The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones

Author:Gayl Jones [Jones, Gayl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

32

Ensinadelo (Ensinanco) and I pulled the lounge beach chairs into the sun. The air was clear. I wondered if his white legs would sunburn. I rubbed Vaseline and cocoa butter onto them. This was the first time he’d been brave enough to wear swimming trunks. Of course people stared. They gawked. How could you expect them not to? In fact, I could tell nationalities by the way they looked at him. Americans were the first to gawk, to stand and gawk, and no bones about it. One American even took his picture (not up close of course, but from a safe distance), took several pictures, and then came back and took another one. The English looked once and were done with looking. The French looked, were amazed and fascinated, but pretended they weren’t looking. The Swedes looked, came over, and jovially discussed the matter with us. The Germans looked, pretended they weren’t looking, and pretended furthermore that there was nothing phenomenal in a man made thus, no different from any other ordinary human being; if he had had a belly made out of a tin drum they’d have pretended he was just like them. When they went back to their hotels, though, they wrote about him in their notes, and feared and worried that there was such a stranger in the world, and wondered whether the genes in the lower part of his body were different from those in the upper part. Italians came over and shook hands. His fellow Brazilians did all of the above. Some of the Catholics crossed themselves. His favorite was the man who took pictures. He’d gone toward the man the second time he came around but the man thought it was to do some violence and ran; but actually it was to ask for a copy of the picture of himself. It had never occurred to him to have anyone take a picture so he could see how he looked in the world.

“I must be a monstrosity.”

“A monstrosity? You’re a handsome fellow. You talk about the women’s surprise and fear. You’ve been surprised and afraid of yourself.”

“I know my mother told you about the healing nonsense. I did try one thing since giving it up. When this happened, I tried to heal myself.”

“But you couldn’t.”

“No.”

“So since you can’t heal yourself, you’re really set on not healing others.”

“It’s a lot of what you Americans call baloney. It has nothing to do with the world today, with its lasers and men on the moon.”

I rubbed Vaseline on my knees, then I gathered up my legs in a lotus posture.

“Some ignorant belief.”

“If belief works, it can’t be ignorant. At least that’s how I figure it.”

“Like all you Americans.”

“What?”

“Your great philosophy, your only philosophy, you offer to the world: what works is good.”

“What works can’t be bad. Maybe what works isn’t the only good, but how else can you judge good.”

“There ought to be another way,” he said. He leaned back onto his black elbows. The insides of his arms were ashy.

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