seem bothered by me,
a single white guy. They thought I was retarded or somesuch and left me alone.
No white boy in their right mind would go down there and hang out.

    Nathan
eased up a little, he made some friends, he didn't smoke weed or drink too
much, and within two weeks we had a small place on Rosemont Street, a couple of
rooms over a laundromat. Rent was low, it was close enough to where we worked
for both of us to walk, and we figured maybe we could hang out there until the
war was done.

    I
thought once again of calling my ma, writing at least, but still the thought of
how it might affect her worried me. I knew she would want me to go back, just
for a little while perhaps, just to visit. I knew I couldn't do that. They'd be
onto us within hours. Someone in Greenleaf would see me, that someone would say
something, and before I knew it someone else would have made a call and it
would all be over. I think I believed the war couldn't go on for much longer. I
think I fooled myself every which way I could.

    So I
didn't call. I kept my mouth shut, kept my head down, and we worked until we
could afford a car. It was some beat-up piece of shit but it went, and for the
first time since we'd left Greenleaf we felt as if we had arrived somewhere. We
were no longer the vagrants, the hobos - we had an apartment on Rosemont, a
car, some money in our pockets. And it was that attitude, that sense of
confidence, that started the trouble.

    It
was the end of June. America was all aflame about the Space Program, that we
would be the first to land a man on the moon. It had been three months since
we'd left Apalachee, almost six months since the Devereau sisters had graced
our lives with their bizarre Louisiana magic.

    Our
thoughts turned to girls.

    Like
moths to a flame.

    It
was a Saturday night, between us we carried more than a hundred dollars, and we
drove out towards the south side of the city. Here were the bars, the
nightclubs, the gambling joints, the brothels. We made a deal: if we hadn't both
connected with someone by midnight then we'd take half of whatever money we
might have left over and go pay to get laid.

    It
seemed a good plan, a simple plan, and a plan that rolled out just fine and
dandy until we hit Ramone's Retreat on Wintergreen and Macey.

    I sensed
no alarm when we entered. It was perhaps the fourth or fifth joint we'd drunk
in that night, and though there were no blacks inside that wasn't something I
even noticed until afterwards.

    We played
pool. Nathan's game had much improved and his playing wasn't the thing that
prompted a reaction; his color was.

    Leaning
against the bar was a group of three men. Later I would recognize that
something in their faces was similar to that of Mr. West at Sumter. They
possessed dark aspects, shadows where shadows should not have been, and it was
these three who said the thing that started the trouble.

    As
Nathan passed ahead of them to gain the far side of the table and line his
shot, the center man made a sound like a pig. It was a brief snort. Like
someone clearing their throat. Nothing more than that.

    Nathan
merely glanced towards him. Just for a second. Less than a second. Half a
second.

    But
that was enough to prompt a question.

    
Why
was Nathan looking at him?

    
What
did he want?

    
Was
there something he wanted to say?

    Nathan
merely smiled and nodded.

    
Was
Nathan now laughing at them?

    
Was
there something funny Nathan had on his mind?

    
And
they called him Boy, like Hey boy, you got something funny to say?

    We
had been here before - both of us - and this particular place was not somewhere
we wished to visit again.

    Nathan
looked towards me. He glanced quickly to the left indicating the door, and then
he gently laid down his cue and started to walk. He didn't pick up his jacket,
left his glass there on the edge of the pool table, and though he was quiet and
slow and nonchalant it was still very obvious that he had every intention of
leaving the bar without another word passing between him and the group that had
challenged him.

    And
they knew it.

    Knew
it instantly.

    The
center one picked up the cue.

    He
said something which was indistinguishable among the grunts from the other two.

    'Go!'
Nathan hissed, and without any further prompting I ran for the door.

    Nathan
was beside me, heel-to-toe, and we burst out through that door and started down
the street. I caught an image of him as he flew past me - not the young, strong
man he now was, but a small kid with jug-handle ears. We were running from the
baying mob at Benny's, we were running towards the witch.

    My
heart thundering like an interstate hauler, my insides cool and loose, I
barreled down the sidewalk, the sound of raised angry voices behind us.

    'Faster!'
Nathan was shouting. 'Go faster, Danny,' and it was only then that I realized
the trouble we had collided with was not staying put.

    The
sound of feet, a door slamming shut, and then an engine… a car engine.

    'Motherfuckers,'
Nathan hissed, and before the word had barely left his lips the lights of the
car illuminated us against the night.

    'Oooh
shee-it!' I remembered screaming, and even as I tried to turn the corner at the
end of the street I collided with the wall. I felt the skin had been torn from
my shoulder beneath my jacket.

    The
sound of the engine was louder, roaring in my ears, and then I could hear the
sound of their voices beneath that.

    Fucking
nigger-lover!
The voice screamed.
Fucking niggeeer-looover!

    I
knew we were done for when I turned the next corner.

    A
dead-end. We'd run right into a dead-end. The car came upon us, the headlights
brilliant, and I turned to see Nathan backed up against the wall, his eyes
wide, his mouth open in an expression of frozen terror.