Pages from a Cold Island (3 page)

As easily as a drunken quack detects a cataract but whose shaky skills aren
’
t up to excising it, I
’
d known forever at what level the book didn
’
t work without being able to do anything about it; I
’
d reached that excruciatingly unhappy impasse wherein I
’
d once spent an entire week going through it page by page and accomplishing nothing more than attempting to see that that and which were used correctly; my morning time lying asprawl the white Naugahyde couch listening to Brubeck featuring Desmond on alto sax on the stereo had begun to outweigh my time at the desk; my coffee and cigarette consumption were consummate. If from out of this torpor the heart
’
s
revelations were going to mani
fest themselves, they had, I thought, better do so soon; and when at midmorning as regular as the screeching alarm of a creaky old-fashioned hand-wound clock I felt the booze and caffeine shakes coming on I rose, descended in the elevator to the dark cool lobby, picked up my mail and stuffed it into my hip pocket, stepped squintingly out into the heart-arrestingly dazzling heat, went for the newspapers, thence to the Beer Barrel to begin my morning ritual with Jack McBride, the bartender.

McBride was thirty, bright, tall and handsome. Girls said he resembled a ren
owned movie actor who in Techni
color adventure yarns always plays a stoic two-fisted role in which he is never asked to draw on acting talents he doesn
’
t own; he is in fact an atrocious actor but he does have what in that dim-witted business is called
“
presence.
”
Jack did resemble that actor but didn
’
t much like this being remarked. For years there had persisted a rumor that the actor was homosexual and with t
he advent of the new permissive
ness there was now in circulation a story that he was
“
mar
ried
”
to a hillbillyishy male television personality, probably, I thought, one of Toni
’
s tales gleaned from the pages of
Midnight
. Given to the new styles, Jack wore his black hair long, he sported a luxurious Mexican
bandido
mustache, and he wore bell-bottomed white-duck hip-huggers with a wide heavy silver-buckled black belt and long-sleeved extravagant-colored satiny shirts with V-necks and sleeves that bloused out at the wrists, which from me elicited,
“
How can you worry about your resemblance to that fucking swish and wear those fruity shirts?
”

He
’
d spent three years in the navy and had had two years of college. At the beginning of his junior year, at that point when the bureaucratic
“
guidance
”
clerks told him he must decide what he must do and what he must
“
major
”
in, he
’
d dropped out. As he hadn
’
t the foggiest idea of what it was he must do, it was only a question of time until he found his way to Beach Court where none of us knew
that
and prided ourselves on being all on a slow boat to nowhere. We employed, quite accurately but affectionately, terms like
“
wholly mad,
”
“
wonderfully crazy
”
and
“
a beautiful yo-yo
”
to describe each other. On television two days before there had been a story that in Palm Beach Gardens at the north end of the county an eight-foot tall, massive and copiously haired humanoid creature was running wild. He
’
d been spotted,
“
confirmed,
”
and driven raving and roaring into a wooded area by a police or TV station helicopter. The year before he
’
d been seen in the Keys. He was thought to be working his way up the peninsula (no doubt making his way to the University of Florida at Gainesville for the summer term), and the inhabitants at the county
’
s north end were cautioned to be on the lookout for him. In sympathy McBride had wanted to get up a posse made up of
habitués
of Beach Court and find the
“
poor fellow
”
before the authorities did.

“
We could chip in and get him a room in the hotel next to Exley
’
s,
”
McBride had said.

Everyone had laughed.

“
Nobody
’
d notice anything unusual on this flaky block.
”

Everyone had laughed again.

“
All the reaction you
’
d get around here is,
‘
Who
’
s the new guy in the hotel? The tall one with all the hair.
’”

Some months before I
’
d got into a mouth-watering conversation about the blandness of the best restaurant food as against home-cooked meals with Jack
’
s father Alex. Until a droplet of saliva fell onto the back of my hand, we had talked with an eye-narrowing and demented exuberance about roast leg of lamb—
”
So the skin is drippy crusty,
”
I
’
d volunteered,
“
and you can eat it like meat candy
”
—mashed potatoes and lamb gravy the texture of lentil soup;
sautéed
peas, baby onions an
d fresh mushrooms mixed and sim
mered together; salads with great chunks of fresh tomato and cucumber and swimming in homemade Roquefort dressing; and hot apple or pecan pie ecstatically topped with fresh whipped cream. For weeks afterwards Alex had invited me to his domicile for just such a meal but as I thought the McBrides lived on the mainland I politely refused. Save when I was
“
kidnapped
”
and driven across the causeway to a movie or, between three and five in the morning, carried to drink and to listen to live music at the White Caps, a deafening
place without acoustics and fre
quented by hotel and restaurant help when they got off work, my paranoia wouldn
’
t permit me to leave the island (
“
odd things
”
were
“
waiting
”
for me
“
over there
”
) and even those infrequent
“
kidnappings
”
became conversation pieces the next day on Beach Court.

“
Exley left the island last night.
”

“
He didn
’
t!
”

“
He did!
”
Then inadvertantly I
’
d discovered the McBrides lived right behind the Beer Barrel on Island Road. I
’
d at last accepted, and now they found it impossible to be rid of me. Three and four nights a week I was over there shoveling in the heavily gravied mashed potatoes with Alex and his wife Peggie, with Jack and his girl Joanne. We
’
d even reached that familial easiness wherein I
“
raced
”
Jack and Alex through the meal to see who would get to the couch first to watch the television movie. Whoever won invariably fell asleep during the opening credits and commercials and had on awakening to ask
“
What happened?
”
to which the reply was also invariably
“
Nothin
.”

With Jack I now began the day
’
s ritual.
“
What
’
s for supper?
”

“
I forgot to ask.
”

“
You prick.
”

Pulling myself onto a barstool, I ordered a Budweiser, laid the newspapers out on the bar in front of me, took the mail from my back pocket and placed it next to the papers, then for Jack
’
s inspection held out my hands, palms face down and suspended in the air a foot or so above the bar.
“
Steady as a rock,
”
Jack said. He shook his head in wonder.
“
Never seen anything like it. Most boozers come in mornings shaking like a leaf, have a couple beers, quiet down and leave. You come in here steady, have a beer, then start shaking.
”
This was true, and for that reason Jack read and answered my mail for me. He
’
d just opened the bar; the regulars wouldn
’
t start drifting in till noon; and the few customers would be tourists who, having saved their pennies and come down from Marshalltown, Iowa, and sitting now atop the loveliest beach in Florida, would come in, drink a draft beer or two, and oddly ask whatever there was to do
“
around here.
”

Winking at me, Jack would recommend a visit to Lion Country, where the mangy lions seem always to be asleep and snoring (the management claims the animals aren
’
t tranquilized but the one time I
’
d taken two little kids there not one of the beasts even conveyed the notion he might be alive and the kids had bawled); to Disneyworld, where in order to explore its inexhaustible and wondrous delights Jack claimed to go on every one of his off days but had in fact never been and probably never would be; or to Frances Langford
’
s Outrigg
er Restaurant where, said oblig
ing Jack, they offered for a buck a
“
mind-blowing
”
drink containing fourteen different ingredients called a Rooty Tooty Fruity.

“
Loaded with aphrodisiacs,
”
Jack always added.
“
Tell
‘
em I sent you.
”

I
’
d finished my first drink and the shakes had started. Having begun, the trembling would need three or four more cans to be quelled. By leaving the newspapers stationary on the bar, I found I could without embarrassment skim them and turn the pages when necessary but I was too ashamed to try and hold and decipher mail in front of strangers. By now Jack had automatically sorted out my bills and thrown them unopened into the green plastic garbage can behind the bar. The first envel
ope he opened was from my paper
back publisher containing a fan missive, which I received at the hardly impressive rate
of about thirty a year. Invaria
bly they were from students, and save for the ones from coeds (one never knew) I almost never answered them. Long since I
’
d discovered that woven into the texture of
A Fan’s Notes
there was a streak of hauteur I could not isolate from memory; though the letters often began on a note of rather touchingly slavish devotion there seemed always to come a time when the writer, in an abruptly paranoic turn, would say,
“
Actually, your book wasn
’
t all that great; in fact, there were places where it was a bunch of shit, and as you probably won
’
t answer this anyway
”
—and he was right—
”
you can go fuck yourself!
”

Today
’
s letter, though free from this odd desire to inflict hurt, was nevertheless disconcerting. It was from a young man in Billings, Montana, who said that as the sum mer holiday was on us he and a dozen or so
“
fellow-student literati
”
in the Billings area had decided to seek me out (
“
With us,
”
he wrote,
“
it has assumed the character of a pilgrimage
”
), sit at my feet, and let me impart the
“
Wisdom of Booze
”
to them. He promised they
’
d only stay
“
a week or so
”
and asked where I was and could they come.

“
Throw it away.
”

“
Answer it,
”
Jack said.
“
It
’
s friendly enough. And intelligent.
”

“
That
’
s all we need
on this block. A dozen more Mon
tana hippies. Fucking cowboys. They
’
d probably all be drinking on my tab, and I can
’
t even afford my own drinks.
”