And if I had known the names of the authors as well it would have been taken for granted that I had read these things, and I would not have mentioned the titles, but merely the names of the characters, and people would listen and know that I knew all these things from the tone of my voice, the expression in my eyes, the way I half- smiled my own thoughts that were nothing but my own.
Perhaps then, only then, could I have possessed something of which to speak.
But I had not, and did not, and never would, I felt.
And so I killed things.
What else could a poor boy do? I watched the tight-thighed girls, their whirling skirts, the way they glanced at me arrogantly, the way they dared each other to
I hated them for their smooth brown skin. I wondered what their sweat would taste like straight from the skin. Beads like condensation down the glass walls of chilled bottles. Like rain against glass.
I sat alone, there in Montalvo’s Diner, and perhaps the only person who did not think I was weird was the crazy halfbreed cook with the forgotten name who carried a smell that should not have had to be carried by any human being.
He did not worry that I had nothing to say, for I bought my Cokes, popped my M &Ms, sat and looked and breathed and existed.
I did not speak.
I would think to speak, but all I could come up with was ‘Well-uh-I-kinda-killed-some-things-one-time…’, but seeing as how that wasn’t really the polite kind of talk folks were looking for, I did not say it.
And, as such, had nothing to say.
Perhaps if I had been caught…
Perhaps then, and only then, would I have had something of which to speak.
Sometimes I would challenge myself, dare myself to walk up to one of those girls, those tight-skinned teenage tornadoes, and ask their name, and say ‘Hi, I’m Bill or “Doc” or “Lineman” or “Swamper,” ’ and feel them blush a little, and smile, and say ‘I’m Carol or Janie or Holly-Beth,’ and ask me how I came to be called something such as that. I would shrug noncommittally, as if it didn’t really matter, and tell them it was the war,
She would fall in love, and I would feel the pressure of her hand in mine, the way her shoulder rubbed the side of my chest as she leaned to stroke my cheek, to kiss my face, to ask me if maybe, somehow, possibly I might consider seeing her again…
And I would have said, ‘Sure honey, sure thing,’ and I would have felt her heart leap.
Or maybe not. Maybe I would hold a Coke bottle in my hand, and as they pulled me close I would break the base of the bottle against the wall, and then turn to face Bobby-Sue or Marquita or Sherise or Kimberley, and say, ‘Here, a little of something cool and hard for the pleasure of your company…,’ and grind the glass teeth deep into the solar plexus, through the vagus nerves, and feel them tighten and twitch, dancing like a headless chicken through the scrubbed backlot behind a busted trailer, feeling them close up against the broken shards like the hands of hungry, shit-faced kids, the blood pumping, sweating out through the aperture, glowing over my hands, warming them, filling the pores, finding my prints like narrow channels and filling them…
And then lean them against the wall, fuck them in the ass, comb my hair and go home.
Perhaps then, and only then, would there be something of which I could speak.
Before Carryl Chevron I had killed a dog. Before that I had set a cat in a pen with three chickens and watched them run their little hearts out. Before that I killed some other things, but now I cannot remember what they were.
We were all essentially children, and some of us never seemed to be anything else. I understood this, as now I understand many things, and I see now that my own depth of understanding is even greater than I am aware. I know it all comes from the heart, right from the very center of the heart, and I know that if you do not listen to what it has to tell you then it will kill you.
Time rolled onwards like some unspoken darkness, and within it there were sounds and motions that even now I cannot bring myself to recall.
Eisenhower was inaugurated as president.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to the electric chair in Sing Sing.
Fidel Castro Ruz was jailed after a failed coup.
Rocky Marciano retained his world heavyweight title when he K.O.d Jersey Joe Walcott. My father said he could have done the same. My father was a drunk. A liar. A failure of a man.
I was sixteen years old, and New Orleans was in my blood. St James the Greater, Ougou Feray, the African spirit of war and iron. The driving rhythm of drums and chants and people pouring red wine, rice and beans, meat, rum and soft drinks into a pond, and then those same people writhing in the mud and sharing their special powers by touching bystanders. Serpent and cross in the same cemetery on All Saints’ Day, and summoning the most powerful of all spirits, loa-Damballah-wedo, the spirited festival of Vyej Mirak, the Virgin of Miracles, and her voodoo counterpart Ezili, the goddess of love. Washing a bull, applying perfume, dressing it in a cape, and then slaughtering it, its blood collected in a gourd and passed to those possessed by the loa. They drank to feed the spirit. Sacrificing white pigeons to the Petro loa, a spirit that demanded birds and hogs, goats and bulls, sometimes bodies from tombs. All Souls’ Day, Baron Samedi, loa of the dead.
I was sixteen years old. I was almost a man, but still I couldn’t stand and take the beatings my father delivered. Not only to me, but to my mother – she of the graceful, artless, silent hope.
It was the end of 1953.
I think back and images merge and blend together, faces become the same, voices carry a similar tone and timbre, and I find it difficult to place events in their correct chronological sequence. I think of Cuba, my father’s homeland, the things that happened there, and then realize that those things came later, much later. My own past challenges me with forgetfulness, and this scares me, for to forget my past is to forget who I am, how I became such a person, and to forget such things challenges the very reason for living.
Perhaps the saddest thing about my own death will be my life.
Some of us live to remember; some of us live to forget; some of us, even now, make ourselves believe that there is some greater purpose worth working for. Let me tell you, there isn’t. It isn’t complicated, it is almost too simple to be believed. Like faith. Faith in what? Faith in God? Greatest thing God ever did was fool the world into thinking that He existed. Look into a man’s eyes as he dies and you’ll see that there’s nothing there. Just blackness reflecting your own face. It’s that simple.
I will tell you now about the death of my mother. Though it would not come for another four years I will tell you of it now.
Through 1954, through the eras of McCarthy, the Viet Minh occupation of Hanoi and the very inception of the Vietnam War, through the release of Castro and his brother Raul on General Amnesty in May of 1955, through all these things.
Beyond Castro’s departure to Mexico where he organized his exiles into the 26 July Revolutionary Movement, how he led eighty-two men to the north coast of Oriente Province, where they landed at Playa Las Coloradas in December of ’56, how all but twelve survived who retreated to the Sierra Maestra mountains and waged a continuous guerrilla war against the Batista government, how those twelve became eight hundred and scored victory after victory against the dictator in the hot madness of revolution and spilled blood that was as much a part of history as anything that might have happened in Europe…
Until finally Batista was defeated and fled to the Dominican Republic on New Year’s Day 1959, and we were
