by Dave King
I stop dead. I don’t want anyone connecting me to Ryan. But the conversation I overheard in the hallway was so familiar that I might well be moving backward through life, rather than forward, while Ryan sweeps on ahead, out of my reach. And really, I’m reckless. All that interests me is escape.
I step to the barber chair and mime placing something in my mouth. The three guys stare at me. I do it again, plucking a small square from my palm and placing it on my tongue, and I wonder if acid even comes in blotter form these days. How would I know? But it doesn’t have to be blotter, and it doesn’t even have to be acid, so I make a gesture I think must be universal: I put my thumb to my nose and sniff.
The kid’s the first to respond. He’s got a sassy, through-the-teeth ts-ts-ts of a cackle, and his smile flashes gold. “Motherfucker wantsa get high!” he exclaims, showing his tongue. “Get out!”
The old guy hollers, “We don’t do that here!” and brandishes the broom like a jousting lance. I’m unprepared for being turned down, and until this moment I’ve thought only of getting wasted. I step back as the jouster comes toward me, and the young dude cackles and grins disrespectfully at my garb. The soul singer rises to crescendo, and I want to say where, then? If not here, where? For God’s sake!
The tall guy drops his scissors in his breast pocket and turns me by the elbow. “Listen, friend. You in a bad way. You need to go home, get on the straight and narrow, do some thinking. Maybe talk to your—what faith you from, man? Got a pastor?” He looks at me quizzically, but his grip doesn’t lessen. I feel like pleading with him, telling him I’ve tried the straight and the narrow and I’ve given up; I’m pursuing alternatives. I look around, at the young guy smirking and the older man poised to run me off like a dog, and I try to remember how I solved this problem years ago; but in the old days, I had a few dependables who knew what I came for. The barber says, “You go home now. Things look better in the morning,” and for a moment, crazily, I think they’re shitting me. This is a game they pull before bringing out the Ziploc bags. But the tall guy says, “Find your people, man. Give them the opportunity to show you kindness and love.” Then he pushes me out the door.
It’s fully dark now, and I sit in the truck wondering what to do. Andee Barber School is the last shop to remain lit, and I watch the young client emerge, rubbing his crown. Then Joe the broomstickmeister goes home. I wonder what I’d do if I were home now, and for an instant it’s not Laurel or Ryan or my mom I think of, but those guys from my transitioning group I saw once at the movies. Is this what the barber meant by my people? I wonder if those two live together. Are they still in a group home? I wonder if they see the others and if anyone remembers me, and suddenly my alienation, which has been growing for hours, feels uncannily familiar. It’s the feeling of then.
At last, the overhead lights in the barbershop switch out one by one. The nice barber emerges, locking the shop door in several places and rolling a metal shutter down over the glass front. As he strolls along the sidewalk, I get out of the truck, and at the sound he looks at me narrowly. “You still here,” he says. “I told you to go home.” To avoid frightening him, I place my palms together in a gesture of supplication, though the instant I do this I feel ridiculous. How much easier it would be to say friend, help a friend find the route to bliss! But the guy says, “You take that shit downtown, you got no self-control. You don’t mind the advice I give you, you can just beat it, hear?” He’s at his car now, and he unlocks it slowly, watching me all the while. I step back, swinging my arms in frustration, and I think what the fuck and bang a fist on a metal mailbox, and the barber reaches into his car and brings out a tire iron. “I mean it,” he says, no longer nice. “You go now, don’t come back. Don’t make me use this. I can give you some stitches, you’ll see that.”
I drive downtown to a bar I remember called the Blue and Gold. I never liked this place, but it’s a place to score, and I used to know a little fat guy who could set me up. The street alongside is a well-known trolling ground for streetwalkers.
Long ago, when Sylvia and I were in high school, the Blue and Gold was owned by the father of a girl we hung out with, and he went to prison my junior year. I remember Sylvia holding up the front page of the paper, with a photo of our friend’s handcuffed dad, and saying she’d literally die of embarrassment. The newspaper called the Blue and Gold a hangout for gangsters and lowlife, and as Sylvia read the article aloud I wondered if Mara visited her dad at work, and I knew such a dive had no place in my existence.
But one night when Ryan was very young, I was in my truck in front of the Blue and Gold, smoking a joint. By that time, of course, I knew the place well. I’d bought acid from the fat guy, and several of the girls on the stroll were acquainted with me. On this particular date, though, my dad had died and I’d made some decisions. I was having a bad night, and as I wrestled with my soul I saw Sylvia standing at the corner of the street. She had on a short, brightly colored skirt and a tight top, which might have looked sweetly daring on any other city block but blended in disconcertingly here. And she definitely looked altered. A long-haired, pug-faced guy was guiding her along by the small of her back, and Sylvia was laughing showily and stumbling a little in tall, cork-soled shoes. I watched the guy steer her into the Blue and Gold, and I climbed from my truck and followed surreptitiously.
Pugface took a seat on a barstool and spread his thighs, and Sylvia stood close enough that he could have clamped her between his knees. Even in the hubbub and darkness of the bar, I could see how she swayed on those tall shoes of hers, and I watched her drink a couple shots of tequila and look around with glittering eyes. It was more than a year since that night when she’d called late to ask about getting high, and absorbed as I was in my own stuff, I’d put it from my mind. But now the path she was on was as clear as the fact that she’d taken it without me, and as she laughed her cartoon laugh I glowered in my corner, and the ropes of looping jalapeño lights cast her in silhouette. The little fat guy appeared and tried to sell me some mesc, but I brushed him off; then some terrible, cheesy song of the era played on the jukebox. Sylvia raised her slim arms and began unsteadily to dance, and when Pugface put his hands on her thighs, I burst from my corner. Looking back, it’s a miracle I didn’t sucker punch him, coming up behind his stool, but my thoughts were of Sylvia. I grasped her wrist and pulled her from between his legs, and her eyes spun with a look of revulsion. Then she recognized me and jerked her hand away. Before I could move, Pugface hit me in the sternum. I fell to the floor, and I think he’d have kicked my face in if the fat dealer and some other so-called acquaintances hadn’t dragged me to my truck. The next time Sylvia and I saw each other, we didn’t mention the incident, but things were out in the open.
The jalapeño lights still hang in the Blue and Gold. In the corner stands the same shabby pool table, and three boys preen as they bend over it. Coming in on my heels are two very young guys and a girl, all giddy and dressed in the spotless collegiate clothes kids wear nowadays. And this is how it is. The fat guy’s nowhere to be found, but happy, fresh-faced children abound, everyone in laundered uniforms and tickled to be visiting the famous dive. The girl who just entered bobs her head to some innocuous tune, and I think of Sylvia, sampling the rough side. And though I bet I could turn to these spoiled, brightly clad dudes and score some ecstasy or almost anything else, a cloud descends, and I want no part of them. Hell, with my derelict appearance I’m part of the atmosphere, anyway. I lurch past a plump redhead with a jeweled stud in her clean, clean nose; she falls against an all-American and says, “Excu-uuse me!” Well, fuck them all. Around the corner, a few girls are still working the desultory streets, and though the first few tell me to keep on walking, I find one who’s small and thin and missing her front teeth. We get in the truck and she guides me to an alley, and as she sucks my dick, I tell myself to enjoy it, because this is my first sexual contact with another genuine human in what? Five years? Ten?
But when the girl’s done I ope
n my wallet, and there’s only the dollar I got back after buying Ryan’s country ham sandwich a century or two ago. I don’t know how I would have managed the acid, but this is worse because the girl has definitely completed her job. Though she doesn’t look particularly young, she must be new to the game, or she’d have gotten it in advance.
Shamefacedly I show her the wallet, and when she doesn’t budge, I pluck out the singleton and hand it over. I’m ashen with humiliation, and if I felt more alive I could easily start weeping. I take off my father’s Masonic ring and hold that out, too, and the girl’s face hardens. Keeping her eyes on my scar, she reaches for the door latch and slides out, slippery as an eel. Pausing just long enough to spit a gleaming hocker on the seat beside me, she screams for support troops and disappears. In the rearview mirror I see a dark figure enter the alley behind me. I gun the motor, but the figure hurls something, and the window behind my head shatters with a crash.
Who knows where I go? I make a turn and cross a bridge where I can’t imagine there ever was a bridge, and some time later I’m in a city park. A bridle path runs by the road, and as I round a curve, a ghostly rider rises up from a hollow. But it slides off into the darkness, and as I leave it behind I wonder if it was a statue. For some time I seek out the ballparks where the Snakes held baseball practice, but I find only parking places, shadowy figures, couples kissing, and the red lights of vehicles. At last I decide I’m not in that park at all but in a different one, and as if the realization determines my whereabouts, I’m expelled suddenly onto city streets. Small brown bungalows, like workers’ housing from an ancient photograph, line the road, and as I turn and turn through the maze of these little homes, I wonder why the city is so unfamiliar. The roads are empty but for me, and the brown houses flutter like cardboard scenery on either side.
The street of houses abruptly comes to an end, and the cross-street curves into a familiar circle. At the center stands the memorial temple, and a gaunt figure wanders the impatiens. I pull to the curb. Timothy! I want to cry. You’re all right! Climbing out, I run toward him with outstretched arms, and I’m babbling as if he’s a long-lost comrade; but when he spots me, Timothy turns on his heel. Knees pumping, he makes a circuit of the temple and scampers across the traffic circle, and a red car appears out of nowhere and mows him down.
A thin kid climbs from the driver’s side and says, “Fuck.” He looks like Ansel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he says, then turns to a sidekick. “What the fuck are you doing?” The sidekick says he’s fucking calling the cops, what the hell does he think? This second boy also looks like Ansel, and there’s a third one who’s out of the vehicle now, too. All the boys look alike.
When the kid first hit him, Timothy flew up the hood, but he slid off and his body unspooled on the pavement. Now he lies face up, an arm crooked under him, a shoe upturned a few yards away. I kneel down and touch his cheek. One eye is half open. I place my hand on his chest, but my hand is trembling. I learn nothing, so I put my head down and listen. He smells very rank. Behind me, the three Ansels are arguing over a cell phone. One says, “Fuck you, man! No fuckin’ way I’m not reporting this.”
We had elementary first aid training in basic, and to quell the panic I try to recall what I learned. Basic was so long ago. I listen again to Timothy’s chest, and a rhyme comes to my head: face is pale, raise the tail. Timothy’s face is creepily white. I look for something to prop up his legs and see Ansel number two still fiddling with the cell phone. Number three murmurs, “So maybe we just like drive him to the emergency room, son.”
No way! I wave my hands. We’re not in the jungle now, and casualties should be moved by medical personnel only. It strikes me that what we should do is stabilize the head in case of a spinal cord injury, but a lot’s happening, and my heart is set on raising the tail. I stand up; the boys recoil. The driver says, “Fuck, that your buddy, man? Ran right in front of me.” I push past him and look in the car for something to raise Timothy’s legs, and he says, “The fuck! Get outa there, ya fuckin’ bag man!” But the car holds nothing beyond fast-food wrappers and a trace of marijuana smoke.
In his flight from me, Timothy sloughed off his long coat, which lies crumpled in the gutter. The coat is heavy with stuff he’s stashed in his pockets, and it smells horribly of rotten meat, but I bunch it into a pad and add the shoe. When I place all this under his feet, the stack slowly collapses. I’m panting heavily and muttering at Timothy, and I take off the blue Snakes shirt and wrap it around the coat and shoe. As the red car’s doors slam, I replace my bundle. Blood: go to his head!
The air fills with a terrible smell. Timothy’s bowels have given way. Two little patches of darkness now glint on the pavement by his torso, and I don’t know if they’re shit or blood or both together, but I crawl over and take his hand. It’s fairly cold. I put my fingers to his neck and wrist, and I don’t feel a pulse. I let out a wail and press down hard on his rib cage, and just as I’m thinking one of the Ansels might lend a hand the car backs away. Tearing the buttons from Timothy’s shirt, I put my hands on his thin chest, and even in the low light of the streetlamp I notice the V of dirt at his throat. I press down, getting up on my knees, and I’m certain this is how it’s done. Press and release, press and release. We’re alone now, Timothy and I, in the middle of the road. No cars pass us. I bear down again and again, putting all my weight into it, and I test the wrist another time. Then I put my lips on his. I can feel the tickle of whiskers on my chin, and I pull in my nostrils and exhale hard; I don’t want to think about the inside of this mouth. Blow out, then up, and fill my lungs with the gorgeous summer night; then down, holding his mouth open with a hand on the chin. Timothy’s lips are crusty, and I come down so hard that our teeth clank and my tongue touches something frightening. But I get in a good breath, and I fill his lungs. Come on and breathe! Then up again; then down, up, down. Another lungful, impelling him to fight, to give what he’s got, to hang on for love of country. Then back to his bare chest, harder now, working ferociously to get a rhythm! A bone snaps, just like wicker, and he’s looking at me with that half-open eye. I wish he’d say something. I press down, all the weight of me, so he’ll pump and breathe and stand up and make something of himself, and I’m weeping now, panting and murmuring nonsense, wishing I could speak his name, Timothy, Timothy. This is where we are when the ambulance shrieks into the traffic circle.
58
I’VE BEEN PAST MY OWN HOUSE four times since eluding the paramedics, slowing to a crawl at every circuit. I’ve said goodbye to Sylvia’s place, too, though it meant taking the long way to avoid that traffic circle. In front of both houses I looked at the darkened windows and tried to empty my mind, and possibly I succeeded. I’m calm, finally. I’ve stopped wailing, stopped hitting the dashboard with my fists. Now it’s three a.m., and the convent gates are closed for the night, but I know a spot where the stone wall’s low enough to scramble over. I park my truck on a cul-de-sac, and between two homes I find a wedge of woods too small for a house lot. I slip among the trees and vault the wall, landing with bent knees as we were taught in basic. Straight above me, the sky is black, but a blur of light hangs over the convent building. Clouds pass like tracing paper torn from a pad, and when at last the moon’s revealed, it’s not quite round. The air whistles at the dent in my head, too.
It’s a short walk to the garden shed, and I’m in no hurry. I’m on the least important mission there is. Ahead stands the dark bulk of the convent, with lights in every stairwell and lavatory. The other windows are dark; the nuns are asleep. Ryan’s asleep, too, I suppose, dreaming of soccer and go-carts, and Sylvia’s getting her beauty rest. At my house, the windows were all dark, though two bedrooms remain empty.
I think of that last afternoon, walking the narrow path between palm trees and scrub growth. Rimet was saying something about something back home, and though he was a decent guy, I really wasn’t listening. Rimet liked big-time auto racing, which I never got, and he spoke of becom
ing a criminal lawyer. He said the jungle reminded him of Hawaii Five-O. We were pals because we were in the same fix, and the last I remember, he was flying through the air. I suppose now he really might be practicing law, or maybe he became Timothy. Remembering that floating figure, I’m not sure it’s one face and not the other I recognize.
On that day we were stoned and reasonably happy, under the circumstances, and I was more interested in what the lieutenant was saying, so I edged forward to respond. And what did I say? This has always bothered me. The LT saw a bloom in a tree and made some remark, but what were my last words? I can only guess. I’d been overseas all of sixteen days; I talked like a tourist. The camp and the surrounding paddies still felt very new, I’d only just discovered the burned plantation, and I wondered how far it was to the sea. I remember urging myself to take what happened as a chance for adventure, just so I wouldn’t shame myself by being scared; and though Rimet and I were scared in a general sense, we’d done nothing very dangerous yet. Even this mission was considered routine. That mine was a complete surprise.
I wonder if I should say a prayer, or if I’m being influenced by the surroundings. I feel a little drunk. Through the silence, the echoey whoosh of traffic below the ha-ha, a sound like waves. The moon slips back behind a cloud, the night is dark again, and I decide to pray something that’s not a prayer so much as an imagined wish; and I wish the first thing that bubbles into my head. I wish for Ryan to be well loved his entire life. That’s the key to happiness, I think. I wonder what Sylvia wishes for Ryan; then my mind is pulled from my prayer, and I think that for a few weeks he was well loved by all of us, and we were loved in return. I was loved by Sylvia once—I’ll always believe that—and I was loved more than I deserved by my mother and dad. And I loved them. I wonder what kind of tally this makes for one life, but I have my excuses. I’d have loved more people if I hadn’t been injured.