The drifter waited so patiently for Victor’s answer that Victor had no choice but to reply. “Morehead City,” he said, in a tone one might use to indicate that one was going to a prison.
“Down East!” the drifter crowed. “Down East! Lucky you, boss, lucky you! Whatcha got goin on down east, brother? You got an old lady down there?”
Victor nodded, forgetting himself. In a way it was true, he had an old lady in Morehead City with whom he was going to stay, his grandmother, who he had last seen when he was too young to remember. He knew that his grandmother was not the kind of old lady the bum meant, but that didn’t really matter. Victor was only seventeen, and had never so much as kissed a girl, and he found himself shamefully flattered that this old drunk would assume for a moment that Victor would have a woman.
“Watch out for those island girls,” said the drifter with mock authority.
“Where ya coming from boss?”
Victor was being sent to work in his grandmother’s restaurant in Morehead City because his mother refused to have him mope around their apartment in the capital city of the state all summer. But until he was six years old he and his mother and father had lived on Long Island near his mother’s Italian family, so he mumbled ‘New York’ in a casual way.
“New York City!” the drifter crowed again. “A New Yorker, huh! A New York Yankee. You’re a long way from home, boss. Ain’t on the run, are ya? They always get their man, believe you me,” the drifter nudged Victor with a sharp denim elbow.
It had been weeks? Months? Years? Since Victor had smiled, but to his astonishment a reluctant grin lifted one side of his mouth, even though he had no idea what the man meant. The drifter, missing nothing, began to wheeze with appreciation for his own wit. Victor shook his head, slightly, looking at his feet, like a shy child.
“Just making tracks, huh,” said the drifter. “So am I, kid. So am I,” he held his grubby, thick-fingered hand out to Victor. “I’m Lewis. Everybody calls me Shorty, though. Betcha can’t guess why,” he winked.
Victor shook his hand. Without any forethought, he said “I’m Steve,” in a voice so clear and strong he couldn’t believe it was his. Unsettled by his unplanned lie, he blushed.
But the drifter did not notice. “Nicetameetcha, Steve,” he said, and released Victor’s hand. Victor turned to the window and willed the warmth and color in his face to fade. Steve. Of all the people to claim to be. Steve. Steve had been a methhead in the treatment center that Victor’s mother had sent him to the year before when he refused to leave the apartment for school or for anything. Steve had been at times floridly psychotic, and sometimes violent, but popular with the female patients for his long blonde hair and effortless charm. Victor had shard a room with Steve and had hated him, hated his manic methhead ways, his contempt for the girls that adored him, the unabashed conceit with which he preened in front of the mirror screwed to the door of their room. Steve had made no secret of his disgust for Victor’s lack of hygiene, and to some extent it was an effort to at once impress and thwart Steve that motivated Victor to bathe and groom himself and in general at least appear to be less subhuman, at least for as long as he was in the treatment center. His therapists and his mother were overjoyed, but no one else really noticed. He was discharged with the feeling that he had somehow been bested. So now why was he pretending to be someone he despised and feared?
Shorty was rummaging in the plastic bag in his lap. He pulled out a little round container, opened it, and pulled out a wad of tobacco that he prodded into his cheek. He held the container out to Victor, who shook his head.
“Ya don’t chew?” said Shorty.
“No.”
“Smoke?”
Victor nodded. Though he could go days or even weeks without a cigarette and not even notice, he considered himself a smoker. His mother, who was an intensive care nurse until her diabetes and weight gain became so disabling that she had to take a desk job, smoked two packs a day. Victor’s father had smoked too, until Victor was eight years old. Victor recalled the day that his father quit smoking as the day he realized that his parents could only barely tolerate one another’s company.
“A smart kid like you?” said Shorty. “Aww, that’s too bad. You know you’ll stunt your growth,” he emitted a series of phlegmy cackles and Victor thought he’d better smile. Victor was six feet tall and with his lack of muscle and long thin neck seemed much taller.
“I been smoking since I was 8 year old,” said Shorty. “My daddy give me my first carton for my tenth birthday. Lucky Strikes. Back then we didn’t think nothing of it. I grew up in Johnston County, tobacco all over the damn place, I picked it, cured it, drove it to market, smoked it, chewed it, spat it, did everything but fuck it from the time I was in diapers. Too late to do anything about it now, I got bigger problems on my back as I’m sure ya noticed. But, that’s the way it goes. You don’t drink do ya, Steve?”
It took a moment before Victor remembered he was Steve. Did he drink? He would if he knew how to get hold of any alcohol. His father drank. He could remember his parent’s arguing once over the fact that Victor’s father was in the habit of offering Victor the head of the beers he would treat himself to after mowing the lawn or completing some other task about the house on the weekend. “A little,” he said. Victor was quite sure he would drink all the time if he had friends he could drink with.
“I’m a alcoholic,” said Shorty. Victor wished he would lower his voice. “It’s a disease. It’s a allergy. There is no cure, only abstinence,” he settled himself back in his seat with an air of having performed some duty. His voice became singsong. “But I ain’t never touched nothing too ghetto,” he said. “Stay away from those ghetto drugs, Steve,” he said. “A little weed… that’s nothing. God put it in the ground for a reason. Takes the edge of things. But all that crack, that meth, that her-on…” he looked over his cheap sunglasses at Victor like a schoolmarm. “That’s for the scum of the earth, ya hear me? I hate to see a nice young white boy get mixed up in all that. Before you know it he’s running around with a rag on his head and his britches hanging down off his ass like … you know what. God I hate to see that. You know what I mean, Steve?”
Victor gave a wary glance past the drifter to the two black women across the aisle, mortified that they might be overhearing the drifter and assume that he was like ‘Shorty,’ but if they heard ‘Shorty’s’ rant it didn’t seem to bother them. Still, Victor sat back in his seat as far as he could. He wished that the drifter would put his earphones back on and start singing. As it was he was liable to say anything.
Shorty indicated Victor’s duffel bag. “That’s a coast guard sea bag, ain’t it!” he said.
Victor nodded, relieved. “It was my dad’s,” he said.
“Aww,” murmured Shorty. “He still with the guard?”
“He’s dead,” said Victor, without a twinge. His father ran an auto insurance company in Conway, South Carolina, and had just fathered a daughter with his new wife, who was seventeen years his junior and who dotted the I in Victor with a heart in the birthday card she had sent Victor signing both her name and his father’s.
“Aww,” the drifter murmured his sympathy. He looked at Victor as if to invite further details, but Victor didn’t know what to say. He didn’t really wish his father dead. He just didn’t want to talk about him. The drifter patted Victor’s forearm.
“That’s too bad. It’s a shame to lose your old man. My old man died six years ago, age sixty-six, I remember it like it was yesterday. He had the big C, had it for years, but it finally took him out. He was a fighter though, my god in heaven you better believe. A holy fucking terror even when he was on his damn deathbed, you just ask one of them nurses aids that had to wash him. He was as big a bastard as you’d ever want to meet sometimes, treated my mama like a dog, but he was my daddy and I loved and respected him as such. You can’t hold