The Journeyman

  A hospital room.

  Sunlight filtered through the window and IV bag, throwing a rippling pattern on the wall like the surface of an amber swimming pool. The space was filled with candy, balloons, and get-well cards—a mosaic of blue, yellow, white, green, orange, and shades in between.

  He had puzzled over such colors a lifetime ago but couldn’t remember where or when.

  The ache in his head sloshed back and forth when he moved the tiniest bit. Some unseen demon poured generously from a cruel pitcher of misery, right into his ear.

  His mouth was too sandy to move his tongue. He blinked. It hurt.

  Two tabloid front pages were taped to the nearest wall. “Hell on a Hill,” clamored the Post in white capital letters set over a photo of a mangled bus. “Prayers for Paul,” proclaimed the Daily News above a shot of someone—not him, surely—in a bed, head encased in bandages. The figure was unrecognizable. Centered in a nest of tubes, he was flanked by enough lit-up gadgets and meters to pilot a starship.

  In the picture, Pop Mike rose from a chair by the bed, reaching for the lens. Somebody wasn’t supposed to be snapping photos.

  The pages were faded from the sun.

  Paul looked around the room. The machines were absent—as were the multitude of tubes, except for the IV.

  He tried to move his feet. His ankle throbbed in response.

  Across the room, a silver-haired nurse wrote on a clipboard, her back to him.

  Paul thought to say something to her, but the nearest card stopped him. It boasted a pastel peacock, tail spread with pride. “Here’s hoping you get your color back!” Bulgy words that left scant white space.

  Someone had once said something about all-seeing eyes.

  He reached for the peacock, the needle in his arm punishing him for the effort. His fingers grazed the card, and it clattered to the tile floor.

  The nurse let out a yip and spun around to face him, hand on heart.

  They stared at each other.

  After a while, it came to him. He was smiling.

  46

  To Arrive Where We Started

  The black clouds unleashed warm summer fury on the sidewalks of Hell’s Kitchen. From the vantage point of the New Beginnings admissions desk a half-floor below street level, a wire-reinforced fire window showed only feet, ankles, and shins negotiating the pummeled concrete.

  Paul could tell which people carried umbrellas by how their shoes moved through the rain, which rebounded off the cement as if fired from on high. Those who’d planned ahead walked. Everyone else ran like hell.

  He completed an intake form for Johnny Day, a sodden fifteen-year-old just three days off the bus from Portland and two nights on the streets.

  The kid stared at him.

  Paul tried to ignore it but soon surrendered. “Yes.”

  “I knew it. You hard, right? They knocked you down but not out.”

  He handed Johnny the form. “Take that to the entry nurse, and try not to get it wet. Down the hall to your left.” He pointed without looking. It wasn’t Johnny Day’s fault, but Paul really hated talking about the bus.

  “She sweet?”

  “Say again?”

  “The nurse.”

  “He’s all right. Cold hands.”

  Johnny Day waited for a follow-up, but Paul wasn’t in the mood. The day was winding down, but the storm would herd more drenched admissions in before it ended.

  The kid shrugged. With a barely audible “a’ight,” he squeaked across the floor in the direction indicated.

  Paul watched him long enough to ensure that he stopped at the correct door. A lot of the kids brought in by bad weather couldn’t read and wanted to hide that, so Paul tried to give them a heads-up before they missed the prominent sign and made it obvious to everyone.

  Keeping the peace at New Beginnings started with the preservation of dignity for all newbies. Those who felt bad about themselves inevitably tried to spread it to others. That’s how things, hearts, and people got broken.

  Johnny passed Pop Mike, who also watched him until he entered the right room. Then the old man gave Paul a status-checking raise of the eyebrows.

  Paul nodded.

  The thunk of the front door’s steel push-bar and a splash of water announced the arrival of the intake van. The drain outside was running slow again.

  A driver in a slicker so yellow it hurt dripped in, followed by a dozen newcomers in increasing degrees of soaked. “Wet ones,” he said. “Laundry room unlocked?”

  Paul nodded again. The new kids stepped into the receiving area, watering the donated issues of Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitan and reducing some fallen free weeklies to mush beneath their soles.

  The leading ones stopped to look around, then realized they were preventing those behind from coming in out of the downpour. Apologies circulated to a soundtrack of sneakers and pulp.

  Paul worked the line with a practiced blend of care and efficiency. These kids needed to know they’d found a safe haven. They also had to understand there would be a structure and a routine they hadn’t had on the street or, most likely, in the homes they’d fled.

  This was payback for the years it had taken him to learn those same things—for the patience he’d required from Pop Mike. Justice had a sense of humor.

  Form by form, kid by kid, all were processed and marched off to the clothing room to change into dry outfits before seeing the nurse. Rory had an eye infection and was separated out immediately. Kurt required time with a pro bono attorney. Paloma spoke no English and couldn’t stop crying. Wilson seemed to think he’d been arrested.

  Paul made them feel welcome. From a distance, Pop Mike watched him. By the time Paul finished, the old man had wandered off. That happened more and more lately—a good sign. He trusted Paul to work on his own.

  A single drop hit the floor, surprising and loud. Paul hadn’t noticed the straggler by the door.

  The boy stood looking out the window, his back to Paul, a small pack thrown over slim shoulders. He watched the rain as if weighing an exit back out into the elements.

  Inside or outside wouldn’t have made much difference, dryness-wise. The gray sweatshirt the kid wore, the hood pulled up to hide his face, was saturated to a dark slate. The wet cotton sagged around his head, pull-strings hydrating the hard floor.

  “Just clothes or clothes-and-a-bed?”

  The boy watched the scurrying feet pass at eye level but didn’t reply.

  “I don’t mean to rush you, but if it’s clothes-and-a-bed, you need to sign up in the next five minutes. After that, we can still give you something to wear, but you’ll have to come back in the morning if you change your mind and want a place to stay.”

  Silence.

  Paul tried again. “Were you the last one off?”

  “I wasn’t on the van.”

  A girl.

  Making her decision, she approached the desk. By the time Paul ducked under the counter to grab another form, she’d pulled her hood down and shaken her long hair out—hair so black that Paul was sure it was just as dark when dry.

  A girl with eyes as inky as her hair—and a depth there that reduced him to nothing. “Are the beds dry?” she said.

  He remembered that he was supposed to answer. “As long as the roof holds. There’s no guarantee of that, but yeah—dry for now. The food, too.” What was he saying?

  She took the form and pen he offered. He didn’t trust himself to write in a steady hand, so he had her fill it out. Pretty girls and the resulting effect on him continued their tradition of knocking him off-center. He wanted to believe he was getting better at hiding it. He wasn’t.

  “Ray-Anne Blair?” he said, reading upside-down, trying to modulate his voice. His job was to make girls feel at home, not scare them off.

  Something about her was familiar. Kids left and came back all the time, of course, and after enough intakes, they started to look alike. He hated admitting that because it made him feel callous.

&nbs
p; But he couldn’t shake the feeling of having met her before.

  She handed him the form.

  He was grateful to have something else to occupy his eyes. “Is this your first time with us?”

  The girl took an odd red-and-gold box of candy from her pack and rattled it, checking for dryness. Satisfied, she shook a black disk into her palm. It looked like a tiny hockey puck.

  The box was one of those things travelers brought home from far away when they couldn’t think of anything else to buy you. “Gifu,” it said in thick black lettering.

  “Sisu?” She held the candy out to him.

  The world tipped at a strange angle.

  Bump-di-di-bump.

  Epilogue: Uncle Lights-Out

  Uncle Lights-Out was not the blind man’s full nickname. It was Uncle Lights-Out-Nobody-Home. But the squatter’s camp neighbors who had pinned it on him thought that was too much of a mouthful.

  He was unable to see—which explained the first half of his moniker—and had been for as long as he could remember. His memories were few, and he didn’t trust them, so he ignored most attempts at conversation. That explained the rest.

  Uncle Lights-Out didn’t mind his name. He knew he wouldn’t have it for long.

  Nor did he mind his dodgy remembrances. They kept him from attracting attention, from raising suspicion. They provided him with cover.

  Others accepted that Uncle Lights-Out was who he appeared to be because he believed it himself. In the camp, questions were scarce. No one liked having to answer to anyone.

  All of that eased his departure.

  When the dog pulled him away from his tent in the park, it acted on no command spoken or heard. Uncle Lights-Out knew then that it was safe to put the shield of his false memories aside.

  “Where you going, Uncle?” his neighbors said. He ignored them, allowing the dog to lead him out of the trees, to the path.

  His other thoughts, those telling him he’d soon enjoy a very different existence, could now surface. There was no need to keep them at bay; he wasn’t at risk any longer.

  Leaving the camp, Uncle Lights-Out heard his neighbors calling him back to claim his collection can and its jingling coins. He didn’t answer.

  Uncle Lights-Out hoped they’d soon fight over the can, though they’d probably safeguard it for his return. He should have been grateful.

  He wasn’t. He would not be back.

  By the second corner, Uncle Lights-Out no longer needed the dog to tell him when the signal changed. He couldn’t see but knew.

  Uncle Lights-Out did need the beast to show him the way to his destination. And the dog served as a distraction to anyone who might stop him, especially New York’s police. He was journeying into a neighborhood that vagrants were told to avoid—told with words, told with deeds.

  He was not far from the squatters’ camp. Yet he rapidly moved from a place of hunger and filth to a realm of privilege and control.

  Blocks from the park’s southern entrance, the dog steered him off the main sidewalk and away from the passers-by, most of whom avoided looking at him. A woman dug in her purse for change, then realized he wasn’t begging.

  He gazed into her with his cloudy, sightless eyes. She shrank away. The time for his arrival was truly now.

  Avenue of the Americas. Uncle Lights-Out and the dog approached the revolving doors of an ebon office tower, passing through the mist of a sculpture fountain.

  The midday sun in the spray created a rainbow. The colors fled before the dog and Uncle Lights-Out.

  So, too, did the good will of the men at the reception desk of the lobby they entered. The warmth they offered a woman in a charcoal suit bled away when they saw Uncle Lights-Out. It was a competition for which was the most offensive to them—the dog, the smell, or Uncle Lights-Out’s boldness in crossing the threshold to this place.

  The nearer of the two guards approached, shaking his head in refusal. Uncle Lights-Out fixed him with his gaze. The guard let him pass.

  Uncle Lights-Out stepped up to the desk alone. The dog was gone, no longer necessary. Now he remembered everything.

  “Are you here to see someone?” the second guard said.

  “They are here to see me. I am expected.”

  Indeed, a man and a woman, also in charcoal suits, emerged from an elevator bank. They headed for the desk and Uncle Lights-Out, each bearing a practiced smile of welcome.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Truitt,” Uncle Lights-Out said. “Gerald.”

  Much to do. Much to rue.

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  About the Author

  Michael Alan Peck is an apprentice storyslinger who’s made his living writing about TV, its celebrities, and its past. (He used to pen a column called “Ask the Televisionary” for TV Guide.com.) He’s also put food on the table by reviewing restaurants and paid for gas by writing about travel.

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  Acknowledgments

  My friend Larry Brody says that if you want to create without collaborating, write a novel. And while he has a point, that doesn’t mean you should try it without help.

  Thus, I owe a hefty round of gratitude to a talented and generous group of people: Dan Fernandez for the wonderful cover and graphic design; Sarah Terez Rosenblum, Renée Bauer, and Marti McKenna for feedback and editing; Michael Visnov for character visualization; and Storystudio Chicago for getting me moving.

  Thank you all.

  What Is the Law?

  Copyright © 2014 Michael Alan Peck

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Dinuhos Arts, LLC

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  5315 N. Clark St., #230

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  ISBN: 986082317

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  ISBN-13: 978-0-9860823-1-3

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.