Dwayne, The Pool Guy
I’m a man of stories. If you’ve got a story, I’m all ears all day.
My story is a simple one
I grew up in a small Southern town in a typical African American family.
We dealt with people throwing us bad glances when we grew up, all based on our color, our demeanor.
Some say racism died with Martin Luther King, but if you walk with someone of my color enough, you’ll notice it hasn’t. Imbalance is worse than it ever was, politics and technology work like gas to a fire.
I never thought this was a problem, not bad enough to ruin my life. I used to see the Neo Nazi’s rev’ing their trucks behind the high-school football games, waiting to infect the parties with their self-brewed drugs and rhetoric. You’d see them picking on people like me in the hallways, sometimes it escalated to physical harm but that was seldom documented, or witnessed. All of this was what it was, until a Brother of mine, Nadeus, didn’t show up to school one day.
We knew he had bad habits, and bad people following him. I always tried to see past it, because he was my best friend, all I knew from the ages 9-20 outside of my family. I remember the day I met him, we were skate boarding at the local park. It was a sunny day, the birds were out chirping and there was a cool breeze blowing about. I was skating down the entrance way when I almost ran into him. His skateboard shot out in to crowd of people watching aside.
“What the hell are you doing man?” he said to me.
“I didn’t see you, I’m sorry”
He looked at me sternly for a few seconds and walked over to grab his skateboard.
He was tall for his age
with a bald brown head gleaming in the sunlight.
Everybody cleared as he approached.
He returned with his skateboard and said,
“What’s your name?”
“Dwayne, what’s your’s?”
“Nadeus”, he responded.
“You know any tricks?” he asked.
“Yea, I just learned a pop shove-it”
I dropped my board,
sunk my feet into the movement and kicked the board up,
spinning it throughout the air.
I landed it, he then copied the same move to the point.
I followed up with another trick,
this time off the stair the set, landing it with ease.
He followed and did the same.
This continued til’ the sun went down,
I walked with him back later.
It turned out he lived in the same neighborhood as me, so we exchanged numbers and said we’d try to meet again.
As school started that year, I recognized Nadeus in one of my classes,
he was seated right near me.
Throughout the year I got to know Nadeus better. He was quiet for the most part, we were the only two African Americans in the class so we felt kind of odd. Southern schools are different, they are smaller, everyone knows each other and knows who they think of as an outsider. We unfortunately were the minority without a doubt. We would pass notes to each other making fun of the overtly racist classmates who came from what they saw as, confederate backgrounds. We’d draw pictures of their trucks crashing, their flags on fire, giant phallics attacking their BBQ’s from the sky.
All sorts of shit, it kept us entertained.
It was all fun and games until one day after High school,
I was walking back with Nadeus,
and some of the these classmates followed us slowly.
We walked the route we usually did, trying to add in little passages between houses to avoid them, but somehow their rusted Red truck kept coming from the corner of every street we approached.
We were usually harassed by these guys, but something was different this time.
Finally Nadeus had it and Flipped them off as they drove by.
They quickly hit the breaks and hopped out the truck.
one of them I recognized as Billy,
he grappled a two by four and look of bloodlust in his eyes.
His pupils like black holes, approached the us at in in human rate.
A girl in the car quickly jumped out as well, running to the scene.
The man began to draw the two by four back, walking right at me.
The girl jumped in front,
he swung but pulled as he realized she was there.
It thudded against her chest, knocking the wind out.
She stood coughing and turned to me and Nadeus,
“Get the fuck out of here” she said.
Her Black Hair moved slowly in the afternoon wind.
She was my angel, both me and Nadeus turned and left.
I looked behind as we walked away and saw her knock the two by four from his hands ass if it weighed nothing. She slapped him so hard he nearly toppled over
“Billy.......Get back HOME now!” she yelled at him.
She then grabbed him by the ear and led him back to the truck, his apeish demeanor breaking down to what looked like a little kid getting dragged by his mother.
The next day I woke up for school feeling better than ever to be alive. It was as if I woke up in a new house in a new body, a better life. But somehow it was my own, the same old thing I always knew. That was the day that Nadeus’s seat stayed empty. I remember wondering where he’d been, he wasn’t sick the day before, or acting weird. There was no announcement, no questions, no wondering. Nothing, it was as if the whole day was an eery silence that didn’t really happen. It was when I came home that I knew something was wrong. There was a police car sitting in my driveway. I came through my front door to find my Ma crying on the sofa. Two officers surrounded her, she looked at me and said, “Dwayne, these men need to talk with you”
The rest was a blur of questions and statements. They were ruling out an overdose, because of how it aesthetically appeared, I asked to see photos and they allowed me to. His corpse looked nothing like him; appearing gaunt and lifeless. His eyes like two black marbles, falling into the depths of a sullen face. His muscles had all but receded to little thimbles. I knew the guy didn’t do drugs, never. I also could swear one of the officers was an older brother of one of the attackers as well. He kept quiet in the corner, shooting death glares at me from time to time. The whole situation seemed beyond hopeless.
They played good-cop bad-cop with me for a while, seeing what they could get out of me, admissions of guilt, anything. I knew they were looking for somebody to frame so I kept my lips sealed.
After seeing the pictures, my mind drew a hard blank, the Red truck and the people’s faces blurred, the thought was replaced by a vast nothingness. The feeling that I’ve lost my only friend. I’m alone again. It wasn’t long before the officer’s realized there was nothing more they could get out of me, and they sent me on my way.
I walked back home from the station with the dark of the night just beginning to set in. I thought of Nadeus, and where he might be now; to me heaven and hell was no more than a mindset, a switch of coding by a conductor seldom seen, leading to anything the mind can perceive as real, besides the thing that got it there. Maybe in some ways this thing was the god element; the inherent force that sways through empty spaces at night, feeling every curve of the darkness until it’s all shrilled by piercing morning light. Nadeus was now somewhere in the darkness, in metaphor and presence.
I could see the clouds ahead of me beginning to electrify with a storm. A full moon loomed ahead of the wall of thunderheads, lighting a little bit of my way. I hurried my pace to get back before the rain started, I could already hear thunder echoing in the distance. As I walked further down the street, I started hearing a whooshing noise from above. I couldn’t place it to be behind me or to the side of me, it just kept coming, almost like a gust of air. I upped my pace to an almost light jog, I could see the glimmer of the old town reservoir in the distance. Home luckily wasn’t too far. The trees were already starting to bend with ominous gusts, a little drizzle picked up. Ahead of me I could see a street light flickering, I could swear the pattern was “S.O.S.” (an old military based relative of mine used to show me the signal with a flashlight). It did it about 3 times and went dark. I was about to pass under it, when I felt something behind me. I turned fast, looked up, and saw the girl who helped me. She was above the streetlight, floating at first, her body then swooped right through the metal arch of the streetlight. Her black hair growing like a lifeless shadow throughout the suspended motion.I felt the gust of air I had felt the whole past block and just like that, she was gone, somewhere far in the darkness above. But I knew, she was with me, and I think somehow she knew I hadn’t done wrong, her appearance was safe with me. The rain really began to pick up at that point, so I started running home. When I got home my Ma & Pa, were up watching Dracula. My younger brother, Darius, sat clutching his teddy bear in the light of the old tube t.v., I called them Ma and Pa but really they were my grandparents. I lost my actual parents not to long after I was born in a freak accident, and my Mom’s family has been taking care of my brother and I ever since.
I almost felt like staying outside, letting them enjoy themselves, just finding the nearest place or thing to disappear to. Lately I was a ghost to them; I could disappear and no one would have noticed.
I decided to walk back to the old reservoir. The rain had died down, and the moon was glowing bright all around. Nadeus and I used to meet up at the reservoir late at night to smoke a joint out of sight, out of mind. Even though he wasn’t going to be here with me tonight, I rolled one up at a park bench nearby. I could see the reservoir from afar. A little light dotted the landing into the dark dot of water. You could see it’s glow echoing throughout the ripples in the lake. I decided to stay in place, I wasn’t fit to go swimming or hiking anyways. The joint I rolled was really nice, round and filled to the brim. The green of the tip had long burned to charred embers; it was about half-way done now. I could see something break in the water from afar. I took a deeper drag, and began to focus on the breaks in the water in the distance. That’s when I saw her again, she slowly surfaced from the water, her Black hair and naked curves glistening in the moonlight. She then sank below the water, seemingly unaware of me. I hadn’t seen that many White girls like this before. Boy was she pretty, like the girls I had seen in the magazines. I’m not sure how long she’s been following me or why, but I didn’t mind her for some reason. I could tell she wasn’t malicious to me. She felt familiar, like someone I had known, though I had never talked directly to her.
As soon as the roach started to burn the tips of my fingers, I left. I didn’t see her again, she seemed to disappear into the water without entrance or exit. I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been there before, watching me and Nadeus in the dark of the night. We weren’t much to see, but it’s odd to think that someone was probably watching. I always felt like the old reservoir had an odd vibe. Maybe she was why...
A tune of “Be My Baby”, echoes far in the distance. It’s frequencies leak about a sleepy nook like an infection, seeping in through any opening it can find.
An old lady living in a victorian house readies her shotgun with bright red shells as she sits on a rocking chair. “Goddamn chilun, granchillun, little chillun, shit noise, shit rocker, I got my red gun a here knocker. You come knock once, knock twice, I’ll act nice. Then I’ll find you in the middle of the night. You won’t like the real me. I don’t care. I’m mean, I gotta shell for each of you when you try to take my rocker”, she said to herself, cocking the shot-gun with her last words. The music echoed through the old wood in the house. She had every window open wide.
Next door was the source of the blaring Spector mix,
A run down house, hiding in the shadow of the monster next door.
A little glow of orange illuminates the front steps, showing the appearance of a smaller girl. She sits on the front stoop smoking a cigarette by herself. As the night grows darker, her shadow grows bigger, her curves more apparent. In the darkness it was seemingly unnoticeable, but under a light it would have looked similar to photosynthesis. Nobody at the parties ever asked her why or where she went when the sun first went down, that was her special place; a place no one else could ever get to.
The Spector mixes evolved into a dark electronica over time, and the boom of the bass made her want to go back in even less.
She twisted her dark Black hair, and thought about the cute guy she rescued the other day, where he might be, what he might be doing.
That was when the front door slammed open. The full frequencies blaring and a bit of smoke billowing out as well. A man stood in the doorway, about the size of it. He had a darkening bruise on his face, and a beer held in his left hand. He wore a raggedy leather-man jacket, it looked about ten years too old at this point. Somehow every morning it seemed knitted new, this amongst many other things was something Billy had come to expect rather than understand.
“Black cat, black cat, what you brought home for me tonight?” he said to her.
“Nothing Billy, leave me alone, you went too far last night. I ain’t got nothing for you” she said, grimacing.
A grin creeped up his face, and he stepped towards her.
“I know you got something, you’re thinking about something.... ripe and juicy, muscular, pure-bred. You thinkin’ about that Black boy aren’t you? How he’d treat you right, put you on pedestal, give you all those big things you’ve always wanted” he said.
She pushed him away and gave him a cold glare.
“Billy you’re drunk, I don’t like seeing you like this, you’d never talk like this otherwise” she said.
“I got three wet girls lined up inside. I don’t care what you want tonight or any night. I saw how that guy was hung the oth...”
Then she slapped him, real hard right in the spot of the bruise. Her face changed from a sense of a sympathy to shear rage in seconds
“Now you shut the fuck up and listen here. We ain’t talkin’ about none of that. You’re two steps from dead Billy, and I’m sick of being mother goose to this whole inbred flock. Half of you don’t even pull through. If it wasn’t for these bullshit accidents you guys cause, you couldn’t possibly get by. I suggest you make plans on getting the fuck out”
He stood there, dumbfounded.
“What you just plannin’ on hitting the morgues ‘gain? Huh you really think something that dumb would work twice?” he said.
“I only need you as much as you make me need you Billy” she said looking off into the distance.
He threw his beer to the ground, shook his head, then dashed back inside, slamming the door.
The Orange glow grew again, then traveled to the garage. Cigarette in hand, she grabbed 2 cans of gasoline and walked to the houses main external gas line. She opened an old metal valve on the exchange. As she walked by the house she could see Billy with two girls. The blinds had slipped open. A bit of blood spattered on the wall, and the corpse of a young black man on the ground. An old brass Swastika topped a big mirror reflecting the whole bloody orgy. Animal like glares came from all corners. They grabbed at each other in an inhuman nature, moving at demonic like speeds with each thrust and grab,
‘if they could only see themselves’ she thought.
But even then it was too late for them, she knew it.
“Fuckers killed my family, my cat, my friends.....” she muttered to herself flicking on the gas line. She dumbed a bit of gasoline trailing around the house to the front. A orange glow emitted again from the ramshackle setting, then went to the ground. A short ignition of fire trailed around the house to the valve of the main line. Within seconds a deep boom sounded, then an explosion traveled through the pipes and out every orifice of the house. Billy flew out the second story window, still erect, and completely on fire. his wails echoed the previous symphony now burning in the phonograph in his room. His old speakers popped their last sounds as the fire melted through the speaker cones.
In his last seconds of consciousness, he heard someone screaming. One of the girls he was with was outside, presumably thrown out as well, he could vaguely make out the image of an Old lady standing above her.
The Old lady held a shotgun at her.
The girl started to cry,
“I didn’t do nothing, he was a nigger! He tried to rob our house. What do you want. He came in the middle of the night. Why are you trying to kills us!” she yelled
“I’m just trying to help you, little darling” the old lady said, not drawing the shotgun down.
“You better hope Billy don’t get back up” she said
The old lady then turned the shotgun to the dark bluish corpse, now steaming, and charred. She aimed the shotgun to his head and blew what was left of his brains onto the green grass around.
The girl then stood up, as if not burned or thrown out a second story window and lunged at the old lady. Another shotgun boom echoed.
“I was just trying to defend myself from all of ya’s”,
she muttered to herself as sirens grew closer.
She gazed around, spat on the ground and awaited the coming police.
The next morning was cold and bitter. You could smell the tinge of smoke throughout the town. The local precinct was busier then ever, still trying to figure out what to do with this old Lady, a shotgun, a blown up house and at least 3-5 corpses.
I remember walking to and from that school that day. No Red truck, no ominous characters following me, almost a pleasant silence. The day had been odd, my first class was 4 seats shorter without Nadeus, Billy, and now two of the prettiest girls who were in class. They were every guy’s eye candy, top cheerleaders who supposedly had a bad habit with guys. Those types always thought they were too good for me and Nadeus(especially because they came from rich White families)but we never wished anything on them for it, they were good company when they wanted to be. The administration made an announcement to the student body about it, “4 students were found dead in complications of a house fire. Any information leading to the arrest of the assailants will be rewarded with care and compensation.
A moment of silence please”
I went through the work as I usually did, trying not to think too much about the whole thing. I didn’t want to get involved in the investigation either, I didn’t need any more police attention in my life. The day moved in sort of a slow motion. Clocks seemed to roll back every time I looked away, people’s conversations and concerns grew less and less important to me. The whole world was beginning to seem loud. I felt trapped, confused, lost.
I found myself walking that same familiar route home, looking for her to come swooping under a streetlight, or appear from the shadows. But for some reason she wasn’t showing. I even found myself at the old reservoir late at night, puffing away by myself, hoping I’d finally get the chance to talk to her; to see who she really was. It wasn’t until late the next week that something finally came. Late at night I was awoken by something shaking me. I shot out of bed immediately, and looked at the clock, it read around 4:34 in the morning. I refocused ahead of me and saw a dark shadow at the foot of my bed. It seemed to focus in through a smoke-like haze. The girl appeared from the haze. She climbed over my bed’s footboard, and crawled up to me. Feeling like I was in a dream, I wasn’t avert to any of this, in all honesty I wasn’t sure if it was actually happening or not. I couldn’t seem to resist her pull. She slipped under the covers and started controlling me in ways I never knew I could be. I put myself into her, at that time a virgin, she seemed to be experienced, not like me. I could feel a warmth within her, a glow, something I had never really experienced before. It wasn’t quite like love and it wasn’t quite like a drug, it was something different. Something about her seemed like a gate way to another universe. Maybe she’s a dream, maybe she’s a ghost, all I know is I now wakeup within and without her. I’ve never really known her, the familiarity is what haunts me. She leaves little messages and slips on the nights she comes to remind she was really there, only things I’d notice.
This went on for about a week. Until one day she came with a glum look in her face. She sat at the foot of my bed, not speaking much, that dark shadow growing around her. This particular morning she hardly woke me up, I just found her there as soon as my vision cleared from a dream-like haze. She waved at me, and oddly enough I could feel her controlling me, I couldn’t move a muscle. I tried to talk but the words wouldn’t come out, they seemed trapped under some sort of immense pressure. She leaned in toward me, completely paralyzed and told me, “good bye, I might never see you again”. She then gave me a kiss, and slipped out the window, when she disappeared completely, the pull broke and I could move again. As I wondered if she was ever actually there, I found myself also concerned about how she had that much power over me. Could she read my thoughts as well? I never had any bad thoughts about her, but the point intrigued me, just how she always showed when I thought she would without a word spoken. I felt like I had always known her, but I couldn’t tell how old she was, or who she was really. I remember going to the bathroom soon after she left, as I walked in I flipped the old brass switch and the lights illuminated a bit of red on my hands and lips, I wiped it off, figuring she must of been wearing red lip stick. When I returned to my room, I went to flick my nightlight off, that’s when I saw a parked car outside. The light was on and I could vaguely make out the face of the officer brother of Billy. Was he watching my house? As soon as I thought it, the light in his car went out and he pulled away in silence. It gave me the creeps. His family was full of the worst kind of racists you could ever meet. They probably have trophies of people in their house, freaks. After seeing him, my night was restless, I saw images of him coming the next morning, telling my parents he was going to take me out for a ride, soon enough these thoughts turned into dreams, and I was reliving the Emmet Till lesson my history teacher gave me that day. Dreams are funny like that, they are seemingly simple thoughts which envelope into a reality that is only as real you make it, kind of reminiscent of this funny thing we call life.
Soon enough, she stopped coming, just like she said. The nights went without a hiccup, my dreams soothing me through the slew of days. This all lasted until one night I was awakened by blaring music.I looked out my window to see Billy’s brother sitting there. All of a sudden, he got out of his car, and started walking toward the front yard to my window. I could see he was holding something. Within seconds, that something was lobbed from below It slammed through the window and nailed my skull. Bits of skull fragments flew about the glass flying through the air. Blood cascaded about. And for a second, I was dead; the red of brick touching my soft brain, falling back onto the wooden floor.
“You aren’t here Dwayne”, a booming voice said.
I awoke on my floor. Ma and Pa were were trying to knock my door open.
“Dwayne, honey are you alright, what was that?”
My mom yelled from outside my room.
My focus faded in and I could see the ceiling fan spinning above.
I went to touch my head, and as I pulled my hand away, no blood.
I stood up and looked in my desk mirror. I looked just fine.
The door cracked in and they came right in.
“Your window..... Dwayne, what did those bullies do?”
she said.
“I don’t know, I woke up to the sound of crashing glass”
That of course being a lie, I could still feel an odd throbbing in my head, every so often I sifted back around for glass or bits of something showing what I had just felt. Nothing was to be found, but somehow I felt different, not like better but, dead, maybe. I’m not sure because as I’m aware I’ve only been alive.
“Paul this is going too far we need to do something about them before this gets any worse.”
my Grandma said, picking up a red brick from the ground. A note was rubber banded to it. it read “Leave our town NIGGERS!”
my Grandma gasped and threw it to the ground.
“We are reporting this to the police in the morning” she said, shaking her head.
After some short conversation and check-up they shut of my lights and left my room. It was eerily silent after, you could only hear the crickets outside. I found myself checking the window to see if he had come back, after about 10 or so times checking, I saw her there perched outside on the window hang, not really minding the shards of glass around. She held out her hand to me and asked “Do you want me to take you away from here?”.
“Yes”,
I grabbed her, then everything turned black.
I awoke to a comfortably air conditioned room with a popcorn ceiling.
The room smelled of cigarettes subtly.
My mind felt hazy, like I had smoked some bad pot or, got hit really hard.
Slowly my perception faded from a jumble of colors.
“Where was I?”, I thought.
“You are staying in Elvis’s private motel room at Sandalwood in Florida. Well this was his before they found him clogged with shit. The man couldn’t afford laxatives but he could afford this. He made some great music with horrible habits, funny how that works right?”
I could make out an older man sitting at a formica table across from me. His hair was jet black, and done back in a pompadour type style.
I sat there in silence, still trying to fathom what the hell was happening.
“Listen up, I saved you. Being a brother in the time it is, I’m telling you it was only a short amount of time until that brick would be a molotov and you’d lose alot more than yourself. So case in point, I saved you, now you save me. I need you to be my pool boy, if you’ll permit. I’ll help you get by until you have enough to pick yourself up, at that point you check in officially and we were never here. Do you understand me, Dwayne?”
he asked
“Yes”,
I said
“One last thing, I own this fine establishment. You can call me Uncle Tom, and this is you cabin for as long as you need it”.
Days blurred into nights and soon enough I found myself combing the beaches for a nice girl to spend time with. The work was easy, it was just maintaining the pools chlorine levels and making sure all the guests were appeased. I was oddly comfortable with the change, it beats dealing with my grandparents and the nazi’s at school. All I had to do was wake up drift through the warmth til’ the cold of night, the waves crashing all throughout, some might of found it to be empty, but I found what loved doing. It was my bit of nothing that held my everything together. The women were beautiful, even the winters would attract some beautiful types in, the kind of girls that make your heart start all over again. None though compared to the girl who brought me here. I wondered about where she might be, if she was flying far above, or beneath the waves below. The answers seldom presented themselves, only in odd creatures I would see in the water and anomalies in the sky. She was the first real love I ever had, and I knew someday I would find her, when I was ready.
As I aged, Uncle Tom did too, and he started to lose interest in the hotel business. He put it up for sale, and I decided to pool together money I had saved over the years to buy the place. Even after I acquired the grounds, I still stayed in Elvis’s old room. It had a nice warmth and comfort to it. I could see why he spent so much time here. It was truly a fortress of solitude.
I still found myself tending to the pool late at night, even when I didn’t have to. Luckily it closed at sundown, so unless we had drunks I was usually alone.
It was mainly silent, I picked a hair from my head, I could see it was beginning to gray.
Time was not being kind to me, and I was beginning to grow worried of what might come besides the next morning.
The pool was oddly cool, but all the levels were alright. I was nearing the deep end when something pulled me at my left leg. I turned around and nothing was there. Within seconds I was in the water, full sprawl. still in my clothes. I opened my eyes to see her in front of me,
“I need you” she said.
She then pulled me under the water, and put her mouth to mine.
Gravity and oxygen seemed to cease existing momentarily as we twirled below the bottom of the pool.
She ripped off my clothes, and made at me like she never did before.
The rest of the night was a slew of sex and debauchery,
I awoke the next morning with a sharp pain in the left of my neck.
The sun dotted her like a jewel, bending over in the bathroom.
I walked over to her, and I could see a man in front of her lifeless. She prepared him on the toilet. As I got closer I could make him out as the guy who whipped the brick at me.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“This is the end of your deal. I’m not like you, but you are now like me. I could never be with you because of a disease. It was put on you as much as it was me. This disease kept me alive through druggings, should-be murders, you name it. I’ve been an actress for 100 years but I’ve always been the same age. From Black and White to Technicolor my face is there, but the name changes. You won’t understand now, but someday you might see the gold in your veins and you will thank me. Maybe you’ll give me a room. Elvis Did”
Dwayne then walked over to her, and gave her a hug.
He kissed her and said
“You’re always welcome at Sandalwood. I’ve missed you”
