Drinking from the Stream

1. GIANT KILLER

(JAKE)

I didn’t mean to kill Pudge. But I killed him, for sure. One minute he was standing there near me. The next minute he was gone. I was still alive; he wasn’t. And I wasn’t sorry he was gone, but I wasn’t glad I killed him.

All right! He had his hands around my throat. It was an unprovoked attack clear as day. And I defended myself. But he died by my hand. So I was a murderer, that was plain. Maybe not a real, actual murderer. I hated Pudge but I had not planned to kill him. In a way, he had it coming. The whole thing was thrust on me. It was like an accident he inflicted on himself. Yet sure enough I ended him, which made me a killer. Now he was dead I didn’t think better of him, though I didn’t expect his death would move me like it did. I even started to feel a little sorry for this bastard who had tried to kill me. But mostly I felt guilty as hell. And plenty scared.

Toward the end of 1969 after I turned twenty, an oil company in Louisiana hired me to work on an offshore rig. I thought my luck had finally changed. I vagabonded after high school, taking the worst jobs available, scraping and scrimping to send money back home for my two kid sisters. Working as a roughneck was big money, some kind of miracle.

On a bright, sweltering day, three months before his death, Pudge showed up on my rig. He was the new cook, a company lifer. By then I’d been there over a year. Pudge was middling height, sparse blond hair, gray puffy face, short thick limbs and hands. He had a beer belly, which tugged at the lower buttons of his shirt, pushed his trouser waist almost down to his groin, hanging obscenely over his belt like a water bomb. Pudge took one look at me, got in my face and said straight out, I don’t like you, you son of a bitch. Stay out of my way and maybe we’ll get along, his face turning dark, almost purple. I tried not to antagonize him, but he couldn’t help messing with me. It was my nose.

Pudge thought I was Jewish, and Pudge hated Jews. He told anyone who would listen how the Jews were all rich moneygrubbers who secretly controlled everything through the so-called Christians they bought off, and that honest white Christians like himself couldn’t get ahead. And the Jews were egging on the Blacks. Pudge liked to use that ugly word for the Blacks that I won’t repeat. The Jews were giving them money and political support, encouraging them to riot. And there was a fair amount of rioting, like Harlem in ’64, Watts in ’65, Detroit and Newark in ’67. The point was to create enough chaos so the Jews could step in and run everything openly, without having to hide it. But—and this was Pudge’s favorite part of the story—when the mask slipped, the tables would turn. The country would erupt in a race war that would crush the Jews forever and shove the Blacks back down to their rightful place on the bottom.

My nose gave me away, according to Pudge. On the rig I was known as Beak. Here everybody had a nickname. My nose is kind of sharp, maybe like a beak, I guess. But who doesn’t have a nose? I can’t say I ever thought much about it. Before Pudge, no one ever gave me a second look. My mother’s father and my three handsome uncles had the same nose. There was this picture that hung in the parlor for years of the three of them in their uniforms. We were all Germans, dammit, but they’d all gone to Europe to fight Hitler and never came back.

My hair does get a little frizzy in the humid air when I let it grow, another dead-giveaway for Pudge, and my name. I’m plain Jake Ries now but I was born Jacob Riesenschlaeger, which Ma and Dad had chopped to Ries. Word got out one day at school what Riesenschlaeger meant in German. From then on, I was Jake the Giant Killer. I liked the old name. So did our pastor, who often quoted the fire-and-brimstone Old Testament prophets. Pudge claimed both the long and short versions of my surnames were Jewish, like Levi or Cohn.

I pointed out that German names could sound Jewish. But denying Pudge’s stereotypes only cemented them in his brain. It infuriated him that I was posing as a White man. He’d caught me out and he wouldn’t let me go, even if I hollered. It sure didn’t help when I told him his theories stank. Hell, they wouldn’t do justice to the mind of a four-year-old. Hatred flamed from his eyes. He swore he’d live to see my family frying in the ovens, the only fit place for people like me. He wasn’t kidding. I saw the horror of his imagined murders in his glance. I tried to laugh it off. But I couldn’t get his words out of my mind, the rows of ovens with open doors, ashes piling up, the residue of human bodies glowing orange waiting to be shoveled out to make room for more bodies.

It’s not like I was a great friend of the Jews. I really didn’t know much about them. My whole family was Lutheran. The only Jews I knew growing up were the Silvermans who ran the town drug store. Freddie Silverman was in the same class as my littlest sister, Margaret. And there was John Friedland, the company accountant in New Orleans, the guy you had to see to place a bet in the football pool, or on a horse race or a fight. That was it. But I loathed the man who boasted he’d kill my family. I hated him because of his designs on me and mine, if he ever got to where he could do something about it, not because of abstract feelings of racial equality or solidarity with the downtrodden. I was keen not to be one of the downtrodden. Pudge wanted to fry my flesh. He said so.

At first, nothing happened. I didn’t do anything. Neither did he. We kind of avoided each other. I say kind of because it’s not so easy to avoid someone on a small drilling platform. Mealtimes were tense, since he was the cook, and I never knew what he might say, though I didn’t worry too much about being poisoned because we all ate from the same pot.

A month passed like that. Then a commissary man I hadn’t seen before came out on the launch. Here was a guy as sloppy, as ugly, and as depraved looking as some comic book drawing. All his expressions looked like a leer. In fact, he was a double for Aqualung on the record album, like he had dressed for the role and was on his way to a Halloween party. He was authentic down to the drool, maybe because he chewed tobacco. He had long, greasy hair, walked with a stoop, and his smile revealed black, crooked teeth. His clothing looked filthy beyond belief. Though you could not pinpoint a stained or dirty place, yet the impression held.

I was working high up on the rig when I saw him, my eyes riveted on him as he mounted the lower steps. After a new pipe section was in place I had a few moments breather.

Who’s that? I yelled.

Who? several voices responded. Then someone said, That’s Hink. That furry son of a bitch? Yeah. They all knew him, though he hadn’t shown up at our rig since I’d been there. I heard he’d worked as a stevedore and a maritime seaman.

Hink. I have no idea where he got that nickname. Turned out he was Pudge’s bosom pal. They’d known each other for years. Like Pudge, he was a company lifer. There were three or four lifers on the derrick. All hard cases, I was sure, with rap sheets as long as my arm. Which is why the company liked them. They were loyal. Where else could they find a job? The roughnecks mostly were young drifters like me, and they kept to themselves. No one much talked about where they were from, and no one asked. Like no one wanted to know that my dad and ma died when I was sixteen, and that me and my sisters were orphans. Which is why I had to go to work. Which is why I was on that oil platform with that bastard, Pudge.

With fifteen minutes off, I went down to one of the lower sections. Hearing voices just before I turned a corner, I stopped to have a look and a listen. They were leaning on a railing, Pudge and Hink, drooped shoulders touching conspiratorially, looking out to sea. I overheard Hink say, You mean he denies it? The yellow-bellied bastard. You watch him. They’re sneaky.

I gave him a scare, you bet, said Pudge. I’ll get him. It burns me up to see one of them pretending to be a white man. Could be that little kike will have an accident. He’s scared of me, for sure. They all get nervous when you remind them about the people who really got their number once and did something about it. They know there’s no place to hide when the white race figures out the truth and does what it has to do. That son of a bitch. He better watch out.

I could have rushed them, pushed them off the platform then and there. My heart pounding, I turned back the way I came and closed my eyes. Flooded by the dark, I shook my arms, my legs, felt my muscles move beneath my work shirt. I knew I was ready if I had to be. I was sure I could handle him, or them. Then I got this idea. I’d get Pudge where it really hurt.

Pudge liked to play draw poker. He played at least two or three times a week, him and a few regulars. They were all older than me by a lot. Now, I’ve never been a big gambler or played cards to make money, though I always thought I might be good at poker. I have a steady hand, a steady lip, a steady gaze. I can look anyone deadpan in the eye. I can remember every card played. I can figure the odds.

So pretty quick, I asked them to deal me in. Everyone acted really surprised, of course. Pudge especially.

You’re going to let that damned Jew play with us? Pudge pushed his chair back.

The others looked at me and back at Pudge.

You sure? asked one.

I’m betting his money’s as good as yours, Pudge, said a second, and we don’t mind taking yours.

I sat and Pudge was silent. Then he pulled his chair up and grinned at the cards he was shuffling, like he was waiting for the fun to start. In the early games I mostly watched, folding decent hands, or calling small bets when I had nothing. The truth is that Pudge was not a great card player. He was too easy to read. Like, he’d get all serious and quiet if he was bluffing, but with decent cards he’d smile and joke, all relaxed. Of course, his cronies had figured this out, too, and Pudge mostly lost. And so did I, honestly. I didn’t want anyone to know I was gunning for Pudge. I never bet heavily, mostly lost small pots. But if I figured Pudge was bluffing, and no one else was betting, and if I had the cards, I went after him. By the time everyone went to sleep, he was down a hundred twenty-five to me. Two nights later, while he was blaming my earlier win on beginner’s luck, I stung him for eighty dollars. Three nights after that, I took him for two hundred with a pair of aces after he folded. I kept at it. Luck’s part of it, sure, but not mostly. It helped that Pudge and his pals drank. They liked their bourbon. Sometimes it seemed I was the only one sober at the table. At the end of the two-week shift I had lost hundreds, but I was up nearly eight hundred on Pudge. All I got from Pudge was IOUs, though he got razzed pretty good for it.

Pudge, pay the kid for chrissake!

And with a wink, Whadda you, Pudge, some kinda tightwad Jew bastard?

Losing money to me burned him more than even I imagined. To him, it was a Jew stopping a righteous Christian like himself from getting ahead. I knew my risks. If he continued to lose to me, though everything was on the up-and-up, he might come after me. I’d never seen him do anything violent; mostly I figured him for a blowhard and a coward. But If I got him crazy enough, I thought he just might snap. He might try something.

Work was going well. In fact, the geologist said we were about to strike oil. The company was so happy with us drillers that we were getting a bonus. But not the cooks. Pudge just glowered when he heard about it. I was getting rich but also restless. After twenty months on the rig I was tired of the two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off routine. I’d had it with that greasy platform and the grease-coated men, me included, who worked there. I didn’t want to see Hink again, or Pudge. I was ready to quit. On the other hand the bastard owed me money. He would crow if I left without collecting from him. More than money, he owed me a psychic debt. I wanted payback. But waiting endlessly was not worth it. I figured to leave after the next two-week shift.

I told everyone I was quitting. I honestly couldn’t wait for this part of my life to end. I was ready to go back to dry land, to try something else. When they asked where I was going, I said Mexico. Sit on some beach sipping margaritas. I don’t know why I said it. How the hell did I know where I was going?

At the end of the two-week shift, when everyone was going ashore except Pudge, there was one last poker game. Before the cards were dealt, without saying a word, glaring down at the table, he slid me an envelope with four hundred-odd dollars in it, about half what he owed me. I opened the envelope in front of everybody, quickly counted the money, stuck the envelope in my shirt pocket.

Thanks, I said, but you’re four hundred short. Though I figured I would never see the rest, this was unexpected. This was good. Pudge got really quiet. His silence was so noticeable someone joked that a young guy was making him look like a fool. He got up and stomped out, making a big racket on the steel plate. He returned a few minutes later and sat.

Hink was there that night, too, stranded by a nasty squall. He radioed in, told them he’d take us to shore early tomorrow in the launch, if the weather let up. Pudge was staying put, though, the platform being short a cook.

We had a game. For once, I was riding high with a pile of chips in front of me. Hink was idly shuffling cards when we changed decks between hands. Normally the dealer shuffles, but that night for some reason we dealt cards after Hink shuffled them. On my turn to deal, I took the cards from Hink and dealt myself a pat hand—three aces and two threes. Pudge immediately started to bet heavy and cracking jokes. I didn’t like it, so I folded. Pudge was called with three sevens. He won the pot. Then someone curiously found the seven of diamonds near my foot. How it got there I had no idea. I was sure I hadn’t dropped it. I picked it up and placed it on the table.

See, said Pudge, maybe a little too fast, I can win on sevens with only three sevens in the deck.

Everyone laughed at that one. Since it was a misdeal we took the hand again, leaving the money in the pot. This time I shuffled the cards myself. As I dealt, I was thinking I had just missed getting set up. Pudge would have claimed I had cheated, dealing myself a full house and him three sevens, while holding the last seven out of the deck, even though Hink had shuffled. He’d claim I’d been cheating him all along. So he’d owe me nothing. He’d demand his four hundred dollars back and get in some cracks about the Jews while he was at it. There would have been a fight for sure.

On the next hand I folded early, took my winnings, and sat out the rest of the game. Pudge won some money while I sat there. He didn’t look happy at the end of the table with his back to the wall, his puffy pink face scowling at his cards. I don’t know what else he and Hink had cooked up, but now they couldn’t try. I watched the game, trying to decide if my mind was playing tricks or if they really were messing with me.

The game ended. I went to my hooch to pack, feeling aimless. In a few hours I’d leave this job. I had no place to go. I didn’t know what would become of me. I’d aimed to go to college, eventually. But now I’d gotten used to being independent and having money. I listened to the wind swirling around the rig. That night I had nightmares, like I’m drowning in the ocean and at my last gasp Pudge and Hink are running me down in a motorboat and laughing.

I got up early. The wind had died. Everything outside looked strange that morning. Nothing soft was left in the world. Gray had disappeared. The sea was oil black. The drilling derrick was black, angular against the bright, electric sky. Bright green-brown crusty seaweed floated everywhere. Everything was brittle, sharp, threatening, even the swells.

After breakfast, I went up top to kill a few minutes. I was still wearing the shirt from last night with the envelope full of money sticking out. I folded it, stuck it in my back pocket. Just then, Pudge walked out from behind some machinery. He was holding an enormous monkey wrench, the one we used to change pipe sections while drilling. He must have followed me up the steps, edged past me somehow. That thing was so heavy it normally took two of us to handle it. And here he was trying to swing it over his head.

I’ll have that money back, you little kike. Give it back or I’ll smash your skull. None of your Jew tricks. Hand it over.

It was a dangerous place to fight. We were high over the water. The platform edge was close, barely fenced. At first, I was too stunned to say anything. Then the adrenaline kicked in.

You big idiot. No one’s cheated you out of anything, except a brain. Plus you owe me another four hundred. You’re not getting any money from me while I’m still alive.

He took two steps toward me, snarling in a low voice, Hand it over, you cheat. Give it to me.

He swung, but it was easy to dodge. The wrench was so heavy he could barely hold onto it, which knocked him off balance. I jumped at him, gave him a big shove, hoping to make him drop the wrench. It worked. The big wrench fell over the side, hitting the water with a loud sucking plop.

He grabbed me around the throat and I kneed him, hard. That stopped him and I gave him a big push. He tripped over the foot-high railing near the edge, landing on his hands and knees, straddling the rail. The pain distracted him, I guess. His knee slipped over the edge taking his body with it. He grabbed the greasy platform awkwardly with his arms and elbows. He stared into my eyes for a long moment, his blue eyes looking tiny and pitiful, his pasty, jowly face speechless. I made a move to help him but stopped. He groaned, lost his grip, and fell. I saw his head strike a girder before he hit the water. He floated face down, then slowly sank out of sight.

He died so easily, so fast. I was shocked. It was all gone now, the plotting, the conspiracies, the twisted paranoia, his try at cheating at cards, his attempt to murder me or rob me, everything he had ever done or thought or had been or wished for. It was gone, all of it, except what still echoed of him in living minds. In my mind.

I pictured him again hanging there over the edge, looking at me. I might have grabbed his hand, called for help. Could I have saved his life? I didn’t try. I just looked into his eyes. Then he fell. No one could say this was my fault. If he hadn’t tried to kill me, he wouldn’t be dead now. It was my last day on the job. I would never have seen him again. Yet it happened.

Now I had the overwhelming urge to flee, to put time and distance between me and where Pudge died and disappeared. There were no witnesses, no evidence. I didn’t especially want to find out how a court would look at it. It might be ruled manslaughter or maybe self-defense. Sure, I knew running would look bad.

Then like I was in a dream I was walking downstairs, down to where everybody was gathering so they could exit this floating junk pile and return to some semblance of real life. They were waiting for me, wondering where I was, glad I turned up so they could leave. The day was overcast, sultry. The sea had turned gray. Brief squalls gusted in my face. Hink was ready to go but wanted to see Pudge. Had anyone seen Pudge? No one had. I didn’t say a word. Someone said, You know, I thought I saw him going above a few minutes ago.

That’s funny, I’ve been looking for him all over. The only place I didn’t look was up top.

I was up there, I said, but I didn’t see him.

Maybe he locked himself in one of the coolers, someone joked.

Pudge. Pudge, Hink cried, looking above us. Come out, you no good cook. Pudge!

The boys started to get restless. Everyone wanted to get started.

Let’s go already, several voices clamored. You can talk with him on the radio when you’re ashore, one said. You get out here to the rig twice a week as it is. C’mon Hink, let’s get moving.

Hink reluctantly moved his eyes away from the top of the derrick. I wonder where he got to. He started down the stairs to where the launch was moored. We all got in. Hink sat in the stern and started her up. Before casting off, Hink tapped me on the shoulder. You never saw him, did you? Hey kid? Looking at his revolting face I shook my head slowly. No. I turned forward and never looked back, though I could feel his eyes on me as the boat pulled away.

2. HEATHROW

(JAKE)

I stepped from the launch onto the fog-slicked pier, waved goodbye to my fellow workers, sprinted to the bus station and bought tickets to New Orleans and Chicago. Hour after hour on those buses I carried Pudge’s last moments in my head. I was sure they would grab me at any moment. I had never been out of the country. Canada wasn’t far enough. I needed to leave North America. England was the easiest far place to get to that spoke English.

Some hole-in-the-wall on the South Side of Chicago sold Louisiana newspapers. I read about the unexplained death of a cook, whose swollen body had washed up on a beach after a week in the water. The police had questioned the entire crew of the oil rig, except for one employee who reportedly was in Mexico. Though I figured eventually they’d circle back to me, the police speculated the death could have been accidental or even a suicide. By now I assumed they knew Pudge and me didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye.

As the days passed, I learned the coroner had determined the cause of death was drowning, although a concussion, probably resulting from a fall from the platform, was the main contributing factor. There was no evidence of foul play. A large monkey wrench was reported missing, but the wound to the deceased’s head was not consistent with a blow from that kind of blunt object.

No one was chasing me—yet. I was the only one who knew for sure what had happened. It was neat. A bit of unpleasant private business, then walk away. Still, the thought of what I did haunted me. I could have saved the man’s life, or I could have tried. I could’ve grabbed Pudge, tried to pull him up, instead of staring at him and thinking how loathsome and pathetic he was. Of course, the bastard might have tried to pull me over the side. Maybe I wanted him to die, or maybe I didn’t mind. I got to thinking I was as bad as Pudge, or worse. He was a fanatic, sure, an aspiring mass murderer, and maybe he’d kill people, if he had the chance. But he’d probably never killed anybody outside of his madman’s dreams. Never once had I thought about killing anybody, but I actually had done it. If I ever spoke with the police, I feared my whole guilty story would spill out. I was looking at jail time, for sure. They might get me on manslaughter. Or maybe they’d trump up a real murder charge. That’s as far as I liked to let my mind go.

No, I had to leave the country. All my actions since that morning on the oil platform would point to my guilt. I decided to get away and follow the plan. I had no family ties, except my sisters who I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. They’d be fine without me and the few dollars I managed to send them.

I tried to convince myself that I’d forget about all this once I got to Europe. I was eager to travel, excited about starting something new and to meet exotic people even though the British weren’t that exotic. I had twelve hundred dollars from my bank in New Orleans, though I was careful not to close the account, plus the four hundred from Pudge, and another five-six hundred from that last poker game. That and my pocket money made twenty-two hundred. If I was careful, I reckoned I could go for a year and then maybe find work someplace.

It took two slow, sweaty weeks in a cheap Chicago boarding house for my hometown to send me my birth certificate, then another two for the post office to hand me a passport. I took an overnight bus to New York, where I immediately bought a one-way ticket to London. I killed another week waiting for the charter. My hotel didn’t cost much. I bought a backpack and a sleeping bag. I went to the zoo. Fed the pigeons. Museums. Went for walks. Rode out to Far Rockaway on the subway. I went to see a play in Central Park. Visited the public library. Counted pimps, whores, and fat cats in Times Square. I did everything I could think of that cost nothing, or next to nothing. For a week I spoke to no one, besides ordering a hamburger or paying the hotel. Except for one panhandler, a low-down bum who dogged me until I warned him off, until he looked me in the eye. And then he froze, retreated a few