by Ryan Scott
Hitting Bottom
Title Page
About the book:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
HITTING BOTTOM
By Ryan Scott
About the book:
This story depicts the plight of a homeless paranoid schizophrenic man who finds love with a stray dog.
Ryan Scott holds a Ph. D. in psychology and lives in Austin with his guide dog, Chaucer. Other books he has digitally published include: Relax and Go Limp, Matter of Attitude, Ella, Realty Riches for Cowards, The Amazing Dr. Mulfinger, Penny Fishbound, Dogs Are Better than Women, Off Center Poetry, and Darkness, the Secrets of a Blind Psychologist.
Chapter 1
I used to play golf when I was a kid. Our father would get Otis and me up early on Saturday morning for 18 holes. Back then I was pretty good, but not now. People talk and laugh about me, but they don’t show themselves. I’ve complained to those so-called psychologists, but they don’t believe me. What do they know? They look at me friendly- like, and then they lock me up. Damn them!
Someone yells at me. “Hey you! Get off your ass and get off the fairway before you get hurt.”
I don’t like to be bossed around, but I get up and walk off the cool grass. The sidewalk burns my feet because the Mexicans stole my shoes. Whenever I wake up in the park, they’ve done it again. Damn, it’s hot, and I’m hungry.
I walk down Liberty Street in the shade towards East Woods Park. Maybe someone threw some of their lunch away, part of a sandwich, an apple core or chicken bones with a little meat left. I get most of my food from trash cans and dumpsters. I never know what I’m going to get, but if maggots are crawling on it, I leave it alone. My favorite dumpster is behind the pizza place. Sometimes when they close, they throw out a whole pizza. It hurts to chew with my bad teeth, but I manage.
A man with white hair with a white cane is walking towards me. I think he’s pretending to be blind. He stops in front of me, but I look away. I don’t like strangers.
He says, “”Hey pal, where are your shoes?”
I say, “I thought you were supposed to be blind?
He gives me a sly smile. “I’m partially sighted.”
I knew he was faking. Maybe they sent him to spy on me.
“Where’s your shoes?” he repeats.
“The Mexicans stole them,” I say and edge backwards.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. This rocky road must hurt your feet. I have some spare change. Here take it,” he says and hands me some coins.
People often give me money without my asking, but they always have some damn suggestion. They don’t like my long grey beard or my dirty hair. If they didn’t have a nice bathroom to wash up, they wouldn’t look so good either, but I don’t like to waste my time showering and shampooing. In the hospital, they forced me to do that. They wanted me to brush my teeth everyday and keep my clothes clean. Now, they can’t boss me around. Who gives a shit about hygiene anyway? My brother, that bastard who thinks he’s so smart just because he’s a surgeon, used to lecture me all the time. Fuck him.
“What’s your name,” the stranger asks.
I don’t like to let people know about my business. They could use it against me. They always do.”My shadow is hiding,” I reply.
“What?” he asks, looking confused.
I don’t like the way he’s studying me. Spies always act like that so I just walk away.
A dog begins to bark, and then other dogs join in. I don’t know why they always bark at me. I used to have a little dog when I was a kid, but I’m not sure about his name. Maybe it was Lucky.
At the park I see some people barbecuing with a bunch of little kids making a lot of racket splashing in the pool. The smell makes my mouth water.
I go to the bench by the tennis court away from those families and sit down. When they leave, I’ll check the garbage can for anything they might have thrown away. A young man wearing white shorts walks over to me and hands me a hamburger.
“Here, I thought you might like it. We have plenty.”
I take the hamburger and smell it, and then I check it for maggots. It looks alright so I take a bite and nod my thanks.
After they leave, I check the garbage can for scraps, but all I find is half of a hamburger. I eat it. Whenever I find food, I eat it all because I never know about my next meal.
When I’m finally alone, I relax. This is my home with a nice little spot under some bushes by the creek where the cops can’t find me after dark. On occasion, I sleep on the top level of the Adobe garage. It’s usually deserted at night. If it rains, I sleep at the laundry mat or under the bridge, but I don’t like to stay there. I don’t trust the other men who sleep there, especially the colored and the hippies. I count the money the blind man gave me and see I have just enough for a can of Bud. While I’m going to the store, a little brown dog begins to follow me. ”Git!” I yell but it just looks at me with his tail between his legs.
When I continue to walk he begins to follow. When I come out of the store, he’s waiting. Oh well, at least he ain’t barking. He follows me back to the park and drinks water from the creek while I pop the top. After he has his fill, he comes to me with his tail wagging. I reach out and pat his head. He licks my hand. “Hey dog, you look hungry. If there’s pizza in the dumpster tonight, I’ll give you some.”
Later that night, I stay out of sight across the street from the pizza place. A bunch of college kids are yelling and making a hell of a racket watching some damn game on TV. At last, the lights are turned off and everyone leaves. When the last car drives away, I walk to the rear and look inside the Dumpster. I’m in luck. I find three pizzas and they’re still warm. I quickly walk back to my hiding place and give the pizza with the most meat to the dog. He immediately gobbles it up, but it takes me longer. I’ll save the last one for our breakfast.
When I lie down, the dog lies down next to me, but I let him stay.
I listen to the creek gurgling, the highway humming, an owl hooting and the chime of the University clock. It goes bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, and then I listen to its melody.
When I hear a dog barking somewhere in the distance. I close my eyes and remember when I got Lucky, my first dog.
Chapter 2
I wake up in my bunk all excited. It’s my tenth birthday. Otis is still asleep in the top bunk. He always gets first choice just because he’s three years older, but I don’t care. Today I’m getting a dog. I’ve been asking for one for a long time.
My father finally agreed. “Alright Clyde, you can have a dog on your birthday, but you’ll have to feed him, give him water and pick up his poop.”
“Thank you, thank you Father; I’ll take real good care of him,” I say, hardly able to wait, but now it’s finally my birthday!
Pearl, our fulltime cook and maid pokes her head in my bedroom. “Happy birthday Master Clyde. I making you a big stack of pancakes for breakfast. As soon as you boys get washed up, come down for breakfast, but keep quiet; your mother is still sleeping.”
She’s always sleeping, but when she is up, she just walks around in her bathrobe and acts sad. Pearl is the one who takes care of the house and makes us kids mind.
While I’m eating my pancakes smothered in maple syrup, Father enters the kitchen. “”Good morning Otis and happy birthday Clyde. Are you ready for that dog today?”
My father is a successful accountant so we can afford to live in a big house in Terry Town, but
he works a lot and he’s gone much of the time. At the pound, hundreds of dogs are barking in cages.
The man behind the desk tells my father, “Yes Sir, we keep them for 7 days, but if no one claims his dog or someone doesn’t adopt it, we euthanize it.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Otis scoffs at me. “It means they kill it, you dummy.”
“Now Otis, don’t pick on your brother. Come on now, let’s find a dog,” Father says and leads the way to the kennels.
There are so many dogs; big ones, small ones, old ones, young ones and puppies. They jump against their gates and act like they want to kill us or they just cry to get out.
A golden half grown cocker spaniel looks at me real sad. When I put my fingers in his cage, He licks them and wags the stump of his tail. “I want this one Father,” I say.
Otis points at a mean looking Sheppard. “Let’s take that one!”
“No! No!” I cry.”I want the puppy!”
“Otis, its Clyde’s birthday so it’s his choice. We’ll take the puppy.”
Otis gives me a dirty look. As we go back to the car, he mutters, “That’s a stupid looking dog.”
Back at home, Pearl says, “Master Clyde, that’s a right down good looking dog. What’s his name?”
I think for a moment. “He’s just lucky I picked him or they would have killed him so I’m going to call him Lucky.”
“Well, that’s a mighty fine name,” she says and gives me her warm smile.
During summer, I have time to fight World War II with my friends, Richard and Floyd. After we build a fort with scavenged lumber, we decide on a secret password. Otis pounds on our fort, yelling, “Hey, you guys, let me in!”
Lucky barks the alarm. I yell, “What’s the password?”
“I don’t know. Just let me in!”
“Sorry, nobody gets in here without a password. You could be a spy for the Japs. You better get out of here fast, or we’ll nail you with our guns,” I say, aiming my home-made stick rifle loaded with a powerful rubber band cut from an old inner tube.
Eventually, we admit Otis to our inner circle. When he suggests we prick our fingers and mix our blood, we object, but he says it’s a sure-fire way to ensure secrecy, so we prick our fingers.
As the war rages across the Pacific we stage battles among ourselves, arguing over who would be the good guys and who would be the Japs. Then we stalk each other and pop up, firing our guns, yelling, “I got you! You’re dead!”
“No, you missed, but I got you back, and you’re the one dead.”
We made our own camouflaged uniforms by painting our old clothes with green paint.
We decide we need a military type vehicle, so we set about building one. We use the wheels from a broken baby buggy, but when I show it to Otis, He scoffs, “Hell, you guys, you’ve pounded so many nails in it, I doubt you even can lift it up.”
Despite his criticism we have fun in our home-made tank with Lucky riding in front. We recklessly ride our speedy vehicle down the hill without brakes; fortunate our heavy military machine doesn’t break our necks.
When we weren’t conducting the war, we play Monopoly for hours at a time, sometimes for days. Otis usually wins, but we’re suspicious.”Otis, we think you’re cheating, so you can’t be the banker anymore,” Richard says.
“That’s fine with me, but I’m still going to win. I’m a natural born winner, and you dopes are a bunch of losers.”
Floyd has an electric train I covet, but because his parents are strict, they limit our time with the train.
His tiny grandmother who speaks with a pronounced foreign accent says, “All right, you boys. No more time with the train. Go outside now and play.”
While we’re playing outside, I notice some bees flying in and out of yellow squash blossoms. “Hey, Floyd, let’s catch those bees, we can grab those flowers when a bee is inside. Then we can break off the blossom and drop it into a jar.”
After we’ve picked all the blossoms, Floyd’s grandmother comes outside and shakes her fist. “You Boy! You turn around and you follow your tracks back home!”
When I get home, Lucky is barking and Pearl is wailing, “Oh Lordy! Mrs. Barge done kilt herself!”
I see her lying on the kitchen floor with an empty bottle of aspirin next to her. I go to her, crying out, “Mama! Mama!”
“Quick Clyde, run to the neighbors and ask them to call an ambulance.”
My mother doesn’t die, but she has changed when she returns from the hospital. Father says she’s suffering from permanent brain damage. “You boys will have to be gentle with your mother. She now acts like a little girl.”
When we’re alone, Otis says, “It’s your fault our mother tried to kill herself. She did it because she was disappointed with your grades.”
Chapter 3
I wake up to the sound of blue jays squawking and the dog licking my face. “Good morning Dog, I bet I know what you want. You want that other pizza, but you’re only going to get half.
He begins to gobble the food so I give him all of it. I don’t know how I’m going to feed him, but maybe the butcher at Fresh Plus will give me something.
After I take a shit in the rest room, I begin the walk up Harris-Park Street towards the market with Dog running ahead of me. When I pass a yard overgrown with bamboo, I see a Pease of bamboo about the size of a cane and pick it up. I’ll use it to defend myself if they try to get me.
While I’m walking on Duval Street, a big dog runs up to the fence and barks like crazy. He does that every time I pass so I hit the fence with the bamboo near his head. He jumps against the fence, barking and snarling. I walk away quickly.
When I knock on the back door of the market, a man wearing an apron opens the door, He looks mad. “What do you want?”
“My dog is hungry. Do you have something for him to eat?”
His face relaxes. “Well, that’s a new approach, but, yes, I think I have some expired hot dogs.”
He goes back in and comes back out with six packages of wieners in a sack. “Here you go. There’s a couple of sandwiches left over from yesterday, but don’t keep them too long. I’ll have some bones for your dog tomorrow.”
I take the food and head back down Duval Street towards the park. “Come on dog, we’re gonna eat good today.”
When I get near the yard with the mean dog, he comes charging at me through an open gate, barking with his mouth frothing. I stay frozen, unable to move. When it’s almost on me, Dog rungs at the dog and tries to bite his neck, but the mean dog picks him up and shakes him hard. After he throws Dog to the ground, he begins to bite him.
A man comes running from the yard yelling, “No Brutus! No Brutus!”
The mean dog stops biting Dog.
“Brutus! Come!” he yells and locks him in the yard. Then he runs to me. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I accidentally left the gate open. I’ll get my car and take you to the vet.”
Dog is bloody and howling in pain. In a couple of minutes the man squeals to a stop and helps me put Dog in the car.
“Never mind about messing up the upholstery. He just saved your life!” he says and tells me to get in. He spins his tires and shoots ahead with Dog whimpering in the back.
At 38th Street, he makes a left turn and speeds past the golf course towards I H 35 where he makes a right turn on the frontage road and goes a couple of blocks. Then he brakes hard in front of the animal hospital.
The man and a helper carry Dog on a stretcher to a back room, but I stand in the waiting room not knowing what to do.
Soon, the doctor and the man return. The doctor is bent over with a hunch back, but his blue eyes seem friendly.
“Your dog is going to be all right,” he says. “He needs a lot of stitches and his front leg is broken, but I can fix him up. Keeping him here for a few days will cost $1,000. Who is going to pay for the treatment?”
“I ain’t got no money,” I tell him.
The man says, “I’ll pay the bi
ll. It was my fault my dog did this.”
The doctor patted me on the shoulder. “You can come back tomorrow to see how your dog is doing.
He ain’t my dog, but I don’t say nothing.
As I’m walking on Red River Street on my way to the park, I see the man with the white hair and cane walking towards me. I think he’s one of them, but he sees me and cuts me off. I’m still jumpy about the attack and don’t want to talk.
“Hey there Pal, I’ve been thinking about you, and I think I can help you,” he says, but I don’t believe him so I don’t say nothing.
“My name is Scott Ryan,” he says. “What’s your name?”