In the City of Shy Hunters

by Tom Spanbauer

  I reached for my tobacco, started rolling a cigarette.

  Roll me one of those too, True Shot said. I’m going to need some tobacco to get through this.

  I rolled True Shot a cigarette, lit his cigarette, lit mine.

  I went back to selling drugs in Dog Shit Park, True Shot said. That’s where I met Ruby. That smile of his could charm a rattlesnake. Ruby and I dealt drugs and stayed stoned for years. Somewhere in there, Ruby started calling me True Shot, and in bars sometimes I’d pose as this wise old Indian from Taos who could barely speak English, and Ruby was one of my followers who was showing me around the town. It’s amazing how many people believed us. People say New Yorkers are hard mean souls, but down deep each one of us wants to believe.

  Eventually, me and Ruby started going different ways, True Shot said. Ruby started shooting heroin with Fred, and I quit drinking, quit smoking, quit picking pockets, started up my company, Spirit Schleppers.

  Fred? I said.

  I didn’t know Fred then, True Shot said. Fred was supposed to be some poet or something, but he was just a junkie.

  Then one night, True Shot said, Ruby and Fred crashed at my house. They were way stoned and slept on the couch. When I woke up, Fred was giving me a gum job.

  A gum job? I said.

  I hit Fred with my fist and knocked him down, True Shot said. I was going to kick him, but he looked so pitiful lying there all skinny and old with strands of hair sticking up in patches here and there on top of his head and blood coming out his nose.

  Even more than that, True Shot said, He looked like Gandhi lying there in a pair of orange coveralls that said FRED on the pocket. I felt like a raving redneck lunatic asshole for committing violence on such a holy old gentleman.

  So I gave him my handkerchief instead, True Shot said.

  Fred said, Thank you. You’re very kind.

  Then I realized I was standing there with my cock poking straight out, and that scared me even more than Fred, True Shot said, So I quick tried to put my boner back in my pocket and that got the old guy to laughing and the way he was laughing, I saw how ridiculous I looked and I couldn’t help but laugh too.

  True Shot’s breath in. His breath out. Big chest heave. True Shot took off the swooped rhinestone mirrors. Wiped his eyes. Blew his nose in the rag again.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out Fred was about to croak, True Shot said. Ruby took off early the next morning, so I let Fred stay there with me, four days, just me and Fred. Stay with me till he died.

  A HELICOPTER BUZZED around the head of Our Lady of the Paintbrush, yellow lights like a yellow jacket on a picnic you swat away. The ocean sound against the ramparts was breathing in, breathing out.

  My breath in. My breath out.

  In all my life, True Shot said, I never heard one man tell so many stories. Fred was a skeleton with an oracle inside him. We’d wake up in the morning and he’d have instant coffee with Cremora and two teaspoons of sugar waiting for me and his toothless mouth would just start talking talking, puffing on his More menthol cigarettes, one after the other, talking about all kinds of shit. Indian stories, Buddhist stories, Greek stories, Bible stories, the rabbi story, O’Henry stories, Scheherazade.

  On the fourth day, Fred wasn’t eating at all, True Shot said. He just lay there on his sleeping bag, a skeleton possessed by More Menthol cigarettes, telling everything he knew and had learned, chattering away all the shit that was inside him.

  I lay close to him at night, True Shot said, Like you and me last night. Fred was mostly babbling. I couldn’t make a lot of sense out of what he was saying. Fred wasn’t not making sense. It was me who couldn’t comprehend.

  That last night, I leaned against the wall and held him in my arms on my lap. He was nothing but a bag of bones. He recited some poem, True Shot said, By some Turkish guy. The poem was about a horse called the Stallion of Love. But I’ve forgotten the poem and the name of the Turkish guy.

  Late in the night, True Shot said, When I woke up, Fred was sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the bed from me, and he was talking talking smoking smoking again.

  Then Fred pulled out his old suitcase from under my bed, True Shot said. He opened it and took out all the herbs, sage, cedar. He drew a circle around us on the floor with his foot. He unrolled the pipe from the ocelot skin. Put the pipe stem into the pipe bowl.

  At sunrise, True Shot said, We smoked the pipe and prayed in a good way. After we prayed, Fred rolled the pipe back into the ocelot skin, put the pipe and the herbs back into the suitcase, closed the suitcase, and gave the suitcase to me.

  I am dying, Fred said. My grandfather gave this pipe to me many years ago. My intention has always been to give this pipe to another man, but the Great Mystery has not intended it so. So now, my friend, it seems you are the one I am to give it to. Treat it always with great respect. Honor the pipe, for it is the universe. Follow the good road, the red road, Fred said. I did not. Perhaps you will.

  Fred died in my arms, True Shot said.

  A long time ago, True Shot said, The night we went to the meatpacking district, you told me Charlie had a scar across his face. That freaked me out. Fred had that same scar. But he was old, I told myself, He had no teeth. How could this possibly be Charlie? And then I knew, True Shot said. Fred had AIDS. You get old fast with AIDS. You lose your hair, your teeth.

  Then the pipe, True Shot said. The pipe I had at Ruby’s pipe ceremony was Fred’s pipe, and you recognized it. You had heard the rabbi story and the locomotive story. Only then, really, did I let myself know.

  The light from Our Lady of the Paintbrush was one long line of illumination toward Door of the Dead van. The line came up the hood, through the windshield, onto True Shot’s chin, his lips.

  True Shot laid his head on my shoulder, his right hand, palm up, into my hand, lips at my ear.

  You got to know that when Ruby and I first saw you at the airport, True Shot said, Ruby fell in love with you. I never saw anything like it. The man looked over, saw you, and was smitten. He thought if he got you in the van, he could get into your pants.

  You looked so... so raw, so vulnerable. But Ruby could tell you were cautious because you knew you were too raw, too vulnerable, too delicious.

  To trick you, True Shot said, Ruby and I made this plan: If he got you in the van, I’d play a wise old Indian chief. We figured you’d go for a wise old Indian chief your first night in Manhattan because you had all that Wild West wind-and-big-sky wilderness in you.

  But as we went on, True Shot said, The act got too real. Ruby was more and more in love with you.

  In my forearms, up to my shoulders, splash down through my heart to my stomach. Cattle prod to cock.

  So it was all a scam, I said.

  I rolled down the window of Door of the Dead van.

  My breath in. My breath out.

  You got to understand, Will, True Shot said. It started out a lie, but the lie brought us all to the truth. By pretending to be a wise old Indian chief, I have become one, True Shot said.

  LATER ON THAT night, True Shot on the foam mattress right up next to me on the futon. We were holding on tight to each other, to the someone else there, like Bernadette would do.

  Was the story of Wolf Swamp part of the scam? I said.

  No, True Shot said.

  Fred told you the story of Wolf Swamp, didn’t he? I said.

  How did you know? True Shot said.

  There weren’t any horses I said, In America until after the white man. Charlie could always tell a good story, I said, But he didn’t always get his facts right.

  True Shot leaned up on his elbows. Only silence for a moment, in all the world, all of New York City, only silence.

  Then: What happened to Fred’s body? I said.

  We took up a collection, True Shot said, And had him cremated.

  What did you do with his ashes? I asked.

  The wind took most of them, True Shot said. A big dust-devil wind came up and took the ashe
s with it. But I got some of them ashes, True Shot said.

  Where are they? I said.

  True Shot touched the buckskin bag with the beaded blue horizontal and the beaded red vertical. He put his thumbs and fingers on each side of his neck, pinched the buckskin strand, lifted it over his head.

  I bowed my head. My ears tingled as the buckskin necklace passed them and settled on my neck.

  The buckskin bag touched my throat: the beaded blue horizontal and the intersecting beaded red vertical. The surprising weight of it.

  With my hand, my right hand, palm up, I held the buckskin bag, held the ashes of Charlie 2Moons.

  To be brothers. To always respect and love each other and always tell each other the truth and to keep each other’s secrets and to never forget.

  BOOK FOUR

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Fifth Street Videoland went into Stranded Beings Searching for God. They tore off the whole front of the place and made it all windows. Tore off the sign with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the three Polaroids.

  The light was real bright in Fifth Street Videoland, unrelenting. The light came out onto the sidewalk at night and pushed garbage and garbage-can shadows into the street. And Videoland played the same music: one big loop of Top Hits round and around and around again.

  The light from below me came up to my windows, in through my windows. At night, lying on my futon, the fluorescence glowed all around me.

  At midnight the lights went off and the music stopped. Weekends one o’clock.

  It ruined the stoop. You can’t sit on a stoop with light like that and pop hits over and over.

  So the summer of ’88 I didn’t do much stoop sitting. Because of the light and because Rose started chemotherapy. Karposi’s sarcoma.

  I don’t know which was worse, the purple berry bumps on Rose’s legs or the brain fry he came home with after a chemo session.

  One night as I turned the corner from the Bowery onto East Fifth, there was Rose. There in the mercury-vapor dust-storm light, Rose was sweeping. Three o’clock in the morning.

  Rose was all in black with a black stocking cap. The closer I got to him the more he didn’t look like my Rose, but Rose as some character of the night: the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Old Lamplighter, a chimney sweep, Frankenstein.

  My open palm on beaded blue horizontal, beaded red vertical. My open palm on Charlie.

  Evening, Rose, I said.

  Rose didn’t look up, kept on sweeping.

  The whole problem, Rose said, With this garbage, Rose said, Is there are people out there who are hungry and have no home and no place to take a shit. And to these people, a garbage can means food and clothing and salable items.

  Lined up on the sidewalk were five silver garbage cans, plastic garbage liners a ruffle of black under the silver lids. On each silver lid was a piece of duct tape; written on the duct tape, black Magic Marker words.

  On the first garbage can were the black words EDIBLE FOOD.

  On the second garbage can, the black word CLOTHING.

  The third garbage can, HOUSEHOLD ITEMS.

  On the next, the black words REFUND: BOTTLES AND CANS.

  On the last garbage can: NOTHING OF VALUE, KEEP THE FUCK OUT. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE.

  Rose’s prizefighter nose, his clitoris-bump forehead, his eightball cheeks, his keep-your-chin-up chin were covered with purple bumps. In the mercury-vapor light, the bumps looked like Ruby’s cockroaches.

  Trickle down, Ronald Reagan likes to call it, Rose said. You know what trickle down is, don’t you? Rose said. That’s what goes down your leg if you don’t shake it.

  What trickle down means, Rose said, Is feeding the horse, so when the horse takes a shit the rats get something to eat too.

  Rose’s black T-shirt said FUCK THE UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND.

  Pollution is everywhere, Rose said. Right now did you know that there are a hundred tons of New York garbage circling the island on a barge nobody wants to take?

  We are so busy filling up the void, Rose said, We are filling our world with the garbage it takes to fill the void.

  I took the broom handle away from Rose. He did not resist.

  Come on, Rose, I said, Let’s go smoke some Sho-ko-lat.

  Tea, Rose said, Herbal tea.

  I’ve got peppermint, I said.

  I took Rose’s arm, and we were one step, two. On the third step, Rose stopped.

  In Rose’s eyes, no coiled-up black serpent.

  I unlocked the front door, pushed the door open. The unrelenting light on Rose’s purple bumps.

  You did a great job on the garbage, I said. I’ve never seen the place look so clean.

  We live in our throwaway, Rose said. When there’s no place to shit you can’t walk for shit.

  ANOTHER NIGHT, I found Rose up on the roof. He was standing where the roof slopes up, on the cornice, on the edge, his toes dangling over East Fifth Street. He was wearing his gold lamé pajamas and holding a martini-up cocktail glass in his right hand, a Gauloise in his left.

  My open palm on the beaded blue, the beaded red. My open palm on Charlie.

  Rose?

  A gust of wind found Rose and fluttered his pajamas. Rose leaned forward a little against the wind, then leaned back, spilling some of his martini. Rose leaning back and forth, back and forth, side to side; I thought for sure he was going over, thought for sure Rose’s blood was on East Fifth Street, all over the garbage cans, so red on the sidewalk in the fluorescent Videoland light.

  I started singing:

  On the roof’s the only place I know

  Where you just have to wish to make it so.

  Rose didn’t turn around. He started singing too:

  When this old world starts getting you down

  And people are just too much for me to take.

  Then we were singing together, and when Rose turned around he almost fell over into chaos, into unrelenting light, but he steadied himself and walked down the slope of cornice, walked up to me, and we started dancing, me the girl, me Elizabeth Taylor, and we sang “Up on the Roof,” all the choruses, and when we finished that song, we sang Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is,” and when we finished that song we sang Nina Simone’s “Wild Is the Wind,” and after that Rose was tired.

  I helped Rose down the stairs, Rose not so extra-lovely anymore, not even lovely.

  When I unlocked his door, Mary, Mona, and Jack Flash were barking barking and running around our feet and jumping up on us.

  I got Rose to put on his Moroccan caftan, got him to sit in his purple-velvet overstuffed chair. I made tea.

  Rose didn’t drink the tea, just sat and stared, so I went down to Fifth Street Videoland, into the unrelenting bright and Top Hits tape loop, and rented Sunset Boulevard.

  Rose knew every one of Gloria Swanson’s lines and said each line right along with her.

  When I rewound the video, the TV came on, and it was an old Barbara Walters interview with Ronald and Nancy Reagan before the Oscars.

  When Barbara Walters said to President Reagan that he was the most popular president since John F. Kennedy, Rose stood up, walked into the kitchen, came back with his silver revolver, and shot the television.

  It’s the truth.

  The dogs ran yelping under the bed, and there was smoke that smelled of electric wiring and a gassy smell. I was sitting on the blonde-fainting couch holding onto my teacup for dear life. Shards of glass on everything. My hands, my shirt, my black waiter pants, my legs, tiny pieces of glass like sequins stuck to me.

  Rose yelled at the black hole where the television used to be, Barbara Walters, you are such a dumb bitch.

  Bracelets clack-clack.

  Don’t you know Ronald Reagan wasn’t the most popular president since John Kennedy until you fucking said it? You have completely overstepped the bounds of accountability, Rose yelled, And have forgotten that the medium is the message!

  So Noam Chomsky.

  By tha
t time, the dogs were all sitting on the blonde-fainting couch next to me. Rose was pointing the gun at us, like Sister Barbara Ann’s pointer stick.

  Don’t let anybody tell you different, Rose yelled. The media are fully aware of their power.

  Across the room, on top of everything in the room, exploded opaque glass. Under the light of Rose’s Italian chandelabra, the room was glitter, tiny illuminations.

  My open palm on the beaded blue, the beaded red. My open palm on Charlie.

  Rose, I said, I think you should lie down.

  * * *

  IN DOG SHIT Park, I sat down on the green bench by Ruby’s Home Sweet Home. I was drinking my morning coffee and eating a com muffin. It was already a hot day. Dog shit stinking real bad. I was telling Ruby again about the medicine bundle and the Museum of Unnatural History. In all the world, there I was, just another crazy New Yorker sitting on a park bench talking to himself.

  That same morning, a figure walked past me on the sidewalk. I say figure because I don’t know what else to call it. It was a walking umbrella with a red plastic shower curtain hanging down all around off the spokes of the umbrella. The bare feet were coated with tar. There was also a humming. The person inside the red shower curtain was humming a song. The tune was familiar but I couldn’t place it.

  A week later, I saw Umbrella Red Shower Curtain in the meatpacking district. I’d gone over there just walking walking, maybe to see if I could find Crystal again, but there was no Crystal and not one dragon on the street.

  No Charlie 2Moons to look for anymore. Charlie was a buckskin bag, the blue and the red, against my throat.

  I was standing on the corner of 14th in front of the pink triangular building whose basement door had been the entrance to Hell. It was maybe seven, twilight, entre chien et loup, when all of a sudden, just like that—abracadabra!—Umbrella Red Shower Curtain walked by. It made a sound when it walked that was the same as the first time I saw it in Dog Shit Park. It was the sound of plastic sliding along the sidewalk, and the sound of the knees of the person inside against the plastic as it walked. Plus the humming. From inside came the humming of the song I knew but couldn’t place.