I nodded.
'I remember I was pushing my boat up the Nile. All these little sucking kisses on my skin where leeches were attaching themselves. I was living off some hard, bitter-tasting fruit off trees on the bank and the raw flesh offish with teeth like razors that I snared in nets improvised from old shirts. Had these big grins on them.'
His own drunkboat, his own African Queen.
'All these people were after me. They wouldn't give up. Never even knew who they were. See them, feel them, back there behind me. Someone pulled a tube out of my throat.'
'You were on a ventilator for a while. A breathing machine. I was there when they took you off.'
'All at once I had to breathe again. Had to go on. Before, it had been so easy.'
'Always that choice.'
'We spoke, didn't we? Something about a missing son, old man looking for him. Everfind him?'
I shook my head. 'No.'
Night had not so much fallen about us as it had toppled there, collapsed, capsized. Lights lashed up from boats on the river, others stabbed at the darkness from cars racing past on Leake Avenue behind us.
'Someone else brought news-or no news. They drank together.'
'Right. The detective and the old man, the father who'd hired him. In a bar on Decatur. Detective's come to tell him his son is dead.'
' 'Nothing to help us but a few hard drinks and morning.' I do remember that. You the one read it to me?'
I shook my head again.
'Someone else, then. I was terrible sick, some kind of flu, burning up one minute, freezing the next. Let go in the bed a couple of times I know of at least, too weak to crawl out. Guess he probably cleaned that up too, in between reading this book to me, spooning soup down me. Had to be a week at least, I was like that. He must of read that book to me cover to cover half a dozen times.'
'Don't suppose you remember what he looked like.'
'Not paying much attention at the time. Not quite there, right?
Couldn't get outside myself. Young man's what I see now I look back on it.'
'Black or white?'
'Black. Like you. Mostly his eyes I remember.'
'His eyes.'
'Brown. With green floating around somewhere in there, never could say just how or where. Like yours.'
'Ever hear his name?'
He thought it over. 'Sorry. Can't recall his ever using one. Not much use for names, situations like that.'
'He never introduced himself? Hi, I'm Carl, I'll be your waiter for today?'
'He could have. Like I say, I was pretty far gone.'
'Never heard another staff member speak to him, maybe call him by name?'
He shook his head. 'I think I'dremember. Whole thing's etched in my mind. Like a dream, doesn't make much sense, but you can't shake it off, can't get shed of it. I thought I was dying. Held on pretty hard to whatever I could grab on to. Strange times.'
Dark now was absolute.
'One more beer, you want it,' I said.
'You don't?'
'Got your name on it.'
'Why not, then.'
First he rolled it along his forehead, then popped it open and drank.
'One thing,' he said.
'Yes?'
'Never thought of this before.'
I waited.
'When I first started coming out of it. Most of it's kind of a blur, you understand, what happened when, the order of things. All jumbled up together. But now I think about it, there was this one time I came half awake-early morning, late evening, no way to tell-and someone's standing there over me saying, You're going to be okay, you hear me, you're going to be okay, it's just a matter of time now.
'I remember reaching up, things still not too clear. Didn't know him. Could be one of those who'd been chasing after me. My hand's huge up there, blots out the whole sky. I try to ask him. He takes my hand and bends close over me.
Now his face fills the sky. Can't make out what I'm saying.
' 'David?' he says, 'You're asking after David? He's gone on. Sicker ones than you here now, mate. But not to worry: we'll take good care of you.''
35
Welcome back.
Yeah, I guess you could say the same to me. But neither of us's ever really been away, have we?
Abyssinia, right. Turns out it looks just like Metairie, except with camels. We drag our worlds along with us and we can't let them go, can't get rid of the damned things. Trapped animals have better sense. They'll gnaw a leg off and crawl away. We just tell ourselves that once we get the furniture inside our heads rearrangedit's going to be a new room, a new world. Sure it is.
But you're going to be okay, Lewis. We both are.
You've been here just over three weeks. Don't suppose you remember much of it. Police picked you upfinally. You'd been sitting on curbs outside Cooter Brown's and a string of bars up on Oak berating custom-el's as they came out, demanding what you kept calling donations, going in these places and, before they heaved you back out, grabbing half-finished beers and drinks off the tables.
Sound familiar?
You still feel like you're underwater looking out, what you told me a few days ago, it's because the doctors have you on some pretty heavy sedation. You've been off IVs a couple of days now. You were so dehydrated when you got here you could barely pull your tongue away from the roof of your mouth. Another day or two now, you might even be able to keep food down again. Be a while before you're up for boudin or grillades, I'm afraid.
Much of those last weeks come back to you?
Well, maybe some of it will, in time. You never know. What does it matter? You're here, you survived. That's the important thing.
Okay. You're right, it does matter. And not only to you.
You sure you want to hear this again now? I've already told you twice.
Three, four in the morning, I had a phone call. Dan the Man two flights clown, I hear him stomping up stairs like he's driving railroad spikes with his feet, eveiyone in the house awake for sure and lying there listening to this, no way anyone's gonna sleep through it. Then there's this polite knock at the door: You got a call Brother.
Brother's what most people call me here. Started out like so many things do as a joke, someone going Hey, bro, because I was black, someone else picking it up, calling me Brother Theresa.
I'd never had a call before.
Guy on the other end tells me his name is Richard Garces.
No, I didn't know him, only met him last week. But he told me how over the years he'd built up this loose network of people like himself, social workers, mental-health nurses and techs, people he'd talk to over the net on a regular basis, and how some years back he'd started hearing things he got curious about. So he pushed a little, asked a few strategic questions and kept his ears open, started putting it together.
Hairiest thing he ever did, he said, not telling you. But he had to figure it was my own life-that I had my reasons which Reason could not know, and so on.
But that night on the phone he told me things had gone upside down. 'Lew might have said bouleverse.' And
