Except
Nathan.
Perhaps
Nathan.
Nathan
knew exactly what it was like to know you were going to die.
But
that's another story.
I'll
tell Father John, tell him everything, and I've got thirty-six days to do it.
We'd left
Greenleaf at the beginning of the second week of June. We'd left on a Saturday.
By the following Monday we were in Jacksonville, Florida, we had spent nigh on
$100 and we needed work. We stayed one night in a motel off of Highway 36, and
then we went down to the coast.
I
remember leaving the motel that morning, the cool clear sky the brightest blue,
and for a moment I felt free. There was no other way to describe it, just
free.
That feeling lasted no more than a fleeting second or two, because as
we turned right at the end of the pathway towards the street I saw a squad car
idling against the sidewalk, motor running, one officer inside eating a
sandwich, the other standing on the curb, radio in his hand, talking to
someone. I didn't hear what he said, couldn't have done from where we were, but
I knew, I just
knew
my name was in among those sounds somewhere.
I
glanced at Nathan, he was looking straight ahead, oblivious it seemed. The
thought struck me that he couldn't have seen the car, but we were fifteen yards
away, only a glance to the left and they were there, and even as we levelled
with them I knew the officer inside was watching us intently. He had stopped
eating, his attention so fixed upon me he hadn't cared to wipe the smear of
mayonnaise from his chin… and I knew we were done for.
I
knew it in my heart of darkened hearts.
My
knees were weak, my insides churning, and I anticipated the sound of his voice,
the
Hey you!
that would come any second.
I
walked on.
One
foot after the other.
One
footstep for every three heartbeats it seemed, and I knew they would hear my
heart, hear it clamoring inside my chest like a frightened crazy man beating at
the door of a burning house.
Any
moment now the door would give and my heart would burst from my chest and land
on the sidewalk like a handful of raw red guilt.
I
turned suddenly at the sound of someone laughing. A child. Then another. A
single-file crocodile of children suddenly turning towards us at the junction.
A man
was at their head, tall and stern-looking, and as he passed he looked at us
with an air of disdain.
I
glanced back at the squad car, and the officer who had been seated inside was
even then rising to his feet, stepping out of the car, taking one, two, three
steps in our direction.
I
thought to run.
Hey!
My
heart froze.
I
didn't want to look back.
Couldn't
help myself.
My
eyes took on a life of their own, and even as I felt my head angle awkwardly to
my left I could see the man at the head of the crocodile of children greeting
the police officer warmly, shaking his hand, smiling. The line of kids came to
a staggered halt as they realized it was now time to stop.
I
looked at Nathan. He looked back at me and smiled.
He
was
oblivious.
Once
more it came home to me that we were running on Nathan's decision, not mine,
and as it was his own uninfluenced decision he had shouldered the
responsibility of any consequences that might unfold. Shouldered that
responsibility along with his rucksack and meagre possessions.
I,
however, had not.
I was
alone in this despite Nathan's company.
Thirty,
forty yards from the motel, the squad car, the line of kids now out of view, I
glanced back the way we'd come.
I wasn't
looking for the police; I was looking towards my home.
It
was summer and already brutally hot, and down along the piers and wharfs there
were fishing boats coming in from the Atlantic. Unloading catches was not a trade
that required any qualifications except the willingness to sweat, to smell of
fish all day and night, and a backbreaking persistence.
We
earned barely enough to cover a room and food, but we were out there, we were
unknown, and no-one asked questions. That, of all things, was predominant in
our thoughts.
It
stayed that way through June and the best part of July, stayed that way until
one night in the last week of the month when we decided we would go out and get
drunk.
We
couldn't afford it, but we felt we deserved it. Six or seven weeks we had
worked without a break, twelve, sometimes fourteen-hour shifts, and we had
gotten into a groove, a tolerable groove, and we had forgotten why we were
there, what we were escaping from.
So we
went into Jacksonville, found a small bar on Oak Street near the bus station,
and there we sat and drank Budweiser and Crown Royal, listened to Willie Nelson
and Chet Atkins on the juke, minding our own business and making small talk
between ourselves.
Which
is the way it should have stayed, but I got it in mind that we should shoot a
game or two of pool, and though Nathan was not interested I convinced him it
was a good game to play.
He
had not played before, and though he gave it his best he was bad. The extent of
his inability was commented on by some guy at the bar, an overweight dungaree'd
redneck who smelled like he was rotting right where he stood and used the word
fuck
as many times as possible in each sentence. Like
Fuck me, what the
fuck is that fuckin'guy doin' on a fuckin' pool table for fuck's sake.
Nathan
took offence. Nathan was a preacher's boy, and when the bad-smelling guy said
something about how blacks shouldn't be allowed to play pool, that pool was a
white man's game, that a pool cue wasn't a spear and maybe he should just stick
to running fast and screwing his sisters, Nathan got mad.
It
was ugly from the start.
The
bad-smelling guy wasn't alone. As if by magic three others appeared, equally
stupid and bad-smelling, and when they rounded on Nathan he looked at me and
realized a little of what he'd gotten himself into.
He
hit the first one and broke the cue.
The
guy didn't move. It was like hitting a tree. A bad- smelling tree.
I
took a cue ball from the table, and when I raised my hand to launch it someone
grabbed me from behind and knocked me down with one punch. A kidney punch
hurts, hurts like hell, and while I was trying to get up, clutching my side and
feeling like I would puke most of my internal organs, Nathan was being kicked
left and right and down the bar to the door.
The
man who'd hit me figured there was more fun to be had beating on a nigger and
he went with them.
I
came up roaring, the man turned, and in some kind of instinctive moment, no thought,
no regard for consequences, I grabbed the glass of Crown Royal and threw the
contents in his face.
The
man screamed in agony as the spirit met his eyes. He clutched his face,
couldn't see a thing, and I let go with the most almighty kick to his balls.
The
moment of connection brought the most amazing reaction.
The
man fell silent, dead silent, and then he went down like the proverbial plank.
Like
Marty Hooper in Benny's.
As I
ran past him I kicked him in the small of the back.
Not a
sound.
I
reached the back of the bar just as Nathan was being hurled headlong into the
alleyway behind the building.
I
went limping down there, my side feeling like it had been opened up for surgery
and then forgotten about.
I
could see them down there, three of them, Nathan kneeling and locking his arms
over his head as they rained punches down on him.
He
wasn't screaming, and that was perhaps the most unnerving thing of all. He
didn't make a sound.
The
men grunted with the exertion, they didn't hear me, didn't see me, and from the
floor I grabbed the lid of a trash can. With all the strength I possessed I
hurled it sideways like a frisbee. The sound of that thing connecting with the
back of a man's head reminded me of church days in Greenleaf. Like a bell. A
goddam bell!
The
sound reverberated down that alleyway.
The
middle man went down, his hands clutching the back of his damaged skull.
The other
two turned, shock evident on their red drunken faces, and then they came for
me, hulking and menacing like cartoon villains.
I
thought this was it. This is the moment I die. This is when it goes really ugly
and they kick the living crap out of me, and
Oh Lord Jesus Christ Almighty,
Mary Mother of Go…
Nathan
came up behind them like a shadow.
He
seemed overpowering, towering like a redwood, and I saw the bar in his hand,
heavy like steel or iron, three, perhaps four feet in length, and when it came
sweeping sideways towards the two men that approached me I knew that this was
going to be something more than a knockdown drag-out fight in some alleyway
somewhere. This was getting to be life and death.
I
knew the blow was crippling even as I heard it. The force drove the man on my
left into the second man with such velocity that they both careened into the
wall. The second man's head connected with the lower rungs of a suspended fire
escape, and again that sound, the sound of a bell ringing, echoed clearly out
into the darkness.
They
went down like collapsing buildings, one over the other, and even as they lay
there, even as silence suddenly filled the alleyway, we knew we were in the
deepest shit imaginable.
I
wondered if the man on the left was dead.
We
moved then. Moved like lightning.
Nathan
went back the way he'd come to the end of the alleyway. With one leap he seemed
to leave the ground and gain the top of the wall. He perched there like
Spiderman, beckoned for me to get a move on, and then I could feel myself being
dragged upwards and over the top. We dropped like thieves into the lee of the
wall, and pausing there for no more than a few seconds I could only sense the
pressure, the sweat that covered my body, my heart running away with itself.
Though I would find a bruise the color of raw steak covering much of the lower
half of my back when I woke the next day, in that moment I felt nothing. The
panic had gone, the terror was a vague and distant memory, and all I felt was a
sense of
aliveness
that was new.
I
looked at Nathan. His eyes were wide, his expression one of tense
concentration, and then he was moving, me beside him, the pair of us hurrying
back across Oak Street towards the room we shared.
My
naivete surprised Nathan.
'Leave?'
I'd asked him once we were inside.
'Hell,
Danny, you understand what happened here? That guy could be dead. Least of all
he's gonna have half his head stitched up in the Emergency Room. You think they're
gonna let such a thing lie?'
I
shook my head. I hesitated. 'I don't know I started.
Nathan
looked amazed, dumbstruck.
'You
don't know? You don't know
what,
Danny? You understand that we're in
violation of a government Draft Notice. That's a felony at least, a goddam
felony.'
I
realized then it was serious. Nathan never,
never
used God's name in
vain.
'We're
committing an illegal act, and on top of that we've more than likely got
aggravated assault, wounding, Lord only knows what… get wise, Danny, this isn't
an adventure, this is real life, this is the most serious shit you ever got
yourself into.'
'So
we're leaving?' I asked.
Nathan
threw up his hands in despair.