Missing Savannah

Russell’s a big guy—strong, man, I wouldn’t fuck with him. I mean, I wouldn’t fuck with anyone, but still.
I’d been living in Savannah about a month, I guess, when I met him.
It was a cook out and there was a large grill with red orange flames rising up to black soot and smoke in the light fading out.
Not to totally stereotype, or whatever, but people seem to dress different in the South. I guess you’d call it more conservative, or maybe just simpler. The guys are all in khaki shorts and Polo shirts and Rainbow flip-flops and sunglasses hanging down from Croakies around their necks. The girls are in sundresses or just jeans and tank tops. For me, coming from San Francisco, the whole culture was foreign and impenetrable. And, alright, let’s get honest, there’s a prejudice that exists against the South. My mom came to California from Blytheville, Arkansas when she was around twenty years old and she’s since worked to train away her accent completely.
“You just aren’t taken seriously,” she explains.
I’d actually never even been to the South before. My image of it was all pick up trucks, fried chicken, racists, and white ladies sipping tea on the veranda. “Deliverance” meets “Gone With the Wind,” something like that.
It’s ironic, though, because coming from San Francisco, I thought of myself as totally liberal and open-minded and blah, blah, blah. The fact that I was so judgmental about Southerners and Southern culture is pretty goddamn hypocritical.
So, anyway, going over to the cookout I basically kept to myself. Actually, I was sitting in a folding chair smoking a cigarette when Russell came up and put a hand on my shoulder. He was drinking a Budweiser out of a bottle and smoking a Camel. He had thin framed glasses and thickness everywhere else—short cropped hair and soft eyes that were already a little glazed over.
“You’re Nic, right?” his voice deep and Southern. “I’m Russell.”
I shook his hand.
“You’re a writer, is that right?”
I kinda lifted my shoulders up.
“I dunno, I’m tryin’. This is a great spot, though. How long have you guys been here?”
He told me just about two years. They’d moved down from Charleston when his girlfriend was offered the management position at this clothing store in Savannah. Russell worked construction, but, back in Charleston, he’d led carriage tours around the city.
“I’ll tell you, man, you wanna hear some interesting stories, just talk to a carriage driver. Those guys I worked with were like history geniuses. Did you know the pirate Black Beard held the city of Charleston for ransom? I mean, that motherfucker stuck up the whole goddamn place. He used to light fuses in his beard when he was charging into battle so there’d be all this smoke comin’ off him—scare the shit outta everybody. Black Beard was a heavy dude. All those pirates were.”
“Pirates, huh?”
He went on to tell me about how most all the pirate captains were ex Navy—trained soldiers who had been either disenchanted, or disengaged with the service. He talked to me about their ships and military strategies.
“Down here,” he said, “we all come from a culture of fighters. Sure there was the Civil War and all, but it’s more’n that. The way I was brought up, back in Mobile, my daddy instilled in me that it was my duty to serve my country. Joinin’ the service wasn’t a question, it was something I had to do.”
I lit another cigarette. Russell drank his beer down. I’ll tell you what, where I came from, I didn’t know one person that even considered joining the military. It wasn’t even in the realm of things that were possible. But talking to Russell, I realized how any criticisms I might have about the armed forces, or abstract ideas of peace and anti-war whatever, had no connection with the actual experience of being a soldier—or being raised in an environment where serving was considered a responsibility. I felt like I couldn’t say anything, you know? I just had to listen.
And I did.
Russell told me about going to the Citadel in Charleston. He was there in the nineties when they were forced by the Supreme Court to admit their first female student. He was part of the regiment assigned specifically to protect her. It was a classmate of his who was accused of sexually assaulting her. After graduating he joined the Rangers and was deployed to different unstable Latin American countries.
“Basically,” he said. “Our orders were just to march through the jungle until we met resistance. When we met resistance, well, it was either they killed you or you killed them. I had no idea what the hell I was doing there. All I knew was that these people were trying to kill me. So, yeah, I come back to the States and start doin’ a little reading and educating myself—a little growing up—then I find out what we were really doin’ in those countries, hell, it makes me sick.”
Saying, “Jesus Christ,” was the best thing I could come up.
“Well, whatever, I was so goddamn young—a little fuckin’ kid. I don’t regret it. I mean, how could I? It’s made me who I am. I had to go through it. And I got this awesome life now—good friends, good food, good drink, all good things, right?”
I scratched sort of absently at the back of my neck.
“Yeah, man, I know what you mean. I went through some hell, too, you know—bein’ strung out for so long. But I don’t regret it. It takes what it takes for each of us to learn and, yeah, like you said, grow up.”
“Yup, I’ve lived life just about as hard as I could. I wouldn’t take it back. Hell, maybe I’ll write a book about it, too. That’s always been a dream of mine.”
“Hell yeah,” I told him. “You should.”
We went on talkin’ like that for who knows how long. He just kept totally surprising me. We talked about the books he loved. His favorite writer was Bret-Easton Ellis. He pretty much knew every goddamn thing there was to know about politics, history, religion, whatever. I coulda just kept asking him questions all night. As it was, he got pretty nice’n loaded and I smoked about a pack a cigarettes and he invited me to go crabbing the next day.
I agreed.
Though, uh, I wasn’t really sure what crabbing was.
As it turned out, the next day was like the fucking hottest of the whole year. By the time Russell called me, around noon, it was easily over a hundred degrees and so thick and wet I could barely breathe. He picked me up in a truck he’d borrowed from a friend. There was a very shy, skiddish black dog in the back.
“That’s Luna,” he told me. “She’s Carolyn’s dog.”
I didn’t know who Carolyn was.
Driving out Victory toward the beach the live oaks with roots breaking through the pavement gave way to marshland—flat, flat—canals cutting through like line drawings. We drove over bridges, past falling apart gas stations advertising boiled peanuts, cold beer, fish and grits. For all the opulence and old money wealth of downtown Savannah, the surrounding areas are desperately poor. Trailer parks, boarded up houses, Piggly Wiggly’s, Wal-Marts, that’s all there is. The heat made the road just shimmer, shimmer, shimmer.
“You’ll like it down here,” Russell told me. “It’ll do you good to slow down a little.”
I thought about that one.
I’d lived the past basically four years in LA—first on the West side, then in Hollywood. My world there was, what? All about image, man, that’s all I can say. I could be strung out on benzos and locked in a psych ward, but as long as I had my I-Phone and my goddamn new car and my celebrity friends, well, I was alright. Life was all about moving constantly, from one thing to the next.
I was, am, just frantic.
Russell pulled into a McDonald’s and we went into the drive-thru.
“You want anything?”
“Nah,” I told him.
Russell ordered a double quarter pounder with cheese and a large coke, then we went ‘round to the pick-up window.
The woman behind the glass was heavy with extensions curled up tight and deliberate. She leaned out towards us.
“You don’t want no fries with that, honey?”
Russell smiled so big, showing his small, block teeth.
“No ma’m. They tend to make me gassy.”
She laughed and laughed and I laughed, too.
Russell thanked her and we got the food and went on and, uh, got.
The next stop we made was at a gas station. That’s where Russell got a six pack of Budweiser and a net basket for crabbing, plus a pack of chicken necks for ninety-nine cents. I couldn’t really help buy anything ‘cause I still didn’t have any money. Russell told me not to worry about it.
“I worked on Wall Street, you know?” he told me. “Worked with a big firm playin’ stocks and whatever. I lived in New York for two years and made a bundle of money. Hell, I ain’t ever been more miserable in my whole life. There ain’t nothin’ worth workin’ like that for—all shut up inside all day—so much stress you can’t barely breathe—trapped by concrete on every side. I’d rather be a little hard up and able to cook out, go walking on the beach, go crabbing with a fine gentleman like yerself.”
“Ha,” I said.
Russell took a side road and suddenly we were driving with tall marsh grass on either side of us.
We parked at the end of a splintering, gray dock stretching out into the murky channel of water reflecting sunlight.
Russell grabbed a cooler and the beer and the net. I got the chicken and tried to keep Luna from running off into the mud and oyster shells.
We walked out together onto the dock.
To tell you the truth, crabbing wasn’t really what I imagined. I mean, it wasn’t a lot of drama and high seas adventure. What you do is, you take a chicken neck and kinda weave it into the bottom of the net, so it doesn’t fall out. Then you just lower the net into the water and, uh, wait. Then you wait some more. Then maybe ten or fifteen minutes go by and you pull the net up. If you’re lucky, there might be a couple crabs in there eating the chicken. So you dump the crabs into the cooler and drop the net back in the water. Of course, a lotta times there aren’t any crabs at all and so you just gotta try again.
And Russell? Russell drank beer and told me stories and listened to mine.
“I’ve been through some dark times,” he told me. “Doin’ coke and whatever else. Somehow you just got to learn how to fall in love with life, you know? I mean, shit, man, just look around, right? How fuckin’ great is this? We ain’t got shit to do but sit in the sun and maybe catch a few crabs, or maybe catch nothin’ at all. It don’t matter. And then we’re gonna go back home and boil these fuckers up and melt some butter and talk some more and maybe a game’ll be on. That’s it, man. That’s fuckin’ it.”
There used to be this TV program in the seventies called The Dick Cavette Show. I have an old tape of it where he interviews John and Yoko. On the show, John talks about wishing he could be a fisherman—pulling his dinner from the sea, connected with the tides and the swells and whatever. He says he wishes he coulda been that kinda person—not someone who needed to perform and question everything and be forever unsatisfied and wanting more.
Looking over at Russell, goddamn, I wanted to be a fisherman so fucking badly.
I mean, why can’t it ever be enough?
What is this fucking turmoil that rips apart a beautiful day like that? The sun, the marsh, Luna hiding in the shade behind us. Why is there this restlessness that won’t let me alone?
I look at Russell and I admire him completely.
He’s figured out the greatest challenge for any of us, just being content.
He’s the fucking hero.
That’s the truth.
And I learn from him.
So we ate the crabs with melted butter and a big hunk of bread.
We sat in the living room, in Savannah, Georgia. And, for maybe once in my life, that was enough.
It was enough.