The Hair of Harold Roux Read online

  The three of them sat on the Frodo B.’s thick-painted gray benches in the sun, waiting—Aaron with more than a little anxiety—for the Joe’s Spa Troops’ chartered bus. The boat moved gently beneath them, and the smell of the cove was powerful: that salty compound of life and rot, chemical, natural, speaking of the dense life of the sea. Through the fathom of water below the boat Aaron could see clamshells on the mud bottom, and crabs moving sideways over white strings of fish parts someone had thrown out. This deep window was only in the shadow of the boat; beyond the shadow the water turned a bright reflecting blue again.

  When the bus finally came, it was three-quarters of an hour late, having had a flat tire, and the troops had obviously been at the booze. They filed slowly out the front door, a little too careful of the steps. Some carried spinning rods and tackle, but most carried, with many grunts and deep breaths, cases of beer, plastic coolers, and cardboard boxes of food. The logistics of the operation were complicated. Aaron, Mark and Captain Billy soon took over the stowage not only of the supplies but of several of the troops, who would never have been able to come down the short gangplank on their own.

  They were men from their late twenties to early fifties, but all their faces, beneath their sporty hats or long-billed caps, were equally blasted, the younger haunted by the finalities of the older. Except for the starved, thin bodies of the burnt-out, gut-trouble types, most were soft-bellied. Though thin elsewhere, they carried a feminine roll over the hips, and navels or pale hairy mounds of flesh were visible between T-shirts and low-slung belts, or between the gaps of printed sport shirts. Perhaps the younger were quieter. Flesh colors were tones of gray; they must all have worked indoors, and in their evenings at Joe’s Spa (all their evenings) the television set above the bar must have chrome-tanned them into its own metallic tones. There were shades of green, or of bruised blue—all on the side of the spectrum away from blood and life, toward the dank, the enclosed.

  They were laughing and yelling jokes to each other, these wraiths, these gross phantoms, and if Aaron didn’t listen to the words it did seem that they were laughing and tossing jokes back and forth. But at a dreadful click of the attention the jokes were not funny, were unstructured, referenceless. The words didn’t matter.

  “Hey, Ooligah!”

  “Bafundam! Yuk! Yuk!”

  “Hornish gaw unner a seat!”

  —Screams of virile raggedness.

  “Bustis fuckin’ head!”

  “Watcher language, Meathead.’“

  “Hey, Ollie! Hey, Oilier

  God, Aaron thought. These poor, deprived organisms. Given so little in the first place, what had they done to themselves? How could a man of approximately thirty have abused himself into such cretinous shape as that one, whose left eye had migrated too far toward his nose, like a flounder’s, whose very expression of dangerous toughness seemed to have caused that evil drift?

  Mark caught Aaron’s eye, and grinned. Among these goblins Mark was suddenly strong, even handsome, and Captain Billy was certainly part Elven, a reflection of God’s true aspirations for the evil race. Aaron caught the Joe’s Spa Troops looking at Mark’s and Captain Billy’s hair, and smirking, the little secret of their opinions of course unkept.

  Some of them were strangely lethargic, and took their positions at the rail with dull, unexpectant stares. Later these would spend much of their time afloat picking helplessly and hopelessly at their snarled handlines. Their apparent leader, or the organizer of the outing, was a recognizably more intelligent man of fifty or so. Toward them all he seemed to have much affection. “They’re all good boys,” he said often in the face of much evidence to the contrary, even when, later, one of his boys vomited on the poop, where a plain sign said no one except crew should go. Vomited his thin beer-puke on the curved poop so that it dripped on the people below, then slid, half-conscious, in his own lubrication into the blue sea, from which he was rescued by means of a gaff in the waist band of his slacks.

  “See?” the leader said. “No fights. They’re good boys.”

  But this came later. When everyone was aboard, Captain Billy started the big engines and steered them through the channel, past the point, into the heaves of the sea where a great bell buoy clanged them toward the immensities. Far out to the northeast were the Isles of Shoals, gray rocks low on the horizon; to the west the continent receded slowly under its yellowish pastel pall. They rode the swells into the clean blue, leaving in their wake a trail of beer cans, sandwich wrappers, aluminum foil and cigarette butts. White gulls scouted them from the horizons, soared low to examine their trash, and moved on, one or two staying always within sight. Later they would have their feast.

  After an hour’s run from the land, Captain Billy circled for a while until, with the aid of his fathometer, he found the underwater ledges he wanted. Mark and Aaron dropped the anchor on its swiftly uncoiling hemp line; when it caught, the Frodo B. swung with the deep tide. Captain Billy ground some sand eels for chum in a kitchen meat grinder that was screwed to the deckhouse, and poured the thin gruel over the side.

  “Bait up,” he said. Mark and Aaron distributed cans of sand eels to the troops, helping the more fastidious bait their hooks.

  Soon they began to pull in cod, the smooth, lippy, innocent faces staring from the washtub in the middle of the afterdeck. When the tub was full, the plump, yellowish fish flopped on the deck in slime and spilled beer. There were periods without crisis when Aaron and Mark had little to do, but after a while a burnt-thin man in his late forties chose Aaron for his confidant. He had several bottles of ginger brandy in his tackle box, and insisted that Aaron try it. It was made, Aaron read from the label, in Detroit.

  “I was in on the invasion of Germany,” the man said. He was at first not obviously drunk. “Invasion of Germany—most fortified country in the world.” He shook his head. “Most fortified country in the world.”

  Aaron thought he had missed the reference, but soon he found that, as with the jokes of the day, there was none. The thin, stringy, banty-like man, whose name—from an embossed tape glued to his tackle box—was Harry Remers, cast occasionally with his expensive and new-looking spinning outfit. He used a stainless-steel jig, disdaining cod and pollack. He wanted only mackerel.

  “Left my wife ten years ago,” he said, his reddish eyes peering sincerely into Aaron’s. “Went back to her in six months. Who wants a mess of fucking cod?” He cast again, and slowly retrieved his jig. “Have a drink of this ginger brandy. It’s good.”

  Aaron did.

  “Let me tell you something. If a woman just lets you rub it around on the outside, it’s no good. Said it hurt all the time.”

  Having retrieved his jig, he had a good slug of ginger brandy, then offered the bottle to Aaron, who had another medicinal, or anesthetic, slug of it himself.

  “I was in on it, all right. Germany, most fortified country in the world.” He lit a cigarette with his Zippo, and tossed the lighter expertly back into his shirt pocket. “Good woman. Don’t complain. Stays home all the time. You follow me?”

  Aaron nodded.

  “I tell her I’m the only guy I know been married twenty-years to a virgin and she says don’t I let you rub it on me? Left her ten years ago. Went back in six months.”

  The two gulls, on quivering, correcting wings, came back to check on the boat, their heads moving, one eye and then the other turned to scan. Someone at the stern threw a sand eel into the air, and both gulls watched it carefully but let it fall to the surface before they landed and squabbled briefly over it.

  “You follow me?” Harry Remers said.

  Aaron was suddenly dizzy. “I’ve got to go check the inlet ports,” he said, moving away.

  “Hey!” Harry Remers called to him. “That was January 21, 1944! That’s a date to remember!”

  “That’s right,” Aaron said. He went into the head to find the thirty-gallon galvanized can full and even sloshing over as the boat rolled. The stench pushed him back. He
could see no drain or apparatus to remedy this, and it was nightmarish; the boat would soon be running scupper to scupper with these liquids and solids. He retched a little, fumes of Detroit ginger brandy scalding his nostrils, shut the door and went to Captain Billy.

  “Jesus,” he said to the tall, calm captain. “The can in there’s sloshing over.” Captain Billy merely nodded, and went to take care of it. Soon he returned, his hands and clothes unsoiled, and Aaron never did find out how the job was done.

  One of the troops had caught a skate about two feet in diameter. Lying flat on the deck, its brown eyes observed from the little pilothouse above its wings. Several of the troops looked at it with wonder and then did what was expected—furiously stabbed and stomped it to death until its eyes were squashed and its tough white flesh winked through gashes and tears in its blue-black skin. “Stingray! Stingray!” they yelled. Skate blood, red as a man’s, smeared the gray deck. One of the troops gaffed it and tossed the corpse back into the sea.

  At Aaron’s elbow a pale, plump man in a straw fedora whispered fiercely to him. “See that guy over there?” he said, pointing guardedly at Harry Remers. “I want to tell you he’s the meanest, filthiest son of a bitch alive. The biggest prick-bastard alive.” Squinting, nodding, having made the point to his satisfaction, he staggered with righteous dignity toward the bow.

  Down the line the man with the drifting eye vomited with the noise of a flushed toilet, and with nearly the volume, then slowly leaned back from the rail, slid from the bench and lay on his back in the bilge.

  The troops were using their knives on the fish, some filleting, some gutting, throwing the guts to the gulls who had mysteriously multiplied into dozens. The gulls cried, soared, deftly caught food from the air, landed gracefully on the water to examine parts too large to swallow—but not the trooper who at this point slid in vomit from the poop and fell eight feet into the sea. As he drifted slowly alongside, most of the troopers observed him as if he were another kind of strange, natural phenomenon, and only one or two thought it anything out of the ordinary. At the stern Aaron gaffed him by his waist band, and he and Mark hauled him out. None of the troops helped pull him over the rail, but as he lay passed out among the fish, fish parts, blood and beer, one of his fellows, to great hoarse shrieks of appreciative laughter, unzipped his fly and stuffed a small, violated cod into his crotch.

  Aaron looked away, at the sunlight on the undulant blue sea, the white gulls planing against the sky. He looked down again to see a balled, tangled handline drift by out of reach.

  The leader of the troops, perhaps showing some disappointment, said, “They’re good boys. They’re good boys. No fights. No fights.”

  Again Aaron looked away, examining his own emotions with what seemed to be infinite care. What was he doing here? He felt that he shouldn’t have to be here, and with this came an accusation of self-indulgence. There was, though, the danger that in truth he couldn’t stand it much longer. Never in his life had he enjoyed the abomination, or been a pure observer. There was the danger that he might enter as an actor here. The Detroit ginger brandy had been a mistake. He didn’t want to turn away from the blue elements, back toward mankind as collective slob, back toward these goblin exaggerations of himself. Finally he did turn back, because he had to, but the sight of the blood and gore, these humans having fun disemboweling fish, gave him traitorous thoughts: he could see them all dead; he was on the side of the fish. Yes, he was on the side of the fish, not just now but in a deeper and more despairing way. Animal bipes implume, the two-legged animal without feathers. He was sick of being one of them.

  When he turned back he found that they had discovered a new game. Gulls are not stupid, but three of them had been caught before the others realized that some of the fish guts contained hooks. Great shouts of encouragement rewarded those troopers who had their living kites on strings, the gulls crying, napping, suddenly awkward in the air.

  As Aaron proceeded toward the first kite-flier he heard Captain Billy’s shout of astonishment and disapproval. The first kite-flier was a young man who responded to Aaron’s presence by his side with a pleased grin, as though he expected only approbation. His face was smeared over with vagueness, however, and as he jerked the string to show his control and possession of the gull his bleared eyes didn’t quite focus. He couldn’t understand why Aaron wanted to take the string himself. At first he pushed Aaron’s hand away with some good nature, meaning to say in his gestures and laughing, garbled words that Aaron should go get his own bird. Finally becoming irritated, he blinked and scowled as though someone were shaking him awake in the middle of the night.

  “Wha’ you doing!” he said, his expression caught at dead low tide as it struggled through the change from pleasure to danger. In it was disappointment, almost a pout at this loss of pleasure, and then with effort it began to signal sternness and anger. The young man cocked his right arm, upon which a stenciled anchor shone bluely through thick reddish hair.

  Later Aaron would wonder why this action lifted from him the weight of despair: he needed that aggressive response, and in his own sudden change of metabolism he lost years, ascending as he did toward a purer definition of himself. Never having known much moderation once it came to rage, he did have time to fear his own dangerousness before he knocked the young man down on the bloody deck. Strange how time seemed to slow; rage had always heightened perception in him until he could observe himself and the world as if in slow motion. He had time to choose a blow he hadn’t thought of for years—one he’d seen an MP use on a black soldier, in which the forearm is at the last moment of the arc drawn quickly back toward the chest and the law of conservation of momentum increases the elbow’s velocity so that it hits with stunning force.

  The young man lay on the filthy deck gasping and hugging his chest. A shout, half moan, arose from those troopers still conscious enough to have witnessed it. Their collective disapproval began to form itself into aggression and the determination to exact revenge. Aaron could read this very clearly in the changes of flexed arms, sucked-in bellies, the stance of feet and legs. In response, his voice listed in their own language their canon of unforgivable definitions—those meaninglessly shameful epithets that are so powerful.

  Captain Billy and Mark, he noticed, had put themselves between him and the troopers, so he pulled on the line that led upward to the crying gull. One of the other gulls flapped away dragging its whole line, wooden reel and all. Trying to be gentle, but of course not able to communicate his intent to the gull, he pulled it down from the sky. As it came nearer its great wings beat in an arc as wide as his spread arms, and it stared at him and fought desperately, its tail spreading and angling for control. The wind of its wings blew into his eyes. He saw that it had swallowed the hook and there was nothing he could do but unsheathe his knife and cut the line as close to the beak as possible. Perhaps it would live. He cut the line and the gull rose powerfully in a swift spiral and was gone, as were all the other gulls from this nemesis of a boat.

  It was very quiet now; Captain Billy was talking to them. Aaron wondered as to how he was not present in his own body, which he seemed to observe as a system of weapons. His knife resheathed itself, his prisms scanned, his bipod adjusted upon itself its marvelous complications of balance. He was at that point of readiness, of purity of intent, in which the body and mind are most nearly one.

  But of course the Joe’s Spa Troops never did rally, their cause being rather doubtful even to them. Their grumbling, in fact, degenerated still further into something like a collective whine. Aaron, out of sudden and devastating embarrassment, retired to the bow. Soon Mark came to help him haul in the anchor, and the Frodo B., as bloody as if it had fought boarders, cutlass and pistol across its decks, turned with the blue swells and churned toward home.

  After the subdued troopers had been helped onto their bus and the bus departed, the crew hosed the gore off decks and railings and retrieved those handlines that weren’t snarled beyond all reas
on. They filled two GI cans with bottles, cans and other trash that the troopers hadn’t had the energy to throw to the innocent sea. The dead fish were, according to their kind and condition, relegated to lobster bait or saved for food. After two hours or more, when the Frodo B. rode clean again at its moorings, Captain Billy brought out a six-pack the troopers had abandoned and they sat in the slanting afternoon sun, each with a warm beer.

  Mark began to laugh. Between his high, mirthful wheezings, he glanced at Aaron, and finally held up his beer. “Here’s to nonviolence,” he said. “Oh, my! See see shoo sboor

  “I’m sorry,” Aaron said to Captain Billy. He was terribly ashamed and depressed—emotions he had tried to hold at bay while he almost frantically helped clean and scour the Frodo B.“It was none of my business. I acted like an idiot.”

  Captain Billy just smiled, seeming to encompass within his youth not only the proper answer but a patience and tolerance that made Aaron’s violence seem even more undignified and juvenile. This made him conscious of his age; he could have been the father of these men. He thought of the blow that had decked the trooper with such efficiency, and how in his time it would have been admired. Now, in their eyes, it must seem merely stupid, which it was—the usual betrayal his generation managed whenever it had the inclination.

  “I’m an asshole,” he muttered. “You ought to put us animals in the brig.”

  Mark put his arm around the old professor’s shoulders and shook him. “Shit, Dad,” Mark said. “You’re not used to it, that’s all.”

  “Patronize me at your own risk,” Aaron said.

  Mark laughed and laughed.

  Aaron finds that he has been suffering; it is as if he has just awakened from anesthesia, aware all at once of vast traumatic manipulations of his body that must have happened while he was asleep. “God!” he cries out, hearing himself with the critical ear of an actor, hearing the cry as a simulation of despair. If one is to die, why not now? That question has never been properly answered.