Echoes of a Distant Summer (13 page)

Señor Ramirez nodded his head as well and a big smile broke out on his face. He patted Jackson warmly on the shoulder and said, “El Negro’s grandson. I have not seen you since you were christened, but I have heard much about you!” As he turned to walk away, El Indio fell in
step with him. Jackson started to follow the two men off the pier when the old man with the fish caught his attention. The old man gestured that he should take the bundle of fish. Jackson’s expression lit up. Forgotten were the two men who still lay crumpled on the pier. He rushed over, almost losing his money trying to take the bulky package of fish.

El Indio said something in Spanish to Señor Ramirez that made everyone, including the old fishmonger, laugh. Bewildered, Jackson followed the two into the darkness. Still chuckling, Carlos appeared at his side and took the bundle of fish from him. Jackson looked up at Carlos with a quizzical expression.

“Do you want to know what my uncle is saying?” Carlos asked without a hint of an accent.

“You speak English?” Jackson asked, surprised.

“Second-year business major at San Diego State College,” Carlos answered with a laugh. As they stepped out onto the floating dock, he explained, “I went to high school in Imperial Beach.”

“Why did everyone laugh back there?”

“My uncle was talking about you. He said, ‘The wolf cub has the appetite and spirit of a wolf, but is still a wolf cub.’ ”

They climbed onto a large, shiny motorboat. Big lights on the roof of the top cabin illuminated the deck. Provisions and fuel were being loaded by several barebacked men. Jackson had never been on a boat so large. Keeping out of the way of the stevedores, he began exploring. There was a large cabin on top of the boat with a steering wheel and a lot of electrical instruments. In front of the cabin, there were several chairs with seatbelts that were bolted to the deck. Jackson noticed little windows on the side of the hull and assumed there must be several cabins below, but he did not venture there because of the bustling traffic. Señor Ramirez was moving about the deck, barking orders and directing men. El Indio, apparently having stashed his shotgun, joined the work crews and pitched in like a veteran. Jackson looked for somewhere to sit that would be out of the way. He saw Carlos waving to him from a seat on the main deck. Jackson made his way carefully to him. Carlos had been assigned to keep an eye on him by Señor Ramirez to ensure there would be no further problems.

From the security of his seat Jackson watched Señor Ramirez get his boat ready for the open sea. Carlos handed him a large, orange life jacket and helped him strap it on. It was bulky, but Jackson liked the
feel of it. He felt the boat’s powerful engines roar to life and was excited by the muffled throb of their forceful presence. When the boat pulled out of the little harbor, Jackson could contain himself no longer, and rushed to the stern to watch the lights of the little town diminish in the darkness. The bright spotlights were turned off and the deck was left in the semidarkness of the boat’s running lights. To Jackson, the stars had never been so bright before. He stared up into the moonless night sky and it appeared almost three dimensional, as if he could reach out and touch any one of the millions of points of light.

The trip took three hours and Jackson loved every minute of it. He liked the rumble of the powerful engines and the rocking motion of a becalmed sea. He saw the lights of other boats pass in the darkness, the inky outlines of small islands, and finally the moon. It made its dramatic entrance about halfway through the trip. It was not quite full but had a bright beige image which reflected off the darkening water. Carlos called him. They were breaking out the fish. Someone brought out a stack of warm tortillas and salsa. The men drank beer, while Jackson was given a Coke. It was the best meal Jackson had had in a very long time. After they finished eating, Señor Ramirez brought him up to the captain’s cabin and showed him how to steer the boat. In the darkness, they passed a large landmass with lights on it called Tiburón Island. When the boat finally pulled into Bahia Kino, it was nearly midnight. Jackson was sorry that the trip was over.

As an adult, when he recalled this initial summer with his grandfather he saw it in terms of Greek mythology: He viewed his boat passage as the crossing of the River Styx; Jimmy and his companion symbolized the two-headed Cerberus, the dog that guarded the gates of Hades; Ramirez was Charon, who ferried dead souls to the netherworld; and his grandfather was Pluto himself.

However, as an eight-year-old he could not complicate his thinking with symbolism. He knew only that he had left the land of the known, the world of routines and cold interchanges, when he and his grandmother got out of the rented car in Tecate. This was more than the recognition that Mexico was a nation different from the United States. He realized on an unspoken level that he had entered a world in which men lived by dint of their wit, the courage in their hearts, and the force in their fists.

Señor Ramirez called for the lights to be turned on again so that the
process of unloading the boat could begin. Men appeared out of nowhere and began carrying bundles off the boat. Jackson found his suitcase and began making his way to the gangplank. When he stepped onshore he saw his grandfather standing in the shadows of an old building, watching him.

T
he bag swung back and forth slowly. It was a ten-inch-long leather oval which had an elastic cord attached to each end. One end of the cord was attached to the ceiling, the other to the floor. Jackson, dripping with sweat, stared at the bag intently. It was the elusive, chest-high object that he had been keeping in motion with his kicks. He wasn’t interested in simple repetition; every time he kicked the bag, he tried for power, to drive his foot through its leather casing. Each time he began his assault on the bag, he thought of his grandmother’s parting words at Rhasan’s graduation: “Even if you do not go down to Mexico, they will come for you.…”

He was tired, but he had twenty more kicks with his left leg before he finished his routine. The bag was an adversary to be battered and driven back. He took a forward stance and swung his foot up quickly and forcefully in a front kick, which struck the bag squarely and sent it swinging in rapid patterns that he could not follow.

“It looks like your timing is way off,” Wesley said as he came over to watch Jackson. “It’s the same principle as a punching bag: You attack it from the same angle and get into a rhythm.”

“Doing side kicks is like playing solitaire,” Jackson grunted as he began his kicks again. “You can be in a room by yourself and some weird-butt will come over and tell you to put the red queen on the black king.” He missed his last three kicks by wide margins and stopped to catch his breath.

“As far I am concerned you have two red queens and two exposed black kings. You obviously need help,” Wesley said as he poised himself, then kicked the bag lightly four times in rapid succession.

Jackson snatched a towel from Wesley’s shoulder and began wiping off. “If you wanted to help, why didn’t you loan me your towel? I’m the one who’s sweating. All you did was show off for a few seconds.”

“I worked out hard last night. The only reason I came back here with you tonight was to stretch. Now I’m ready to go. Let’s hit the showers.”

In a sparring ring on the other side of the dojo, two men were working out. From the sounds of the blows landed, it was full contact. Jackson and Wesley paused on their way to the showers to watch the match.

“That’s not kempo.”

“No, it’s kick boxing,” Wesley answered. “Their gym got closed down and Sensei Matsuo has allowed them to work out here.” As Wesley finished speaking, one of the combatants delivered a spinning back kick. It was delivered with such force that even though it was partially blocked, it still knocked his opponent to the canvas.

“Damn! That was a hell of a kick!” Jackson said as they entered the locker room.

Jackson took off his T-shirt, turned from his locker, and asked, “Have you ever been driven by something? Propelled by some all-consuming passion?”

Wesley paused before he answered. “I don’t know … I mean, I like money and I’m reasonably ambitious, but all-consuming? No, I don’t think so. Not unless you include my twenty-four-hour pursuit of pussy. Why?”

Jackson gave Wesley a long look. “Don’t you ever worry that you’re devaluing women when you think of them as pussies?”

“No! I want to connect with them on that primal level. I’m into that caveman shit! While you’re fucking and sweaty, being a dick or a pussy is reaching into the essence of it all. That’s the real reason mankind is a successful species. Despite his brain, he has to fuck.”

Jackson laughed. “Thank you for another neo-Freudian interpretation of human history. So what happens when you run across a woman who doesn’t feel that way?”

“We only fuck once.”

“That sure is simple.”

Wesley held up his hand. “Wherever you’re going with this, I give up. You win! You can have the moral high ground. Okay? Now, we started off talking about you. Where was that going?”

“Well, sometimes I worry that I don’t have the capacity to really care
about something. I don’t have any life goals which require me to dedicate myself. I sometimes think that I’ve lived my whole life by default and that I don’t exert any consistent control over where my life is going. For example, I work at the City of Oakland because I came out high in the selection process. I didn’t even start off wanting to work in the East Bay.” Jackson grabbed a dry towel and headed into the showers with Wesley. “It’s more than that, really, more than being driven. I have never really had an all-consuming desire for anything. It’s scary, like I’m drifting through my life.”

Before he disappeared in the steam of the showers, Wesley jibed, “Thank you for sharing the fact that you’re suffering from attention deficit disorder.”

Jackson smiled. What did he expect? This was one of his macho male friends; there could be no intimate exchange without some derision. He had unthinkingly just done the same thing to Wesley. That was part of the game. There were too many games. Too many rules. Too many things to worry about. He stood under the shower, wanting the hot water to wash all thoughts from his mind with its cleansing heat. He wanted to lose himself in the pounding heat of the streams of water. Yet he could not find even momentary peace. He began to see metaphors in the shower. He was part of an eternal human flow, a fluid of countless faces. Funneled through the vast sprinkler head of birth to different destinations, some to be stopped by objects in midflight, others to hit the wall, while still others evaporated into the very air that was breathed by all. As he walked out of the shower, Jackson wondered which stream his grandfather had passed through, and at what destination he would soon arrive.

Wesley was almost dressed when Jackson got back to his locker. He gave Jackson a questioning look and said, “Damn, man, I thought you drowned. What were you doing in there, masturbating?”

“Thinking,” Jackson answered as he began to dress.

“Thinking?” Wesley challenged. “About what?”

“Life, my grandfather; the whole ball of wax.”

“That’s it? That’s all you thought about during a two-hour shower?”

“Lifetimes have been spent in resolving issues smaller than these.”

“Suppose you tell me in plain English what the hell we’re talking about.”

“My grandfather may be dying. He was a man who took many lives,
who was addicted to the drama of violence. If there is a soul that exists after death, is there some grand scheme of poetic justice that exacts payment for negative deeds?”

“You’re talking about heaven and hell,” Wesley said, fixing his tie. “If you’re a Christian, you’ve already bought into some alternative of this scenario. But ain’t nobody but the dead really got answers to these questions. It’s a riddle that can’t be answered. I say, let’s go get a drink.”

“I don’t think I’m up for it,” Jackson said, buttoning his shirt. “I’ve got a lot of things to think about.”

“Give me a break! Like you’re going to find answers to this tonight?” Wesley picked up his gym bag. “Aren’t you ready to go yet?”

Jackson pulled on his slacks and sat down to put on his socks and shoes. “Something my grandmother said keeps running through my mind,” he said as he slammed his locker shut and picked up his bag.

“It’s only seven-thirty!” Wesley grumbled as they walked out of the dojo. They were greeted by a brisk wind coursing up the Broadway corridor, chilling their scalps, which were still wet from the shower.

Suddenly, a drink in a nice, warm establishment didn’t seem that bad an idea to Jackson. “Okay,” he conceded. “Let’s go to Justin’s.” There was nothing awaiting him at his house except work and convoluted memories.

Justin’s was one of three black-owned bars in the Jack London Square area. It catered primarily to black professionals, but there was a smattering of Asians and whites who also frequented the establishment. The walls were gray but the furnishings were done in pink and black. There was a pink neon light encased in Plexiglas which ran the length of the wall behind the bar. The bar itself was a long, narrow, angular black Formica construction which thrust out into the room. There were a series of high black Formica tables scattered throughout the main room around the bar. Each table had its accompaniment of tall, pink stools. The decor was hard to ignore, but generally Justin’s was so crowded one did not notice its interior colors. However, after seven in the evening on a Monday night, the bar crowd had begun to dissipate; there were even a couple of unoccupied tables when Jackson and Wesley entered. They stepped aside for two women who were leaving and then made their way to a vacant table.

Wesley craned his neck to give the departing women a last appraising look. “Looks like we missed some meat on the hoof.”

“Watch yourself!” Jackson retorted as he looked around for the waitress. “This is the Bay Area. If some woman hears you talk like that, you could find yourself being stomped by a frenzied mob of indignant
Mother Jones
feminists.”