The Last of the Savages Read Free Page B

beaten up on the playground might yield social as well as academic dividends.
    Will’s chosen field of erudition was harder to define and—for me—to understand: it revolved around the music scene in his hometown of Memphis, although the music, in his analysis, was part of a larger movement of personal and social liberation. I knew about Elvis, of course—the whole planet knew about Elvis.
    “Even before civil rights,” he told me, “the musicians were breaking down the barriers, secretly integrating the city. I’d hide under the covers in my parents’ house in East Memphis and listen to Rufus Thomas on WDIA in Memphis and WLAC out of Nashville and when I was older I’d sneak down to Beale Street with Jessie Petit—our yardman till my old man fired him—we’d split a pint and listen to the rhythm and blues and I’d say to myself, Shit, the segregationists are right—if white folks find out what they’re missing they ain’t never going to work for the man anymore. That’s why the old man sent me here, they wanted to get me away from that Memphis scene. But the shit’s out of the box now and it’s spread way beyond Memphis.” As if throwing me a sop, he added, “The Beatles are part of it, they’re messengers.”
    He stood up to change the record. “My parents gave me this fucking stationery, has our family
crest
on it. Like I’m going to be writing lots of letters home about the glories of the old school.” He paused and looked off. “Tell you what—I’m gonna design me my own crest with themotto, Free the Slaves. And let me tell you, Pat—the slaves are you and me.”
    I began to worry at this point that my new roommate was crazy.
    “You Catholic,” Will asked suddenly.
    The question threw me. “Is the pope?” I finally responded. This was one of the characteristics of my upbringing I was sort of planning on leaving behind. Growing up Irish Catholic in the fifties and sixties, it was impossible not to feel slightly déclassé among the Protestants, who seemed to be the real natives of the Republic, and who were still being regaled in their own churches with stories of papist idol worship and voodoo.
    “Wish I was,” said Will. “Next best thing to being Jewish, which is the next best thing to being a Negro. At least you’ve got a real identity.”
    I had never considered this aspect of the matter. Will wanted to know all about confession, and in the light of his intense curiosity—caught in the disconcerting focus of those raptorish blue eyes—I suddenly saw one of the more tedious rituals of my life as faintly exotic and interesting. This was one of Will’s gifts, within the limits of his choppy attention span: to make you seem interesting to yourself by virtue of his inquisitiveness. Within minutes he’d forced me to reassess two of my manifest handicaps—my bookishness and my Catholicism.
    “Do you confess
everything?
Like even your
thoughts?
”
    “You’re supposed to.” Flexing my new independence, I added, “I don’t.” This was true; ever since the virus of sex had invaded my body I had been unable to make a really honest confession.
    As if reading my mind he said, “So if you think about laying a chick, that’s a sin?”
    “Can you believe it?”
    Men of the world, we both stretched out on our beds and contemplated this absurdity. All the tormented hours I’d spent trying to reconcile my unbidden sexual fevers with the supposed dictates of my faith suddenly seemed like so much moral persnicketiness.
    Will said, “No wonder Catholic girls are so screwed up about sex.”
    Were they? I wondered. And how did he know?
    “What are you,” I asked.
    “Episcopalian, Methodist, what’s the diff?” He gave the impression that he considered himself cursed at birth. “I come from one crazy-assed family. From the Mississippi Delta by way of Charleston. You know about the Delta?”
    “More or less,” I muttered. I knew only that it was a geological feature associated with