(Published in Concho River Review, Volume 34, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2020)
One mid-September night, down a Galveston beach, a man – what is the right word, ambled? – yes, this man ambled as if he were absolutely in no rush at all, as if he had world enough and time. And perhaps he did.
His white suit stood out in the inky dark. And as he walked, his head firmly planted downward, he mumbled under his breath, seemingly lost in a concentration so profound. His hair, long and wavy, bordered on being out of control. This thin man in a long-out-of-style white suit with a thin black tie strolled in a sort-of zig-zaggy pattern, until suddenly he stopped and made an abrupt 90 degree left turn.
The next thing the man knew, the always-warm Gulf water was lapping up to his thighs. After a shake of his head, he blinked his eyes in an exaggerated, almost theatrical way, then looked around, as if for the very first time taking note of his surroundings. Focused now, he took in the whole 360 degree sweep of the beach, the seawall, the Gulf. Then, while a lone motorcycle with no governor wound through its gears racing above him down Seawall Boulevard, the man breathed in deeply the Gulf's thick salty smell laced with seaweed, spotted a white lozenge of moon barely seen through wisps of clouds. Then he suddenly remembered their name and said it aloud, “Cirrus.”
And the name of the beach. Stewart Beach, where one balmy night soon after World War II his mother had won a jitterbug dance contest in one of those dance clubs all the rage with the younger set back then, before . . . well, everything. Now the beach was all but deserted, it being late, a bit past 10. And those dance clubs? All long gone.
Out in the Gulf, he noticed the lights of a ship, probably an oil tanker by its outline, waiting its turn to enter the bay to unload its highly-viscous cargo to some smoke-belching refinery on the ship channel. Behind the tanker a sideways fist of lightning flashed.
With only the dullest thoughts echoing inside his skull, he began to slowly wade back to the beach, steeling himself for the long, wet slog back to his motel room. Then out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a handful of the old Indians of Galveston. Karwankawas – six feet tall – both men and women accompanied by their coyote-like dogs. One of which now howled at the almost full moon.
If the man in the white suit was shocked by the sudden appearance of long-ago Indians, he didn't show it. He looked at them, curious, to be sure, but his thin face betrayed no surprise. And as he stood there, he couldn't help but catch a whiff of the Indians’ smell – dirt and alligator fat smeared over their bodies to keep the clouds of mosquitoes that have always haunted this island at bay.
For their part, the Indians stared back at him with increasing suspicion Their great muscled bodies seemed ready to let fly a phalanx of arrows at yet another small man of European descent, the kind of whom they knew all too well. What else could they think of this thin wisp of a man, this walking ghost in white suit and thin tie?
He continued down the beach, the dry sand making it difficult to walk with any speed. He then spotted a figure in front of him on a leeward slope of dune -- the Spanish castaway, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, himself, thrown up on this isle wearing nothing, like his Indian wardens. When in Rome . . .
The Karankawas, a word meaning dog lover in their own language, were dying of a European sickness that infected the stomach. They could keep nothing down. One orifice or another was always working overtime until death like sweet mercy came.
Acting as a medicine man, de Vaca made the sign of the cross over one ravaged Karankawa – once well-muscled, now bones as dry and brittle as the opened oyster shells he rested upon. De Vaca recited a Pater Noster and for good measure threw in an Ave Maria. Prayed to God he was not murdered in his sleep, a jagged knife across his gullet, in this land of perpetual misfortune, this god-awful island, a true isla de Malhado, the Island’s original Spanish name, the island of doom.
By the moon's light, the thin man could just barely make out how the Karankawa's elaborate tattoos snaked down their nude bodies. But there was also a sound he couldn't quite identify, a sound like the beating of a muffled drum. But when the moonlight hit just right, he finally made out how the reed piercings on their nipples clanked against their chests when they moved. Suddenly these Indians stopped, pointed ahead.
And there stood an assemblage of white men dressed in shirts and breeches from another century. Some had tied scarves around their necks and almost all were full-bearded. Though one was not, only a small mustache graced his upper lip. There he stood beside a cannon, gold doubloons spilling out of his pockets like sand in an hourglass, smirking as he lit the fuse. He was a handsome man with a face equal parts sensual and rapacious.
Jean Lafitte called his empire Campeche and from his Maison Rouge lorded it over the island like every two-bit tyrant. Behind him stood black men chained to one another by leg clamps. Their bodies, shiny with sweat, flashed a bright shade of red with every cannon blast. Those chained black men embodied the real reason the pirate called The Island home. An easy equation really: black human beings to be sold like bales of cotton equaled ever more money in his till. Buy low; sell high, a time-honored, if amoral, fixation.
Then, suddenly, there, smiling his big sloppy drunk grin, was old Jim Bowie, sipping rot-gut, poking his eponymous knife into the starless night. The thin man wanted to stop, to speak to everyone he'd seen, but before he could find the right words, if there were any, screams down the beach interrupted his thoughts.
Ahead of him, about a dozen black men cried out as they picked up the swollen bodies of the drowned. Around them, clouds of flies swarmed everywhere, and the smell of black tar slime kicked up from the very depths of the Gulf permeated the air, the aftermath of the Great 1900 Storm. Next to the wagon, the white overseer took a long swig from a bottle, his Winchester resting on his hip, always ready.
“Boys, you can take a break now. Free whisky!” he cried out in a gravelly voice, trying to sound as companionable as anyone holding people against their will by force of arms could.
But not one of the black men made a move. Drained of emotion now, their movements did not deviate. They went about their task as if they'd mutated from human beings to automatons, lifting and stacking the water-drenched, always uncooperative dead into a flatbed wagon, showing no emotion, whatsoever. The thin man noticed one of the newly stacked, a small girl improbably still clutching her rag doll, waterlogged and tattered, though it was.
“Dammit, boys, can't you hear? I never knew y'all to turn it down before. Free whisky, boys, free whisky.”
Shots echoed between sand dunes.
The thin man raised his head, shouting to the few stars he could see, “I’m just part and parcel of the glorious fabric of the universe!”
As he got to the seawall stairs, he stooped, then knelt to ring the salt water from his pants. The night breeze from the Gulf blew right through him. His teeth chattered. He walked slowly now, very carefully, one leg at a time, up the stairway to the seawall, his dress shoes squeaking with each footfall. His right hand gripped the tottering handrail made from iron pipes.
But once up on the seawall, a young couple suddenly appeared on the sidewalk. The girl wore a pleated plaid skirt, knit sweater, white socks, and loafers. The boy, his jet-black pompadour slicked back, was dressed in roll-up jeans and a plaid shirt. Both ambled, as if mutually lost in their own thoughts. Then, as if choreographed by a Hollywood musical of the era, turned toward each other. The girl looked up at the boy's eyes. Then he looked at her, until some small, white floating object landed in the girl's hair. The boy smiled and picked it out of her curls. Immediately the ash crumbled in his fingers.
Then a yellow pickup truck screeched up, blaring its horn. “Get in, J. D.! Sarge says we're going now.” The boy turned squeezed the girl's hand, smiled, then ran, and with all his young athleticism, leapt into the truck bed from the sidewalk. There his laughing friends managed to catch him. He turned to look at the girl, gave her a big grin, a shy wave. As the truck drove away, she waved back.
His mom and dad, before they ever got those names, so innocent looking. April '48 he thought? He'd have to check. The Texas City Disaster, a ship full of fertilizer blew up, the deadliest industrial accident ever. Almost 600 killed.
The two people who later would be his mom and dad were in English class at Galveston's Ball High that morning when explosions twenty miles away rocked their building. They ended up walking out on the seawall. His Daddy would talk for years about stacking the burnt bodies. Mom always said he was never quite the same after that. He realized they have no idea how, by turns, wonderful and awful their lives will be.
The thin man smiled, his eyes tearing up. Who was he to thank for these – whatever they were – visions, tiny rips in the space-time continuum? His plan now was to walk back to his motel. Though, there was one slight complication. He didn't quite remember where it was exactly.
That might just cause a problem, he admitted to himself. Then shook his head, but couldn't help but laugh at his chronic absentmindedness. Eleven now, the only sounds were from a lone motorcycle barreling down the boulevard, the rustle of palm fronds above his head, the always steady evening breeze from the Gulf, that always sounded to him like The Island breathing, and, of course, his wet dress shoes squeaking with every footfall.
