I Am Marcus Fox, page 14
“Marcus!” my mother hollered, but she was not addressing me. She was speaking to my father. “We have Marcus! They don’t know about Marcus!”
Before I knew what was happening, my father had kicked open the midway door and barreled into my room. The act of violence was certainly unnecessary, as I’d seen him open and close it in a normal fashion, earlier that day.
“Get up,” he said. I stood and went to him. “Marcus. They don’t know about you. OK? Do you know what that means?”
I shook my head, and my father crouched to my level.
“It means that we’ve got the upper hand. We can get out of this. All of us, as a family.” It was the first time I’d ever heard that word. What could it possibly mean? Whatever the connotation, it sounded good coming from his lips.
My mother stood behind him. The look of disgust she always reserved for me was now focused on dear old dad.
“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP OR WE’RE COMING IN, GUNS BLAZING!”
“We don’t have time to baby him, Billy, come on!” She disappeared back into her room and then bellowed so loud the walls rattled. “FUCK YOU, COPPER! WE GOT A HOSTAGE!”
Silence rang out in my crazy world. The word “hostage” had a completely different meaning than “family.” Of this, I was sure.
“Don’t you worry, ace.” My father winked at me. “It’s all just a game, all right? Just you remember that and you’ll be fine. Don’t you ever forget. It’s all just a game.”
I was crying now. I loved my father in that moment. “OK, Dad,” I said, and he pulled his gun.
“YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT, CALLIOPE!” the cop replied. “WE’RE COMING IN!”
“You come in here and I’ll splatter this kid’s brains all over the rug!”
This I understood. My mother was serious too. I looked at my father and he shook his head no.
“She’s bluffing,” he whispered to me, and winked.
“SHOW US THE KID!” the cop demanded. My father walked me into their room and unlatched the door to the outside.
“All right,” my mother bargained. “Don’t shoot!”
“Remember Marcus, it’s just a game. And you’re gonna help us win. OK?”
Sure, I was afraid, but now I was feeling important. Like I held the key to whatever the final outcome of this terrifying situation might be.
Billy turned the knob and pushed open the door a crack. He held tight to the back collar of my shirt as I poked my head out. A blinding light shone in my eyes, and I recoiled back into the room.
“Oh fuck,” I heard one officer proclaim before the door shut tight.
“Now here’s how it’s gonna go down!” Calliope commanded. “You’re all gonna move your pig cars outta the way and clear a path! We’re gonna get in our Impala and drive on outta here. You got that?!”
Silence echoed from the outside. And then, the sound of all those police cars moving out of the way, obeying her. My parents are brilliant, I thought.
When the noise of the retreating vehicles ceased, the officer in charge got back on the bullhorn. “OK, YOU CAN COME OUT NOW. JUST DON’T HURT THE KID!”
My mother gave me a look that chilled my blood. She said, “Not one peep out of you, Marcus. Not one!” And then she pulled me away from my father and pointed her gun at me.
“What are you doing?” a titmouse with my father’s voice asked.
“We both know you don’t have the balls.”
“To do what?”
“Whatever needs to be done. Now march.”
I looked up at my father for reassurance, but he seemed to be busy trying to read my mother’s crazed face. In his eyes, I saw recognition as he studied her. He knew she meant business. He’d always known.
“Your mother and I aren’t the winners of the game here, Marcus.” He winked. “You are.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder and opened the door.
“I’m not armed,” he lied. I could see the bulge of his gun tucked under his shirt clearly, just above his belt in the back. “Shoot and Calliope does the kid!”
“You hear that, Marcus?” my mother whispered as she pressed her gun to the back of my head. “That’s freedom your father’s preachin’.”
With one arm wrapped too tight around my neck, she pushed me forward. We stepped out into the light, following my father.
The getaway car was just a few feet away in its cozy parking space. My father was already arranging himself behind the wheel. His was the only figure I could see through the endless rays of headlights beaming on me. He got the car started, and his rugged expression held my focus. Out there, in the sea of white-hot light, there were maybe a million cops watching him, watching me, watching my mother walk me slowly to the car, holding a gun to her only child’s head and getting off on the adrenaline. Her heart was beating through her sweat-stained shirt.
“Babe, let’s go!” my father said, and we rushed into the backseat. She slammed the door behind her and threw me to the floor. Her window was open and she hung her head out of it. She knew she was a target for any over-enthusiastic, trigger-happy cop. She didn’t care.
“If we catch sight of you in the rearview, the kid dies!” From their lack of response, I gathered they believed her. My father backed up slowly, then our getaway car made rubble of the pavement. “Nice knowin’ ya, fuckos,” Calliope cackled as we left nothing but dust in the parking lot of that roadside motel.
A minute later, I looked up and she was smoking. The gun was in her lap. I could have grabbed it and shot her dead. I knew I could have. She wasn’t even paying attention. She was gazing out into the distance as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And really, had it? Just another day in the life of young Marcus Fox. I got up off the floor and sat next to her. She didn’t move or say a word. I chanced a glance out the back window and didn’t see a car for miles. The lonely desert road went on and on and on.
“Well that was almost too easy, wouldn’t you say?”
My father drove on, ignoring her for now. He was steady, trained, like a robot doing exactly what it was designed to do. I looked from her to him, then back to her again. She was looking through me, like I was nothing, insignificant, a worm. I cringed into the nook where my seat met the door and she leaned down at me.
“The first chance I get,” she whispered, “I’m throwing you back to the wolves.”
But we are Foxes! I thought. Not wolves!
“Bah!” She dismissed me with her yellowed cigarette hand and climbed over the front seat, taking her rightful place next to her man.
“Good thing this piece of shit car still runs,” she said.
“Piece of shit, my ass! We’re doin’ a buck twenty. Put your belt on. Marcus, you hear me?”
I did hear him. I clicked my belt tight.
You know, for safety.
* * *
BEEP.
BEEP.
BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP.
BARK BARK BARK!
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBARKBARKBARKBEEPBARKBARK.
“What?!”
My eyes flashed wide and I was yanked back into the present. I remembered everything about my dream, about my past. I’d let it go for so many years. I hadn’t thought about my early childhood horrors in forever. But that part of my life was back. All of it. Out of the clear blue sky. In my head, trying to hurt me. I wouldn’t let it. Not now. Something else was happening.
Charlie was barking his head off and the airplane was beeping its gadgets off.
“OK, shut up, dog! I’m up.”
I checked the gas gauge. The needle was well below E. The inevitable had arrived. The engine would choke out, the propellers would stop turning, and we would crash and die in the middle of the Mozambique Channel.
As if the hopeless thought willed it to happen, the engine sputtered and belched. A loud mechanical pop was the last sound I heard as the propellers slowed to a halt. Briefly, we rested there on a plateau, sailing in a straight, perfect, serene line. In those few precious moments, the entire universe bowed to me. I was the ruler of all. Then, our slow descent began.
There was nowhere to land safely down below. There was no land! Only water as far as the eye could see. But how? When we’d made the flight in the opposite direction all those years ago, the pilot had flown from Madagascar to Zambia on half a tank! Maybe I’d misremembered that insignificant detail of my life. After all, I was six and drugged.
BEEP BEEP BARK.
My heart, risen to my throat, had the flavor and mass of a sour six-toed hedgehog.
The altimeter dropped 100 feet (or meters or whatever it was) per second. There was no time to think. I surveyed the small cabin and saw nothing that would help us survive. What I was looking for was a miracle. And I did not believe in miracles, so I guess I was looking for nothing.
900, 800, 700; the altimeter was crashing and so were we. I looked to Charlie and apologized without words. In that moment, I saw in his big, sad dog eyes a look that clearly said, “You are an idiot, Marcus.” He dropped his head under his seat and snapped something out with his teeth. It was a strap. He dragged it further and tossed it into my lap.
“Genius, Charlie!” I praised him, flipping the parachute bag and escorting it over my arms.
600, 500, 400. The water was there now. I could see it just below us in the moonlight. It gleamed with hundreds of thousands of wavy, broken-glass shards. They were rising their way toward us. Pulling us to them to rip us to shreds.
I leaned to one side and kicked out the door. It flew open and I grabbed Charlie and hurled us both out. The moment we were free, I pulled the cord with my good arm and held tight to Charlie with the other. The chute flew open and caught the wind. We were launched upward at the very last possible instant. The force was so great that my arm jerked away from me and I lost Charlie.
I lost him.
The plane crashed not far at all from where I hit. The last thing I saw before the warm waters surrounded me was a fireball splash. But none of that mattered. The poor mutt that saved my life was gone. Yet another casualty of war in the life lived by yours truly.
The sea surged to drag me down. I fought, at first, against its fury. I climbed the underwater ladder rung by rung and broke the surface to view the desolation and destruction once again. The seaplane, The Safari Hunter, was aflame and going down without a fight of its own. Black smoke swirled high into the air, drifting toward where Madagascar should be.
I did not care for my life anymore. I suppose instinct and the desire to save Charlie had given me the strength to jump out of the plane. But I did feel terrible about my new friend, and I decided to stay conscious and alive for a couple more hours, just to tread water in hopes that I might find him.
The more I swam, the more hopeless it appeared to be. There was no way Charlie could have survived the crash. He died because of me. Nothing new there.
Full of self-pity, impossible sadness, and too many shitty fucking memories, I let my limbs go limp in the current.
“Take me,” I spoke softly to no one in particular. Death, perhaps. “Take me now.”
Before I swallowed a world of water, I imagined that Shumbuto, mighty and alive and well, was wrapping his blessed arm around me and pulling me to shore.
Sadly, my savior was but a beautiful memory in my diseased and drowning mind.
The fucking end.
CHAPTER
10
But of course, it was not the fucking end, now was it? How could it be? How could it ever?
My saviors this time were American — deep sea fishermen from New York who were wrapping up a six-month expedition. When they netted me free of the waves (the captain later explained), I was “dead like disco.” One of the crew administered mouth-to-mouth and brought me, coughing and spewing seawater, back.
Who knows how long I was on the other side? Truth be told, I don’t remember visiting a heaven or a hell or any midway ghost realm. It could be that I did either burn or ascend and then kicked Lucifer or Gabriel in the nuts and came screeching back to Earth, sans any recollection of the hereafter. If such were the case, I tell you, I cannot vouch for it. So let’s just let those mysteries lie forever in secret, as they most likely should.
Speaking of Lucifer, there were times, back in my first year in Zambia, when Shandra-Namba would refer to me as her “perfect fallen angel.” Though I don’t hold any belief that I was a perfect anything (besides hunter), I was recently informed that a fallen angel is not a good thing. In fact, it’s about the worst thing you could be. But she didn’t know that.
If you have a hard time believing that I’ve not once but twice fallen from the sky into a large body of water, only to be serendipitously rescued, here’s another whopper for you. You ready for this one? The dog lived! The sailors rescued him, too! Caught us both in their net, I was told. Lifted him and me together, right out of the ocean.
Once I got my bearings and sat up, I saw Charlie barreling toward me. He leapt, full speed, and I caught him in my arms. I didn’t have any choice in the matter, did I? The lovable mutt licked my face twice and then ran away again. Yelping with his big dumb tongue flapping out the corner of his mouth all the way down the length of the long trawler.
If you are wondering (as I certainly was), what in the bloody fuck a bunch of well-cut, broad-shouldered sailors were doing so far from home, all I can relay is what the captain, a strange box of a man called Scruggs, told me: “The fish out here just taste better to a certain class of people. Do you know which class I mean, Marcus?”
I did not.
“The farken black card class!” The whole crew shouted their response.
“OK,” I said, caring nothing for whatever nonsense this was about.
The captain went on to tell me that the black card class was an elite group of super-rich Manhattan snobs who had so much money that they had to spend it on the most ridiculous things in life. The exotic, incredibly rare, pink-tailed Thresher sharks that inhabit the Indian Ocean near Danger Island … oh you’re perking up now, I see … the Thresher sharks swirling Danger Island, he said, were a goldmine for these crusty men, and they’d captured and killed nearly 200 of the sea beasts before they fished Charlie and me out of the sea.
Danger Island, the captain said, was uninhabited by humans and only about a mile long.
“The Brits went on an expedition to explore the Great Chagos Bank region about twenty or so years ago,” he discoursed. “They discovered the coral reefs there to be thriving with sea life — especially around Danger Island. The fish themselves weren’t a problem for the explorers, but the coral atoll took a sore toll on their ships. The reefs jutted out so far that they had to pull back and send small, lightly manned, inflatable lifeboats to shore. Those few men who ventured out soon found that the waves crashed like the devil on Danger Island. Their lifeboats were torn to shreds, and they were lucky to crawl onto solid ground with their lives intact. They were stranded for two days before helicopters flew in to rescue them. In the meantime, all they discovered on Danger Island was coconut trees and red-footed boobies.”
“Boobies?”
“Birds. Moronic-looking things with faces that appear to have been painted on by Picasso. Long beaks that make up their whole heads. The island itself isn’t dangerous, once you’re on it. It’s just getting in and out that can tear you to shreds. So why go there at all? Unless you have a penchant for coconuts and boobies.”
The captain snickered, but it sounded like paradise to me. I believed I could live the remainder of my days eating tropical fish, drinking coconut milk, and being utterly alone. It was about all I deserved, if even that.
“What about the sharks?” I asked, interrupting my man-stranded-on-an-island fantasy.
“Ah, well, you see, I got a reliable tip a little over six months ago that the pink-tail Thresher was cozying up to the coral atolls that surround Danger Island. Couldn’t get out there fast enough!” He smiled down at the cargo hold. “By God, we cleaned ’em outta there and made the reefs a safe place once again for its true inhabitants — the wee little fishy wishys.”
A runaway, childish twinkle in the captain’s eye seemed to convey: Be nice to me; I’m a lunatic.
“So what? You’re some kind of Father Nature figure?” I asked.
“I am father to nothing,” he said. “Fathers are nothing. You are who you make yourself to be. That is all.” His twinkle was gone. I probably should have stopped right then and there, but I pressed him on a previous subject.
“When you get home and sell those rare sharks, won’t your newfound riches initiate you into that very same black card class you despise?” I was picking a fight and hoping to be tossed back into the sea. However, my words had the opposite effect on the captain; he just laughed and laughed.
“Maybe so, Marcus! And maybe when I’m dining on my very own pink-tailed Thresher in the finest restaurants, I can pick my teeth with my very own black card!” The crew had a fantastic row at that. So much so that I managed to steal away from them all and slip into the lower bunks. That was where I spent most of the remaining trip. Most of the time, I was alone. Occasionally, Charlie lay by my side. And we traveled on in peace and relative silence until we reached New York harbor, two weeks hence.
* * *
I had no feelings whatsoever about returning to the country of my birth. No joy, no wonder, no apprehension, not even an iota of anticipation. As it turned out, I didn’t even feel indifference. The word “hollow” doesn’t begin to describe my state of being.
I was a thirty-year-old shadow of a man with counterfeit roots and a meaningless future. My life, in its entirety, was a miserable sham. All that had happened was, at best, just a ridiculous story.
I should have been cut from this world’s womb a hundred thousand times. I may have been breathing, but I was far from alive. Maybe I died when I hit the Zambezi River all those years ago. Or maybe I was never even born. Maybe all the trials I suffered were just part of one ceaseless, perpetual punishment for some unremembered other life. Maybe the Marcus Fox I knew was just a miserable, damned soul, passing each day through the halls of hell. Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil.
