The Bewdley Mayhem

by Tony Burgess

  Tommy and I usually set out panhandling early in the morning so we can catch the tourists before their children get a chance. Today I meet Tommy by the ice cream hut at the top of the strip. Already the day seems extraordinary and I find myself laughing, even through the trembling in my face. From a distance I can see Tommy. His bare shoulders slant from left to right and his walk is confusing to watch: his thick abdomen inflexible, muscled, and his giant open palms held out in front ready to hide his face. His face, with its placid strangeness, is always turned towards the elevated shoulder. He is shy.

  “Tommy, you have to explain some things to me.” I awoke this morning with my bottom lip slung off my face, and I could almost push my teeth through the opening.

  It doesn’t hurt that much, but you do want to know.

  Tommy breathes a bit louder than he talks. I think it has something to do with his deformity. “You’re a crazy motherfucker.”

  “What, Tommy? What happened?” Tommy seemed really happy that I didn’t know the story.

  “You went crazy down at the Sister’s. You were punchin’ people out. Hee fuck, man. You did not like this one fuckin’ guy — oh, did he piss you off.”

  All the crooked pleasure I was feeling this morning was beginning to sink from my limbs, which were starting to rattle — I had thought five minutes ago that that rattling was me laughing, now it’s just a skin-deep fear of movement. I look over to the base of an orange barrel beside the ice cream hut, and I scan there for cigarettes. Now my lip burns and I’m worried about it for some reason. The brightness starts to hurt my eyes. There are little figures shaking in the sunlight near the barrel. They are whacking each other’s mouths with pool cues. I take this to be today’s version of how my memory will work. Near one of them, who has fallen clutching his head, there is a cigarette as big as his leg. He becomes the colour of gravel when I reach down to pick up the smoke. When I stand back, Tommy is five metres down the strip surrounded by a family of four. The man is holding his two children back from Tommy. He is staring at him with the most uncomfortable horror. I shuffle forward — just to hear.

  “All I want is bus fare to get back to Alberta. I made a mistake coming way out here. I was robbed in Toronto and driven out here. I don’t even know the name of this place.”

  The man’s face contorted to reflect the seriousness of this. He appeared to be in pain, never having felt anything as deeply as he was at that moment. The woman had spotted me and she knew exactly what was going on. She popped open her purse and fished out some bills and gently stopped Tommy’s explaining hands by placing money in them. The man’s empathic backflips suddenly clicked off and he turned furiously to her.

  “Oh, that’s what we do, is it? We just give out a few dollars and walk away? This boy has nowhere to sleep tonight for God’s sake! Don’t you think there might be a better answer than paying him off? Really, Cindy, and where are your politics this morning?”

  Cindy drops her heavy pink sunglasses onto her nose and curls her lip in way that looks decadent. As Tommy turns his higher shoulder from them, one of the children taps the father’s sports sack.

  “Daddy, let’s go rent a boat.”

  The man sniffs at the woman and says triumphantly, “I’m sorry little man, but Mommy just gave away all of our money so that she can feel better.”

  Tommy flips open his hand and shows me the four dollars. This means I have to match it. We need $14.65 to buy four bottles of high-octane wine for this afternoon. We split up and move down opposite sides of the strip. I steal most of Tommy’s good lines, about being lost, needing bus fare back to some place, and it’s usually a brisk business. We had almost made enough scratch to quit — for smokes even — when I spot this gang being chased out of the Silver Dollar grocery store. A young guy, with hard black hair and a seriously handsome face was tearing up after them. He ran so perfectly, it seemed to me, that he must be aware of everyone watching him. By the time they were bearing down on me I burst out laughing and I looked over to Tommy, just in time to see him slipping in beside the KFC across the street. I held my ground as they flew by. Suddenly I felt my eyes blacken and I knew that my head was going down. Beyond the blood drumming in my ears I could hear their shouts diminish as they ran off. A hand scooped around my back supporting me, and when I opened my eyes, the running grocer was looking down at me. His stupendous good looks made me feel like things had suddenly become insanely romantic. I let my bleeding face fall against his arm. From there I could see Tommy standing on the corner, his arms pounding into the air, as he raged against the long-gone enemy. He had run for them after he saw them knock me down. What a guy. I pushed my bubbling nose into the crook of my grocer’s arm and fell asleep.

  The first thing I noticed in the detox was that my feet were in little bags. Then I recalled fighting with heavily armed paratroopers — I remember that every time I opened my mouth to scream, they would lift their snouty faces and steal the sound of my voice — screaming it fiendishly back at me while I fought with something like paralysis. I pulled my knees up and felt for the short distance between me and that delirium. It was far enough away for me to get out of bed now. There’s something about the D.T.’s that I really enjoy. It’s like an amusement park ride that you know might kill you. And it’s always cheesy. Afterwards, I find myself saying, “How fake.” I wonder what nightmares were like before movies.

  A strong-looking bald man in a tight white T-shirt is sitting at the front desk reading a novel. He doesn’t look up until I’ve been standing in front of him for some minutes. He elaborately places a bookmark in his book and sets it down squarely parallel to a binder that’s attached by a thin chain to the white desk. He recognizes me by making prayer hands against his mouth and blowing wearily through them. I place a steadying hand on the raised front of his desk and I lower my eyes — it’s not a good thing that he knows me. I’m grateful that he doesn’t use my name when he finally speaks.

  “Lunch is over, but there’s a tray down the hall with some juice and sandwiches on it.”

  “Can I use the phone. For just a second. It’s important. Local call. Please?”

  He abruptly grabs the phone and spins it around to face me. He fully intends on sitting there listening while I make the call. We’ve both done this before, but as they say, that doesn’t make it any easier.

  “Jimmy. Yeah, it’s me. I’m in the detox. Yeah, badly. Terrific. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  My buddy returns the phone, adjusting its position so that it sits in symmetry with his novel and the binder.

  “Well, my friend, that’s it for us. You will have to wait thirty days before I let you back in here. Sure you wanna go?”

  “Yeah, I got to. Thanks for everything.”

  On my way over to Jimmy’s I saw Tommy passed out on the floor of the post office. I knew that if I ever brought Tommy over there that Jimmy just wouldn’t let me in. It’s hard enough to get drinks out of him as it is. All the way there I’m trying hard to put the last two days together as a single amusing story. I know that Jimmy doesn’t think of me as a person that should matter to him, so I earn my booze by making him feel real comfortable about laughing at me. I cannot afford not to clarify this to myself as I make my way over. I am preparing myself for the best afternoon I can have. I reflect occasionally on how much I despise him and I find myself getting excited about arriving.

  When he comes to the door he’s already laughing. This is bad for two reasons. First, he’s already in a good mood which means I’m more likely to bring him down than cheer him up. Second, and this is disastrous, he’s probably drunk enough that he won’t care how badly I need a drink. I can’t afford to feel anxious about this however, because he will be keenly aware of the spin my presence puts on his good mood. I’m now fighting against a disgust I cannot afford. Jimmy slams his six-foot body down onto the dock and rolls a forty-ouncer along his side and onto his chest. At his feet
the television is playing a baseball game he’d taped earlier in the week. Jimmy thinks that the most poignant thing a man can do is watch his team lose when it doesn’t matter anymore. I have danced and clapped for Jimmy’s originality. Today, last week’s baseball game looks so very life-sucking dull that I’m afraid to sit down. Instead I take a bold jab and tell Jimmy the story I cooked up on the way over. I include the facts, more or less, but I really punch the embarrassing moments. I do a silly little pantomime of the gang knocking me down. Holding my arms up over my head, I whisper shout — “help.” I make a big deal about the grocer falling in love with me, and how I had to ‘fight free of his manly grip.’ Jimmy loved it, shaking his head at my shameless other life. Soon he was lining up shots and we were both trading wilder and wilder versions of my story. This is the rising part of the afternoon.

  All too quickly comes the falling part. I was getting messy and stupid, as Jimmy was becoming more sullen and violent. Jimmy made one of his bizarre speeches. This is how he talked. This is exactly what he’d say.

  “I’m a big man. I’m a very smart man. In fact I may be one of the smartest men you’ll ever meet. Nobody really knows the hell I live in, day after day. The dank guilt, my lonely sick thoughts about women, the feeling I have for humanity — I live these things in my mind and they haunt my alcoholic soul. But it’s not that I’m a smart man — now listen — nobody will ever tell you this — it’s not that I’m a smart man — it’s that I’m a big man. People respect my size — it’s true — if someone has to look up to talk to you, they can’t help but look up to you. I know, because this haunts my alcoholic soul.”

  Before I can think this through I find myself mumbling, “You’re fuckin’ brain dead.”

  Jimmy pounces on me and pins me to the floor. I’m so drunk that I lay quite relaxed under his weight, looking up at his harmless double image. I can hear him threatening me — the violence in his voice, but I can’t feel it. Just before I fall into darkness, I feel a wobbling thrill as he pushes a tear-streaked face dramatically into the light.

  I don’t think we talked for the rest of the night. At least I don’t remember talking. It seems to me we just started doing things automatically — in unison, without any discussion. We put our seatbelts on in the car and sped along the empty road towards Port Hope. In my hand I clutched a prescription and watched the road moving. When we hit town the lights made my head loll and all the glass made my thoughts violent. We stopped at an intersection and I wanted to tell Jimmy how much this felt like a movie we had seen the night before, but we had stopped talking. As we approached the small plaza with the Shoppers Drug Mart, it occurred to me that I wasn’t even sure what the prescription was for and when I uncrumpled the piece of paper it looked like wood grain.

  Inside the Shoppers the pharmacist’s area runs along the back facing out towards the length of the front window. I know the pharmacist saw us coming because I watched him look up over a woman’s shoulder as we wheeled around the parking lot. There is a line of thick red posts that skirts the exterior of the store, running behind the concrete parking blocks. When Jimmy’s car crashed into them, a piece of something flew against the storefront and sent a single crack from the bottom to the top of the window. The pharmacist watched me exit to the left of the window, leaving Jimmy to hammer on his horn while laughing and calling out, “We are here, sir! We are here, sir!” What surprised me, while I watched from behind a car across the lot, was how no one in the store moved. Not an inch. Nothing. They stood in their spots and waited patiently while Jimmy calmed down, started the car and pulled slowly away. When he picked me up, we resumed our silence, except now I could sense that Jimmy was thinking about the evening with revulsion. It hadn’t been the best of times.

  Tommy was ready for anything, now. He had been stirred by a need and was no longer asleep in the post office. He was practically hopping when I spotted him from the car. This was a good opportunity to leave Jimmy. I don’t think he wanted me around anyway. I made it easy for him.

  “Jimmy, listen, man. I’ll save this script and we can fill it tomorrow. Here why don’t you take it, in case I don’t see you. I’m gonna walk down to the lake, maybe crash on the beach.”

  Jimmy stopped the car abruptly, snatched the prescription from my hand and turned his head away to drag on a smoke while I got out. As I walked across the street I was confronted with a curious fact. I sometimes think it has a lot to do with why I can’t stop behaving like this. The fact is: nobody lives like this anymore. I’m not even sure why they ever did. I can’t control it. I’m grateful to be able to think this as I walk up to Tommy and prepare myself for an early morning of getting what we need. I can tell right off that Tommy’s really into something weird, just by the way he jumps at me when he sees me.

  “Those were the fuckin’ guys, man! Those were the guys! Those guys that came running out of the Dollar were the guys you were fighting with down at the Sister’s. They are really fucked up — they’re Nazis or something. They started it all because you were with me. Holy fuck.”

  I somehow couldn’t picture myself in all of this. Doing battle for Tommy. Tommy takes care of himself as far as I’m concerned.

  “Listen, Tommy, I don’t want to start some shit with these guys.” Tommy threw his clenched fists out between us. He was beginning to get a little shaky on his feet. It looked like he had something strange in his system.

  “I’ll kill those fuckers. I’m gonna kill those fuckers.”

  “Listen, Tommy, why don’t we just think about moving on. I don’t wanna spend the summer in jail, for fuck’s sake. Let’s go see Mendez and get some Percs and we’ll do a day at the beach.”

  Tommy suddenly collapsed. Whatever he had taken was very seriously putting him under. I bent down to check him out and I noticed that he was absolutely still. I felt around his body looking for breath or a pulse or anything, but I felt only weight. He was dead. That’s how you die. And in Tommy’s case the moment you die, four Nazis spot you curled up at your friend’s feet. And they chase your friend off and they descend upon your body.

  I finally stopped running when I got to the beach. I flung myself into the burning sand and I prayed that the terrible pounding of my heart would push me under the hot white grains. Hide me. Bury me. I clawed deep into the sand, stinging my fingertips in the coolness there. I held back the tears that I was unable to force out anyway. This beach was the cruellest place. A spit out band of eraser dust, the pause deposited around me by water. My teeth grind to pebbles, then as sand they fall from my mouth. People here are numb around me. I have to watch this place. I have to watch it move. Crouching. Smiling. Nothing is more important than this. I have instantly accepted the fact that my friend Tommy has died. I had nothing to do with it. His shoulders slanted from left to right. He was never still at night. He always moved around during the day. He panhandles on the strip.

  I thought that I could tell Jimmy. That maybe he would be OK. Jimmy’s father had died in the spring. He died the day after we got here. Jimmy never mentioned it, ever. Maybe, now, we can talk about some things. I know that Jimmy won’t go home because he thinks his mother will say he killed his own father. I think that Jimmy wants to die here. I don’t think Tommy wanted to die here, and maybe Jimmy won’t either, once I tell him it’s alright. Even if we’ve killed them.

  When I knock on the door there’s no answer. I wait for a minute or two and, of course, I think that Jimmy’s dead too. He isn’t, however, but he whispers strangely against the door, asking, “Who is it? Who is it?” He opens the door for me and then rushes into the kitchen where the faucet is running full.

  “Oh, man. I gotta watch the news. I gotta lay low for a while. Go turn on the news.”

  Jimmy was leaning over the sink holding his hands under the tap. His knuckles were torn and blood streamed through the water on the back of his hands. I went into the living room and crouched in front of the TV not really s
ure how to turn it on without the remote.

  “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I didn’t have to do that. Holy Christ, this is serious. I gotta lay low for a while. For a long while. I gotta watch the news.”

  Jimmy walked into the room. His face looked stricken with worry and fear and his shoulders were pinched up around his ears. He unclasped his bloody hands and picked up the remote off the top of a speaker. The TV came on and the images started blurring into each other as Jimmy shot around the channels. I pulled my knees up the right side of my body. This is not a good time to talk about Tommy. At my feet I watch the tiny red light on the VCR come alive and I listen to the simple click of its decision to record.