Part 13 (1/2)

PART II

RIVER, FIST, AND BONE

10

TWO YEARS LATER, I was back fro in a third-floor walk-up in Lynn, Massachusetts It was a town southeast of Haverhill, a town of welfare projects and brick tenes, the s in over the barroo, ”Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin, you don't come out the way you went in,” but I lived contentedly alone in two roo on the walls, the front roo my footsteps each time I walked over its cracked linoleuas stove and a small table and chair In the back was the bedrooa mat my mother had made and upholstered for me years earlier It was foam an inch thick and I laid it on the floor and put tork boots into a pillowcase for a pillow, covered up each night with a sleeping bag

I did not own a telephone or TV, a radio or record player, and each night after working construction with my brother Jeb, I lay on my foam pad or sat at the small table in the kitchen and read Max Weber, E F Schuels, and Vladimir Lenin I enty-two years old, and I'd become a Marxist That's what Texas did toand institutionalized it In Austin, I'd drifted into the social sciences where you could learn a little about a lot, but all I seemed to find was story after story of US i dictators and Big Business at the expense ofto eat and live and be free

I listened to lectures on Third World politics and econoainst coainst the poor by the rich, the strong against the weak, and I walked the carief, so much of the world's history the story of cruelty and injustice and very few people doing anything about it

This was a campus of fifty-five thousand students, half of ere business majors, and they went to classes in spacious, air-conditioned buildings, their roofs terracotta, their open foyers sporting exotic plants and stone fountains on cool Mexican or Italian tile Palm trees offered shade wherever you needed it, and fro, you could stand and look over the terraced steps of the South Mall to the gold doht under the Texas sun you couldn't look directly at it

There was the tower that'd been closed since August 1966 when Charles Whitman climbed up there and calmly aimed and shot and killed fourteen people I could see it clearly from the steps of Arrakis House on Pearl Street, the co-op I lived in with five other men and six women It was a small two-story in the shade of oak and pecan trees We had a fenced-in yard and a garage that had been turned into a bedroom and bathroom, and I bunked there with Dan, a tall skinny PhD candidate in political science He had a beard and long hair and wore round rilasses like John Lennon, and on Friday or Saturday nights he'd play his guitar on the front porch and sing hoorking-class hero was sos in the air Across the alley fro wohtly colored coupes and put their blonde hair in curlers at night and studied at the business school Soe a few blocks east, new pickup trucks would pull up to the sorority, their beds full of fraternity boys in jackets and ties, their boots shi+ning, and they'd hop out and line up on the lawn and sing soirls ere now out on the second-story balcony, their s The youngof Texas and past glory and friendly senoritas, and the girls would toss single roses down to the fraternity boys, this ritual I assu I'd watch a Latina wo to pick up the roses left behind, their red petals falling to the ground

I'd walk the hot streets and its s tortillas and eucalyptus leaves and the dried pecan shells I crushed underand reclusive and studious When I wasn't studying, I worked out hard at the Texas Athletic Club, ridingofover 400 pounds off their chests, squatting with over 600, dead-lifting even e men, and I still strived to be one of the body was not enough, that that kind of poas only the beginning of what you'd need to confront those anted to take so away froon It was left to us by the parents of a boy who'd killed himself the year before I arrived, and it was the model that in those days exploded into fla or take soo cool off somewhere outside of town

It was a hot Saturday afternoon, the air still and heavy, and I was driving the Pinto into the lot of a 7-Eleven Kourosh was sitting beside me He was a new resident of the house, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian who'd just moved here from London to study computer science When I learned he was frohtly and said hello back and soon ere studying together in the library, drinking beer together on the weekends, and every other Friday night ould sit down solish and he would reciprocate the folloeek by teaching ood with his hands, he'd become the house mechanic and he made the Pinto run se, kind wos She had a proble out too, from stress, she said, and trauma, so she had no eyebrows or eyelashes, and half her head was bald while the other half held thin black hair from which her ears protruded

Beside her sat Jen She was a year younger than I was She skipped a lot of classes and stayed in her roo atercolors or spray cans, anything she could find She had blonde hair and wore faded cotton dresses froh school valedictorian, though she had to explain to me what that was Her room was next to mine on the second floor Sometimes I'd crawl into her bed or she'd crawl into , a bright and cheerful prehed a lot and studied hard, sht

The five of us were heading to Barton Creek, a spring-fed swi hole on the other side of Austin All we needed was beer and ice, and just as I pulled into the lot, two frat boys climbed out of their powder blue Monte Carlo They were both tall and well-built, their button-down shi+rts tucked snugly into their ironed jeans, and as we pulled up in our rusted Pinto wagon, theout the back, the driver glanced over at us like ere bugs somebody should've stepped on, and that's when I noticed how he'd parked his Monte Carlo across two parking spaces, that's when I noticed the stickers on his rear bumper: Anti-Irania Mania Anti-Irania Mania, and No Camel Jockeys No Camel Jockeys

They weren't the first I'd seen A ht, I'd walked home from the campus library to see a Cadillac parked in front of our house Like so hborhood of fraternities and sororities, it was new, its silver hubcaps catching the diht from our front porch I saw the No Camel Jockeys No Camel Jockeys sticker on the rear bu while sticker on the rear bu while

Because of my ties to Marjan and her family, I'd studied more about Iran and its secret police, Savak, trained and supported by the United States There were stories of men forced to watch the repeated rape of their wives, forced to watch their own children held dohile fingers were broken, a hand was sawn off, or an arm Then, on Septe and unarunned down in Jaleh Square, and what killed them were American bullets

In November, students climbed over the walls of the American Embassy and took control of what they called ”the nest of spies for the Great Satan” I didn't see us all as being the Great Satan, but I thought it very reasonable that they did

Back in Austin, Texas, fraternity boys got liquored up and cruised the streets looking for anyone with dark skin and eyes and hair, anyone who looked like a ”caer” They found Ethiopians, Mexicans, a few Egyptians and Sudanese, and they beat them up, usually three or four on one I'd hear of these attacks, and each day I walked to and fro to do what I'd learned to do

Now in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, ed the Pinto up to the rear passenger side of the powder blue Monte Carlo and stepped on the gas and scraped , the Monte Carlo rocking in the rear viewfro, ”You have no right! You have absolutely no right right to do that with to do that with us us in the car Andre Take us hoht this minute!”

”Not till they come out” My mouth was dry I'd slipped off my seat belt so I could jump out of the car when they came back outside, those two racist, entitled pieces of shi+t I was going to go after But Kourosh's hand was on my arm

”Andre-jahn, no No”

And it was like thereception in East Boston, a cal me this is not the way

FOR THE ht after dinner, Kourosh and I would load our backpacks with books and notebooks and walk to the main library on caht I was reading a lot of labor history nohich kept me in a dark mood, especially stories like the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado when the governor sent in the National Guard to break up a strike and they shot and burned to death twenty men, women, and children Karl Marx said that human history is the history of class conflict, and how, I thought, could he have been anything but right And I was tired of walking around carrying this neledge that only the writers of little-read books seemed to have, that onlyin Austin and all day it had rained You could snolias and eucalyptus and pine Across the alley at suppertime, the sorority's kitchen door had been open and they'd been served brisket and beans, but noas after ht, a Tuesday or Wednesday, and my as open, and I lay onfrom leaf to leaf The house was quiet Down the hall behind a closed door ca of keys from a manual typewriter I'd always loved that sound, was drawn to it for reasons I couldn't explain A block or two north a college boy let out a rebel yell, so home from an outdoor bar But then there were , another one hollering, and didn't they know the whole neighborhood was asleep? Did they even think think about that? about that?

I closed ot louder I could hear boot steps on Pearl Aabout a woman, how everybody knew she was a whore ”How come you you don't know that, JB? She's a fuckin' don't know that, JB? She's a fuckin' whore whore” And JB let out a boozy yell right there underin the alley, the light fro across the wet asphalt They were tall, the way so many Texans seemed to be, and they wore pointed Tony Lahtly as he lit a cigarette, the other two talking in loud, half-drunk voices about Dolly, the sa a whore Thescreen was pressing against nore thenore them They'll wander off Go to sleep

But then one of theain, and I said, ”You want to keep it down out there, please? People are sleeping”

”Yeah? You want your ass ass kicked?” kicked?”

I pulled onbarefoot over the kitchen's linoleuround, then the cool wet asphalt of the alley

LATER, BACK inhow I'd walked up to three tall et it started, and when the tallest one asked , I dropped hiht cross to the face, then pivoted and dropped the one next to him, then I went after the third but he was the drunkest one and he tripped and fell, then the second one was onat each other till I got in more than he did and he fell back and crawled into the shadows of the duet the fuck out ofHe lay on his back with his ar, and I watched as his two friends e and picked him up and carried him farther down the alley to their car They lay hiine revved once, then the driver, the second one I'd punched, backed up and drove sloay fro hoell those first two punches had gone, the first a knockout, the second a knockdown And it had happened so fast, the way it always did, so that my friends in the house I lived in didn't even know about it That I'd protected thelow of the hurt I'd caused, and I felt coood father

But then an to burn, this voice in my head: You did that for you You did that for you And I saw Cody Perkins back on the streets of the South End, hoalked with his chest out and his head up, hoas always looking for a fight At eleven and twelve years old, I could only fear and admire him; how could anyone And I saw Cody Perkins back on the streets of the South End, hoalked with his chest out and his head up, hoas always looking for a fight At eleven and twelve years old, I could only fear and adht? How could anyone for a fight? How could anyone ant that? But lying there onup, the alley clear and quiet because I had cleared it, I knehy he wanted to find those fights; they were his only chance to get out as inside him Like pus from a wound, it was how he expressed what had to be expressed It gave hi for him and him only, and my shame now came from someplace I hadn't considered before, that et this pus out, other ways to express a wound that? But lying there onup, the alley clear and quiet because I had cleared it, I knehy he wanted to find those fights; they were his only chance to get out as inside him Like pus from a wound, it was how he expressed what had to be expressed It gave hi for him and him only, and my shame now came from someplace I hadn't considered before, that et this pus out, other ways to express a wound

I began to meditate I skimmed a book on it at the ca at the library, I'd sit cross-legged on the floor in hts off andEvery few exhalations I'd think, Om, peace, peace, peace O that word in her and , even Jesus, soine loving all these people I'd come to hate, these wealthy white kids I was convinced would one day hold the reins of oppressive power

But then I saw the body of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, his chest collapsed, those spikes driven through his feet and palms I saw the bullets shot into Gandhi's torso, his outsretched hands that could do nothing for hi dead on that concretefaster, ht peace, peace, peace peace, peace, peace But I saw my brother's arms at his sides as Tommy J punched him in the face, I saw ht, and when I was nine and we still lived together in that house in the woods, I lay on the living room floor under the coffee table while my mother and father watched the black-and-white news, a close-up on the X-ray of Robert Kennedy's brain and the 22 caliber bullet shot into it And now I knehory over Kennedy's support of Israel, and ould any of this ever end? Would we ever stop doing this to one another? But I saw my brother's arms at his sides as Tommy J punched him in the face, I saw ht, and when I was nine and we still lived together in that house in the woods, I lay on the living room floor under the coffee table while my mother and father watched the black-and-white news, a close-up on the X-ray of Robert Kennedy's brain and the 22 caliber bullet shot into it And now I knehory over Kennedy's support of Israel, and ould any of this ever end? Would we ever stop doing this to one another?

GRADUATION DAY was hot and cloudless, the Texas sky a deep blue above the terracotta-tiled roofs of campus The steps of the South Mall were taken up with fathers in ties and mothers in dresses, and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins watching thousands of us in our robes and tasseledlistening to a speech given by a man in a linen three-piece suit Somewhere in the croere my mother and her mother and sister, both of whorandmother lived My mother had flown in fro with Bruce for two years helping hiht company that flew in supplies for hotels and restaurants My brother and sisters were up North: Suzanne had dropped out of Bradford and gotten a job tending bar at the beach She'd et h school and living with our father and his third wife, Peggy; and Jeb had gotten a girl pregnant He orking construction and sharing a small rented house with her in Salem, Massachusetts She was due to have the baby soon He was nineteen