Authors: John M. Del Vecchio
He walked slowly, delicately. He crossed small sand-gravel gullies, stepped into slippery clay-silt deltas, buildups that sucked his running shoes from his feet, stood upon large newly exposed boulders or smaller rocks, the size of basketballs, washed clean by the last downpour, the last torrent eroding North Peak mountain. In the dim light the creek waters looked gray, murky. He thought of the time he’d fished this stretch, of the trout that hid in the cover along the edge. Now he stood on a lip directly over the water’s roil, peering down into the spindrift above the gray cascade. To the north, behind him, he heard the predawn chirp and trill of songbirds. He turned, glanced back across the dark blocks and skeletons of North Peak CondoWorld.
The lip beneath him shifted. He shifted his weight, began to step back. It happened as if in slow motion, the earth giving out, sliding slowly then avalanching, he twisting, hand reaching to the stable ground just inches behind, one leg, foot rising, the other falling with the lip, then quickly his legs out from under him, thwack, his head, the gravel, the immediate feel of blood followed immediately by inundation and the roil of the cascade.
His body lies in a shallow paddy. He is on his side. The water is five inches deep. He has sunk two inches into the mud beneath the water. Grass, rice, offer little cover. The air is thick, humid. The water is foul, oily, sticky. He lies on his side keeping half his face out of the water, just high enough to keep from drowning. The top and right side of his face are exposed, bloody from hitting the gravel. Rifle fire comes from the tree line. Undefoliated. Assholes, he thinks. The water is getting cold. Damn cold. Better cold. Better to feel cold than to feel nothing at all. In the water there are swirls of violet and blue from the oil and of red from the blood. Has he been hit? No one near. The water is stagnant. Maybe it’s blood. Something moves before him. A trout, he thinks. Or a turtle. He wants to reach for his 16, for his bayonet. He wants to stab the ripples. What the hell’s there? But he does not want to move. What if they see him. There isn’t enough concealment to hide a swimming duck in this paddy, much less a moving man. He lies perfectly still, on his side, his legs beneath the water. His right hip protrudes. In white. White! What the fuck am I doing in white? They’ll see me. He cannot move. Where are the others? Why doesn’t he have on fatigues, cammies? Why is he in this foul stench of a paddy? Couldn’t be a paddy. Paddies don’t defoliate. Must be a manioc grove, a teak stand, something, and someone must have cut all the wood, carted it away for fuel, left this rotting barren bog. Bog, that won’t be a fish. Water spider? No. No fuckin way. He does not move. They are firing at him. He cannot move. Where’s his 16? Has he fallen on it? The swirling before him comes closer to his face. His waist is completely submerged but his hip shows white in the marsh muck, against the graying sky. His torso emerges from the water just below his arm pits. It is wrapped in white. His right arm is behind him. Tied. Tied to something. Lines into it and tied to something. He can’t move. His neck is below the waterline. Submerged. Half his head. His heavy head. Have to keep it up. Can’t let it drop. His neck muscles cramp from keeping his head just so, his nostrils above water. They’re going to shoot me. Don’t let them shoot me. White! For God’s sakes! Who put me in white? He coughs. Something bites him, inside. Something bites his lungs. He tries to raise his face just an eighth of an inch, just enough to get his lips out of the water. He coughs on the red swirl in the water. It is seeping into his mouth. Don’t let them shoot. Under the water, something on him. A hand? A crab? A spider? Sudden jerk. A leg. On his face. He opens his mouth to scream. Red swirls gushed in. Drowning. Bit. Bit my face. Get it off my face. Get it off. Pulling, ripping, surging with all his strength. Get it off! His right arm breaks away, reaches his face, grabs the crab/spider but it is locked on his face biting his eyes.
He lets go, falls, falls into his own mind, swirling, seeing himself as Stacy, as Red, as Olivia. Seeing himself in a rushing swirl of colorful dresses, of perfect teeth, makeup, eyes, hair, Lisa, wine, women without names, Jane Sharon Diana. Seeing himself without self, seeing un-self prodded by corruption; by crime unreacted to; by toxic assaults unopposed; by political lies condoned; by ambient cultural masturbation acquiesced, assimilated, accepting the path of least resistance, the easy way, the tons of regret; by denial of self all swirling together losing what was good, losing values—take these with you ... Integrity. Virtue. Pride. Responsibility. Freedom. Faith. Family. Courage.
Then there is the noise, the sharp cracking barks, repeated yips, whines. Like Josh chasing a jackrabbit. Josh.
Bobby is at the side, the bank. His face aches. His body is limp. Dawn has broken. The sky is overcast, rumpled, splotched bright to gray to black. Josh paws his shoulder. Bobby laughs weak, but laughs. From the ground the Lower Res looks immense, a sea edged with trees, the earth. The small gully in which he lay towers over him. The sky stretches forever.
S
AN FRANCISCO, MID-SEPTEMBER 1971
—Ty stood in the aisle. His hand throbbed; his groin ached; his head hurt. He held the chrome overhead bar with his right hand as he had each workday evening for the past month. She sat in front, as always, sideways as always, behind the driver. He kept his left hand in his jacket pocket, slouched, stared up, forward, aware of her yet not looking at her, aware of her long straight hair, gaunt face, long straight body. He wanted to watch her, catch the light blue of her eyes if she raised her face. But he dared not. The man in the Raiders jacket was not behind him. Behind him was a haggard black woman with two children. Since they’d boarded she’d been berating the boy, perhaps eight years old, for having dropped ice cream on his pants. “How’m I gon clean em tonight? En have em dry fo tomorrow fo I get you to school? Bran new pants! How come you do this? I work, en fo what?” Loud. Pained. Sharing her plight with an entire bus of strangers; the boy shy, slouched, his head down but nowhere to hide; the girl, perhaps six, assuming a posture that said, “Not me. He did it.” And Tyrone Dorsey in front of them in his suit and fine shirt and polished shoes, not turning, assuming too a posture that said, “Not me. They are not with me. All blacks are not like them.”
His eyes itched, were watery and red. The bus stopped. People shuffled. His eyes darted to the gaunt white woman who timidly glanced up, back, then tightened her knees against the seat and twisted her feet attempting to keep them from the aisle. In his mind he apologized to her but he knew now he would never apologize, knew he would never speak to her. Indeed he was afraid she might actually acknowledge him, might read him and know. He felt ill, ached all over. The lymph nodes at his groin were sore, swelling again. No amount of washing would take the sensation away. His hand throbbed from the abuse it took every working day—packages, papers, crates, stacks of manila envelopes, every conceivable form of mail needing whisking from point A to point B, ASAP. Tonight, he told himself, as he now often did, I’ll take a little something to ease the pain.
By the tenth day after his finger had been ripped off he had felt as if adjustment and recovery were imminent. Tyrolian Finance Corp. had received its first investment capital, $7,600, via a referral from Lloyd Dunmore. Peter Wilcox had immediately provided a borrower for a short-term second mortgage of $8,000 minus ten points up front and $150 in fees. Ty, on paper, earned $950 though he retained only $450. He had yet to register with the state or the IRS.
Then the pins and needles had begun and he’d thought it was nerves over his first loan transaction. The swelling and soreness and itch had followed. Then pimplelike sores burst into blisters on the head and shaft of his penis; the inside burned. Herpes. Herpes from the woman who’d stolen his pinky ring and his finger. He’d called into work, said he had a summer flu, locked himself in his room with his few books, weathered the first bout alone, angry, withdrawn, disgusted, unable to concentrate even through a single page.
The bus swerved, rocked like a giant ark, halted, lurched, halted. He’d become aware of the feeling at ten o’clock this morning as he’d waited before a pretty receptionist, needing the signature of her boss, in an office on Montgomery Street. As he waited he’d chatted her up, chided her about working for a white guy. “Nice-looking sister like you!” Ty, cocky, proud, smiling. “Why don’t you come and work for me? I’ve got eighteen runners.” Ty kept his left hand in his pants pocket. “Couple of em out today so the boss—” he tapped his chest, “is filling in. But I need help in the office. Someone to take over. Break me loose to expand. I can’t do it if I’m tied to a desk all day. Great opportunity.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Dorsey.” She smiled. She answered another call, put the caller on hold. “Really, I’m very happy here.”
“Nice-looking sister like you,” he repeated quietly. “Working for a honkey.” She excited him but the feeling in his groin wasn’t excitement. By noon he’d begun feeling ill, had recognized the prodromal symptoms. By three he was having chills. By five thirty, on the bus, sidling past the long, thin woman, he felt as if bugs were creeping out of his abdomen, out of his anus, creeping to his groin. He felt as if everyone could see, as if even the small boy being berated knew, and all the people with eyes darting at the haggard woman saw instead herpetic Ty Blackwell Dorsey. He felt exactly like the little boy, embarrassed, shamed, nowhere to hide.
By six fifteen Ty was sitting alone in a dark wooden booth in a small dimly lit bar a half block off The Embarcadero. Before him was his half-finished beer, the crumbs of a Reuben sandwich, a stack of thick home fries coated with ketchup that he’d aligned neatly on the plastic plate. With his fork he separated one fry from the stack, cut it in half. Eat, he told himself. “Keep yo strength up, Son,” his stepfather used to say. He forced the forkful to his mouth. “Keep yo from gettin sick. En ef yo get sick, keep yo from gettin real sick.”
Ty sipped his beer. Half a dozen patrons were seated on the stools chatting or watching the news on the TV. All were white. The bartender was white. Only the cook, who emerged occasionally from the small kitchen beyond the end of the bar, was black. Eat, Ty told himself again but he did not want to eat anything more. Herpetic cunt, he thought. Goddamn herpetic white pussy. My ring, my finger, my fuckin johnson, my whole fuckin body. He ground a forkful of fries into the plate. Carve a big
H
in her forehead, he thought. Goddamn. He sipped his beer, glanced to the stools, to the TV, caught a few words: “... new American chief delegate William J. Porter ... Paris talks ...” It flashed in his mind that maybe it wasn’t the bitch who’d stolen his finger but perhaps the fat fag had done something to him that night after his first speedball.
Ty did not linger on the thoughts. He believed thoughts like those would keep him from advancing. He still had plans, herpes or not, nine fingers or ten, honkeys or whatever. He glanced to the TV. The white customers, even the bartender, were rapt. The story was: black GIs; soul alley; drugs; black/white incidents. It was not a new story, not a new exposé. In the fourteen months since Ty had been discharged he’d seen scores of TV reports about how black and white GIs in Viet Nam hated each other, how they warred against each other, how blacks were abused, used as infantry fodder, treated unfairly for promotions and medals. There was not a single story on interracial cooperation, harmony, friendship.
Fuck em, he thought. Fuck it all. I go god damn Airborne. Prove my manhood. Then some honkey major ... then some honkey bitch ...
The TV caught his eye again. The scene could have been I Corps, could have been Camp Evans. A black soldier was standing by a sandbag wall. The reporter was letting him ramble. In the background a white GI was waving a Confederate flag. One of the guys at the bar glanced at Ty then quickly turned back to the TV.
“You know why we here?” the black soldier was ranting. “Economics. Even these white dudes. Suckers, Man, suckers. The Man, he lookin for an openin, you dig? He lookin for a foothold, dig? He want them rubber plantations. He want ta drill for oil. He want these little yellow people to work like ants. You understand what I’m sayin? Have these little people make radios an tape recorders. Pay em in rice. We here because of eee-co-nomics! We here to line the pockets a The Man. No matter we dyin. No matter we killin these little people. There plenty mo.”
Ty stared at the TV, at the backs of the other patrons. His thoughts were not on the validity of the assertion but, why didn’t they get a brother who could speak clearly. They do it on purpose, he thought. They find a stereotype, broadcast it, reinforce it.
“Who gettin killed, huh?” The soul brother’s arms were now flailing. “Bloods, Man, Bloods. You dig? Brothers. Twenty-five percent, Man. You tell me this aint no race war.”
It was dark in Ty’s room. Late. He needed to pee but he dared not move the bottle alarm, open the door, go down the hall to the common toilet. He was sweating, feverish, delirious, shaking, twitching like a fish too long out of water. He did not like the dark but was afraid to turn on the light. Had to, he thought. Had to. To control the pain. To control the anger. To forget those honkey motherfuckers absorbed in the TV-nigger’s babble. True or not.
Even before he’d reset the bottle alarm Ty had rolled back the mattress and taken out his “works.” He’d been shaking, sweating, aching all over, itchy at his groin. He’d weathered the pain of his traumatic finger amputation with the fat fag’s speedball and with skag-laced cigarettes; had weathered the first herpes bout snorting a little coke, smoking a little heroin. After they’d passed he’d prepared, bought the works for recurrences. Then, tonight, returning, he’d been all jitters. He’d paced the small room, removed one shoe, placed a few bottles, unfolded the kit, removed his shirt, back to the bottle alarm, checking his stash, his cash, his dope, back to undressing—nothing in straight-line order. Carefully he’d mixed the coke powder and the heroin powder—his dealer had called it Indochina Ivory—a little water, pure, clean, distilled, kept in a sterile bottle in his sheet-metal armoire, mixed in a clean spoon—so careful not to spill it, not to use too much, a quarter of a tenth of a gram of heroin, 60 percent pure, and a third of a tenth of cocaine—I can handle it—it’s too expensive to get hooked, steal my piece of the pie—then crushed a pure white sterile cotton ball into the mix in the spoon, a wadded sterile filter absorbing impurities—so careful—then inserting the needle into the cotton, drawing that beautiful mix into the syringe. He’d checked the room. His head, body, groin, had ached but the anticipation of the hit had overridden the prodromal creeps. Ty had tied off, a length of surgical rubber tubing above the left elbow, had slapped up a vein, jabbed in the needle, felt good, satisfied that he’d become proficient at self-injection. Then fifteen seconds later—Contact! Ambush! High, wide, dull, loose, BANG!