* * *
Two days later he was nearly out of money. He walked over to Connecticut Avenue, where his old friend Victor played harmonica for coins, when he couldn’t find other work. Today he was there, belting out “Amazing Grace.” He cut it off when he saw Leroy. “Robbie! What’s happening?”
“Not much. You?”
Victor gestured at his empty hat, on the sidewalk before him. “You see it. Don’t even have seed coin for the cap, man.”
“So you ain’t been getting any gardening work lately?”
“No, no. Not lately. I do all right here, though. People still pay for music, man, some of them. Music’s the angle.” He looked at Leroy, face twisted up against the sun. They had worked together for the park service, in times past. Every morning through the summers they had gone out and run the truck down the streets, stopping at every tree to hoist each other up in slings. The one hoisted had to stand out from trunk or branches like an acrobat, moving around to cut off every branch below twelve feet, and it took careful handling of the chain saw to avoid chopping into legs and such. Those were good times. But now the park service was gone, and Victor gazed at Leroy with a stoic squint, sitting behind an empty hat.
“Do you ever look up at the trees anymore, Robbie?”
“Not much.”
“I do. They’re growing wild, man! Growing like fucking weeds! Every summer they go like crazy. Pretty soon people are gonna have to drive their cars through the branches. The streets’ll be tunnels. And with half the buildings in this area falling down … I like the idea that the forest is taking this city back again. Running over it like kudzu, till maybe it just be forest again at last.”
* * *
That evening Leroy and Debra ate tortillas and refries, purchased with the last of their money. Debra had a restless night, and her temperature stayed high. Rochelle’s forehead wrinkled as she watched her.
Leroy decided he would have to harvest a couple of the biggest plants prematurely. He could dry them over the hot plate and be in business by the following day.
The next afternoon he walked east into no-man’s land, right at twilight. Big thunderheads loomed to the east, lit by the sun, but it had not rained that day and the muggy heat was like an invisible blanket, choking each breath with moisture. Leroy came to his abandoned building, looked around. Again the complete stillness of an empty city. He recalled Ramon’s tales of the people who lived forever in the no-man’s land, channeling rain into basement pools, growing vegetables in empty lots, and existing entirely on their own with no need for money.…
He entered the building, ascended the stairs, climbed the beam, struggled sweating up to the fourth floor and through the hole into his room.
The plants were gone.
“Wha…” He kneeled, feeling like he had been punched in the stomach. The plastic pots were knocked over, and fans of soil lay spread over the old wood flooring.
Sick with anxiety he hurried downstairs and jogged north to his second hideaway. Sweat spilled into his eye and it stung fiercely. He lost his breath and had to walk. Climbing the tree was a struggle.
The second crop was gone too.
Now he was stunned, shocked almost beyond thought. Someone must have followed him … It was nearly dark, and the mottled sky lowered over him, empty but somehow, now, watchful. He descended the tree and ran south again, catching his breath in a sort of sobbing. It was dark by the time he reached 16th and Caroline, and he made his way up the busted stairs using a cigarette for illumination. Once on the fourth floor the lighter revealed broken pots, dirt strewn everywhere, the young plants gone. That small they hadn’t been worth anything. Even the aluminum foil rain funnels on his plastic jugs had been ripped up and thrown around.
He sat down, soaking wet with sweat, and leaned back against the scored, moldy wall. Leaned his head back and looked up at the orange-white clouds, lit by the city.
After a while he stumbled downstairs to the first floor and stood on the filthy concrete, among the shadows and the discarded bottles. He went and picked up a whiskey bottle, sniffed it. Going from bottle to bottle he poured whatever drops remained in them into the whiskey bottle. When he was done he had a finger or so of liquor, which he downed in one long pull. He coughed. Threw the bottle against the wall. Picked up each bottle and threw it against the wall. Then he went outside and sat on the curb, and watched the traffic pass by.
* * *
He decided that some of his old teammates from Charlie’s Baseball Club must have followed him around and discovered his spots, which would explain why they had looked at him so funny the other day. He went over to check it out immediately. But when he got there he found the place closed, shut down, a big new padlock on the door.
“What happened?” he asked one of the men hanging out on the corner, someone from this year’s team.
“They busted Charlie this morning. Got him for selling speed, first thing this morning. Now the club be gone for good, and the team too.”
* * *
When he got back to the apartment building it was late, after midnight. He went to Rochelle’s door and tapped lightly.
“Who is it?”
“Leroy.” Rochelle opened the door and looked out. Leroy explained what had happened. “Can I borrow a can of soup for Debra for tonight? I’ll get it back to you.”
“Okay. But I want one back soon, you hear?”
Back in his room Debra was awake. “Where you been, Leroy?” she asked weakly. “I was worried about you.”
He sat down at the hot plate, exhausted.
“I’m hungry.”
“That’s a good sign. Some cream of mushroom soup, coming right up.” He began to cook, feeling dizzy and sick. When Debra finished eating he had to force the remaining soup down him.
* * *
Clearly, he realized, someone he knew had ripped him off—one of his neighbors, or a park acquaintance. They must have guessed his source of weed, then followed him as he made his rounds. Someone he knew. One of his friends.
* * *
Early the next day he fished a newspaper out of a trashcan and looked through the short column of want ads for dishwashing work and the like. There was a busboy job at the Dupont Hotel and he walked over and asked about it. The man turned him away after a single look: “Sorry, man, we looking for people who can walk out into the restaurant, you know.” Staring in one of the big silvered windows as he walked up New Hampshire, Leroy saw what the man saw: his hair spiked out everywhere as if he would be a Rasta in five or ten years, his clothes were torn and dirty, his eyes wild.… With a deep stab of fear he realized he was too poor to be able to get any job—beyond the point where he could turn it around.
He walked the shimmery black streets, checking phone booths for change. He walked down to M Street and over to 12th, stopping in at all the grills and little Asian restaurants, he went up to Pill Park and tried to get some of his old buddies to front him, he kept looking in pay phones and puzzling through blown scraps of newspaper, desperately hoping that one of them might list a job for him … and with each footsore step the fear spiked up in him like the pain lancing up his legs, until it soared into a thoughtless panic. Around noon he got so shaky and sick-feeling he had to stop, and despite his fear he slept flat on his back in Dupont Circle park through the hottest hours of the day.
In the late afternoon he picked it up again, wandering almost aimlessly. He stuck his fingers in every phone booth for blocks around, but other fingers had been there before his. The change boxes of the old farecard machines in the Metro would have yielded more, but with the subway system closed, all those holes into the earth were gated off, and slowly filling with trash. Nothing but big trash pits.
Back at Dupont Circle he tried a pay phone coin return and got a dime. “Yeah,” he said aloud; that got him over a dollar. He looked up and saw that a man had stopped to watch him: one of the fucking lawyers, in loosened tie and long-sleeved shirt and slacks and leather shoes, staring at him o
penmouthed as his group and its bodyguard crossed the street, Leroy held up the coin between thumb and forefinger and glared at the man, trying to impress on him the reality of a dime.
* * *
He stopped at the Vietnamese market. “Huang, can I buy some soup from you and pay you tomorrow?”
The old man shook his head sadly. “I can’t do that, Robbie. I do that even once, and—” he wiggled his hands—“the whole house come down. You know that.”
“Yeah. Listen, what can I get for—” he pulled the day’s change from his pocket and counted it again. “A dollar ten.”
Huang shrugged. “Candy bar? No?” He studied Leroy. “Potatoes. Here, two potatoes from the back. Dollar ten.”
“I didn’t think you had any potatoes.”
“Keep them for family, you see. But I sell these to you.”
“Thanks, Huang.” Leroy took the potatoes and left. There was a trash dumpster behind the store; he considered it, opened it, looked in. There was a half-eaten hot dog—but the stench overwhelmed him, and he remembered the poisonous taste of the discarded liquor he had punished himself with. He let the lid of the dumpster slam down and went home.
* * *
After the potatoes were boiled and mashed and Debra was fed, he went to the bathroom and showered until someone hammered on the door. Back in his room he still felt hot, and he had trouble catching his breath. Debra rolled from side to side, moaning. Sometimes he was sure she was getting sicker, and at the thought his fear spiked up and through him again, he got so scared he couldn’t breathe at all.… “I’m hungry, Leroy. Can’t I have nothing more to ear?”
“Tomorrow, Deb, tomorrow. We ain’t got nothing now.”
She fell into an uneasy sleep. Leroy sat on his mattress and stared out the window. White-orange clouds sat overhead, unmoving. He felt a bit dizzy, even feverish, as if he was coming down with whatever Debra had. He remembered how poor he had felt even back when he had had his crops to sell, when each month ended with such a desperate push to make rent. But now … He sat and watched the shadowy figure of Debra, the walls, the hotplate and utensils in the corner, the clouds out the window. Nothing changed. It was only an hour or two before dawn when he fell asleep, still sitting against the wall.
* * *
Next day he battled fever to seek out potato money from the pay phones and the gutters, but he only had thirty-five cents when he had to quit. He drank as much water as he could hold, slept in the park, and then went to see Victor.
“Vic, let me borrow your harmonica tonight.”
Victor’s face squinted with distress. “I can’t, Robbie. I need it myself. You know—” pleading with him to understand.
“I know,” Leroy said, staring off into space. He tried to think. The two friends looked at each other.
“Hey, man, you can use my kazoo.”
“What?”
“Yeah, man, I got a good kazoo here, I mean a big metal one with a good buzz to it. It sounds kind of like a harmonica, and it’s easier to play it. You just hum notes.” Leroy tried it. “No, hum, man. Hum in it.”
Leroy tried again, and the kazoo buzzed a long crazy note.
“See? Hum a tune, now.”
Leroy hummed around for a bit.
“And then you can practice on my harmonica till you get good on it, and get your own. You ain’t going to make anything with a harmonica till you can play it, anyway.”
“But this—” Leroy said, looking at the kazoo.
Victor shrugged. “Worth a try.”
Leroy nodded. “Yeah.” He clapped Victor on the shoulder, squeezed it. Pointed at Victor’s sign, which said Help a musician! “You think that helps?”
Victor shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I’m going to get far enough away so’s I don’t cut into your business.”
“You do that. Come back and tell me how you do.”
“I will.”
* * *
So Leroy walked south to Connecticut and M, where the sidewalks were wide and there were lots of banks and restaurants. It was just after sunset, the heat as oppressive as at midday. He had a piece of cardboard taken from a trashcan, and now he tore it straight, took his ballpoint from his pocket and copied Delmont’s message. PLEASE HELP—HUNGRY. He had always admired its economy, how it cut right to the main point.
But when he got to what appeared to be a good corner, he couldn’t make himself sit down. He stood there, started to leave, returned. He pounded his fist against his thigh, stared about wildly, walked to the curb and sat on it to think things over.
Finally he stepped to a bank pillar mid-sidewalk and leaned back against it. He put the sign against the pillar face-out, and put his old baseball cap upside-down on the ground in front of him. Put his thirty-five cents in it as seed money. He took the kazoo from his pocket, fingered it. “Goddamn it,” he said at the sidewalk between clenched teeth. “If you’re going to make me live this way, you’re going to have to pay for it.” And he started to play.
* * *
He blew so hard that the kazoo squealed, and his face puffed up till it hurt. “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” blasted into all the passing faces, louder and louder—
* * *
When he had blown his fury out he stopped to consider it. He wasn’t going to make any money that way. The loose-ties and the career women in dresses and running shoes were staring at him and moving out toward the curb as they passed, huddling closer together in their little flocks as their bodyguards got between him and them. No money in that.
He took a deep breath, started again. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” It really was like singing. And what a song. How you could put your heart into that one, your whole body. Just like singing.
One of the flocks had paused off to the side; they had a red light to wait for. It was as he had observed with Delmont: the lawyers looked right through beggars, they didn’t want to think about them. He played louder, and one young man glanced over briefly. Sharp face, wire-rims—with a start Leroy recognized the man as the one he had harrassed out of Fish Park a couple days before. The guy wouldn’t look at Leroy directly, and so he didn’t recognize him back. Maybe he wouldn’t have anyway. But he was hearing the kazoo. He turned to his companions, student types gathered to the lawyer flock for the temporary protection of the bodyguard. He said something to them—“I love street music,” or something like that—and took a dollar from his pocket. He hurried over and put the folded bill in Leroy’s baseball cap, without looking up at Leroy. The Walk light came on, they all scurried away. Leroy played on.
* * *
That night after feeding Debra her potato, and eating two himself, he washed the pot in the bathroom sink, and then took a can of mushroom soup up to Rochelle, who gave him a big smile.
Walking down the stairs he beeped the kazoo, listening to the stairwell’s echoes. Ramon passed him and grinned. “Just call you Robinson Caruso,” he said, and cackled.
“Yeah.”
Leroy returned to his room. He and Debra talked for a while, and then she fell into a half-sleep, and fretted as if in a dream.
“No, that’s all right,” Leroy said softly. He was sitting on his mattress, leaning back against the wall. The cardboard sign was face down on the floor. The kazoo was in his mouth, and it half buzzed with his words. “We’ll be all right. I’ll get some seeds from Delmont, and take the pots to new hideouts, better ones.” It occurred to him that rent would be due in a couple of weeks; he banished the thought. “Maybe start some gardens in no-man’s land. And I’ll practice on Vic’s harmonica, and buy one from the pawn shop later.” He took the kazoo from his mouth, stared at it. “It’s strange what will make money.”
He kneeled at the window, stuck his head out, hummed through the kazoo. Tune after tune buzzed the still, hot air. From the floor below Ramon stuck his head out his window to object: “Hey, Robinson Caruso! Ha! Ha! Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to sleep!” But Leroy only played quieter. “Columbia, the Gem of
the Ocean”—
TOM MADDOX
Snake-Eyes
Here’s a scary and compelling story that demonstrates that getting something into your head isn’t so hard—it’s getting it out again that’s the trick.…
Born in Beckley, West Virginia, new writer Tom Maddox is now an assistant professor of languages and literature at Virginia State University. Although he has sold only a handful of stories to date, primarily to Omni and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, he is clearly a writer to watch, and I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more from him as the eighties progress. He is currently at work on his first novel, tentatively entitled Time Like Shattered Glass. Maddox lives with his family in Petersburg, Virginia.
SNAKE-EYES
Tom Maddox
Dark meat in the can—brown, oily, and flecked with mucus—gave off a repellent fishy smell; and the taste of it rose in his throat, putrid and bitter like something from a dead man’s stomach. George Jordan sat on the kitchen floor and vomited, then pushed himself away from the shining pool, which looked very much like what remained in the can. He thought, no, this won’t do: I have wires in my head, and they make me eat cat food. The snake likes cat food. He needed help, but knew there was little point in calling the Air Force. He’d tried them, and there was no way they were going to admit responsibility for the monster in his head. What George called “the snake,” the Air Force called Effective Human Interface Technology, and they didn’t want to hear about any post-discharge problems with it. They had their own problems with Congressional committees investigating “the conduct of the war in Thailand.”
He lay for a while with his cheek on the cold linoleum, got up and rinsed his mouth in the sink, then stuck his head under the faucet and ran cold water over it, thinking, call the goddamned multicomp then, call SenTrax and say, is it true you can do something about this incubus that wants to take possession of my soul? And if they ask you, what’s your problem? you say, catfood, and maybe they’ll tell you, hell, it just wants to take possession of your lunch.
A chair covered in brown corduroy stood in the middle of the barren living room, a white telephone on the floor beside it, a television flat against the opposite wall—that was the whole thing: what might have been home, if it weren’t for the snake.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection Page 78