Kamby Bolongo Mean River Read online

  Whenever I hear this kind of call my head cracks open and I spill out all over the floor.

  This is when they have to come in here and clean up after me.

  One of them comes in here with a mop and another one with a bucket. I sit on the bed with my feet up so they won't miss a spot and cheer them on.

  This is like how when Mother used to vacuum in the living room except she made Charlie and me do it most of the time.

  The floor here is cement and easy to clean up after. It's also good for drawing on in chalk.

  They let me draw stick figures on the floor so this is what I do all day long.

  I draw stick figures in relation to other stick figures. Some stick figures are dancing jigs while others are singing during the commercials. Some are seated at a kitchen table eating sandwiches and coleslaw and others are meditating on the living room sofa.

  In one drawing there are two stick figures trying to sneak into a private school with two stick security guards chasing them away. Right next to that one is a stick figure jogging with a rope tied around his waist and he is pulling along another stick figure riding on a skateboard. This stick figure is holding a dog's leash and there is a stick dog jogging along beside them.

  There are two stick figures pushing another stick figure in a stick wheelchair on one side of a street while another stick figure harasses two female stick figures on the other.

  How this one works is the two stick figures pushing the other stick figure in a stick wheelchair is Mother and I pushing Charlie around in a wheelchair after he got out of the hospital that one time.

  There may well be a professional actor named Charlie Robertson. If there is he probably isn't good because I've never heard of him. He may be one of these actors that waits tables all day long instead of acting.

  He might take a class or two at night and go on auditions during the day. Or he goes to a small rural town every summer to do what actors call summer stock. Summer stock is another thing actors make up. There is no such thing as summer stock. Actors want people to think they do act sometimes so they tell people this. I'm not sure anyone believes it.

  Charlie Robertson is probably one of these kinds of actors if he is an actual actor.

  I know about summer stock because Charlie tried to be an actor after he finished boxing. I don't know why he thought he could do this when he couldn't keep his hands and head from shaking but Charlie always knew better.

  Charlie made me rehearse with him two whole summers. What we'd do is wake up while it was still dark out and meet in the living room so we could rehearse. Mother would still be sleeping I think. Otherwise she wasn't home yet from her night job. Mother sometimes had to work at night in order to keep us off the streets. Mother said she had to make all kinds of sacrifices because she gave birth to the two of us and she rued the day.

  She said this is why I had to make it in show business.

  I didn't know any of the plays Charlie and I rehearsed together in the living room. Except that Charlie never called them plays he called them scenes.

  Charlie came out wearing a bathrobe and sucking on a pretzel stick which was supposed to be a cigar. I had a crutch which was actually my old baseball bat from that one summer they let me play on the team. I was Charlie's son and he was the father. Charlie was supposed to be some kind of famous writer and I was supposed to be his lazy crippled son.

  Charlie the father said there you are son.

  I said I had plans but maybe after breakfast.

  Charlie the father said a man without ambition is a waste of everyone's time.

  I said I had ambition daddy.

  Charlie the father said I didn't notice anything but then again.

  I said I'm not sure but I'll let you know when I do.

  Then Charlie the father said you need to exercise your imagination son.

  I said I would try after breakfast.

  Charlie the father said you are clever like your old man but you are lazy like a gorilla. Had the gorilla any ambition at all he'd be a man today.

  I said so what are you are working on daddy.

  Prattle Charlie the father said. It is all prattle but they will call it gold.

  I said why would they do that daddy.

  Because what do they know Charlie the father said.

  This is when Charlie the father did what he called his soliloquy. I was allowed to sit on the couch when Charlie did this part of the scene because all I had to do was listen.

  Charlie the father said this one involves a few people the way they all involve a few people with some people being more important than other people and the importance of the important people can only be measured against the relative unimportance of the unimportant people which is to say that these people are only unimportant because we have made them that way unimportant we have endowed them with this overarching unimportance our own imaginations failing us and even though some of these unimportant people are smarter and prettier and faster than the important people who let's face it some of the important people are ambitious in ugly ways and they can be greedy and selfish and manipulative in ways that make the unimportant people people we may now call righteous people because they do not behave in this manner and who along with this more agreeable behavior are sometimes smarter and prettier and faster than the important people these unimportant people are dignified and have an integrity that is alien to the important people so these unimportant people we used to think of as unimportant because they lacked a certain something a certain quality call it charisma or gravitas or je ne sais quois or whatever you'd like to call it because perception and reality are entirely distinct from each other and our imaginations are gone from sight these heretofore unimportant people but now altogether righteous people recoil from the ambitious unhealthy important people because why shouldn't they after all these unimportant people have rights too they pay taxes too and then you start to think nothing is this black and white and nothing is this cut and dried and maybe some of the important people aren't always important and some of the unimportant people aren't always unimportant and maybe they do have some things in common or there is some cross-pollination occurring here and one shouldn't point fingers or paint with broad strokes or do anything that can be described in a familiar platitude and perhaps maybe our imaginations aren't all the way dead which makes everything all the more vexing and you think to yourself you think these people are fucked and surely all of this takes place in a place with a climate and a social structure and there are natural elements and unnatural elements and there are familiar markers everywhere you look a house an apartment a street corner and there is food and wine and cigarette smoke and time passes and peace comes to those who wait and time passes again and there is conversation in this place which is a place both peculiar and charming in an oddly familiar yet somehow foreign and exotic way and you have these important people and these unimportant people and the people who exhibit traits from both paradigms who we shall now call the unimportant important people in a place like this place and in a time like this time and they are all of them involved with themselves and with each other and you can never tell by looking at them which is which is which.

  The way Charlie did this soliloquy would make your head come off its shoulders. He flailed his arms up and down and spittle flew from his mouth in every direction. He contorted his face and moved his eyebrows up and down without stopping. The trouble was Charlie couldn't keep his hands or his head from shaking so you spent a lot of time watching him shake instead of watching him act but he delivered the speech perfectly each time regardless.

  Charlie himself was a great actor I thought if not for all the shaking.

  I didn't know what the soliloquy was about and neither did Charlie. I know this because I asked him what the soliloquy was about and he asked me what I thought it was about. When I told him I didn't know he said he didn't either. He said that doesn't mean it wasn't great though.

  I asked him how he memorized the entire speech like
that and he said it was because he meditated.

  Charlie said lots of boxers turn to acting when their careers are over and almost all of them meditate.

  It's hard to know if Charlie was a better boxer or actor. As a boxer Charlie had a good jab and a short right that could knock anyone's head off. Charlie's combinations were dangerous which is why no one wanted to stand toe to toe with him. Other boxers would dance around and try to stay away from Charlie for as long as possible. They'd wait for Charlie to get impatient and switch back to southpaw which he almost always did. He was the same way with meditating. He said he should meditate for two hours every day but he never lasted that long. After thirty minutes he'd get up and find something else to do.

  So what would happen is Charlie would go on the offensive and leave himself wide open. As his trainer I was outside the ropes yelling and screaming at him to keep his left up but he wouldn't listen. He'd try some combination and the other boxer would counter with a short right of his own and it was crying time again. Charlie would be on the canvas and the referee would count one two three four and I knew Charlie wasn't getting up for the look on his eye. Charlie looked the way he probably looked when he woke up screaming in the middle of the night because he thought he was dead. So the referee counts one two three four and I say please get up Charlie get up Charlie get up but Charlie doesn't listen and the referee reaches ten and I climb inside the ring to wake Charlie up. I smack him his face once or twice and squirt water all over him. This is when Charlie wakes up and I tell him it's okay that he tried his best and that next time he should keep his goddamned left up.

  Should the phone ring I might ignore it altogether. If it's Charlie then he'd probably understand and if it isn't Charlie then it's none of my business.

  If Charlie kept his left up who knows what would've happened to all of us.

  Should the phone ring and it's people on the other end I will say hello people and then I will say you have to have ambition people and that if you were a gorilla would you still be lazy after breakfast like Charlie.

  Should the phone ring it might be Charlie on the other end because the last time he called he said he had to go and would call me right back.

  Once when Charlie called he said he had several appointments and would be in the area.

  I didn't believe him so I said what kind of appointments Charlie.

  Charlie said he would try to stop by but not that I should wait around for him if I had something to do I should do it and we would catch up with each other later.

  I said what the hell are you talking about Charlie. Then I said do you even know the area Charlie.

  Charlie said there were some things he wanted to discuss but it wasn't something I should alter my routine over.

  This is when I said to myself this isn't the Charlie I know. The Charlie I know is a fanatic and he doesn't talk like this but I thought I should play along anyway.

  I said to myself Charlie never should've become a boxer.

  So I told Charlie I didn't need to see him but if he needed to see me I would be drawing stick figures on the floor most of the day.

  Then Charlie asked if I get bored drawing.

  I was about to say I don't know when Charlie said some of his appointments might run long.

  Charlie said he had to visit an Indian couple that didn't speak English.

  I said he smoke'm peacepipe Charlie.

  Charlie said goodbye by saying they always give Indians to the new guys and hanging up.

  This is why you never know with Charlie.

  You never know what he's going to say or do next but this is always what's made Charlie Charlie especially after the boxing.

  It's when people use words they shouldn't is when we get in trouble with ourselves. One caller asked me for an allocution once before I was even finished with the hello how are you and I had to hang up in his face. I didn't know who this caller was and no one had told me to expect a call like this. I probably had to read allocution when I did the As but I can't remember what it means. This is when Mother would say I should make myself useful which meant to leave her the hell alone.

  Allocution is a word no one should use over the phone intruders especially.

  The caller's voice was deep and gruff and sounded a little like Charlie's. Charlie has had this kind of voice for as long as I've known him.

  We used to sing songs during commercials and try to harmonize but I was always the better singer which made Charlie jealous. Charlie always wanted to sing lead because he didn't know how to sing harmony. He said he didn't have the ear for harmony but I never believed him. He wanted to sing lead because it's the lead singer who gets all the glory. No one pays attention to the people singing harmony. In this way Charlie is like most people.

  Anyone who isn't tone deaf can sing harmony.

  The Charlie like most people isn't the same person as Charlie Robertson the hypothetical actor. How you can tell them apart is Charlie is real and the hypothetical actor isn't.

  When we were kids I would call different kinds of people Charlie. Cops were Charlie Pork Chops or Charlie Nightsticks or Charlie Hambones. The ice cream man was Charlie Popsicle or Charlie Sundae and dogs were Charlie Canines or Charlie Fleabags. I never had a Charlie name for MPs or security guards. I don't think I knew about MPs or security guards when I called everyone else Charlie.

  Charlie didn't like it when I'd call these other people Charlie which is probably why I did it all the time.

  Should the phone ring and it's Charlie I would know right off from the sound of his voice. Charlie is a baritone which proves my point. Baritones are never lead singers. Sure there are exceptions but not when it comes to Charlie and not when there's a tenor like me standing right beside him. This is how people tell us apart over the phone. There's no mistaking Charlie and me this way.

  Should the phone ring it might be the smooth sounds of Charlie's silky tooth baritone.

  That's how radio people would describe Charlie's voice.

  When Mother called the house from work she knew right away which one of us had picked up by the sound of our voices. Whenever I picked up the phone she wouldn't say the hello how are you at all. She would say put Charlie on the phone like she had nothing to say to me herself. Once I asked Charlie why Mother wouldn't talk to me on the phone and he said what do you expect.

  I don't know what Mother said to Charlie when he picked up the phone himself but I assume it was the hello how are you I'm fine I didn't sleep last night I have a headache.

  Otherwise it was Mother saying to Charlie what do you want for dinner tonight Charlie.

  Charlie would say sandwiches and coleslaw would be fine.

  Mother says you're not as dumb as you look Charlie.

  Charlie doesn't say anything which is his way of saying thank you.

  Mother says make sure your brother doesn't get hurt and die in the meantime.

  Charlie says I am the responsible one Mother.

  So people calling here expecting Charlie to answer should know it's not him as soon as I finish with the hello how are you. I know it wasn't Charlie who asked me for an allocution because Charlie was away at camp at the time and he wouldn't have known what a word like allocution meant anyway. Even with all the books he reads he wouldn't know a word like allocution.

  Sometimes callers talk like I'm supposed to know what they are talking about. This is when I concentrate on the voice and leave the words alone. How the voice sounds is always more important than the words. Otherwise I tell them I have to go that I left something on the stove. Most callers don't know I don't have a stove here and can't leave anything on it.

  Every morning during breakfast Mother would say she didn't sleep last night. She would come to the kitchen in her bathrobe and curlers and cook us breakfast. When she put the breakfast on the table is when she said she didn't sleep last night and she had a headache. She said but still I feed you rotten kids. We would both thank her by keeping our heads down and eating our breakfasts.r />
  Breakfast was usually cereal and toast but sometimes it was eggs and other times pancakes. She would only cook eggs or pancakes if she wasn't running late which she almost always was.

  I think this is when I started with the allergies.

  Everything Mother cooked for us I was allergic to.

  What happened was my stomach would be in agony and I'd have to go to the bathroom even more than usual.

  Otherwise I would wheeze and it felt like I couldn't catch my breath. It was exactly like Charlie on one of our morning jogs only worse.

  I would wheeze in my room and Mother would have to come in there to calm me down. She would give me a yellow pill and sing songs to me and before long I would stop wheezing and fall asleep.

  This was Mother as an act of kindness.

  Mother never noticed that for two whole summers Charlie didn't eat any of the breakfast she cooked for him. This was the time I made Charlie his drink of raw eggs and milk every morning when we got back from our jog. We had him on a special diet those two summers so he never ate Mother's breakfasts. What we'd do is when she turned her back we fed the breakfast to the dog.