SCREAMING WITH THE CANNIBALS

Thirty-Two

226 Thirty-Two Hugo and I didn’t have the money to buy suntan lotion, so when we couldn’t beg lotion from the girls we slicked ourselves up with motor oil. For a while, we worried what the girls would say if they found out we were using motor oil, but then one day a girl saw Hugo slathering the stuff all over him and she made gagging sounds and wouldn’t touch him when he held out his arm for her to feel. But she didn’t leave. Hugo told her it was a lifeguard secret—using the motor oil—and that she shouldn’t tell the other lifeguards that she knew about it. That they would get mad at him for letting her in on it. Within a week, half the regulars on the beach were using motor oil. It got to be a thing. Got so you could smell some of those girls coming. I never told Banger about the hotdog stand and the deputy. I knew the deputy would tell him, and I didn’t want Banger to think it was anything that I was worried about. For a couple of days I would catch him looking at me, wrinkling up his face and squinting, but he got tired of that and after a while he quit. The fact is, Banger just didn’t care, didn’t give a shit, about me, about hotdog stands, about anything. I’ve often wondered if Banger loved anything, even liked anything. He was from an island near Ft. Myers, down in Florida, and he went back down there every autumn after the beaches closed in South Carolina. That’s where he got the big seashell that hung over the bar, said he found it right on the beach, said the beach was the only place on the whole island where you could see more then fifty feet. Trees and vines and even the damned weeds grew higher than 227 your head, way higher, he said, and so thick you need a big knife just to hack your way through. The only way on the island you could see anything, really see, was to get in a boat and go out on the water. Then you could look back and really see the island, the low line of dark green that hung just in back of the line of delicate lacy surf that pushed the shells up on the beach. In other words, Banger said, you couldn’t see a goddamn thing and no one could see you. He loved it. I thought I might want to go down there someday, but only if I was sure Banger wasn’t there. For the whole summer, Banger never said anything about kin or friends or anybody else down there on that island. It was as though he went down there every winter, and hid. Well, there was one thing I knew for sure he liked, even loved, but it didn’t really count. Banger loved firecrackers, all kinds, but his two favorites were the M-80s and cherry bombs. He seemed to have them around all the time, in his pockets, in his car, dumped into boxes in the storage room. Once I even saw him put some into the cash register. For just in case, he said. And he liked those little ones, too, the ones he called ladyfingers. He kept a supply of them in a large seashell that sat on the shelf behind the bar, next to a neon Budweiser Beer sign. He would reach into the shell, grab a ladyfinger and play with it at the bar, toss it into the air, wave the fuse around next to his cigarette. Now and then he would take the cigarette out of his mouth, put the firecracker between his lips, light the fuse with the cigarette, then roll the whole thing into his mouth. The women would scream and the guys would try to act casual, like they saw guys swallow minia- 228 ture bombs every day. He would turn and spit the firecracker, fuse still burning, over the shelf and out into the junk piled behind bar where it would explode, an empty popping sound all but muffled by the noise from the bar. People would edge away from the him, trying to be casual, trying not to show Banger that they wanted the hell...