Swimming in the Volcano by Bob Shacochis Read Free Book Online

Mitchell with disapproval but finally shrugged, taking his hand away; the old man released like a wound-up toy. Mitchell felt like he had become someone who needed to be protected from his own caprice. This was sublime ridiculousness, to give away a blood-soiled shirt to a walking corpse. A stick of animated carrion. Hang a shirt on decrepitude and nothing whatsoever in the world changed.
    The old man disappeared out the door, a zombie come and gone. Mitchell dismissed a moment of petty guilt—why not give him a few coins if you were going to give him anything. Throw a dollar down the fathomless hole, into a need so pure it had no earthly solution, abstracting into the untouchable. You could talk about it but you couldn’t change it, any more than you could fill a bottle with oil that had already been filled with water. But then, to do something so meaningless and farcical as give him a rag of a shirt, take it right off your back?
    â€œWhat was that, man? Obeah?” He counterfeited a laugh. “That old man had some kind of hold on me. You know?”
    â€œNah,” Isaac said. “Him just a poor dutty mahn wit he hand put out.” Now that Isaac had washed his ear, Mitchell could see that it might need stitching. He asked again if Isaac were all right. “Not so good,” Isaac had to admit. “Daht ride knock some language in me ear I nevah esperience. Like ten womens whistlin and clickin tongue.” Mitchell wouldn’t acknowledge this connection with yet another world. Access to one was more than enough for anybody. They were at the door and Isaac swung it open: an acrid stink seeped in behind the throb of Mitchell’s nose.
    â€œWhat smells funny?”
    Isaac sniffed around, testing the air for himself. “Smell like some dy-amn religion buhnin gungee stick,” he said.
    The souvenir stall had raised its grated door, doggedly anticipating customers, the collection of foreign currency. Incoming flights were customarily late; newcomers disembarked frazzled, wary, and discomposed. Some first-timers were doomed from the start, as if they were traveling under the weight of anesthesia—the couples from Liberty, Missouri, from York, Pennsylvania, from Coos Bay, Oregon, on an unmeditated leap out onto the globe, victims of Fireman’s Ball raffles and travel agents that never should have been listened to, excursion packages and the defensive lies of their friends who went to some ofthese places aboard a cruise liner and adored it. Dwayne and Jean, Bill and Helen, about to step off into the five most appalling days of their lives, on vacation in the Third World.
    Mitchell walked under the grating sheepishly, aware of the impropriety of his shirtlessness. The people of St. Catherine expected their guests to honor a code of respectability. The code was straightforward and universally known, not unlike the standard Mitchell was raised by in Virginia: a sound appearance is a great comfort to everyone’s nerves, particularly when among scoundrels. A tastefully dressed crook with a shine to his wing tips, a pederast who drives to the Fairfax Hunt in a Jaguar and spreads an eighteenth-century carpet on the lawn for lunch at the rail—these were citizens one could depend on not to disturb the public peace, wholly preferable to a state’s attorney who purchased suits off the rack at Woodies and licked gravy from his butter knife. Whatever backroom tendencies you pursued which might bring shame down upon your house and loved ones, appoint yourself handsomely with the proper weaves, exude a delicate fragrance, make reference to your forefathers and investment strategies, stay out of the penitentiary and let heaven be your judge since nobody on earth was qualified for the position. The manners of the Virginia countryside, whether you were born under their influence or not, sugared the surface of human affairs in a land with few bridges between those who had access to the