Chapter 4 Samson
The other boys can relax.
They play and laugh and talk about MTV and make plans for the weekend.
The other boys move through each school day like water running through a smooth gully.
There are no obstacles for them. Their daily lives are frictionless.
I observe them doing this thing and that: buying their lunch in the cafeteria, handing in their assignments at the end of biology class, placing their textbooks back in their bags.
I watch them as they thrive, and they do not even realize how fortunate they are.
I am a whole different species.
Take James Kendricks Jr. Known to us as Jim.
He’s the kind of boy who will become a senator someday.
His blond hair is always perfectly in place, and his shirts are always clean.
White collars that glow. At the end of each day, Jim looks relaxed.
He has laughed his laughs and he is drifting through the final minutes of his final period, calm, almost sleepy.
Whereas I am on my knees and I daren’t show it.
Looking over my shoulder, hour after hour, class after class, watching my back, takes it out of me.
“Jenkins, what are you loitering about for?”
“Sorry, Mr. Davenport. I’m looking for my bag, sir.”
He walks closer. Dennis Davenport. Head of Lower School. Decent enough.
“Why would it be here, Jenkins? You haven’t had gym today, have you?”
“No, sir.”
He frowns.
“I lost it, sir.”
They moved it.
“You lost your own bag?”
They hid it.
“It’ll be around here someplace.”
“We’re locking this building soon, Jenkins. Wake up, find your belongings, and get off home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ten minutes later I find my bag stuffed inside a planter. The base is wet but my Walkman is still working. It is intact inside its sock cover.
They laugh as I head out the doors by the gym.
They laugh as I walk away to the school gates.
Passing through with dozens of other boys, a sea of black polyester blazers, they laugh in the distance.
After I’ve walked for ten minutes past the candy store and the bakery, they’re still laughing.
Inside my head I can hear them clearly. Laughing at me and my damp bag. At my life.
My spirits lift on making it past the park with the empty public pool. I see a tall sophomore on a bike. He’s even skinnier than I am. I’ve heard his classmates call him Sniper’s Nemesis.
I walk on.
A safe zone.
Neighborhood of my oldest, most unlikely friend.
Mr. Turner lives at 34 Bakersfield Avenue. His bungalow is larger than the one we used to live in. One extra room, a bigger garden, and a garage.
I ring the bell.
I found the advertisement in the classifieds. Senior gentleman requires help in the house and boat one day a week. Light duties, grocery shopping, dog walking, odd jobs. Mom came with me to see Mr. Turner to make sure he wasn’t a pervert.
I ring the bell again.
A full minute passes.
“Come in out of the cold, Samson. Come in, boy.”
He ushers me inside and the bungalow smells of unwashed sheets and the heating turned up too high, TV dinners and cigarette smoke. There are Walmart bags stuffed inside a cardboard box on the kitchen table. On either side of the box is a steaming cup.
“Nice cup of hot milk after your schooling. Sit down. You want a KitKat?”
“Yes, please.”
“There you go.”
He places it down next to my mug. Two fingers. He gives me hot milk because that’s what he had as a boy.
“You want me to go out to the store for you, Mr. Turner?”
“After. You sit down and rest a while. Get that milk inside you. Hot drink will fix most things, my old mama used to say, God bless her soul. You see the fire truck, did you?”
“No.”
“About ten minutes ago, it was. Heading up toward the levee. Lights and everything. Hope nothing too serious.”
The milk is sweet and my throat loosens a little. I use my fingernail to run along the foil wrapper and then I offer Mr. Turner a chocolate finger.
“Oh, no, they’re for you, Samson. I’ll put my supper on when you’ve gone. Chicken potpie night, one of my favorites. Listen, how’s the boat? Newer than mine, isn’t it? British design: long and thin. How are you taking to life at sea?”
“Just a canal, Mr. Turner.”
“I know it is, boy, I’m yanking your chain. You like it, though? Cozy life, isn’t it?”
“Dad doesn’t like the marina. Says it’s too noisy.”
“Yeah, well, it can be that.”
“Dad’s moving us.”
“Where to?”
“Robertson’s is too expensive, he says. He wants us to be on our own out of town. Wants to be in nature for his book writing. Maybe onto the river, even.”
Mr. Turner stands up and rinses his cup and places it upside down on the drainer. He’s wearing new sheepskin slippers.
“Not easy being out cruising full-time. Not having a base. People think it’ll be a grand life but it’s not straightforward even if you’re good with motors.”
“I don’t want to go on the river.”
“Don’t blame you for that. The size of the barges these days. The currents.”
“Dad likes things that are not easy.”
He looks at me. “And what does your mom say?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right, listen. Drain that cup and go to the store. I need a carton of whole milk, pack of pink sugar wafers, and a loaf of thinly sliced bread. You remember all that?”
I nod and hand him my warm cup.
“And two packs of Marlboro Reds.”
“I can’t, Mr. Turner.”
He smiles. “I know, boy. I’ll ask my cousin’s son to buy them for me. Only a few more years, eh?”
He hands me the cash.
The owner looks at me suspiciously as I walk around his tiny corner grocery store and pick up the milk, wafers, and bread. He always looks at me suspiciously, this one, like I’m about to steal something.
When I return, Mr. Turner’s in his recliner, the one with stuffing sprouting out of both arms.
“Quiz show on the TV. Let’s see how you fare today, Einstein.”
The theme tune plays as I put the food away. The tightness in my shoulders eases and I stare at my reflection in the kitchen window. Time stops for a full minute. I look into my own eyes and take this moment for myself. No harm can come to me in this stuffy, familiar place. He just lets me be.
Mr. Turner answers the first two questions incorrectly.
“They’re making it harder, the jackasses, I know they are. Nothing stays the same, does it? Infernal TV.”
I made a handsome thirty-two cents profit at the store.
The doorbell rings and the neighbor hands back Mr. Turner’s dog.
He’s too old to walk her himself and for some reason he won’t give her to me to walk yet even though I’ve offered.
He says Amber needs to become accustomed to me first. She’s a Jack Russell terrier: black and brown with a pink leather collar.
Mr. Turner says she’s a sensitive dog and she can be anxious around new folks.
Amber jumps up on Mr. Turner’s lap and he strokes her narrow head and the quiz show keeps on playing. Her eyes close.
I’m glad they have each other.
“I was going to keep it a secret and surprise you, but I can’t hold it in. I’m bringing my boat out tomorrow,” he says. “My cousin’s son’s helping me with it. He’s about your parents’ age and he’s good with all things practical, is Phoenix. Might come and see you on the canal, Samson.”
“Is Phoenix his real name?”
“Is it his real name?” He chuckles to himself. “No. His name’s Graham.”
I pause to imagine Mr. Turner on the canal. “Will you manage?”
“Will I manage?” he says, rubbing Amber’s chin. “Will we manage? Of course we’ll manage, boy. Had my boat nineteen years, five of them with Betty. Will I manage?”
He doesn’t talk about Betty much with me but there are photos of her everywhere. One time, when I arrived early, he was sat on the sofa holding a framed photograph from their wedding day and he looked like he was upset. He claimed it was hay fever.
“I’ll let you know where we moor up,” I say.
“You do that, Ahab.”
When Dad found out it was relatively inexpensive to live on a boat, he began investigating this way of life. It’s just a shame he bought the smallest, thinnest boat in America, but Mom says we’re lucky to have what we got. Others around here have it much worse.
I say goodbye and he pays me ten bucks for the week. Three one-hour visits, up from one originally, that I’d willingly do for free. He is a decent man, Mr. Turner. He never had any kids, but I think he would have made a good dad.
Bus home, and then a walk along the towpath.
My schoolbag feels cold and heavy, the damp part chill against my back.
I spot a bird of prey on the far bank, hovering in the tree line, but I can’t tell if it’s a Mississippi kite or a goshawk.
The light is falling away and the water shines: dull and bright at the same time.
“Tiny Dancer” on my Walkman radio. Then Whitney Houston at maximum volume. Then the haunting, perfect voice of Sinéad O’Connor. Music can save a person, I’d say. Radio, especially. If I’m at rock bottom, nine times out of ten the right song will come along right when I need it.
I pass the area in the marina where our boat was once moored up and walk on.
Another mile. Two more. I switch off my radio.
The light is almost completely absent and there is frost in the air.
My feet are frozen. I move my bag strap to the other shoulder.
It’s as if it’s growing heavier with every passing mile. And I’m growing hungrier.
A freight train rattles along the tracks in the distance.
I keep on walking.
Looking for home.