The Fortress of Solitude (13 page)

His old teacher’s office was unchanged, so it might all be a dream, a mistake. He might be cutting out on a City College lecture at 135th Street to visit the Art Students League on 57th Street in 1961, might be again the Columbus Avenue kid gawking like he wasn’t even a New Yorker, like he was some hick loosed in hipsters’ paradise, positive he saw de Kooning around every corner, airing his fresh goatee and praying nobody would call him on the bluff, banish him back uptown. Back then Brooklyn had been unknown to him, apart from Coney Island, that distant faded Wonderland where, at seventeen and high on Coca-Cola, under the squeaking boardwalk, in bands of sun and shadow, he’d unclasped his first brassiere, Sasha Koster’s, and, balls aching, jetted spontaneously into his binding underwear. He should have known that by spilling seed there, in the cold littered sand of Brooklyn, he’d doomed himself. That though MacDougal and Bleecker Streets seemed his future he would instead marry a life-drawing model from Williamsburg, a Hunter dropout, a chain-smoker and pot-smoker, a hippie before there were hippies, and end up raising their child alone in a row house five blocks from the Gowanus Canal. By venting Sasha Koster’s breasts to the salt air he’d sworn himself to the borough.

His office was unchanged and Perry Kandel was unchanged, still genially shabby in an elbow-patched sweater, teeth and skin still gray as an erased charcoal sketch, hair wild like a
New Yorker
cartoon of a shrink. Kandel tipped his stolid middle over his desk to shake hands and wave at a chair, then sat back and spoke as if resuming pursuit of a conversational point to which he’d been building for half his life but wouldn’t reach if he lived twice.

“Thinkers aren’t thinking, Abraham, teachers aren’t teaching. The writers don’t write, they stand onstage and play with themselves instead, emulating Mailer and Ginsberg. We’ve lost a generation. Young men walk into my office and declare their intention to live in a geodesic dome and tend bees, or compose choral music in Esperanto. To do
happenings
. Tradition’s kaput. Nothing’s good enough, not since Warhol, that schmuck with earlaps. It isn’t interesting enough to be merely a man or a woman, even. I went to see a so-called film at the Quad and in three hours learned only that David Bowie is without a penis. Him, he can’t even play with himself. Me, I have a smaller ambition, to keep painters painting, a few, anyway. You, Abe, you’re a grave disappointment.”

“You said a job, Perry. Don’t torture me.”

“I regard it as an act of despair. You weren’t selling when you sold to Hagopian, you were burying the evidence like a guilty animal. You’re ashamed of paint, it embarrasses you. What, you’re surprised? You think word doesn’t reach me?”

“Has word of my wrecked marriage reached you?” Abraham Ebdus spoke the words he hadn’t to this point, and looked his old teacher in the eye, wanting to shock and silence him. In fact, he’d shocked only himself. Perry Kandel didn’t even pause for breath.

“There’s a problem nobody’s solved. A painter leaves a trail of wrecked marriages should he be so lucky to get laid in the first place, but, but, but—essentially he persists in covering canvas with rabbit-skin glue and pigment. That’s how he earns the right to go on wrecking them.”

Abraham wasn’t going to descend to mentioning
son
, or
mortgage
. “If what you told me on the telephone was just to get me here for a lecture—”

“Listen, it’s a job. Whether it’s for you, you’ll decide. It would involve the application of paint with a brush, but only for purely tasteless and reprehensible ends, so relax. Your renunciation of your talent should remain uncompromised.”

“I appreciate the concern.”

“It’s nothing. An editor acquaintance, a clever man to whom I frequently lose sums at the poker table, he asked if I knew any young painters with both a figurative and an abstract bent, and with a sense of color. I said sure, a couple. He presides over a line of science-fiction paperbacks, which he wants to market with an eye on adults for a change,
the college crowd
, god knows what he imagines that is. For this he wants someone outside the usual hack commercial painters. He used the word
upscale
. Personally, I hear that word, I tremble. I wouldn’t want it applied to myself.”

Though certain to resume his galactic harangue before long, Perry Kandel paused now to savor his own last rhetorical flourish like he was sucking on an invisible cigar. Then, price extracted—Abraham Ebdus was more than usually conscious this day that every single thing in the world had its price—his old teacher scribbled a name and a phone number on the pink duplicate copy of a student evaluation form and pushed it across the desk.

chapter  
6

R
abbit-furred parka hood laced tight around his neck, tunnel vision further reduced by his bowed head, the boy’s narrowed view consists only of his own ribbed Converse sneaker toes shooting forward in alternation through a fur-lined oval window of rushing-past pavement. He walks this way along Atlantic Avenue to Flatbush and Fourth, hands plunged in pockets, winter giving a certain minimal cover, a chance to mask hands, face, all whiteness. Crossing Fourth he’s forced to lift the furred viewfinder, turn it right and left, searching for the right moment to cross the lanes of heavy traffic to the newsstand on the triangular island. Seen through the windshields of the steaming cars at the red light on Fourth, or through the dusty windows of the Doray Tavern or the Triangle Pawn Shop, the boy might resemble a mole or rat on two legs, gray hood tugged into a shape that resembles a darting, questing nose, one which sniffs air for danger.

The mole-figure now scurries across the intersection to the shelter of the newsstand. There he looks up again, turns the nose anxiously full circle, perhaps suspecting he’s been followed. Finally, satisfied, the mole crouches, under the indifferent eyes of the newsstand’s proprietor, a bearded Arab who warms his hands over the portable heater wedged at his feet in the narrow cubicle lined with
People
,
Diario
,
The Amsterdam News
. The mole kneels, peels up his pants leg, wrinkles down his orange-striped tube sock. Tucked moistly against his ankle is a paper dollar and three twenty-five-cent coins. It’s Tuesday. The mole-boy pushes the dollar and one of the quarters forward on the smooth-worn wooden lip of the newsstand, then gently works the freshly arrived comic books out of the cold metal racks. One each of
The Avengers #138
and
Marvel Team-Up #43
, featuring Spider-Man and Doctor Doom, and three copies of the debut issue of
Omega the Unknown
, an instant collector’s item, as promised by months of buildup in the “Marvel Bullpen Bulletins” columns in other titles. The proprietor glances, nods glazed consent. The mole-boy’s parka is opened for a dangerous instant, the comics slid ever so carefully into the waistline of his pants. The mole-boy closes his coat, relaxes his arms, tests to see that he’s walking normally, that the presence of the comics is concealed, but also that the precious #1s are uncrumpled. The remaining two quarters are now shifted to the coat pocket. They’re to travel with him, gripped in a clenched, sweaty fist, for offering up at the first opportunity, the slightest confrontation. Mugging money. Walk these streets with pockets empty, you’re an idiot, asking for it.

This creature of pure fear waddles home, tiny steps to be sure the comics don’t slip.

Once indoors the mole-boy sheds his protective cover.
The Avengers
and
Team-Up
are put aside, afterthoughts. Two copies of
Omega the Unknown
are tucked in sober plastic, the plastic is taped shut, the sealed bags moved to a high shelf, archived. The last copy, that’s for reading.

The heralded Omega? He turns out to be a mute superhero from another planet, pretty much Black Bolt mated with Superman, if you allowed the comparison. The comic is weird, worse than unsatisfying. Omega, it turns out, isn’t the main point of the thing. The majority of pages are given over to another character, a twelve-year-old kid with an unexplained psychic connection to Omega, a bullied, orphaned kid who’s going to a public junior high in Hell’s Kitchen.

Hey, maybe even the geniuses up at Marvel Comics knew you were in hell. Didn’t matter, didn’t help, because you weren’t allowed to know it yourself, not really. There wasn’t any connection between you and the poor, helpless kid in
Omega the Unknown
, not that you could permit yourself to see.

That kid? He just didn’t have any
street smarts
.

Sixth grade. The year of the headlock, the year of the
yoke
, Dylan’s heat-flushed cheeks wedged into one or another black kid’s elbow, book bag skidding to the gutter, pockets rapidly, easily frisked for lunch money or a bus pass. On Hoyt Street, on Bergen, on Wyckoff if he was stupid enough to walk on Wyckoff. On Dean Street, even, one block from home, before the dead eyes of the brownstones, in the shadow of the humming, implacable hospital. Adults, teachers, they were as remote as Manhattan was to Brooklyn, blind indifferent towers. Dylan, he was a bug on a grid of slate, white boy walking.

“Yoke him, man,” they’d say, exhorting. He was the object, the occasion, it was irrelevant what he overheard. “Yoke the white boy.
Do
it, nigger.”

He might be yoked low, bent over, hugged to someone’s hip then spun on release like a human top, legs buckling, crossing at the ankles. Or from behind, never sure by whom once the headlock popped loose and three or four guys stood around, witnesses with hard eyes, shaking their heads at the sheer dumb luck of being white. It was routine as laughter. Yoking erupted spontaneously, a joke of fear, a piece of kidding.

He was dismissed from it as from an episode of light street theater. “Nobody hurt you, man. It ain’t for real. You know we was just fooling with you, right?” They’d spring away, leave him tottering, hyperventilating, while they high-fived, more like amazed spectators than perpetrators. If Dylan choked or whined they were perplexed and slightly disappointed at the white boy’s too-ready hysteria. Dylan didn’t quite get it, hadn’t learned his role. On those occasions they’d pick up his books or hat and press them on him, tuck him back together. A ghost of fondness lived in a headlock’s shadow. Yoker and yokee had forged a funny compact.

You regularly promised your enemies that what you did together had no name.

Dylan leaked saliva, tears. On a cold day a nostril path of snot. Once, pee. He’d bite his tongue and taste the seepage, the tang of humiliation swallowed back. They made faces, rolled eyes. Dylan was hopeless, stained with shame. They’d try to overlook it.

“Boy bleeds you touch him, dang.”

“Nah, man, he all right. Let him alone, man.”

“You ain’t gonna say nothin’, right? Cuz you know we just messin’ around. We wouldn’t never
do
nothin’ to you, man.”

He’d nod, collect himself, not open his mouth. Wait to be congratulated for gulping back a clog of tears, for exhibiting silence.

“See? You pretty cool, for a white boy. Get outta here now.”

White boy
was his name. He’d grown into it, crossed a line, become visible. He shined like free money. The price of the name was whatever was in his pockets at the time, fifty cents or a dollar.

“White boy, lemme talk to you for a minute.” Head tipped sideways, too lazy to take hands from pockets to summon him. One black kid, two, three. One near a bunch, maybe, you couldn’t say who was with who. Eyes rolled, laughing. The whole event a quotation of itself, a little boring, nearly an indignity to perform.

If he ignored it, tried to keep walking: “Yo,
white boy
! I’m
talking
to you, man.”

“What’s the matter, you can’t
hear
?”

No. Yes.

“You don’t like me, man?”

Helpless.

The fact of it: he’d cross the street to have his pockets emptied. The outcome was obvious anyway. He’d cross magnetized in disgrace, under the sway of an implicit yoking, so no one was forced to say
See now I got to fuck you up, cuz you don’t listen, man
. It was a dance, steps traced in yokes gone by.
Call me white boy and I’ll hand you a dollar spontaneously, I’m good at this now
.

“Just come here for a minute, man, I ain’t gonna hurt you. What you gotta be afraid for?
Dang
, man. You think I’m gonna hurt you?”

No. Yes.

The logic was insane, except as a polyrhythm of fear and reassurance, a seduction. “What you afraid of? You a
racist
, man?”

Me?

We yoke you for thinking that we might: in your eyes we see that you come pre-yoked.

Your fear makes it our duty to prove you right
.

He was caged on street corners, stranded anywhere. A pair of kids made a human jail, a box of disaster waiting on the innocent sunlit pavement, as though he’d climbed into the legendary abandoned refrigerator.

Two voices made paradoxical, unanswerable music. Their performance for one another’s sakes, not his. The pleasure was in counterpoint, no place for a third voice.

“Who you looking for? Ain’t nobody gonna help you, man.”

“Nah, man, chill out. This white boy’s all right, he’s cool. You don’t got to fuck with him.”

“Fuck he starin’ at me for, then? Yo, man, you a racist motherfucker? I might have to fuck up your stupid ass, just for that.”

“Nah, man, shut up, he’s cool. You cool, right man? Hey, you got a dollar you could loan me?”

The distillation, the question at the core of the puzzle, asked a million times, a million ways:

“What you lookin’ at?”

“
Fuck
you lookin’ at, man?”

“Don’t look at me, white boy. I’ll slap you, motherfucker.”

Here was what Robert Woolfolk had prepared him for. He’d awarded Dylan the gift of his own shame, his mummy’s silence, for use on a daily basis. Each encounter bore Robert’s signature—glancing pain and tilted logic, interrogations spinning nowhere. Ritual assurance that nothing had actually happened. And the guilt of Dylan’s whiteness excusing everything, covering it all.