The Last Worthless Evening

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Authors: Andre Dubus
name?”
    He eased down on the chair.
    â€œSeaman apprentice Ellis. Kenneth Ellis.”
    â€œMiddle initial?”
    â€œD. It’s for Dalton.”
    â€œWhere are you from, Ellis?”
    â€œDetroit. Mr. Fontenot.”
    â€œDo you want to make a statement?”
    â€œYes sir. Yessir, I’ll make a statement.” He reached for his mug and cigarette, almost burned down now, and his fingers trembled. He looked at Gantner. “Want me to go slow?”
    Gantner did not look up from the page in the typewriter.
    â€œI’m fast,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Take a cigarette when you want one. I got a carton in my locker and there’s enough here to get me through this fucking watch.”
    He quickly looked up at me, apologetic, then defiant as his face lowered to the page.
    â€œWe was on the pier,” Ellis said, and Gantner was typing. “I was by myself. I mean I left my buddies in the bar. I was tired. I was going broke too. I mean, they’d pay for me, but you know how it is. So I was standing on the pier, watching the boat coming. It was crowded, you know.” He had been looking directly at me, and he still did but now his eyes were not really seeing mine, and his voice softened, as memory drew him back to the pier, and the man he was there, with the life he had there. “People close up against one another.” I saw a motion to my right and looked at it: Gantner’s face rising from the words under the keys, his eyes looking at mine. “There was some loud ones behind me. Southern boys. But they wasn’t saying nothing. To me, I mean. Or doing nothing. After a while I forgot they was even there. They was loud, but I didn’t hear hear it no more. I was just watching them running lights and thinking about sleeping and tomorrow.” Gantner was very fast; it seemed that Ellis’s words themselves struck the keys. “I got liberty tomorrow too. I had liberty tomorrow. I was thinking about where to go, and how much money I ought to bring. When was the next payday, and would it be before the next port. I must have stepped back. I guess I did. No reason. I was just thinking and I stepped back. I bumped one of the white boys. One of the Southern boys. He said— He called me nigger. Something about ‘Watch what you doing, nigger.’ Something like that. So I turned on him. Mister—” His eyes came back from memory, focused on mine. “Fontenot. Nobody’s called me that since I was too little to do nothing. When I got my size maybe two, maybe three guys, they called me that. But they didn’t come out so good.” His size was not height, or in his shoulders and chest; he was a normal young man, five-nine or so, a hundred and sixty, but I knew he was telling the truth about the two or maybe three. It was in his eyes. He’d hang on like they say a snapping turtle does, and even if you finally beat him on strength alone, you’d end up wishing you had never seen him, and you’d make certain you didn’t see him again. He lowered his head, looked at the space of deck between his thighs. Then slowly he shook his head. Twice, three times, more. He did not raise it when he spoke again. “But that white boy. On the pier. I wish— We didn’t even hit one another. I grabbed him and got him in a headlock. He was a heavy boy. We was kind of turning. Like spinning round, and I was holding onto his head. Then we went off the side. The water’s deep there. We went down a ways before he let go my body. He had me around here.” Still looking between his thighs, he pointed at his waist. Then he said it: “Around my waist.” Under Gantner’s quick fingers the keys clicked to a ring, and he slid the carriage back and the keys clicked again, dulled by the three pages and two sheets of carbon paper. “Soon as he let go I did. I swam right up. I was scared too. I mean, I didn’t

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