Dreams Underfoot n-1

by Charles de Lint

  I shot a glance back in through the glass doors because I figured it had to be from the postal clerk—who else knew me?—but he wasn’t even looking at me. I sat and stared at it a little longer, but then I finally picked it up. I took out my pen knife and slit the envelope open, and carefully pulled out this card. All it said on it was, “Allow the darkrobed access tonight and they will kill you.”

  I didn’t have a clue what it meant, but it gave me a royal case of the creeps. If it wasn’t a joke—which I figured it had to be—then who were these blackrobed and why would they want to kill me?

  Every big city like this is really two worlds. You could say it’s divided up between the haves and the havenots, but it’s not that simple. It’s more like some people are citizens of the day and others of the night. Someone like me belongs to the night. Not because I’m bad, but because I’m invisible. People don’t know I exist. They don’t know and they don’t care, except for Angel and the postal clerk, I guess.

  But now someone did.

  Unless it was a joke. I tried to laugh it off, but it just didn’t work. I looked at the envelope again, checking it out for a return address, and that’s when I realized something I should have noticed straightaway. The envelope didn’t have my box number on it, it didn’t have anything at all except for my name. So how the hell did it end up in my box? There was only one way.

  I left Rexy guarding Tommy’s mail—just to keep him occu—

  pied—and went back inside. When the clerk finished with the customer ahead of me, he gave me a big smile but I laid the envelope down on the counter between us and didn’t smile back.

  Actually, he’s a pretty goodlooking guy. He’s got one of those flattop haircuts—shaved sides, kinky black hair standing straight up on top. His skin’s the color of coffee and he’s got dark eyes with the longest lashes I ever saw on a guy. I could like him just fine, but the trouble is he’s a regular citizen. It’d just never work out.

  “How’d this get in my box?” I asked him. “All it’s got is my name on it, no box number, no address, nothing.”

  He looked down at the envelope. “You found it in your box?” I nodded.

  “I didn’t put it in there and I’m the one who sorts all the mail for the boxes.”

  “I still found it in there.”

  He picked it up and turned it over in his hands.

  “This is really weird,” he said.

  “You into occult shit?” I asked him.

  I was thinking of dark robes. The only people I ever saw wear them were priests or people dabbling in the occult.

  He blinked with surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  I grabbed the envelope back and headed back to where Rexy was waiting for me.

  “Maisie!” the clerk called after me, but I just ignored him.

  Great, I thought as I collected the mail Rexy’d been guarding for me. First Joe postal clerk’s got a good Samaritan complex over me—probably fueled by his dick—now he’s going downright weird. I wondered if he knew where I lived. I wondered if he knew about the dogs. I wondered about magicians in dark robes and whether he thought he had some kind of magic that was going to deal with the dogs and make me go all gooshy for him—just before he killed me.

  The more I thought about it, the more screwed up I got. I wasn’t so much scared as confused. And angry. How was I supposed to keep coming back to get Tommy’s mail, knowing he was there? What would he put in the box next? A dead rat? It wasn’t like I could complain to anybody. People like me, we don’t have any rights.

  Finally I just started for home, but I paused as I passed the door to Angel’s office.

  Angel’s a little cool with me these days. She still says she wanted to help me, but she doesn’t quite trust me anymore. It’s not really her fault.

  She had me in her office one time—I finally went, just to get her off my back—and we sat there for awhile, looking at each other, drinking this crappy coffee from the machine that someone donated to her a few years ago. I wouldn’t have picked it up on a dare if I’d come across it on my rounds.

  “What do you want from me?” I finally asked her.

  “I’m just trying to understand you.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. What you see is what I am. No more, no less.”

  “But why do you live the way you do?”

  Understand, I admire what Angel does. She’s helped a lot of kids that were in a really bad way and that’s a good thing. Some people need help because they can’t help themselves.

  She’s an attractive woman with a heartshaped face, the kind of eyes that always look really warm and caring and long dark hair that seems to go on forever down her back. I always figured something really bad must have happened to her as a kid, for her to do what she does. It’s not like she makes much of a living. I think the only thing she really and honestly cares about is helping people through this sponsorship program she’s developed where straights put up money and time to help the downand-outers get a second chance.

  I don’t need that kind of help. I’m never going to be much more than what I am, but that’s okay. It beats what I had before I hit the streets.

  I’ve told Angel all of this a dozen times, but she sat there behind her desk, looking at me with those sad eyes of hers, and I knew she wanted a piece of me, so I gave her one. I figured maybe she’d leave me alone then.

  “I was in high school,” I told her, “and there was this girl who wanted to get back at one of the teachers—a really nice guy named Mr. Hammond. He taught math. So she made up this story about how he’d molested her and the shit really hit the van. He got suspended while the cops and the school board looked into the matter and all the time this girl’s laughing her head off behind everybody’s back, but looking real sad and screwed up whenever the cops and the social workers are talking to her.

  “But I knew he didn’t do it. I knew where she was, the night she said it happened, and it wasn’t with Mr. Hammond. Now I wasn’t exactly the bestliked kid in that school, and I knew what this girl’s gang was going to do to me, but I went ahead and told the truth anyway.

  “Things worked out pretty much the way I expected. I got the cold shoulder from everybody, but at least Mr. Hammond got his name cleared and his job back.

  “One afternoon he asks me to see him after school and I figure it’s to thank me for what I’ve done, so I go to his classroom. The building’s pretty well empty and the scuff of my shoes in the hallway is the only sound I hear as I go to see him. I get to the math room and he takes me back into his office. Then he locks the door and he rapes me. Not just once, but over and over again. And you know what he says to me while he’s doing it?

  “‘Nobody’s going to believe a thing you say,’ he says. ‘You try to talk about this and they’re just going to laugh in your face.’”

  I looked over at Angel and there were tears swimming in her eyes.

  “And you know what?” I said. “I knew he was right. I was the one that cleared his name. There was nobody going to believe me and I didn’t even try.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Angel said. “You poor kid.”

  “Don’t take it so hard,” I told her. “It’s past history. Besides, it never really happened. I just made it up because I figured it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear.”

  I’ll give her this: she took it well. Didn’t yell at me, didn’t pitch me out onto the street. But you can see why maybe I’m not on her list of favorite people these days. On the other hand, she doesn’t hold a grudge—I know that too.

  I felt like a hypocrite going in to see her with this problem, but I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.

  It’s not like Tommy or the dogs could give me any advice. I hesitated for the longest moment in the doorway, but then she looked up and saw me standing there, so I went ahead in.

  I took off my hat—it’s this fedora that I actually bought new because it was just too cool to pass up.

  I
wear it all the time, my light brown hair hanging down from it, long and straight, though not as long as Angel’s. I like the way it looks with my jeans and sneakers and this cotton shirt I found at a rummage sale that only needed a tear fixed on one of its shirttails.

  I know what you’re thinking, but hey, I never said I wasn’t vain. I may be a squatter, but I like to look my best. It gets me into places where they don’t let in bums.

  Anyway I took off my hat and slouched in the chair on this side of Angel’s desk.

  “Which one’s that?” she asked, pointing to Rexy who was sitting outside by the door like the good little dog he is.

  “He can come in if you’d like.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m not staying long. I just had this thing I wanted to ask you about. It’s ...”

  I didn’t know where to begin, but finally I just started in with finding the envelope. It got easier as I went along. That’s one thing you got to hand to Angel—there’s nobody can listen like she does. You take up all of her attention when you’re talking to her. You never get the feeling she’s thinking of something else, or of what she’s going to say back to you, or anything like that.

  Angel didn’t speak for a long time after I was done. When I stopped talking, she looked past me, out at the traffic going by on Grasso Street.

  “Maisie,” she said finally. “Have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?”

  “Sure, but what’s that got to do with—oh, I get it.” I took out the envelope and slid it across the desk to her. “I didn’t have to come in here,” I added.

  And I was wishing I hadn’t, but Angel seemed to give herself a kind of mental shake. She opened the envelope and read the message, then her gaze came back to me.

  “No,” she said. “I’m glad you did. Do you want me to have a talk with Franklin?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The fellow behind the counter at the post office. I don’t mind doing it, although I have to admit that it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing he’d do.”

  So that was his name. Franklin. Franklin the creep.

  I shrugged. “What good would that do? Even if he did do it—” and the odds looked good so far as I was concerned “—he’s not going to admit to it.”

  “Maybe we can talk to his supervisor.” She looked at her watch. “I think it’s too late to do it today, but I can try first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Great. In the meantime, I could be dead.

  Angel must have guessed what I was thinking, because she added, “Do you need a place to stay for tonight? Some place where you’ll feel safe?”

  I thought of Tommy and the dogs and shook my head.

  “No, I’ll be okay,” I said as I collected my envelope and stuck it back in with Tommy’s mail.

  “Thanks for, you know, listening and everything.”

  I waited for her to roll into some spiel about how she could do more, could get me off the street, that kind of thing, but it was like she was tuned right into my wavelength because she didn’t say a word about any of that. She just knew, I guess, that I’d never come back if every time I talked to her that was all I could look forward to.

  “Come see me tomorrow,” was all she said as I got to my feet. “And Maisie?”

  I paused in the doorway where Rexy was ready to start bouncing off my legs as if he hadn’t seen me in weeks.

  “Be careful,” Angel added.

  “I will.”

  I took a long route back to the squat, watching my back the whole time, but I never saw anybody that looked like he was following me, and not a single person in a dark robe. I almost laughed at myself by the time I got back. There were Tommy and the dogs, all sprawled out on the steps of our building until Rexy yelped and then the whole pack of them were racing down the street towards me.

  Okay, big as he was, Tommy still couldn’t hurt a flea even if his life depended on it and the dogs were all small and old and pretty well used up, but Franklin would still have to be crazy to think he could mess with us. He didn’t know my family. You get a guy as big as Tommy and all those dogs ... well, they just looked dangerous. What did I have to worry about?

  The dogs were all over me then with Tommy right behind them. He grinned from ear to ear as I handed him his mail.

  “Surprises!” he cried happily, in that weird high voice of his. “Maisie bring surprises!”

  We went inside to our place up on the second floor. It’s got this big open space that we use in the summer when we want the air to have a chance to move around. There’s books everywhere. Tommy’s got his own corner with his magazines and all the little cutout people and stuff that he plays with. There’s a couple of mismatched kitchen chairs and a card table. A kind of old cabinet that some hoboes helped me move up the one flight from the street holds our food and the Coleman stove I use for cooking.

  We sleep on the mattresses over in another corner, the whole pack together, except for Chuckie.

  He’s this old lab that likes to guard the doorway. I usually think he’s crazy for doing so, but I wouldn’t mind tonight. Chuckie can look real fierce when he wants to. There’s a couple of chests by the bed area.

  I keep our clothes in one and dry kibbles for the dogs in another. They’re pretty good scavengers, but I like to see that they’re eating the right kind of food. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them. One thing I can’t afford is vet bills.

  First off I fed the dogs, then I made supper for Tommy and me—lentil soup with dayold buns I’d picked up behind a bakery in Crowsea. We’d been eating the soup for a few days, but we had to use it up because, with the spring finally here, it was getting too warm for food to keep. In the winter we’ve got smaller quarters down the hall, complete with a castiron stove that I salvaged from this place they were wrecking over in Foxville. Tommy and I pretty near killed ourselves hauling it back. One of the bikers helped us bring it upstairs.

  We fell into our usual Thursday night ritual once we’d finished supper. After hauling down tomorrow’s water from the tank I’d set up on the roof to catch rainwater, I lit the oil lamp, then Tommy and I sat down at the table and went through his new magazines and ads. Every time he’d point out something that he liked in a picture, I’d cut it out for him. I do a pretty tidy job, if I say so myself. Getting to be an old hand at it. By the time we finished, he had a big stack of new cutout people and stuff for his games that he just had to go try out right away. I went and got the book I’d started this morning and brought it back to the table, but I couldn’t read.

  I could hear Tommy talking to his new little friends. The dogs shifting and moving about the way they do. Down the street a Harley kicked over and I listened to it go through the Tombs until it faded in the distance. Then there was only the sound of the wind outside the window.

  I’d been able to keep that stupid envelope with its message out of my head just by staying busy, but now it was all I could think about. I looked out the window. It was barely eight, but it was dark already.

  The real long days of summer were still to come.

  So is Franklin out there? I asked myself. Is he watching the building, scoping things out, getting ready to make his move? Maybe dressed up in some black robe, him and a bunch of his pals?

  I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t know him, but like Angel had said, it didn’t seem like him and I could believe it. He might bug me, being all friendly and wanting to play Pygmalion to my Eliza Doolittle, but I didn’t think he had a mean streak in him.

  So where did the damn message come from? What was it supposed to mean? And, here was the scary part: if it wasn’t a joke, and if Franklin wasn’t responsible for it, then who was?

  I kept turning that around and around in my mind until my head felt like it was spinning. Everybody started picking up on my mood. The dogs became all anxious and when I walked near them got to whining and shrinking away like I was going to hit them. Tommy got the shakes and his little people started tearing and then he
was crying and the dogs started in howling and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

  But I didn’t. It took me a couple of hours to calm Tommy down and finally get him to fall asleep. I told him the story he likes the best, the one where this count from some place far away shows up and tells us that we’re really his kids and he takes us away, dogs and all, to our real home where we all live happily ever after. Sometimes I use his little cutouts to tell the story, but I didn’t do that tonight. I didn’t want to remind him of how a bunch’d gotten torn.

  By the time Tommy was sleeping, the dogs had calmed down again and were sleeping too. I couldn’t. I sat up all night worrying about that damned message, about what would happen to Tommy and the dogs if anything ever did happen to me, about all kinds of crap that I usually don’t let myself think about.

  Come the morning, I felt like I’d crawled up out of a sewer. You know what it’s like when you pull an allnighter? Your eyes have this burning behind them, you’d kill for a shower and everything seems a little on edge? I saw about getting breakfast for everyone, let the dogs out for a run, then I told Tommy I had to go back downtown.

  “You don’t go out today,” I told him. “You understand? You don’t go out and you don’t let anybody in. You and the dogs play inside today, okay? Can you do that for Maisie?”

  “Sure,” Tommy said, like I was the one with bricks for brains. “No problem, Maisie.”

  God I love him.

  I gave him a big hug and a kiss, patted each of the dogs, then headed back down to Grasso Street with Rexy. I was about half a block from Angel’s office when the headlines of a newspaper outside a drugstore caught my eye. I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared at it. The words swam in my sight, headlines blurring with the subheadings. I picked up the paper and unfolded it so that I could see the whole front page, then I started reading from the top.

  GRIERSON SLAIN BY SATANISTS.

  DIRECTOR OF THE CITY’S NEW AIDS CLINIC FOUND DEAD IN FERRYSIDE