I
started to scream. I don't know what, but hell I started to scream.
The
car came forward, backing us even further into the cul-de-sac, and even as it slowed
the first man came out of the passenger side brandishing a pool cue.
'Fucking
nigger and his nigger-loving buddy,' he said, and faster than either of us
could react he lurched forward and brought the cue down over his head onto
Nathan's back.
Nathan
didn't go down but he arched forward and howled in agony.
I
made a run down the side of the car, but the driver jerked open the door and
floored me. He floored me with a single roundhouse to the side of the head.
I'd
felt that before, back there in Benny's. Then it had been for the honor of
Sheryl Rose Bogazzi. Now it was for my life.
I
tasted blood in my mouth. I could hear nothing but a rushing tide in my head,
beneath that an insistent squealing that neither fluctuated in tone or pitch.
I
tried to get up. A foot came from somewhere, a foot encased in a heavy work
boot, and that boot seemed to drive a hole the size of California through my
stomach and chest.
I
believed, I
really
believed, that I was going to die.
I
remember wondering then if there had been anything that day that had been an
omen, a portent of what would happen, and then my attention was snatched from
wherever I had put it by the sound of Nathan screaming.
There
were two of them beating on him, the man who'd come first from the car, and the
third man from the rear. The passenger still held the pool cue, and with the
heavier end he was just whipping Nathan across the back and shoulders. Nathan
was curled up like an embryo, howling excruciatingly with every collision of
that cue, and as I tried to stand I felt every color and sound imaginable rush
through my head like a tidal wave of broken glass.
And
then Nathan fell silent.
All I
could hear was the labored breathing of the two men standing over him. The one
who had floored me had stepped over me and joined his buddies at the end of the
passageway.
You
think he's dead?
Fuck
knows.
Let's
get 'em the fuck outta here.
Where
d'ya wanna take 'em?
Fuck
knows… any place, far as you can get.
You
go get your car.
Fuck
it, you go get yours… I ain't havin' no nigger bleed all over my upholstery.
I
think I went then.
Lost
it completely.
There
was a sound like a freight train grinding to a halt on a broken rail line
somewhere behind my ears. I remember staggering to my feet, gasping for breath,
and even as I stood, even as I raised my arm to hurl it I felt blackness
rushing towards me.
And
then there was nothing.
For a
long time there was absolutely nothing at all.
And
then I could smell something. Something bad. Smelled like someone had eaten a
dead raccoon and thrown it up over my clothes. I could feel something cool and
moist on my hands. And that smell. Never smelled anything so bad in my life.
When
I moved I heard sounds like rustling paper, something skidding beneath my foot,
something solid and unforgiving, and as I raised my arm and stretched it I felt
a cool metal surface.
It
was dark, but there was also the sound of cars somewhere.
I
tried to sit up. I felt like a bridge had fallen on me. I closed my eyes and
strained to move. There was no traction, nothing to grab onto, and in my
fumbling and groping there in the darkness I felt my hand brush across
something.
It
was Nathan's hair.
I
struggled again, somehow managing to maneuver myself into a semi-seated
position. I raised my hand, and again found a cool metal surface, something
that didn't resist me as I pushed upwards. With every ounce of strength I
possessed I heaved upwards, the surface seemed to rush away from me, and
suddenly my eyes were almost blown out the back of my head by the daylight.
We
were inside something.
It
took a minute or two for my eyes to become accustomed to the light, and then I
looked downwards.
Garbage,
rotten, stinking, infested with mould and shit and Christ only knew what. We'd
been thrown into a garbage dumpster.
I
remember cursing and swearing, retching even, and then I tried to rouse Nathan.
There
was blood all over his eyes and nose and the upper part of his head. I grabbed
his arm, pulled it, shook him, shouted his name -
Nathan! Nathan! Nathan! -
but there was nothing.
For a
little while I thought he was dead.
I
grabbed his wrist, and pressing there against the artery I could feel a weak
pulse.
I
knew then, knew with greater certainty than anything I'd known before, that if
I didn't get him to a hospital he would die.
Nothing
else was important then. Not our identities, where we'd come from, how we'd
ended up in a garbage dumpster in Panama City… none of these things were
relevant or significant. If I didn't find medical help Nathan would be dead. I
came up out of that dumpster like a crazy man, and within minutes I had found a
phone, called Emergency, and there was a medic unit on its way.
I sat
there on the side of the road, stinking and bleeding, crap in my hair, in my
shoes, and I watched the waves of red and black fighting with my consciousness
until I heard voices around me. I looked up and saw a man inside the dumpster
trying to help Nathan out and onto a stretcher, and everything was washed out
and vague, and the sound of the cars sounded like the coastline up around
Apalachee when you'd smoked too much weed and Emily Devereau was trying to get
your shirt off and laughing so much you thought you'd spontaneously combust
right there on the sand…
And
then there was nothing once more.
The
most appreciated and welcome nothing I'd ever known.
They
wanted names, home towns, dates of birth, all manner of things. They wanted to
know where we'd come from, why we'd been beaten up. They wanted to know if we'd
beaten each other up and gotten into the dumpster to sleep it off. They wanted
to know my address, my Social Security number, my mother's and father's names,
they wanted to know who to call and when they would be there and if we'd be
willing to make a statement to the police and look at some mugshots.
Every
question they asked me, I told a lie. I lied good. Like a professional.
And
finally they told me that Nathan had a couple of broken ribs, but they'd not
been broken the previous night, they'd been broken some time before. He had a
gash across the top of his head, needed fourteen sutures, and the thumb on his
right hand was dislocated.
That
was it. Apart from the bruising and some abrasions that was it.
My
certainty that he would die had been wrong.
Later
I would see that as a premonition, a misplaced premonition, and with that
premonition came that oh so familiar sense of guilt. I was carrying it like a
sleeping child, carrying it close and tight for fear of losing my grip. I
believed perhaps that my duty to carry this guilt served as some reason to go
on.
The
nurse who dealt with me said we'd be there just as long as it took to check all
our details, sort out some way of paying for this, and then the police would
want to question us about the incident. I agreed with everything, agreed and
kept on asking if I could see Nathan. After an hour or more the nurse said okay.
They
took me to where Nathan lay in another curtained area. They'd given him
painkillers, he was drowsy but coherent, and when I explained what they wanted
to know, that they wanted us to talk to the police, he told me I had to figure
us some way out of there.
I
left him there, returned within a minute or two with a wheelchair.
Nathan
levered himself off of the gurney and dropped into the chair like a dead
weight. He grunted painfully.
'You
okay?'
He nodded.
'Figured I'd race you to the street corner and do some press-ups.'
I
smiled.
'Whup
your ass any time white boy.'
'Can
it, Nathan… just can it.'
We
seemed to glide then, glide mysteriously from the hospital emergency room, and
there must have been a guardian angel because there were no voices calling
after us, and even as we approached the Reception desk the girl there turned
and looked away as we passed, and I knew there was something else going on.
I
would tell Father John Rousseau of this many years later, and he would smile,
and nod, and then he would say the last thing in the world I would have
expected him to say.
'Nothing
to do with God,' he'd say. 'Nothing to do with the Archangel Gabriel or secret
guardians of the Netherworld… all comes down to decision. People make powerful
enough decisions and they can do some incredible things. You ever hear of a
woman lifting a car off of her child's legs? Skinny little woman, nothing to
her, little more than a hundred pounds, and she lifts a car off of her child.
That isn't God, Danny… that's people.'
Whatever
the reason, we made it out of there, and then we were on the street, the
wheelchair abandoned in the lobby, Nathan Verney limping along, me holding him
up so he didn't fall flat on the sidewalk, and me with my face all swelled up
on one side like I was trying to chew a baseball.
We
made it out of there and we were three blocks away before we realized that
things like this were not supposed to happen. Despite the pain, despite the
previous night's events, we were laughing. Laughing together. If I think back
now that moment was the closest moment we would share before the end.
Seems
odd to me that the most terrible circumstances seem to bind people together.
But they do, and that's what happened to me and Nathan Verney in Panama City,
Florida in the summer of '69.
We
didn't leave, we stayed right where we were. We avoided Ramone's Retreat, we
stayed on the north side of the city where things seemed a little more liberal
and understanding. We kept our jobs, our car, and every once in a while we'd go
out and find some company. It was simple, uncomplicated, and it stayed that way
until Christmas. For the best part of six months there was no Vietnam, there
were no questions, no-one looking for us, and Nathan and me got along just
fine, possibly better than we'd ever done.
Nathan
had forgotten
the burden,
either that or he was remarkably good at
pretending there was nothing on his mind.
I had
not. I thought of it often. And more often than that I thought of my ma.
And
it was she who closed up the chapter of Florida in December. It had been a
comfortable chapter, the sort of chapter you go back to and read once more,
perhaps again and again, because there seems to be some kind of emotion
encapsulated there that you connect with. I connected, at least I thought I
did, but like all things it came to a final paragraph, a final line, a final
word.
The
word was
family.
Helluva
thing.
Christmas
was coming and we - Nathan Verney and I - figured it might be okay to call
home, just one call each, just to check everything was fine, that there was
nothing too serious going down.
We'd
been gone eighteen months, and whoever might have been sent down to find us had
given up by now.
Surely.
There
was only one way to tell.
We
called on December 17th, eight days before Christmas, and it was that date,
that date and no other, when the real nightmare began.