Lost Memory of Skin (6 page)

The way he sees it his mother was always there for him. That’s her phrase, that she was always there for him, and it means two things to him: that he was a burden to her and that he never took full advantage of that fact. He never accepted her love and loyalty. The phrase makes him feel ashamed twice over. She’s a better person overall than he. She has a good excuse for refusing to grow up and he doesn’t. Her being a fake woman makes sense; his being a fake man doesn’t.

He thinks all this has something to do with his no-go zone reaction to Larry Somerset. He wonders why he let the Rabbit talk him into taking the man’s money and letting him sleep in his tent. It isn’t like he needs the money especially. He has a job and almost no expenses. And it’s not like he’s fond of playing the Good Samaritan. He knows who the guy Larry Somerset is or rather was and what he got busted for and while the Kid’s in no position to judge Larry Somerset or anyone else living beneath the Causeway he still has a fearful attitude toward the guy and it’s not just because Larry Somerset is a cheese ball and was once a big-time state senator with all the power and prestige and money of that office and might still have some of it left over.

The Kid has glimpsed kiddie porn by accident lots of times back in the day cruising the Internet looking for company late at night but he always quickly clicked off—scared but not sure why. Nothing he’s seen on the Internet has scared him like that and he’s seen a lot. And it isn’t fear of being caught and punished for doing something illegal or weird or breaking a taboo like incest or sex with animals. That’s a whole different kind of fear than what scares him about Larry Somerset.

It’s what he felt in the not-too-distant past spending his nights maxing out his mother’s credit card and then his own debit card on porn sites and role-playing and swapping endless sex-talks with strangers in chat rooms when he’d sometimes click his way unintentionally into a website or a chat room where the hinted-at subject was sex with children. Which is immoral. Maybe worse—if there is something worse. Well, baby-banging is worse.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of getting caught unless by his mother and she didn’t bother for years to check on where he went in real life—never mind where he went on his computer. He might not have been raised by wolves exactly but he was a feral child. He was pretty sure that back when he was still living at his mother’s house none of his digital travel was illegal or expressly prohibited as long as he did it on his own time which since he got sent back from Fort Drum became almost all the time.

Fear of being caught and punished for doing something most people disapprove of and some people prohibit or is illegal is only what goes with playing a high-stakes game of chance. If you win you feel lucky and if you lose you feel unlucky and you just take your punishment like a man. Either way you don’t feel ashamed or guilty. It’s almost never colored by shame or guilt like it would if it was immoral.

The Kid hears a car overhead or maybe it’s a truck because it’s moving too slowly to be a commuter’s car and while he waits for it to thump off the bridge onto the highway to the Barriers he hears a second vehicle also moving slowly but on the opposite side coming from the Barriers toward the mainland and then he hears both vehicles crunch to a stop somewhere up there on the Causeway. For a long moment, silence. Until several more cars or vans—he can’t be sure which except he knows they’re not trucks or buses—arrive from both directions and stop overhead. More silence. The Kid sits up and listens. Nothing. The man lying next to him turns fitfully in his sleep, rolls onto his left side facing away from the Kid and yanks the top of his sleeping bag over his head against the chill and goes back to dreaming whatever a guy like that dreams. The Kid doesn’t want to know.

Iggy’s chain clanks and the Kid knows that the iguana is awake and alert. The chain is locked onto a cinder block and Iggy can drag the block a fair distance but not easily and is lazy enough not to bother unless someone accidentally drops trash that he thinks is food just out of his reach. It’s one of the reasons the Kid keeps his campsite clean and gets pissed off at anyone who tosses his garbage and wrappers from McDonald’s or an empty pizza box anywhere close to his tent.

The Kid’s heart rate has picked up. He’s spooked but doesn’t know why. He’s almost never spooked down here. The other residents might be weird and even squalid because of the difficult living conditions and some of them are drunks like the Rabbit or high on drugs and a few of them are potential if not actual thieves but so far none of them has been violent. At least not against him. It’s violence from outsiders that you worry about. Besides, all of the residents except for the Rabbit are afraid of Iggy the best guard dog a man can have and even the Rabbit is cautious around Iggy. Not that the iguana would ever actually attack a human other than to defend himself and probably not even then but nobody except the Kid knows that for sure. The only person in danger of being attacked by a male iguana is another male iguana. And that’s in breeding season when there’s a female iguana in the neighborhood.

He reaches forward and partially unzips the front tent flap and looks out. The predawn light in the east hasn’t reached the camp yet and it’s like being in a cave out there. He grabs his headlamp and switches on its narrow beam. The light is dim. Nearly out. Batteries need replacing. Always happens when you need it. The Kid drops the pale beam of light onto Iggy, who has run his chain out to the end. The iguana’s sawtooth crest is rigid and on high alert. He follows Iggy’s stare and casts his headlamp’s useless fading yellow light in the direction of the off-ramp but it falls short. A narrow bare-dirt path starts at its base and switchbacks up the steep incline from the encampment to the guardrail and highway. It’s the only entrance and exit. Unless you arrive or leave by boat or jump into the Bay and swim from the mainland against the tidal current—where to keep from drowning you’d have to be an Olympic-level swimmer—there’s no other way in or out.

Maybe Iggy hears one of the residents sneaking home after curfew and because of his electronic anklet already caught without knowing it and scheduled for trouble or maybe jail time. Why bother to sneak in when you know they’ve already nailed you? Why not just stroll home openly?

Old habits, the Kid guesses.

He snaps off the useless light and glances back toward the path one last time and against a gray swatch of the eastern sky spots the moving silhouette of a man. The man carries what looks like a baseball bat or possibly a rifle. A weapon anyhow. He’s wearing some kind of helmet with a visor. Behind him comes a second man who also wears a helmet and carries a club or a gun. They’re big guys and they’re walking carefully in the darkness as if they aren’t familiar with the pathway down and don’t have any flashlights or don’t want to reveal their presence by using them. The Kid remembers training in the dark at Fort Drum wearing helmets fitted out with night vision and how useless they were for walking on rough unfamiliar ground and wonders if these two are using night vision.

Behind the first two come a whole bunch more big guys wearing helmets and carrying weapons. It’s some kind of raid or a military-style takedown by a platoon of cops or soldiers or a SWAT team. But why the hell would they be making a raid down here? Nobody down here deals drugs in any quantity larger than the occasional nickel bag or a few tabs of Ecstasy. No illegal aliens. No terrorists plotting the overthrow of the state. There’s nobody here but people like the Kid and the Rabbit and Larry Somerset and Paco and the Greek. Practically everyone in Calusa has known for years what kind of people live here and why and has never given a damn as long as they stay put. The newspapers write about it like it’s a leper colony. Even the TV news has covered it a few times. The only authorities who ever visit the camp are plainclothes cops and parole officers or caseworkers looking for their clients gone missing or the occasional bored state trooper dropping by to waste time looking for drugs or following up on a possible lead to some real criminal he’s investigating elsewhere. And they don’t come at night. They come during daylight hours as if even though the doctors say the disease the residents carry isn’t contagious people think it is—cops included. They’re afraid they’ll catch it if they come at night. The Kid watches the strangers in helmets gather together in a clot at the bottom of the steep incline. There are twenty to twenty-five of them. Maybe more. And here come five or six more guys but without helmets or uniforms—civilians in regular sports clothes.

As if at a signal he somehow missed the entire SWAT team or cops or soldiers or whatever charge full speed into the encampment. Their boots slap heavily against the concrete and their clubs are raised—the Kid sees now they’re uniformed cops carrying batons not guns—ready to bust somebody’s bones while the half-dozen civilians stand back and watch from the sidelines like they’re embedded reporters. When the raiders reach the tents and shanties they break into teams of two and three and go to work kicking over the flimsy huts and yanking down the tarps and as the residents stumble befuddled and terrified out from under the wreckage of their collapsed shelters the cops bellow at them—
Get the fuck outa here! Move move move! Get your shit, get the fuck out outa here!
—and call them names—
Motherfucking pervs! Faggots! Kid-fuckers!
The frightened residents cover their heads with their arms and try vainly to dodge the riot sticks but it’s no good and the cops club their shoulders and backs and skulls and whack them across the face. Blood spurts from noses and mouths and ears. People howl in pain.

The Kid sees a pair of cops lurching toward his tent. He grabs his backpack and unzips the rear flap of the tent from inside and ducks out and escapes into the darkness just beyond when he flashes on Iggy and turns back. The cops have already grabbed onto the front end of his tent and are yanking it down when one of them sees Iggy on his chain stalking steadily toward him fearless and on the attack with his mouth open and his long forked tongue flicking the air.

Holy shit! What the fuck’s that?
the first cop says.

The second cop pauses in the destruction of the Kid’s tent. He takes a look at the iguana and his eyes widen.
It’s a goddam lizard! Shoot it! Shoot the fucking thing!

We got orders to keep our guns holstered.

Unless physically threatened, man!

While the cops argue the Kid’s roommate wearing only his baggy boxer shorts and T-shirt and black socks like an old-time European porn actor escapes from under the collapsed tent through the open flap at the back the same way the Kid got out. He scrambles on his hands and knees into the relative safety of darkness and comes up on the Kid.

Good God, what’s happening? What are they doing?

The first cop has his revolver out and aims it down at Iggy who keeps on coming toward the second cop.

I call that threatening. That’s physically threatening, man! Shoot the goddam thing! Shoot it!

Too much fucking paperwork. It’s on a chain anyhow.

The Kid hears the sickening crack of a club against bone and he glances in that direction and sees the Rabbit go down, then slowly get back up and stagger off, dragging his right leg as if the thigh bone is fractured. Most of the rest flee into the darkness running and stumbling past the embedded reporters or whatever they are gathered at the bottom of the incline. Those who can do it scramble up the pathway to the Causeway and hop over the guardrail and run down the highway. The few residents who refuse to run or like the Rabbit are unable to run are herded together and shoved into a group off to the side close to the civilians where they’re guarded by a pair of cops with flashlights and guns while the Kid and Larry Somerset watch unseen from the edge of darkness.

I said shoot it! For Christ’s sake, he’s gonna bite me!

The Kid suddenly stands,
Don’t shoot!
he cries.
He’s friendly! He won’t hurt you!

The cop swings his helmeted head around and peers through night-vision glasses at the Kid and Larry Somerset. He looks like a giant bug standing on its hind legs. He brings his gun up and aims it at the Kid.

You got ten seconds to get the fuck outa here. You and the other guy. Otherwise you’re busted back to prison.

For what? We haven’t done nothing!

Obstructing a police officer. Now get the fuck outa here you disgusting little creep before I change my mind and bust both of you and your fucking lizard for resisting arrest.

The Kid turns and runs. He’s got no alternative. Larry tries to follow him but he doesn’t know the camp in the dark the way the Kid does and after a few steps he stumbles and falls. The Kid hears his face smack against the concrete—
Kid, help me! I’m hurt! I’m bleeding!—
but keeps on running anyhow. The hell with him. It’s every man for himself. As he races past the civilians at the bottom of the pathway he sees that they actually are reporters—they’re holding skinny notebooks and are writing furiously in them and a couple of them are talking into digital recorders. They have strange little smirks on their faces like they’re customers at a sex show who don’t want you to know it’s turning them on.

The Kid keeps running. He sees bright red and yellow and white lights flashing up on the Causeway and hears sirens wailing as ambulances and paddy wagons and more cruisers arrive. TV crews too. He keeps running. He makes it up the path to the guardrail, jumps over the rail onto the Causeway, then races panting down the ramp onto the highway that leads to the Barriers. He’s still running. His heart is pounding. His lungs feel like they’re on fire. Turning back he sees a pair of patrol boats cutting full speed across the Bay toward the encampment. Coming to pick up the guys who couldn’t make it up to the ambulances and paddy wagons parked on the Causeway—probably including the Rabbit, oh Jesus, the poor fucking Rabbit who looked like his leg got broken and Larry Somerset who looked too scared and bloody to get up and run after he fell. The hell with them. Nothing he could do for them anyhow. He slows to a jog. Then he walks.