Ray

XIII

THE gulls are coming in to the dock and fighting over the can of sardines I left out for them. I couldn’t finish it. I should eat. Sweetest Sister is gone and Westy is gone, and it is hard to swallow a cracker. Out in the gulf you see the edge of your world, many boats, and people falling off, silhouetted by the sun. Arms up, screams, goodbye. The moon is coming in red. Small-craft warnings are out. Over the crumpled horizon the moon seems to roll away the clouds and be a great ruby marble.

Barry and I are here. We aim to catch some fish.

Lee and Barry are also back here in Tuscaloosa with me. Hold old Ray close, everybody, for he is estranged from the clear home that he once knew.

I almost forgot. My dogs are here too. We’re all in here now and we are having fun pitching pennies in a minnow bucket. We are about to eat the delicious ribs from Archibald’s — happy nigger that smokes them the best — and my daughter Lee and I have had a good time at the university pool. She comes down the slide hollering with glee. She’s a water lady of nine years. We go off the diving board together in a backflip. Through the water and swimming forward.

This is me at the trial.

“Doctor, did you ever hear Doctor Castro threaten the woman?”

“No.”

“Did you yourself ever have sexual relations with the deceased?”

“No.”

“You are under oath.”

“The answer is no.”

“Semen was found in her vagina.”

“Not mine.”

“But Doctor Castro has alleged that he saw. .”

“I’m not on trial here.”

Maynard stood up, crying, and confessed. You couldn’t understand too much of what he said through the weeping. But there it was. He rushed over to me and hugged me. I came up with a quick stroke from the old Navy practice and sent him sprawling back to his lawyer.

In their secret hearts, such perversities as Maynard know there are things they can never have, things they have wanted with all their hearts. So they kill them. Most preachers are this way. Their messages seem benevolent, but they are more evil than the rest of us walking pavement.

When I fly again, it will be against the preachers.