I was still smiling when JoAnn said, “Maybe we should stroll up to the bar and see if Ransom will introduce us. I’ve never asked for an autograph in my life, but…” which is when I stopped smiling and JoAnn stopped talking because we both saw the actor, Gunnar Camphill, reach out and touch Ransom’s arm, saw Ransom pull away. Then we watched Camphill reach again and this time catch her arm and try to pull her to him, but Ransom yanked her elbow back once again and said something to him, her expression cautionary, not yet angry but getting there.
I was pushing my chair back, but Jeth was already on his feet, moving across the bar toward Camphill as the actor held both hands up, palms out to Ransom-he was surrendering-laughing at Ransom, a concessionary posture, but Ransom wasn’t smiling back.
I got there just behind Jeth, whose eyes were moving from Camphill to the men at his side, and I heard him say, “What’s the problem, this guy giving you a hard ta-ta-tah-time?” Nervous, his stutter had suddenly returned.
As Ransom told us, “This white gentleman getting very, very close to getting his pretty face slapped,” one of the men next to Camphill-he was much smaller, with a pointed face and coarse black hair, holding a cigar with the paper ring still on it-said simultaneously, “Jesus Christ, it’s Porky Pig to the rescue,” meaning Jeth with his cartoon stutter.
That stopped Jeth, changed his expression, an insult so obvious, and he moved a step closer to the man, Ransom backing slightly to his right as he said, “What dah-dah-did you just call me, mister?” angry and drunk enough to punch the guy right there, his stutter getting worse because he was furious.
Then Camphill-large boned, muscular, with blond hair, square chin, tough-guy eyes-stepped in. He stood and moved between Jeth and the bar and said, “Look, my friend, what we’d really like to avoid here is causing a scene. Doesn’t that make sense? So what I’m going to ask you to do right now is back off a few steps, give us our space. A little room for us all to breathe, huh? Then here’s what I suggest: I will apologize to your nice lady friend for misreading something she said. Entirely my fault. After that, you go back to your table like a good boy, and all of us, we go our separate ways and forget the whole thing.”
Jeth didn’t step back; he seemed frozen, his fists clenched, staring at the smaller man, hyperventilating, while pointed-face, the man with coarse black hair, sat there sipping his drink, eyes moving lazily around the room, smiling as if Jeth were invisible or too small to see-an insignificant problem, something for the hired help to deal with, nothing at all to worry about.
Camphill’s voice had an actor’s resonance, and he knew how to make a statement using his body, posing. He was playing a role now, and the role was that of the rational adult, the peacemaker-a person big enough to take all the blame, even though he didn’t deserve it-but his hand gestures, the way he held himself, his vocal intonations said: Don’t push it, make nice with me right now, or I’ll have to change character and do something I don’t want to do.
“Did you hear me, my friend? Back off just a little bit. You understand what I’m saying? We’re apologizing. ” Camphill reached to touch Jeth’s chest-move away, please-but I got my hands on Jeth first, worried that minor physical contact might cause him to snap. I’ve known the man for years, and I’d never seen him so angry, so close to losing all control. I turned Jeth and moved between him and the bar, my back to Camphill and the others. “Jeth Jeth, listen to me. Let me handle this. Go back to the table, I’ll find out what happened.”
Behind me, I heard the man with coarse black hair say, “First Gilligan with an Afro Mary Ann, and now the Professor. Where the fuck’s Skipper and Ginger?”
Jeth was looking past me. “Hey… wait a minute, did that guy just call me Gilligan? You jerk, I don’t look anything like Gilligan!”
“Drop it, Jeth. Let it go.” I was herding him gently away from the bar. Behind me, I heard pointed-face say, “Watch out for that razor intellect of his, Gunnar. He’s a sharp one, very sharp.”
I turned and, over the noise of their laughter, said to Ransom, “What happened? Why’d the guy grab you?”
Camphill said, “I was chatting with the lady-”
Angry myself, and feeling the alcohol in me, I leaned and put my index finger within an inch of the actor’s nose. Held it there for a moment before I told him, “I’m talking to her. Not you.” Stared into his eyes.
It took all the noise out of the bar. I stood and listened to a shuffling of feet, heard someone cough. I expected Camphill to knock my hand away. Instead, he took a huge breath, making a show of controlling himself, letting everyone around know this wasn’t easy for him, still playing the peacekeeper’s role, as the man to his right-a slim blond tennis player type-said, “He doesn’t know who you are, Gunnar. Better drop it. We know in twenty, thirty seconds, you could put him in the hospital, kill him, whatever, but you’re the one with the career-not the Professor here.”
I lowered my hand slowly, looking at Ransom, who was already talking, her voice easy to hear because the bar had gone so very quiet. “The way it happen, my brother, this pretty gentleman, he start a conversation with me. Very nice at first, then he say he give me two, three hundred dollars, whatever I want, if I come to their hotel and make his friends feel very good tonight. Told me his two friends, they’d never had them a black girl. It so good he wanted them to know what it like.
“I told ’em he and his friends, all three of them, they probably used to trading blow jobs with each other. Or maybe little boys-” Several people at the bar laughed at that. “So why they want to bother a nice colored woman like me?” She was shaking her head, smiling, giving them a dose of her contempt before she added, “That’s when this pretty gentleman, he grab me.”
I turned once again to the actor, some inner awareness reminding me that I’d had too much to drink, that I needed to be careful, cognitive, keep things cool, so I said, “You’re right, mister. You need to apologize to her. Now. Then we go our separate ways.”
He thought about it, staring at me with his tough-guy eyes, nodding, creating drama because he knew how to do it, and then threw his head back and laughed. “Okay, Professor! I’ll blink first!” He stood, took Ransom’s hand, bowed at the waist, and kissed the back of her hand regally. “Lovely lady, I was wrong to say what I did. I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
Then he stood there as if maybe expecting to hear some polite applause, but there wasn’t any. Everyone around the crowded bar was staring at him, mostly locals, their expressions saying he was a jerk, maybe they were a little embarrassed for the famous man, too.
Which got to him. I could see it in his expression. So he had to get the last word, contrive a dominant gesture, so he leaned and put his index finger near my nose-payback time-and said loudly, “And you, my friend, you don’t know how very, very lucky you are that I’m in a good mood tonight.”
Looking into his eyes, I let the words hang there for a moment before I answered softly, “Just for the record-I am not your friend.” I waited for something to happen, and, when it didn’t, I shrugged and turned away.
I thought that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
Because then Gunnar Camphill focused on Jeth’s T-shirt. It was a T-shirt that had quickly become popular with Florida’s sports fishermen. On the back is a silk-screened cartoon of a dead manatee lashed to a spit, roasting over a fire. Beneath the cartoon are the words: Any Questions?
The irony of the T-shirt-and the situation-is that Florida’s sports fishermen have, for years, been among the state’s most vocal and powerful environmental advocates. Now they were being labeled “antienvironmentalist” by groups pushing to get fishing boats off the water. The long and careful defense required to disprove broad, buckshot accusations, such as “racist” or “communist,” is incapacitating-exactly the reason such charges are so commonly made and why they are so effective.