Bone

by George C. Chesbro

  But the thing that most impressed him was the buildings lining both sides of the street as far as he could see, buildings so high that he had to crane his neck in order to look up at those closest to him, buildings that formed a canyon of stone, glass and steel.

  Suddenly he experienced a strong sense of familiarity, immediately followed by an equally strong sense of alienation. The canyon of buildings, he thought, made him feel at home—and yet far from home; he belonged here, and he did not; the stone canyon was home to him, and totally alien.

  It made no sense at all, he thought, suddenly frustrated and disgusted by the fact that his random thoughts and feelings remained maddeningly ephemeral and would not coalesce into anything he could call a memory.

  Once again he wondered if he was insane.

  He continued walking up Park Avenue, slowly, trying to push away the anxiety the seeming contradictions in his sensations and feelings caused him, trying to relax and yet still struggling to capture the essence of the strong emotions the stranger was experiencing in this man-made canyon.

  In the distance, another huge building loomed in the very center of the landscape, seemingly blocking the way. High atop it, in large blue letters, were written the words Pan Am; the words meant nothing to him, yet once again the sight of a tall building standing out from the others exerted a powerful emotional pull on him.

  Suddenly, without knowing why, he abruptly stopped walking and looked down at his gnarled hands. Had he broken his hands in a building? For almost a full minute he stood, alternately glancing up at the building in his path, then down at his hands with their twisted bones and scar tissue nails. But nothing came to him, and he resumed walking.

  He had assumed Park Avenue would end at the building with the blue letters on it, but what he found when he reached that point was a smaller—but equally impressive—building of grayish-brown stone, with intricately carved stone balustrades and columns forming its facade; it was quite unlike any of the buildings around it. He stood for a few minutes on the sidewalk, staring at the building with the words Grand Central Terminal carved into the stone above the entrance. This building, he found, also reminded him of something, but it was a different feeling from the sensations evoked by the other buildings—the same, yet different, as this building was different from the others.

  Contradictions.

  He felt no desire or urge in the stranger to enter the stone building up ahead, but he did feel the need to go on to the place where he would make camp. Park Avenue here diverged in two directions; one part of the road appeared to circle Grand Central Terminal, while the other angled down into darkness.

  Underground.

  This is where the stranger wanted to go, Bone thought, and he started walking down into the underpass. There was no sidewalk, but only a narrow concrete ledge on the right to walk on. The volume of traffic on the street was increasing, and as he descended down into the roadway he had to press closely against the stone wall on his right in order to avoid being brushed by the cars that swept past.

  Suddenly, with no warning, he experienced a strong sensation of belonging—and yet not belonging—in this man-made cave, pressed against a stone wall. Suddenly he felt dizzy, and he almost fell off the stone ledge onto the roadway and into the flow of traffic. Carbon monoxide and burning oil fumes assaulted his senses, burning his nostrils, clogging his lungs and making his eyes water, nauseating him. He had made a mistake in coming this way, he thought. It was all wrong.

  Peel off!

  And yet he felt natural here, pressed against the wall with his gnarled fingers digging at the smooth stone, the flesh tingling on his back, his buttocks and the backs of his knees as he balanced on his toes.

  He could die here!

  Suddenly his fear, confusion and nausea combined into an explosive mixture that flashed into panic. He had to get out of the cave.

  He stumbled off the ledge into the path of an oncoming car, and barely managed to leap back again and press himself flat against the stone as the car, horn blaring, sped past him, brushing his shirt. More horns blared. Sickened by the fumes and gasping for breath, he crab-walked as fast as he could along the stone ledge, occasionally stepping down into the roadbed as he lost his balance, hopping and staggering along as fast as he could as more cars sped past, their bright lights creating a surreal, nightmare glow throughout the underpass. The noise from the blaring horns was deafening, and served to fuel his panic. Finally, when there was a small break in the traffic pattern, he simply jumped down into the roadbed and sprinted, arms pumping and heartbeat racing, toward the sunlight a hundred yards away. In the opposite lane, onrushing cars in the narrow tunnel seemed about to hit him, and Bone was dimly aware of drivers staring out their windows at him in shocked amazement. Behind him, brakes squealed, and he was conscious of a car almost directly upon him. A horn sounded, seemingly right behind his head; the shrill, abusive blare echoed off the stone walls, pounding at him. He could do nothing but keep sprinting. The light was closer now, closer . . .

  And then he was out of the tunnel.

  He collapsed against the side of a building, crumpled to the sidewalk and lay there, gasping for breath in the smog-filled air with his eyes tightly closed. He fought to control the panic he had felt in the underpass, and gradually came to sense that the terrible fear had come not so much from being in the darkness of the underpass as from the impossibly contradictory sensations and emotions he had experienced there; even though the roadbed had been only inches below the narrow ledge he had tried to walk on, he had somehow felt that as he clung to the stone wall he was also hanging over an abyss . . .

  Light and darkness, high and low, at home and alienated . . .

  When he opened his eyes, he found that he was being stared at by curious onlookers on their way to work in the city morning; people carrying briefcases, in suits and ties or dresses and heels, stared at him as they walked by—but all gave him a wide berth, sometimes glancing back over their shoulders before hurrying on. Nobody stopped to ask if he needed help.

  Embarrassed, Bone struggled to his feet. He picked up the femur, walked quickly around the corner and stopped there, leaning against a second building with his forehead against the cool brick until he was breathing normally and once again felt in control of himself. Suddenly he felt terribly alone—and lonely. He wanted desperately to have a sanctuary where he could rest, hear the voice and perhaps feel the touch of someone who was neither hostile nor suspicious.

  He desperately wanted to talk to, see, Anne. His most vivid memory now was of the brief moment in the park when her breasts had pressed against his arm, when she had unhesitatingly placed herself in a position of potential peril in order to defend a stranger who might be a killer. At this moment, in the wake of the panic attack in the underpass, he would have given almost anything to feel her breasts brush against him once again. Perhaps he would—should—even give up his quest. Ali Hakim had given him the construct and suggested the psychological tools he might use in the search for his identity, but at this moment he was no longer certain he wanted to know. In that direction, perhaps, lay madness.

  He would need change. He started toward the entrance to Grand Central Terminal—then slowed, finally stopped and once again leaned against the side of a building.

  He—not the stranger, but he—was a fool, Bone thought. And a coward. He had been ready to give up his search so quickly, and in the midst of an emotional storm which could very well provide vital clues to his identity. And if the stranger had been mad, there was no guarantee that he was not still so.

  He had no right to involve the woman further; also, even if he did have the right, it wouldn't be a good idea. He was obviously very vulnerable to the feelings she had aroused in him, but those feelings were part of this life—not the one he had lived on the streets, or the life even more deeply buried in the past. His feelings for the woman could be a severe hindrance in his search for the stranger's feelings in the past. Until he had the answers he was
searching for, he could belong to no one, and no one could belong to him.

  Finally, he had already, in a way, betrayed the stranger by panicking and bolting when he had experienced precisely those kinds of strong emotional surges Ali Hakim had told him to look for. To search for, in a moment of weakness, solace—a woman—who might further weaken his resolve and confuse his memories would be another kind of betrayal, and he would not do it. He continued walking up Park Avenue, deeper into the forest of soaring buildings.

  Further uptown he used a portion of his emergency funds to buy two changes of underwear, jeans and another shirt. In addition, thinking he felt a vague urging in the stranger, he purchased other items: cans of food, Sterno, two large boxes of wooden matches, soap, a comb.

  Closer to his destination, his arms filled with packages, he passed an army and navy store, abruptly stopped and stared in the window at a display of hunting knives. And he felt the strongest urge yet in the stranger.

  The stranger wanted a hunting knife, Bone thought—and immediately felt a surge of fear. For what reason could the stranger want a knife? To cut what? He could not think of any good reason why a man should want, or need, a hunting knife in New York City, except for self-defense—and he already knew that the stranger had effectively used the femur for that. Increasingly uneasy with the urge, he turned away from the window and started walking quickly away. He crossed an intersection and was halfway up the next block when he halted, then stepped back into a doorway to get out of the way of the increasingly heavy flow of pedestrian traffic. It took him only a few moments to make his decision.

  He walked back to the army and navy store and used twenty-five dollars out of his diminishing emergency funds to purchase a large hunting knife that his instincts told him was good, made of quality materials. He also bought a sharpening stone and a small can of fine machine oil with which to hone the knife, for the vague urgings of the stranger told him that a fine knife should be kept sharp at all times.

  The idea of possessing such a weapon still frightened Bone, and he suspected that he could be put in jail if the police found him with it. Still, there was no doubt in his mind that the stranger had wanted the knife, and Bone was, if not content, at least willing to risk waiting to see what its purpose would be.

  He was the stranger's only ally, his only defender besides Anne, whom he could not afford to contact, and he had to trust the man.

  He had already betrayed the stranger once, and he would not do it again.

  Chapter Nine

  The night before, while he slept, somebody had stolen his three-wheeled shopping cart, after—inexplicably—removing two garbage bags filled with his belongings and dropping them on the filthy marble floor of the waiting room in Grand Central Terminal. He had been almost overwhelmed with relief to find that he still had his possessions, and had decided to leave Grand Central; the next time he fell asleep on the hard wooden benches at the rear of the waiting room, he might not be so lucky.

  Besides, it was time to return to God and the intergalactic television station, anyway; the people on all the other planets who watched him speak with God probably wondered what had happened to him.

  Gasping for breath as he dragged his two bulging garbage bags behind him on the sidewalk, Michael Goodman finally made it to the Chrysler Building, which he knew was actually God with His brightly lighted, multi-faceted spire of a head that was also a television antenna broadcasting his image, thoughts and words to the other beings of the galaxy. It was because of God that he knew that on other planets the streets and sidewalks were made of soft material, and there were beds in all the doorways of the buildings, toilets on every corner, and nobody who lived on the streets was ever cold or hungry. There was no need for the terrible shelters, where other men had hurt, raped and robbed him. Michael was fifty-eight years old, and he wished he lived on one of those other worlds. Sometimes, he wished he were dead, and he often wondered if committing suicide would enable him to get to another world.

  He did not hear the voices yet, but that was not unusual, for he was not yet safe deep inside the great domed arch of the entranceway. Once there, he would take his blanket and small pillow out of one of the bags, curl up with his bags on either side of him and then listen to the voices and talk back to them until dawn, when sometimes he would fall asleep and dream sweet dreams of his childhood until a policeman shook or prodded him awake and forced him to move on. But where would he go the next day? Not back to Grand Central, where his things might be stolen. He decided he would not worry about it until morning, when he was shaken awake.

  Almost totally exhausted, but now within yards of his goal, Michael slumped down on the sidewalk of Forty-third Street and leaned back against the building, panting for breath. It was past midnight, and not many people were on the streets on the East Side. But there were some. A well-dressed couple walked past, stopping when the woman tugged at the man's sleeve. The man turned around, walked back and stopped in front of Michael. He withdrew a wad of bills from his pocket, thumbed through them until he found a single; he dropped the bill in front of Michael, then walked quickly away. Michael picked up the bill off the sidewalk, stuffed it into the pocket of one of the three shirts he wore.

  He was hungry. The dollar would buy him a doughnut, but he was too tired to walk any distance to find a store that was open. He would have to sleep with his hunger, he thought, and maybe in the morning he would have the energy to walk the few blocks to the headquarters of Project Helping Hand, where Anne or Barry or one of the other workers would give him something to eat. Maybe they would help him find another shopping cart, which was even more important to him. First, he would have to listen to their lectures and pleas for him to go to a shelter, and he might even have to take a card and promise to go before they would help him. But he would not go to a shelter; he feared the shelters more than anything else. He did not want to be raped again.

  He was so very tired, Michael thought. But he had to get to God and hear the comforting voices before he could sleep. Feeling as if he were moving under tons of water at the bottom of an ocean, he slowly struggled to his feet. He breathed deeply a few times, reached down and grabbed the necks of the garbage bags, had to use all of his strength to tug them along the sidewalk; but finally he was into the almost total darkness under the Chrysler Building's entranceway arch.

  He immediately began to hear the soft, soothing voices on the intergalactic television station.

  "Get the hell out of here, motherfucker! You smell like a goddamn sewer! Get the fuck out! Go find someplace else to crash!"

  It was not a voice from another world, Michael thought; this voice had drowned out all the other voices, frightening them away. He tugged at his bags, trying to move off to the opposite corner. Suddenly a foot landed on his thigh, and a fist hit him hard between the shoulder blades, narrowly missing the base of his skull. His head jerked back painfully.

  "Shit, man, you stink!" another voice said. "Get out of here! Jesus!"

  "But I can't," Michael murmured. "I'm so—"

  He was kicked again. And then there was a chorus of voices, all belonging to men like himself from this wretched world.

  "Take your stink out of here!"

  "Get away from me, you stinking motherfucker!"

  "Get the fuck out of here before I cut your balls off!"

  The doorway under the arch was crowded with other homeless men, and Michael felt despair when he realized this meant he would not hear the voice of God or kind people on other worlds this night. With tears of exhaustion and sadness streaming down his cheeks, Michael once more gripped the necks of the garbage bags and hauled them back out onto the sidewalk.

  He was so tired, so hungry . . .

  There was a half-filled wire trash basket halfway up the block, near Park Avenue. Michael leaned over it, reached down and began poking around in the debris, pushing papers around and wriggling his fingers until he felt something soft and sticky. He grabbed this scrap of paper and brought it t
o his mouth, licking it; it tasted sweet, of apples and crumbs—the remains of a slice of pie, which only served to whet his appetite and make him even more hungry. Now he reached down into the basket with both hands, and again touched paper with something on it that felt like food. He pulled out the paper, eagerly put it to his mouth. He smelled what the substance was a second too late, after he had already put his tongue and lips to it. He gasped and spat, hurling the paper covered with dog excrement away from him as he desperately wiped at his mouth with his sleeve. The horrible taste would not go away. He slumped down on the sidewalk, over his garbage bags, bowed his head and began to sob uncontrollably.

  He couldn't help it if he smelled like the dogshit he'd just eaten, he thought as he continued to sob. Twice he had allowed people at the shelters to strip him and put him under a shower. The first time he had been scalded, and the second time the water had been so cold that he had come down sick soon afterward. He feared the shelters, and would not go to them again. He couldn't help it if his fingers didn't always work right and he couldn't drop his pants before he urinated or defecated. Sometimes he defecated without even being aware of it. Also, in the winter the urine and feces that collected in his pants and ran down his legs was so deliciously warm that he welcomed it. And after a while he could no longer smell himself.

  A sound caused him to look up—and he cried out in terror.

  They were back—the young ones with the gray jackets and black boots. The last time they had caught him alone, he had been on his way to a soup kitchen; but he had left his belongings and his shopping cart behind, in a safe hiding place, and his smell had caused them to leave him alone. Now they would take everything he owned.

  Without a word, two of the four Wolves stepped forward, reached down and grabbed his two full garbage bags. Michael lunged for the bags, but it was too late; his fingers grabbed nothing but air, and then a fist shot out and struck him on the side of the head. Pain shot through his skull, flashed down into his jaw and neck, and he fell over on his side.