Walters spread his sleeping bag between his chair, his cooler, and his fishing rods and the edge of the dock. He was too drunk to move everything back now. He would be all right.
He removed his Orioles cap, set it on the dock, got into the bag, and zipped it to his neck. He lay on his back, folded his arms across his chest, and looked at the stars, the last wisps of clouds, the moon. His eyes grew heavy and he fell to sleep.
He dreamed that he was falling.
He opened his eyes, and he was falling. The black water rushed up to meet him.
The cold water shocked him. He was numb at once, and his head went under as he tried to free his arms from the bag. He freed one arm and kicked furiously at the bag. Now his head was out of the water, and he used his free hand to try and unzip the bag, but his hand was like a club. He kicked at the bag, moving himself away from the dock. The bag and his clothes were heavy and he was going down again and he kicked.
“Aaaah!” yelled Walters. “God!”
He kicked, and the bag was down around his waist. He went under and came up and kicked and now his legs were free. But his legs were moving very slowly. His clothing weighed him down, and he couldn’t seem to move his legs. He treaded water and almost at once he was tired. He saw that he was far from the dock and the pilings around it. His arms ached. He tried to float, but his clothing and boots dragged him down. He let himself drop beneath the water so that he could rest. He fought and broke the surface of the water with a gasp. He could no longer feel his feet. His arms barely moved. He looked at the shoreline and knew he could not make it to the dock.
Daddy!
Walters turned his head. He was near the sunken rowboat. He could see the tip of the bow.
He used his shoulders and will to cut the water and move toward the boat. He went under and came up. He choked in air and moved toward the boat again. He shut his eyes against the water that was rising and then he closed his mouth and he was down.
He felt something solid and grabbed it. He pulled himself to the solid thing and hugged it.
I have reached the boat, thought Walters. I’ll float myself up now and I’ll be at the boat and above the water and I’ll hold onto the bow while I get my breath.
He tried to push away from the boat, but he was held fast. His down vest or his shirt, something was snagged on the boat. He panicked and writhed violently, watching the bubbles from a cough of exhale explode around him. Something slid across his neck, and he shook his head in panic and was bitten in the face.
In his panic, he let out the rest of his breath.
He had no air in his lungs. He was dizzy and his chest burned and he could no longer move his arms or legs.
In the gray water he saw shapes. The silhouettes of a woman and a little boy dog-paddling toward him.
I love you, Vance. I was always proud of you, son.
Bernie Walters relaxed. He opened his mouth and breathed. The creek flowed into his open mouth and flooded his lungs.
It didn’t hurt. It was peaceful. His chest didn’t burn and he was no longer cold or anything else.
The darkness came like a kiss.
TWENTY-FOUR
Frank Farrow lit a Kool. He leaned forward, dropping the match into a kidney-shaped ashtray set on a cable-spool table in front of the living-room couch.
Roman Otis stood in front of a rectangular mirror, running a little gel through his long hair, softly singing the Isleys’ “For the Love of You.” He couldn’t quite hit the highs like brother Ronald, but he had it in spirit. That was one nice love song there, too.
Otis smiled, admiring his gold tooth. He patted his hair, turning his head so the gel caught the light. You had to be careful not to put too much of that gel in your hair. He’d seen some brothers in the old days overdose it, goin’ for that Rick James look, came out lookin’ like glue and shit.
“Hey, Frank,” said Otis. “You just dye your hair again, man?”
“Some stuff I picked up at the drugstore down in Edwardtown,” said Farrow.
“Finally got that shoe polish out, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Otis pursed his lips. “Looks good, too.”
Farrow glanced at Gus Lavonicus, sitting at an old desk, trying to write a letter to his wife. He had the push end of a pen in his mouth, and his lips were moving as he struggled to compose the words. His legs were spread wide, as he couldn’t hope to fit them under the desk, and he was fanning them back and forth. When you got right down to it, thought Farrow, the guy was nothing more than a giant child. Farrow should not have agreed to let Otis bring him along. But he’d never say no to Roman – the two of them went that deep.
“How’s that letter to my sister comin’, Gus?” said Otis.
“I’m trying to find the right words.”
“Tell her she’s prettier than a flower,” said Otis, “some shit like that.”
Farrow sipped red wine. He dragged on his Kool. “That what you’d tell her, Roman?”
“If that was my woman? I’d just go ahead and tell her that I planned to split that thing like an ax to an oak.”
“You always did know the right thing to say to women,” said Farrow.
“Goddamn right I did.”
“I can’t say that to Cissy,” said Lavonicus in his monotone.
“No,” said Otis. “I don’t recommend that you do.”
Booker Kendricks, Otis’s third cousin, came from the kitchen with two bottles of beer in his hand. He was a small, spidery man with rheumy eyes and rotten teeth, a multiple sex offender with violent attachments who’d finally gone down on a sodomy rape beef. Even Otis knew that his cousin belonged in prison for life. But the system had coughed Booker Kendricks back out onto the street.
“Here you go, Roman,” said Kendricks, putting a bottle in front of Otis. He snapped his fingers. “Aw, shit, did I forget you, Gus?”
“I don’t drink beer anyway,” said Lavonicus. “Yeah, you must be in training for that athletic comeback you’re gonna make someday.”
Lavonicus watched Kendricks as he turned on the living room’s television set. Despite the fact that Kendricks was a relative by marriage, Lavonicus didn’t care to spend much time around him. Sometimes he got the feeling that Kendricks was putting him on. He didn’t like that.
“Here we go,” said Kendricks, sitting in an overstuffed armchair. “Got the Bulls and the Knicks.”
Otis had a seat on the couch next to Farrow. “You all right, man?”
“Itching to do something,” said Farrow. “That’s all.”
Kendricks watched Larry Johnson sink a jumper, then wink at the bench as he jogged down the court. “Look at L. J., man. The man thinks he’s all that.”
“Johnson can play,” said Lavonicus, who had turned the chair away from the desk to watch the screen.
“Johnson can pa-lay,” said Kendricks, mimicking Lavonicus, then slapping his own knee in laughter. “Aw, shit, Gus. Say, man, tell me what it was like in that post-ABA career you had. Weren’t you on the squad of one of those teams that used to play against the Harlem Globetrotters?”
“The New York Nationals,” said Lavonicus softly. “I only did that one season.” They’d thrown him off the team after he coldcocked one of the Globetrotters who had called him a name. The fans had laughed like crazy; they thought the knockout punch had been in the script.
“Yeah, I remember the green uniforms y’all had. How’d it feel to be ridiculed, having balls passed between your legs, gettin’ the pill bounced off your head and shit, night after night?”
Lavonicus felt his ears grow hot. He imagined they were red now, the way they got when he let guys like Kendricks get to him like this.
“It was a job,” said Lavonicus, and he turned his chair back to the desk.