The Salt Eaters (20 page)

“Hiya doin?”

“Hey.”

Fred waited. But that was all he was going to get. One of them self-contained types. His bike basket crammed with folded newspapers he’d be slinging around all over town. Fred could just see the kid at the doors collecting for the week. Nobody’d give this kid any song and dance about no change, or come back next week, or I paid you already. Not with them feet. A mere twelve or thirteen, he had feet that could put the garbage compactor companies out of business.

“Scuse me.”

The kid had finally looked up and was rushing now sort of,
folding down his thick white socks he probably washed every night himself on one of those old-fashioned washboards, if they still sold them, folding the socks down neatly over the top of the incredible red and white shoes. A good kid. Not the type to give his parents any grief, unless they were the sort that had groomed him to be a brat or a momma’s boy. Fred searched himself for something to say to him, something appreciative and friendly and encouraging. But the boy on his feet now, those incredible feet, was hiking up the kickstand and preparing to move out, pausing only to look at the winos and then at Fred. Fred straightened and tried to do in posture at least what the mud puddle and the pigeons wouldn’t permit, to create distance between himself and those bums. The boy might be measuring his own possibilities, studying them as a preview of things to come. Fred wanted to stand for something opposite, for something hopeful and good. He stood there trying to look like what he’d hoped he could be for his son. But the pigeons were splashing his pants, his shoes. And his concentration was broken each time he looked at those “bindle stiffs,” and longed to blockprint the word neatly on newsprint with a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil.

“Take care, son.”

“See ya.”

And the moment had passed and Fred felt corny. He looked at the drinkers and looked at the pigeons and philosophized: So used to dipping your beaks in muddy water and turpentine, wouldn’t know what to do at a fresh lake spring if you got a paid vacation.

“My people, my people,” he sighed aloud, eying the two gents who were eying him, hunkered down in the glass-splattered doorway passing the bottle back and forth, picking around in a pile of butts they’d evidently gathered for just this moment. He tried his hand at caring.

The uglier of the two was lighting a match and cupping it very … Fred decided to just go ahead and say “tenderly” just for the fun that was in it. The bum got the butt lit but had to suck like crazy to keep the stubby, bent thing going, blocking the draft kicked up by the pigeons with his knees like maybe his ancestors did at the mouth of the cave. The other was very ceremoniously skinning back the brown paper bag and rubbing the bottle with his dirty sleeve. They toasted each other, drank, toasted Fred, drank. In another few years, who knew, he was thinking, his mouth drooping matching the drool of their lips. And then he was walking on their side of the puddle, making them draw in their feet. Red wine oozing down their scraggly jaws and darkening greasy collars. They toasted each other again, grinning, as if to seal a bargain: no head hunting in each other’s caves. They toasted Fred’s back as he muttered shit, their arms high, another victory over cannibalism, it would seem.

“Happy carnival,” one of them drawled, and Fred lifted his arm in a half wave, half brush-off.

“Bindle stiffs,” he sneered, blocking the letters neatly.

Folks on the Hill were readying up for the festival or whatever it was. Kids racing by with streamers and balloons. Masks and noisemakers in store windows, flower carts on the sidewalks, the incense peddlers in granny-square caps of holiday colors. Years ago when he’d first settled in Claybourne, things didn’t officially start till the first Saturday after spring. In some parts of town, the Catholics kicked things off on the Tuesday before Lent. The Greeks had a parade on the first Saturday after Easter. But in the community Hoo Doo Man broke out of the projects with a horned helmet on some particular day near the first of spring and led the procession through the district to the Mother Earth floats by the old railroad yard. It always caught Fred off-guard. He could never keep track of the
day from one year to the next. The talk on the Hill, he was overhearing, was that things would get started at midnight tonight in the park.

“Got your lists ready, pardnuh?”

“You know it,” Fred hollered toward the old man at the bus stop who was loosening his false teeth and wrapping them in a not-so-clean hanky. What lists these might be was a mystery to Fred. He vaguely recalled though, pausing in front of the Regal to read the concert posters, that there’d been a bonfire years ago and Margie had insisted on going. But it seemed to have been winter, New Year’s Eve as he recalled. People were supposed to write down all the things they wanted out of their lives—bad habits, bad debts, bad dreams—and throw them on the fire. Margie would never tell him what she’d written, but it couldn’t’ve been much, just a strip from the flap of an envelope, didn’t take but a second to scribble whatever it was. Fred ran his hand over the posters. This was great, live music again at the Regal after all these years. The place probably smelled like mothballs, mothballs or mildew. Had been a church for a while, then a place for rummage sales. For a while a community radio station had been housed there. For a season musicals from Broadway had played the Regal. But for a long time it had been dark.

“I’m wishing for the moon,” the toothless man crooned behind him, anxious for Fred to hurry up and turn away from the posters and join him. That would be the other list. One was supposed to draw up a list of dreams and pin it on the Mother Earth float, or stick it in the horn of plenty, or shove it up her skirts or something. He’d seen envelopes and dollar bills tacked to the side of the float, scraps of paper pinned to the billowing skirts of the woman who rode the rickety thing through the district to the old church. He never could see getting in a funk about it all, it was all foolishness. Stead of writing Santa Claus
notes, people ought to get armed and get with it. He turned from the box office and gazed across the street, wondering if there was anything in the story of guns hidden there in the Academy.

“Our finest monument,” the man was saying, pointing a shaky finger toward the Wall of Respect.

“Yer right there.” He stared with the faith of x-ray eyes. He’d like a chance to prowl around invisible in there one time. Be invisible and free to search.

That was what Porter had been beating his gums about those last days, being invisible. He’d thought at first Porter had lost his marbles. But seems he didn’t mean invisible invisible like the old Claude Rains movie. Something stranger it turned out. Porter had been out early walking around the salina, as he called the marshes. And whom should he run into but the town character, The Hermit they called him. And for three solid days, when it wasn’t Yucca Flats ’55 and dying, it was The Hermit’s views on this and The Hermit’s views on that, and being invisible. For a hermit the guy was sure gabby, the way Porter kept going on and on about all he’d said.

“Invisible is being not visible, Fred, not looking like the something or someone a cop is after or a trickster is expecting.”

“Looking different from what’s expected.”

“That and more, Fred. Like when you’re looking for a four-hole, thick blue button to sew on your jacket, the tape measure and needle pads and all that other stuff you just don’t see. You barely notice the two-hole brown buttons.”

What did Fred know about a sewing basket. But he’d sat there in the Pit Stop chewing on the spongy bread while Porter had gone on about being invisible.

“They call the Black man The Invisible Man. And that becomes a double joke and then a double cross then a triple funny all around. Our natures are unknowable, unseeable to
them. They haven’t got the eyes for us. Course, when we look at us with their eyes, we disappear, ya know?” He ordered another cup of tea and made the waitress pull out everything in the back hunting for some honey she’d been silly enough to say she’d once seen back there when he asked. Since when did Porter drink tea and honey? Even had his own sack of loose tea. Fred had thought it was marijuana for a moment. And thought again old Porter had really lost his marbles pulling it out that way.

“So it’s not just looking different, Fred, but being different. Your true nature invisible because you’re in some incongruous getup or in some incongruous place or the looker’s got incongruous eyes. Ya know? He’s one shrewd cookie, The Hermit. His name’s Cleotus. Fine old dude. I’m going to study with him soon’s I get on the night shift again.”

And that had hurt Fred, hearing Porter wanted to go on nights. They’d raised sand about being put on nights all the time, cause they were colored was the reason. And almost as hurting, not being able to crack on The Hermit anymore. He’d changed status overnight from nut to wise man. But the hurtingest part was the voice, something in Porter’s voice like Wanda’s when she found “the way,” joined up with them Muslim people, talked off the wall in a voice that shut him out. All the time she was saying he should come with her to temple, should come hear this or that speaker, but something in her voice was locking him out.

“How long you think it’ll take?” Not sure what he was asking Porter but trying to stay in.

“Like he tells me, ‘Ain’t no graduates from the university I study at.’ ”

“How long?” Maybe he could wait it out. Maybe it was a sometime thing. He had hoped for that before and lost. “How long does it take to learn to be invisible?”

“Don’t know.”

And those were the last words he’d heard out of Porter. And he still didn’t know whether it meant nobody knows, or the wise man wouldn’t say, or he, Fred, could never know, or that Porter didn’t need to know cause the question was totally beside the point, ignorant.

“You ever been over there? Big place, lotsa doins at the Academy.”

Fred shook his head no then yeah then bobbed his head any ole way as the old-timer nattered on and on. Well, maybe he’d go see The Hermit. Maybe the man had some answers. Fred was pretty sure he had some questions. But at the moment what he had were needs: to shower, shave, get into some fresh clothes, do the last run, get those doctors out of his hair, maybe go out on the town, catch the show at the Regal. He was smelling something bad and wasn’t sure whether it was the old man or himself. He inhaled carefully. There was throbbing in his stomach, trembling in his throat, and he didn’t have a fresh hanky. He nodded to the old man and headed back toward the Infirmary.

Obie tried bouncing from the waist, then chinning on the bar in the doorway of the massage room. He felt a catch in his side. Tight muscles and joints, he instructed himself, contain suppressed feelings, memories, energies. He tried thinking that through, tried recalling recent entries in his journal. He was blank. He’d been using a confounding code, worried that Velma might snoop. That would never have occurred to him before.

“The Obo!” The masseur was grabbing his face in his hands and Obie embraced him, patting his back with both hands. It never failed to trip him out, this effusive Korean from Arkansas. He owned every album his homeboy, Pharaoh Saunders, ever cut.

“When are you going to come to my class?” He was helping Obie onto the table, wasting no time, arranging the sheet. “I want to teach you about release points. You already know about pressure points and that’s tough enough for combat. But for
health—stress points, release points. Your back’s one big rock quarry, Obo.”

“Your hands are like hammers.”

“Hey, I’m a gentle man.” He had taken his hands away in mock offense, but wasting no gestures, rolled the kimono sleeves onto his shoulders. “Like the song says, ‘Massage is my meditation and my dance.’ ”

“You just make that up?”

For an answer, Obie was flattened out on the table. He felt drowsy. Chin greasy from Ahiro’s hands, his head was slipping off the table, eyes level finally with the band of pane between the window shade and the window ledge. Through the hedges, he could make out the Regal across the street, and past the parking lot, the tabby wall where the brothers sat shooting the breeze.

“I’m not trying to slide your wedding band off, just trying to get out the knots. Relax, breathe deep.”

But
she
couldn’t relax. Not Velma. Walking jags, talking jags, grabbing his arm suddenly and swirling her eyes around the room, or collapsing in the big chair, her head bent over. He’d grown afraid for her. She talked on the surface, holding him off, shutting herself off from herself too, it seemed. And at night, holding her, he felt as though he were holding on to the earth in a quake, the ground opening up, the trees toppling, the mountains crumbling, burying him. Then he’d grown afraid of her.

“Pressure points of the human body … pressure points of the system … the U.S.… pressure. Yeh.” He heard himself drowsy, distracted. His conversations of late seemed no less than Velma’s diversions. “Points of the body … apply pressure to the system … parallel … interesting.”

“Your enthusiasm, Obo, whelms me over. Don’t talk. Relax, listen. You remember them Euro-Americans over at the Hurdy
Farm, just two hours out of the city, that new-age community, they call it? Heavy. They say Claybourne’s a major energy center, one of the chakras of this country. How you like them apples? Talk about some parallels? They’re trying to recruit Third World people. Check’m out sometime. But for now, relax. Just give me your leg, Obo. Your calf feels like a brick.”

She was like a brick, a stone, a boulder that would not be moved. He didn’t know how to lift her; he didn’t know how to satisfy her anymore. “Give me your tongue.” And she might flick it dry, totally preoccupied, over his bottom lip, and he would suck at the tip while the blood engorged his joint. He would rub against her, trying to get her attention, and she would mumble something. But only that he get up, turn the lights on, and take the robe flung over the closet door down and shake it out. Night after night being sent to the closet or the chair to assure her there was nothing there and no one there that should not be there. And coming back toward the bed looking at her twisting in the covers or climbing on the pillows, he would stare at her opening glistening and wet, inviting, misleading. He would gather her up again, but inside she was dry and her muscles clenched before he could enter deep, clench and shut him out. “Let go, Velma,” groaning into her neck. “Don’t let go, Obie,” trembling in his arms.