Authors: Mark Wisniewski
DEESH
GABE’S LATEST BLUE STREAK
changes direction as sharply as my first right turn after Bark shot the cop. Gabe
has a little something to propose, just a little idea he’s saying just now popped
up in his head, an idea for a possible plan for me. The plan, the
plan
, his plan for me, is that he and I both keep on together, keep on heading upstream
in his boat, for a good couple of hours. And that while we stick together like brothers
and continue on, he’ll teach me all the finer points of baiting a hook and casting
a line and catching bass, because a guy can’t live more than a week or two without
protein, and I myself can’t risk shooting squirrels, or shooting anything, for that
matter, since regardless of how much ammo a guy has to spare, the sound of a gunshot
in these woods risks a warden rushing toward him faster than wildfire.
And, yes—of course—I would need to put down the gun in
order to cast, so he won’t push any of these fishing lessons on me, certainly not
now, not right at this moment, because he understands me, he
gets
how I need to keep the gun on him—he’d do the same thing if he were me—but of course,
being himself, he also would like me to put the gun down, not only for his own personal
safety but also for mine, because, if I, Deesh, think about it, I don’t need another
count of murder or even just kidnapping added to the list of the counts already piling
up against me. He’s sure I’ve already thought this through. But he really does want
me to know he’s been thinking it through also, because, see, he really does want to
help me, really does want what’s best for me.
“You saying you believe I didn’t shoot that cop?” I ask, to slow down—or, shit, end—this
particular blue streak or, if not, to remind him that if he, (a), really does have
heart problems, and, (b), truly wants this boat ride to be good for both of us, he
should probably take a breath now and then to let a brother say something.
And his answer to my question wastes no time:
“Oh, no,” he says. “I think you shot him.”
So now my eyes stay as riveted on his damned white-guy face as his are on the gun.
“I just think he deserved it,” he explains.
“Why did he deserve it?”
“Because he was racist.”
“But man, you weren’t there.”
“I didn’t need to be. I’ve seen this scenario play out enough on the news. How many
times do we need to see it reported after the black guy is killed? How many racist
cops do we need to hire and suspend and put on trial and finally stick in jail? And
you
know
we probably hear about less than a tenth of the shit.”
“But—”
“Deesh, this is a fucked-up country. It is totally fucked. It’s just one big old melting
pot of hatred. And it just keeps boiling.”
“But how do you know
I
wasn’t the hater?”
“Because I’ve been around haters. Been around the best of them, and you can tell.
Just listen to how they talk, and you can tell.”
And this, he then says, reminds him to give me the matches in his tackle box. And
to show me what kind of tree branches to use to make the fires I’ll need to fry the
bass I’ll catch. And I’ll need to remember never to make a fire during the day, or
even at night unless it’s cloudy, since neither he nor I will want anyone to notice
smoke rising past his land’s treetops, which of course would provoke suspicion.
Because, well, we both now need to remember these
are
his woods, but they’re not. He alone is paying the mortgage that says he owns them,
but when it comes to land in this part of Pennsylvania, long-held land prime for fishing
and hunting and hiking and fracking and whatnot, there are always rights-of-way and
shared borders and so forth, and of course there are also state laws that apply to
every hunter and hiker and gem collector who might want to encroach, at least theoretically
speaking, but that’s not his point.
His point is the plan. That wasn’t the
whole
plan, what he’s told me so far. The whole plan, he explains after his eyes cross
briefly and he blinks them back into alignment while he takes a ragged breath—the
whole plan ends with him taking me to the empty hunting cabin that sits in these woods,
these woods that are mostly his except for a right-of-way owned by a contractor from
Philly who comes up very rarely,
maybe
once a year, sometimes not at all—but certainly, definitely only in fall—when deer
hunting is legal.
Deer hunting, if he, Gabe, now can remember correctly, begins in October. October
15th or 20th or 25th. Or something like that, but it’s definitely in October. Which
means the cabin’s always empty now. The cabin’s all mine. The cabin’s all mine for
the summer at least and, with any luck, pretty much forever.
JAN
THERE WAS ALWAYS
another place to look, certainly always Bill Treacy’s feed store and the tavern in
town, and every morning Tug checked the shed in the woods behind Jasper’s cabin, and
Tug and I again and again asked around at the track, and after eight days of such
checking and looking and asking, we returned to the Corcoran house almost as a couple
would, and Jasper, anchored across the kitchen table from Colleen, glanced over at
Tug, and Tug said, “Nope.”
“Well, let’s face it,” Colleen said. “This isn’t good.”
And I thought, It’s
horrible
. But I didn’t dare say that.
And that was the thing about being in that house. The Corcorans acted as if you solved
problems by simply not talking about them, which I
knew
made them worse. But at the same time it kind
of lent you hope, so soon you almost liked keeping your mouth shut—or keeping on while
waiting for someone else to speak.
So I did that for a good while, as my mother reheated Tug and I a lunch of fried bluegills
someone had caught from the lake. And I did it a while longer as Tug picked at his
food and I ate nothing at all. Colleen then suggested that Tug join her and Jasper
that afternoon, because today, finally, after eight days of Colleen’s consternation
about whether they should or whether they shouldn’t, she’d decided that they’d skip
the Podunk sheriff and go straight to the state police district headquarters forty-some
miles away. And Tug nodded a yes, as if nothing being said were at all a big deal,
much as he still seemed to be trying to keep me from knowing how undoubtedly fucked-up
everything was.
And when he and Colleen and Jasper got there, to the non-Podunk state police district
headquarters, a trooper eyed Tug on and off while he asked Jasper about Tug’s father’s
gambling pals, and Jasper answered some of those questions reluctantly, some maybe
dishonestly, but always, Tug thought, for his family’s own good. Then an older trooper
had Colleen sign a missing persons report, which he said he’d file immediately.
And it wasn’t until after Tug and Colleen had finished their business there, on their
way down those headquarters’ concrete stairs, that Tug eased up on worrying enough
to imagine running in the dark with me, and again he wanted to buy me something I’d
like that would show he’d always care, so right there, within earshot of Jasper, he
gathered the spine to ask Colleen the kind of question Tom would have considered too
intrusive.
“Mom, I need some of my tuition money—could you get it?”
“What do you mean
get
it?” Colleen said.
“I mean withdraw it.”
“Tug, that cash went into an account only your father can touch. You’ll have to ask
him when he comes back.”
And on those stairs Tug tried to accept what she’d meant.
She’d meant:
Honey, that cash is long gone.
DEESH
EACH BEND IN THIS STREAM
presents the threat that we���ll sail directly into the range of a loaded firearm
held by a redneck or a warden or a trooper or a strapping buck from the FBI, though
so far we’ve seen no such life-forms here, just the hind legs of an orange fawn leaping
between Christmas trees to escape us, then a pair of small yellow butterflies tumbling
over each other, and then, way up there, a hawk or an eagle, who knows which, circling
so high it seemed closer to the rolling gray clouds than to us.
But now there seems to be more to Gabe’s plan than he first told me. Or so he’s now
informing me. The plan also includes his suggestion that he and I never be in contact
once he drops me at the cabin. Of course he’ll give me all this fishing gear, the
tackle box no problem, matches included, the lunch bag of bread and liverwurst and
so on if it turns out we get to the cabin before we feel
hungry enough to stop, and, now that Gabe thinks about it, he’ll need to replenish
my stock of matches every few months or so. But he can do that, he’s
willing
to do that—just “happen” to drop a box of kitchen matches on the shore near the cabin
when he’s up that way guiding a client—even though there is some risk involved—for
both of us—in our being in contact after he drops me off, since, from his point of
view, of course, he’d be thrown in jail for having given me refuge like this. For
me, of course, the risk would be less significant. But there would be
some
. For me the risk would be that, if I felt that he and I had struck up a little friendship,
I might be tempted to head downstream to hang out with him now and then, which would
mean that if, say, by an almost inconceivable coincidence, he had a visitor, maybe
some woman—maybe this one particular woman in a plaid jacket who, twice now, has hiked
past the road just beyond his driveway whistling that one show tune, that one show
tune he should be able to remember right now but can’t—he just can’t—what the fuck—it
must be the synergistic effect of all the damned medications he needs to take thanks
to his botched heart surgery.
But the point, the point he’s trying to tell me, is there would be risk for me, too.
There would be risk for both of us if we stayed in contact. So the plan that stands
in his mind right now, albeit sketchy, is that, after he navigates me far enough upstream
and we take the short walk through virtually virgin woods to this basically unused
hunting cabin, we’ll
never see each other again, much as we would both, at that point, if I was happy with
where he’d taken me, be on the very best terms, wishing each other the best of luck
and all that.
And I think, He thinks I shot the cop.
He thinks I’m guilty.
Everyone
thinks I’m guilty.
And everyone includes Madalynn and Jasir.
And I, right now, in this boat, wonder if I can abide this. My aunt wouldn’t abide
this, none of my people would abide this—if my father somehow showed up right now,
he’d resent it as much as I do.
And I keep on resenting it while Gabe rows around a bend with the tight-lipped look
of a man who has just spoken his peace and a damned righteous one at that. And I resent
it well into Gabe’s next blue streak, which, since I’m barely listening, might be
about his heart surgery or the woman in the plaid jacket or—yeah, I’m sure he’s right
that he
could
probably go on for days about his ex-wife if I let him.
But I’m not going to let him. Because I can’t stop thinking that he thinks I shot
the cop. And of course I need to think. Everyone does. And sometimes everyone needs
to think on their own, and it’s now, as I realize this, that I can see myself pulling
this trigger. Because the more a guy who thinks you’re a killer yaps on about his
owned fucked-up life, the more he can get on your nerves, to the point that you start
thinking things like how shooting him right now, smack in the middle of him talking
about shit you hardly care about, would be doing him a favor, too.
And of course he has no clue I’m thinking any of this. How could he, with him not
giving me a chance to talk? So now here I am, waving the gun wildly in front of him,
wildly for sure and still pointed in his direction, kind of aggressively, hell-yes
risking that it might go off and put a bullet into
some
nearby life if not his, and finally, right about when he notices enough to shut up,
I say,
“Gabe.”
“What?”
And here another twitch comes up through me, startled as I am
that his talking’s stopped, but I absorb this one to keep the gun aimed. “How do you
know so much about hatred?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said you thought I shot the cop because you know so much about hatred. And I’d
just like to know why you think you’re such an expert.”
“I didn’t say
you
hated the cop,” he says. “I said the cop hated you.”
“I know. But what made you such an expert on hatred that you knew the cop hated me?”
“Oh,” he says. “You don’t want to hear that whole story.”
“But I do, man. I really do. Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking.”
“Fine,” he says, and off he goes, on blue streak number eight or nine or, fuck, ten,
and the thing about listening to a guy talk on and on for several hours is that it
does help him get into your head—you start hearing his rhythms when you think—maybe
you’re even
starting to
want what he wants,
which can be a problem if you’re holding a gun on him and he wants you to put it down.
But that’s just me. Just me telling you how it feels listening to his eighth or ninth
or tenth blue streak, this one about a woman, another woman, a woman he’s certainly
lost contact with, a woman he doesn’t love at all. A woman he calls The Man Hater.
And a Man Hater, he’s now explaining, in a shy but lecturelike mode, is exactly that:
anyone who hates anyone born male. Yes, most Man Haters are female, but not all of
them, he says. In a sense, he says, a Man Hater is not different at all from people
who’ve despised me because I’m black—both a Man Hater and a racist like the cop he’s
sure I shot won’t empathize with you, or hear you out, or even as much as give you
the benefit of the doubt. Once they see you’re born with that certain physical characteristic
they despise, they
plug themselves into their hatred and let it rule you and them. No doubt, he says,
there are also Woman Haters and White Haters. He’s sure there are haters of all the
various ways that people are born to be. American citizenship, he thinks, encourages
hatred. But it’s beyond America, he says. It’s international. It’s why there’s war,
certainly why there’s terrorism. 9-11, he’s sure, happened because of Haters of Christians
and Jews. He guesses most everyone in the world has been hated at least once. In fact,
he says, he would bet on this.
“You’re talking about discrimination,” I say.
“I’m talking about hatred,” he says. “Hatred, Deesh, when you really stop to think
about everything? Hatred is the world’s most wanted public enemy.”
I nod. He’s freaking playing you, I think. This is all just to get you to lose the
gun.
But he hasn’t once glanced at the gun since blue streak number six. Though maybe that’s
all an act. Either way he talks on, rowing, yeah, and sometimes studying a shoreline
but mostly talking, about how this Man Hater he knew was the chair of the English
Department at the university where he last tried to be what he’s always wanted to
be, a literature professor—poetry. About how this Man Hater’s hatred of him contaminated
his love of teaching and even his marriage. How, when he proposed to his wife and
she said yes, they’d thought he’d bring in at least his modest salary as a professor,
so when he was later denied tenure, their finances were screwed.
All bullshit, I think. All a freaking con. But I know how to deal with cons—give them
time and ask questions. Any con man anywhere, on Eighth Avenue or on a hoops court
in the Bronx or, probably, on any stream where guys like Gabe fish, will eventually
lie to you so long and often that something will stop making sense.
So I say, “You hadn’t factored in The Man Hater.”
“Exactly,” he says, and now he’s swallowing hard, touching his face, scratching the
side of his scalp—the guy is nervous.
“No one warned you about her?” I say. “When you first started teaching at this university?”
“Nope. Then again, most of my colleagues were female.”
“Like most dudes on Wall Street are white.”
“Exactly,” he says, and our eyes meet, then part ways.
“What did your wife think about all this?” I ask.
“Didn’t believe it either. At least not at first. She thought I was just a shitty
professor. And then she simply didn’t want to talk about it. I mean, it was just too
tense and confusing for both of us, with all my students giving me positive evaluations
but my boss telling me I wasn’t going to get tenure. There was kind of this vibe that
if I was a good husband who really loved his wife, I’d figure out how to keep paying
the mortgage. You know, from my wife’s perspective, at some point it became more about
the bills and the credit cards than it was about how I and this Man Hater felt.”
Talk on, Professor, I think. Talk.
And right then, as if Bark’s gun betrays my mistrust, he shuts up on me. He casts.
Reels. Casts again. He sighs. I doubt that, right now, he cares at all about catching
fish.
I say, “You stay married?”
He sets down the fishing gear, rows intently. It’s like he wants to disappear more
than I do.
“Not for long,” he says.
“And?”
“And what.”
“She didn’t love you?”
Rowing harder, he grins for the sake of making a show of it. “Man, you go right after
what counts.”
“Can you blame me?” I say. “I just want to know if you’re bullshitting me.”
“About what?”
“This.” I wave the gun. “Who shot this gun, why we’re on this boat trip, why you have
these stupid theories about Man Haters—
everything
.”
He glances at the gun, blinks hard. He faces the shoreline and rows on.
Cliffs flank the stream, purple wildflowers crowded up against both shorelines. It’s
tight here, the only way through.
“At some point after my boss began messing with me,” he says, “my wife became mean.”
And that’s all he says, with no blue streak attached.
And I feel sorry for the pudgy sonofabitch. Really feel sorry, like you would for
a real friend.
So I say, “Mean’s hard to love, man.”
“But, see, Deesh, my wife was cool before we got married. We understood each other.
We were on the same team. But that all changed when The Man Hater began making sure
I wouldn’t get tenure.”
“How’d she do that?”
“Assigned me goals that no human being could possibly reach. And made up lies about
me. You make up one good lie about a male professor in a department of women hired
and chaired by a Man Hater, that male professor can kiss his
career
good-bye.”
He rows on, and I keep the gun aimed, maybe a little lower, but still set. Gnats try
to distract me, and I swat at them.
“So what, then—your wife divorced you?”
And I feel both of us, on our insides, sinking down.
He lets go of the oars, grabs a fishing rod, wings a cast that lands his bait smack
between two gray rocks. There are plenty of ways not to tell the truth, I think. One
of those ways is to run from it.
Then, after nothing but a sneeze from me, off Gabe goes, on another blue streak, this
one about the heart murmur his doctor found just after his divorce, how the sound
of that murmur led to his botched surgery, how he now needs to take all sorts of medications,
blood thinners and beta-blockers and statins and “whatever,” how side effects from
the statins have him trying to replace the statins with plant sterols and red-rice
yeast tablets of various dosages. How, yeah, there’s been Percocet as well as on-and-off
reliance on antidepressants, how, yes, it causes him shame but he probably needs to
admit to depression, how he has these “little episodes.”
“What do you mean, ‘little episodes’?”
“It’s just a little hard to see sometimes,” he says. “Things get blurry. Sometimes
I black out. But usually not for very long.”
And there I sit, across from this ill man in his boat, my own body perfectly healthy
as far as I know, holding a gun on him.
“Because you
need
me, right, Deesh?” Gabe says. He rows very hard, but he’s playing it up, grinning
like a maniac. “Without me,” he all but shouts, “you can’t get to that cabin!”
He’s jacked up for sure. Reminds me of drunken Friday nights with Bark and James back
when we were all cool, and yeah, yeah, I’m smiling, but fuck him.
“Which I’m happy to do,” he says seriously. “But you do realize a guy can’t expect
to be a hundred percent, particularly after they saw him open and slice up his ticker—right?”
Bullshit, I think.
Bull
shit.
Get him talking again. About heart surgery. He’ll mess up fast if he’s not being completely
straight.
So I say, “From what I’ve heard, man, not too long after heart surgery, a lot of people
feel great. Hell, they run marathons.”
“That’s if you had a little bypass,” he says. “I had two new valves put in.”
“Valves are a bigger deal than a bypass?”
“Mine were.” He inhales slowly through his nose, lets a breath out through his intentionally
open mouth, and I think, He is
unreal
, with this bullshit. But there’s no bringing him back now, gone as he is into a new
blue streak, this one about how, in his case, the surgeon “bungled” the suturing on
of the new valves. How anyway that was if you asked Gabe’s lawyer. How of course if
you asked his surgeon, his surgeon did a perfectly fine job, and how the surgeon has
a team of fourteen doctors and nurses and technicians to back him up. How what he,
Gabe, was now trying to say—to me, Deesh, today—was that these fourteen people were
all trained professionals who were there, completely awake, doing what they did for
a living. And he was of course
out
, completely anesthetized, so who was he to say that the surgeon botched it?