Outer Banks (5 page)

1.

The king showed up at the Loon's tree house just before dawn, and if the Loon hadn't been expecting him, he probably wouldn't have recognized him. He had shaved off his bushy beard and had cut his hair short, rather clumsily, it appeared, with a knife. He looked a little psychotic. He was dressed in a burlap grain bag with holes cut in it for his head and arms and a length of half-inch rope tied around his waist for a belt. He was barefoot. In a small bundle, he had a wooden begging bowl, a string hammock, and a brick-sized bar of solid gold which he said was his Atonement Gift. Evidently, he intended to present it at the Empire State Building.

—Jesus, you're really dressing down for this, aren't you? the Loon observed.—Is it okay if I wear something a bit fancier?

—Whatever, was the dour reply, so the Loon put on a powder-blue, wet-look jumpsuit with a long gold scarf tied at the throat.

2.

It was already evident, from the king's appearance, that the journey was going to be arduous.—Maybe I'd better bring my credit cards, the Loon suggested hopefully.

—Whatever, the king replied.

After taking a quick peek into the king's bundle, the Loon packed one for himself—begging bowl, string hammock, offering (a thumb-sized block of Moroccan hash), plus a few extras: the Ten Essentials (see p. 25), and his packet of internationally honored credit cards.—Well, he announced,—I'm ready.

The king murmured,—Whatever, and they started out across the park, heading in an easterly direction, toward Fifth Avenue. They hadn't traveled more than thirty or forty yards, however, when the sun came up. Immediately, the Loon hung his hammock from two small maples, wrapped himself in his U.S. Army blanket, and dropped off to sleep.

The king looked at his companion, shrugged and said,—Whatever, to himself and sat down on the ground to meditate. He certainly was a Changed Man, and no one was more aware of this fact or more impressed by its significance than he himself, he meditated.

3.

The first obstacle they encountered was the jungle. It was a dark and moonless night. They could hear the roars of the hunting beasts and the high-pitched wails of the hunted. A small, magenta bird with its head torn off fell at their feet.—I think we're in the jungle, the Loon said.

A large, dark jaguar crossed the path a few feet in front of them, dragging with its mouth the broken, bleeding carcass of a spotted fawn, while a pair of hyenas, delirious with barking laughter, followed after. The heavy, moist air was filled with feathers, fur, and the smell of blood. At the river, crocodiles were catching unwary drinkers, peccaries, small deer, armadillos, yanking them into the slow, muddy waters, tearing them apart and devouring them. Snakes fell to the ground with rubbery thumps and rushed slithering after lizards, rodents, small apes, to crush and swallow them.

At last, the sky began to silver at the eastern edge, and they saw a trading post, where they quickly went in and enjoyed a sumptuous Polynesian meal.—Good old American Express! toasted the Loon, raising his rum-filled coconut.

4.

They were crossing the desert. In the moonlight, the sand was like a sea of silver grain. The king, plodding through the sand, silently beat his breast.

—You know, Egress, the Loon said to him,—I was wondering. After you've paid this penance, what then?

—Whatever.

—Jesus Christ! the Loon exclaimed petulantly.—You haven't said anything but “Whatever” since we left! I suppose that's part of the penance, too!

—Whatever, repeated the king, and, in heavy silence, slogged on.

5.

Scaling and crossing the Great Snowy Mountains was neither easy nor painless, especially the way they were dressed. At the Divide, they were hit by a blizzard and for three days huddled in a snow-cave, waiting out the storm. They surely would have frozen to death or starved, had they not, on the second day, been joined by a small band of Abenakis. The Indians were fleeing the genocidal persecution of Abenakis that had followed the deaths of Princes Egress, Dread, and Orgone, violent deaths in which the tribe was slightly implicated. Their leader, named Horse, was wearing a jukebox. The others were dressed in the usual flashy, slightly tacky, Indian costumes. They had corn, venison, maple syrup, bread, birch beer, quail, baked potatoes, raisins, apples, and some good New Mexico grass—plenty for all, though the king accepted only a few crusts of bread, which he washed down with snow-melt.

—He's trying to get tight with God, the Loon explained to them.

Ah, the redmen nodded, understanding. They, of course, did not recognize the king, and the Loon wisely thought it best not to tell them.

6.

Horse and the Abenakis led them down the eastern slope of the Great Snowy Mountains to the plain, where they parted company. The Indians headed south to New Mexico; the Pilgrims headed north to the Empire State Building, the prime shrine in the religious life of every believer in the Empire State. At one time or another during their lifetimes, most true believers managed to make it to the great, stone spire, to worship there in awed silence, perhaps even to join in the traditional penny-dropping ceremony afterward. The king's all-consuming passion was the dropping of his gold brick. He pictured himself standing humbly at the top, head bowed, dropping his fifty-pound offering over the edge into the windy, abysmal space below, and at that precise instant, the very hand of God Himself would reach down from His perch to touch him on the nape of his neck, forgiving him, freeing him to return home in a 747 jumbo jet, King Egress the Hearty, home again, victorious, self-transcendent, a truly enlightened despot! A grateful people; a gracious ruler: It would be his finest hour!

7.

On and on they walked. Until they came to the sea, and here they had to stop. The Loon stripped and ran into the foaming surf, delighted with the chance for a moonlit swim. He laughed and splashed and called to the king, but got no response. The king sat down on the beach and waited. Finally, the Loon came out of the water, giggling and rubbing his body to warm it.—Terrific ocean, Egress! You ought to try it. Wash some of that roadfilm off.

Nothing. What a drag, the Loon thought. If he weren't such a good walker, I'd think he had tired blood.—Okay, ol' buddy, he said to the king,—how're we going to get across? This is your trip, so navigate, please.

Just as the king was about to say—Whatever, a large, silent boat appeared out of the shadows. The boat was of Egyptian design, constructed entirely of papyrus reeds, and was being poled along in the shallow water by a dwarf-like gondolier singing Wagner at the top of his voice. He saw the pilgrims and pushed his sturdy craft in to the beach.—Gif a lift? he queried.

—Do you take credit cards for payment? the Loon asked back.

—Ya, all kinds! Ve got da cross-now-pay-later plans for effrey-buddy! Climb aboard! he sang, and they did, the Loon somewhat apprehensively.

8.

On the crossing; which took a little over fourteen weeks, the king began to come out of his grim withdrawal. The first break came early the first night out. The dwarf, who seemed an excellent sailor, was whistling aft, busying himself with knots and scrimshaw. The king and the Loon lay on the foredeck, watching the full moon rise out of the ink-dark sea.—This afternoon I dreamed of disaster, the king informed his companion.

—No kidding, the Loon said.

—I saw a bloody moon hanging in a white sky. I saw a museum sculpture garden with all the statues carefully beheaded. I saw four sets of bloody handprints upon a white wall, and every hand was missing the middle finger. I saw two rooks fly into the sun, and only one returned. The king lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

—So what are you going to do? the Loon asked, studying the moon with affection.

—I don't know yet, but I'm beginning to think that my wife had something to do with the deaths of my sons. It's still only a feeling, but a strong one.

—Can you
dig
that moon! the Loon said rapturously.

9.

The third night out, the king walked onto the foredeck and saw the Loon lying on his belly, watching the moon rise out of the sea again. The king crept up behind his friend, dropped to his knees, undid the Loon's blue jumpsuit, spread his buttocks, and silently sodomized him.

Finishing, he uncoupled and fell away. He leaned against the mast and began to talk about his childhood, which, to the Loon, sounded awful. The king, however, was speaking with fondness and the kind of hazy nostalgia that often comes over a man on a long sea voyage.

10.

After ten days at sea, the king talked constantly of his wife, the queen, and her nefarious plots against him and his sons. Also, he screwed the Loon at least once a night, much to the erotic delight of the boatman.

—I guess you don't feel so guilt-ridden anymore, eh? the Loon panted.

—Not really, the king said, zipping up the Loon's jumpsuit.—But after all, isn't that what a pilgrimage is
for
?

11.

One night on the foredeck, the king, leaning exhausted against the mast, waxed slightly philosophical:—I think that guilt, once perceived,
i.e.
, experienced, is a passion, to be spent, like other passions. The meanings of most things, of passions, certainly, lie wholly in their enactments or in analytical description,
i.e.
, reenactment of those things. The point of human life,
when it comes right down to it, is simply to provide content for the otherwise empty forms of reality. The basic difficulty of human life is in knowing when a particular form has been sufficiently filled, or perceived, experienced—knowing when an experience has become redundant. Thus, most of the “good” life is an exercise in good taste, and I do mean ethically.

—Is it safe to assume, then, that you no longer feel guilty? the Loon asked wearily.

—Right! the king said, surprised.—You know, Lon, for a kid with no college degree, you certainly can think abstractly.

—Thanks, said the Loon.

12.

After one hundred days at sea, they docked in Liverpool, where they caught a train to London, a cab to the airport, and a jumbo jet for home, first-class.

—Good old American Express! the king said, raising his champagne glass in a toast.

—Yay, said the Loon quietly. He was thinking of the block of Moroccan hash he had brought as an offering for the Empire State and how much he was going to enjoy smoking it when he got back to the tree house.—Yay, he said, clinking the king's glass with his own.

—Kiss-kiss, you little devil, said the king happily.

—Kiss-kiss-kiss, answered the Loon.

The king lit a large Cuban cigar.—“Yay,” huh? Heh, heh, heh. God, Loon, that's rich! You're such a disgusting faggot, the king said chuckling.

R
EMEMBER
M
E TO
C
AMELOT

A Novel

by Naomi Ruth Sunder

1.

“Be good to Kay,” Rex instructed his eldest son, Bif. “Your mother's never been on her own before, she doesn't know how to take care of herself, son,” he explained to the boy.

I stood somberly in the center of the living room with Hunter and Rory, fighting back the tears, proud of our three little boys, our little men, but proudest of Rex, my husband, because I understood the deep pain he was feeling at this, the moment of his departure. He was leaving us—perhaps forever.

Our country in her need had called him from the side of his loved ones, and he had no choice but to go. Rex was a major in the Air Force Reserve, and his unit had been activated for combat duty in Vietnam, which at that time I couldn't even have located on a map. They needed all the veteran pilots they could get, and Rex, in Korea more than a decade earlier, before Bif was born, had been one of the best in the skies. He had been almost legendary, and, as he leaned down to kiss me good-bye, I saw him wink away a tear with a brave grin, and I knew that he was still one of the best.

We kissed, long and joyously, and then he patted each of us on the top of the head and walked out the door to the waiting car.

2.

It
was
true, what Rex had said to Bif—I had never been on my own before, and I didn't know how to take care of myself. I had been the only child of protective parents, raised in Sarasota, Florida, where, as a fifteen-year-old girl trying out for the cheerleading squad, I had met Rex. He was two years older than I, a junior and the captain of the football team.

We fell in love that autumn, the season I made the cheerleading squad and the football team went undefeated, and from the first, ours was a love that never wavered or wandered off center. Rex was everything I wasn't, and thus it was only with him and through him that I felt completed. He was stern and disciplined, sophisticated yet rough-hewn, gentle but at the same time demandingly straightforward.

And there was a sense in which I completed him, too, for I allowed him to be tender and naive, shy and insecure—character traits he otherwise would have been ashamed of and would have denied himself.

3.

As soon as Rex graduated from Sarasota High, we got married. It was the summer of 1950 and the second half of the twentieth century had just begun. How were we to know that war with the Orientals would break out and, within a year, with me pregnant, would separate us?

Rex went to Texas as an Air Force cadet and earned his wings in record time. I closed up our little apartment, put our wedding gifts and furniture in storage, and went home to live with my mother and father. Three weeks after Rex had left Texas for Korea, I gave birth to our first son, Rex, Jr., whom Rex in his letters instructed me to call “Bif,” the name by which he had been known when he played fullback for Sarasota High.

Even from that great a distance, Rex was a doting father. My parents and I would laugh gaily over his long letters filled with
careful instructions as to how we should care for his namesake and how my parents should care for me. In some ways, Rex was able to make it seem that he had never left. In my heart, though, I knew how far away he really was.

4.

But now it was twelve years later, and just as the Vietnam War was different from the Korean, Rex's absence from his family was different. Over a decade had passed between the wars, and our life together and our lives separately had changed in many subtle ways.

When Rex had come back from Korea, taller, leaner and, yes, harder than when he had left, we had been able to resume our life almost as if there had been no interruption at all. And in a real way, for, when he had been drafted, our life together had not yet had a chance to begin, there
was
no interruption. As if his absence had never existed, and as if we had not begun at all, we were able to begin anew.

We bought a new, three-bedroom mobile home with a cathedral ceiling in a mobile home park over by the Bay, and Rex went back to work for his father's plumbing company, a journeyman plumber, as before, starting at the bottom, as before. But, “The sky's the limit!” he used to say to me, late at night as we talked in bed of our plans and hopes for the future.

I was newly pregnant with Hunter, and touching my swelling womb, feeling the life stir there, knew how right he was. “Oh, Rex, not even the
sky
can limit
us
!” I would tell him, as he drifted peacefully off to sleep.

5.

Hunter was born, a healthy, bright child, serious and intense from birth, just as Bif had been boisterous and cheerfully gregarious from birth. Hunter's personality brought out another side of Rex, a side I hadn't seen before. With his second son, Rex
was somber, morbid almost, encouraging in the boy, and thus in himself, activities that were solitary, physically strenuous, and somewhat dangerous—such as hunting and deep-sea fishing, rock-climbing, scuba diving. Was this a result of his war experiences, things he wouldn't talk about, couldn't talk about, even to me? I wondered helplessly.

“What else are you going to do with a boy named Hunter?” Rex would tease me whenever I asked him why, for example, he was encouraging his son to hunt alligators in the swamps with Negroes.

“But he's only a
boy,
” I would plead.

“A boy's only a small man,” he would explain to me.

I was no less concerned over Rex's enthusiasm for Bif's adventures in sports—Little League baseball, Pop Warner football, playing for two or three different teams at a time, day and night, throwing, batting, and kicking balls, sobbing exhausted and disconsolate whenever his team had failed to humiliate the other.

6.

When our third son was born, I named him Rory, after Rex's father, and determined to protect him, if possible, from the several influences of his father that I was fast learning to be frightened of.

As aspects of his whole personality, Rex's fierce competitive pride, his love of sports and danger, and his occasional, dark fascination with solitude did not in any way alarm me. But in our sons, one or another and sometimes several of these aspects became dominant, intimidating, and, eventually, I feared, killing the milder, sweeter traits which, in Rex, made me love him—his tenderness, his shyness, his naiveté, and his insecurity.

Immediately, it seemed, Rex sensed my protectiveness toward Rory, and he subtly undermined me, encouraging and thereby instilling in his youngest son yet another negative aspect of his own personality.

“You're like your mother,” he would tell him. “All emotions. Now, your mother is a wonderful woman, and I'm pleased that
one
of my sons is like her, so don't go thinking I'm putting you down, son.”

But of course poor Rory thought his father was rejecting him, so the only emotion he allowed himself to feel with passion was anger, raging, explosive anger, even as a child.

7.

Thus it was with deeply mixed emotions that I watched my husband in his Air Force major's uniform stride down the steps of our blue mobile home, cross the pebbled driveway to the white convertible waiting for him at the curb, pausing a second at the sidewalk to give Bif's soccer ball a friendly boot into the goal in the side yard. And then, flinging his flight bag into the back seat, he jumped into the low-slung car without opening the door and signaled to the lieutenant to take off, which, with a great roar of exhausts and squealing of tires, the lieutenant did.

Little did I know that I would never see my husband, my beloved Rex, again. If I had known it, or even had suspected it (I was so enthralled with the man that I imagined him winning the war quickly and returning home in a season), I never would have allowed myself to feel the wave of relief that swept over me as he drove away. I did not then understand that feeling, and naturally I felt terrible for having it, as if I were an
evil
woman. Rex had made my life possible. Without him, I had no reason for living. I knew that I loved him deeply. Why, then, did I feel this hatred for him?

8.

Happily, the feeling swiftly went away, and I began to miss Rex awfully. I stayed up late night after night writing long, amorous letters to him (one thing about my Rex, he was a marvelous
lover). My days were busier than ever, taken up completely with the boys and my housekeeping.

Then, one night late that summer, I was startled from my letter-writing by a telephone call from the Tampa hospital. There had been a terrible accident, the doctor told me, on the causeway between St. Petersburg and Tampa, and my mother and father, who had driven over to look at a new Golden Age planned community, had been killed. I quickly got my friend Judy from the trailer next door to baby-sit and took a bus to Tampa, as the doctor had suggested, to identify my poor mother and father.

“Yes,” I sobbed, “it's they!”

The doctor, a kind, handsome, young man with a blond moustache, comforted me by holding me in his arms. “There, there,” he said, “you'll be all right. They went together,” he reminded me. “Think how much that would have meant to them.”

I wiped away my tears, blew my nose, thanked him for all his trouble, and walked slowly out of the hospital into the cool, palmy night, terrified.

9.

Now I was truly on my own—in spite of what Rex had said to Bif. He had known as well as I that a twelve-year-old boy can't take care of a twenty-eight-year-old woman. He had said it mainly for Bif's benefit, not mine—so the boy would feel the proper responsibility, regardless of whether or not he could act on it.

At first, I had felt sorry for Bif, who was trying hard to live up to the terms of his charge, but then, as increasingly he began to order me around, I began to feel anger toward him. As long as my mother and father were still alive, I was able to get Bif to stop worrying over me simply by assuring him that Grandpa was taking care of us all while Daddy was away in Vietnam. But after the accident, even that assurance was no longer possible.

Then, finally, one evening about six months after my parents' death, all my anger flooded over. I served the boys a
supper of turkey hash on toast, leftovers from the roast turkey of the night before, and Bif slammed his little fists down on the table and said loudly, “We never had to eat this crap when
Dad
was at home! What makes you think it's any different now?”

I slapped him across the mouth with my open hand as hard as I could, sending him spinning off his chair to the floor. After calling Judy over to baby-sit, I stomped out and caught the bus to Tampa.

10.

I arrived home again just before dawn (the doctor, Ben, insisted on driving me in his new Buick sedan), exhausted, slightly woozy from the gin-and-tonics, and in spite of the endless shame I felt, still raging. The combination of guilt and anger was almost too much to bear, and I was afraid I was going mad, though Ben assured me that I was not, that it was perfectly normal for the wife of a man away in the service to feel this way.

I sent Judy home, and while I waited for the boys to get up for their breakfast, I sat down and tried to write a letter to Rex. I began the letter many times, tearing each new attempt to shreds just as I got to the place where I had to tell him I had let Ben make love to me. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't make that man's life any more painful than it already was. I remembered his last letter to me, received the day before.

At last, I heard the boys happily slamming each other with pillows, and wearily I got up and started setting the table for breakfast.

11.

That very afternoon, I received the letter from Washington, D.C., the Department of Defense, informing me that Rex's plane had been shot down by the enemy while on a mission over North Vietnam, and he had been taken prisoner. He was now a POW, and, as far as they knew, he was not injured.

In that one brief moment, as I read the letter, I felt my life turn over and go back to zero and start anew, the opposite of drowning. I still loved Rex, of course, but deep inside, I said a prayer of thanks to the North Vietnamese gunners who had shot him down. I would never be able to explain that gratitude to anyone, I was sure, and I probably could not explain it even to myself, but I could not deny to myself that I felt it, no matter how hard I tried. And though I was not especially proud of the feeling, neither was I ashamed of it.

I joined a group of POW wives from central Florida, and for a while went around with them, speaking to groups of men who were said to have influence in Washington in ways that would somehow benefit the POWs. But I could never quite understand how POWs or their wives could benefit from a more aggressive war policy, so I dropped out of the group. I took good care of my sons and our home, saw Ben about once a month, and just sort of cooled my heels for a while.

12.

Gradually, I became used to the idea that I was on my own and, therefore, had no choice but to take care of myself. I enrolled in night school and got my high school diploma with an ease that astounded me. I went on a diet and exercise program and studied yoga at the Sarasota YWCA. I started sending Rory to a reading
clinic, because of his disability, and no longer insisted that the boys get their haircuts where their father had always gotten his. I started trying new foods, exotic dishes, and occasionally took in an X-rated movie with Ben. I took driving lessons, got my license and borrowed the money from a bank to buy a Japanese station wagon.