But that’s all over now—the spell has been broken. I’m done with rehabs and twelve-steps and psych doctors and acupuncture and inner-child workshops and blah-fucking-blah-blah. I’m going crabbing with Russell. In Charleston, South Carolina. He picks me up a little after twelve thirty. Of all the celebrities and intellectuals and industry people and upper-crust New Yorkers and expensive doctors and whoever I’ve met in my life, I already have more respect for Russell than I’ve ever had for any of them. In LA, the first question everyone asks you is, “What do you do?” And how you’re treated from that point on is completely dependent on your answer to the question. But down here it doesn’t work like that. No one cares what you do. If anything, the way you’re judged is on how you live your life, how you treat your friends—simple, not-very-glamorous shit like that. At least, that’s the way Russell tells it. And, honestly, in my whole life, I can’t say I’ve met more’n one or two people like that, ever. My friend Akira, in San Francisco, is one. And I can’t even think of another.
Except this guy Russell. Already I admire him absolutely.
He knocks at the door, and I let him in really quickly to smoke a bowl before heading out.
The truck he’s driving, he tells me, he borrowed from a friend, and there’s a very shy, skittish black dog behind the front seat. It looks like some sort of lab mix.
“Oh,” he says, “that’s Carolyn’s dog, Luna. She asked me to watch her for a couple days.”
I don’t know who Carolyn is, but whatever.
Driving out toward the beach, the live oaks with roots breaking through the pavement give way to stinking marshland with canals cutting through like line drawings on colored paper. We drive over bridges, past falling-apart gas stations advertising boiled peanuts, cold beer, fish and grits. For all the opulence and old-money wealth of downtown Charleston, the surrounding areas are desperately poor. Trailer parks, boarded-up houses, Piggly Wigglys, Wal-Marts, that’s all there is. The heat makes the road shimmer.
“You’ll like it down here,” Russell tells me. “It’ll do you good to slow down a little.”
I nod, knowing that’s the truth for sure. “Yeah,” I say, my eyes fixed on nothing out the side window. “I’ve never been too good at that.”
“Well,” he says, laughing a little, “I’m the champion of taking it easy, so you’re in good hands.”
He pulls the truck into a McDonald’s parking lot, and we go over and wait in line idling at the drive-through.
“You want anything?”
“Nah,” I say.
He orders a double Quarter Pounder with cheese and a large Coke, and then we drive ’round to the pickup window.
The woman behind the glass is heavy, with extensions braided tight to her head. She leans out toward us.
“You don’t want no fries with that, honey?”
Russell smiles big, showing his square, white teeth. “No, ma’m. They tend to make me gassy.”
She laughs and laughs, and I laugh, too.
Russell thanks her and we get the food and we go on and, uh, get.
The next stop we make is at a gas station, where Russell gets a twelve-pack of Budweiser and a net basket for crabbing, plus a pack of chicken necks for ninety-nine cents. I can’t really help buy anything, ’cause I spent the last of my money this morning. He tells me not to worry about it.
“I worked on Wall Street, you know?” he says out of nowhere as we drive down the road, crossing bridges and passing strip malls. “Worked with a big firm playin’ stocks and whatever. I lived in New York for two years and made a bundle of money. Hell, I ain’t ever been more miserable in my whole life. There ain’t nothin’ worth workin’ like that for, all shut up inside all day. I’d rather be a little hard up and able to cook out, go walking on the beach, go crabbing with a fine gentleman like yerself.”
“Ha,” I say.
He veers the truck onto a side road, and suddenly we’re driving with tall marsh grass on either side of us, making our way deeper and deeper into the swamp.
We park at the end of a splintering gray dock that stretches out into the murky channel of water reflecting sunlight.
Russell grabs the cooler and beer and the net. I get the chicken and try to keep Luna from running off into the mud and oyster shells.
We walk out all together onto the dock.
As it turns out, crabbing isn’t really what I expected. I mean, it’s not too exciting or anything. Basically, what you do is you take a chicken neck and kinda weave it into the bottom of the net so it doesn’t fall out. Then you just lower the net into the water and wait. Then you wait some more. Then maybe ten or fifteen minutes go by and you pull up the net. If you’re lucky, there might be a couple of crabs in there eating the chicken. So you dump the crabs into the cooler and drop the net back into the water. Of course, a lotta times there aren’t any crabs at all, and you just gotta try
