The Vandal

by Tom Molloy

  She waited, then continued.

  “One day, oh it was real hot, and even hotter in our bunkhouse. Well anyway I snuck out and went to town to get some cigarettes.”

  She laughed aloud, blowing fresh smoke into the clouds over her head. Her right arm fell so that her fingertips brushed the rug.

  “Can you imagine? I was kinda fresh when I was a kid. ‘Bold as brass,’ my mother used to say.”

  She gently sucked on the cigarette, its tip becoming prominent in the fading light. Her lips made a smacking sound before she spoke.

  “I was walking back to camp with my pack of Luckies tucked in my little shorts when a big yellow car pulled up with a man driving.”

  She paused. I poured champagne until it bulged over the edge of the glass, testing the limits of its own elasticity, quivering whitely as it was lifted. She continued her account.

  “He asked me if I wanted a ride, and I sure did ’cause it was a long walk. He was dressed real nice, with a suit and a tie, the way I always wished my dad would of dressed, but he never did. He smelled real nice too, with nice cologne, not that Old Spice stuff my dad used to put on every freaken Sunday.”

  She passed the cigarette from one hand to the other and then back again.

  “He turned on the radio and that big yellow car just glided down the road, and he told me what a pretty girl I was which nobody had ever done before.”

  I traced the lip of the glass with the tip of my index finger, then touched the fingertip to my tongue. She continued to speak.

  “He kept talking and we went right past the camp, and he asked if I was hungry and when I said yeah, he stopped at a place and got me a Coke an’ fries, and I can remember all the bugs around the big red neon sign. Then we drove away and I remember licken’ the ketchup from the fries off my fingers, and how big the dark was all around the lights of the car, and how he made me feel safe, even though he didn’t have real big muscles or nothin’, and I watched all the dark goin’ by, and he told me he knew a real nice place not far away.”

  The cigarette smoke rose in a straight column, expanding and slowing.

  “We came to a pond with the moon real white and real close over the trees and he said, ‘get out,’ and we did. Then he asked could I swim, so I told him yeah that I’d even got a medal from the Y once, and he just nodded and said, ‘Take your clothes off and we’ll go for a swim,’ so I did like he told me.”

  She drew again on the cigarette.

  “The water was real nice and without sayin’ nothing we swam out to a raft in the lake. And right there he pressed me against the raft and I could feel him right inside me and it was wonderful, and he held me real nice and gentle and we floated just on top of the water then he kissed me and kissed me and kissed me and I just went crazy, and he kissed me more and more and it was just the most wonderful thing I ever even imagined.”

  Her fingers felt for the ashtray on the floor and without looking she crushed the cigarette into the metal. The layer of smoke drifted higher like sea fog waning in the dawn as she spoke again.

  “I was like warm but kinda cold at the same time and I had my eyes closed and we floated and floated, my head on his shoulder as he held me up. I could smell his skin and the water, his skin smelled so nice with the water right there, ya know I ain’t never smelled nothin’ so nice since, not ever, and I ain’t just sayin’ that neither.”

  The woman stroked the rug with the back of her fingers, swallowed once and resumed talking.

  “Then we came in from the water, and he took his shirt and rubbed me all dry. He was real gentle, he even had me lift each foot so he could dry them too, but all of a sudden I knew I’d never see him again. He didn’t say nothin’ about it but I knew, and in the car I stared and stared at him, ya know like memorizing his nose, his chin, his eyes, his ear, and his hair, and stuff that ladies notice, then he took me right back to the entrance of the camp and he just kissed me on the cheek and said good-bye, and I watched them red lights of his car go away gettin’ smaller and smaller, and that’s just like how my heart felt, like it was just gettin’ smaller and smaller till it hardly even wasn’t there, till it was just so small it couldn’t even break, ’cause it was just too small to do even that.”

  She brought the cigarette up, looked at it, but did not touch her lips to the white paper.

  “I used to lie awake in my bunk an’ think of him, and I used to sneak out to the front of camp to where there was a big rock, and sit on the rock an’ watch the cars come by, and wait for him but he never came. The other kids called me ‘Stoney’ ’cause I used to sit on the rock, you know? So that was that, and he never came, but I remember that night all right, and I know I’ll never forget the way the water and him smelled together, how we floated and floated, and it ain’t never been the same since, but I got that inside me, so nobody can take it ever. ’Least I got somethin’ special, and no one can take it, not ever.”

  A minute, then another, then long slow seconds passed. She turned her head toward me, the smoke very close above her.

  “Ya know?”

  “Yes.”

  Her hand moved slowly along her stomach and brushed flat a wrinkle in her slip.

  “I still love him, I really do.”

  The smoke began to vanish in the dim air, and with the falling darkness the woman almost disappeared in the low hollow shadow of the couch.

  Replacing the cork in the bottle, I sipped the last drops of liquid from the glass. As quietly as I could, I put the bottle back into the refrigerator and pressed the white door shut.

  On the street, despite the cold, I carried my coat draped over one arm, occasionally feeling the garment to make sure the pocketed instruments were secure. After many blocks I pulled the coat on, passing bars, variety stores, beauty salons, and a gas station.

  Near the shelter of a bus stop, I paused to get my bearings. Inside the shelter with its see-through plastic wall stood a teenaged girl. She wore a small black hat with a veil over her eyes, a black coat, one black silk glove of the same consistency as the veil, a black leather skirt, stockings with heavy, seams, and had an orange-tinted teased haircut.

  She said, “Ya better not try nothin’.”

  We looked at each other for several seconds, then I turned my back to her, deciding to go down a small side street. As I stepped away her voice came over my shoulder.

  “Ya just better not.”

  The little side street opened onto a round square where three other streets converged. In the center of the square was a war monument, a small column with an American eagle on top. The column listed the names of local men who died in World War Two. No other wars were mentioned.

  On the far side of the square was a neighborhood market, its weekly specials announced in large block letters taped to the plate glass window. The sales this week were on ice cream, juices, and bread.

  I pulled the instrument from my pocket and carefully traced the message between the door hinges and the burglar alarm.

  TO HAVE THEM

  ALLOW THEM

  TO TOUCH YOU

  Moving counterclockwise around the square I repeated the message on the side door of a gas station, the base of a barber pole, and the low windowsill of a beauty salon. Retracing my steps, I went quickly past the girl in the shelter, who moved her hands to her hips, but did not speak.

  Back at the house, the smoke was diffused and stale, and I drew my sleeping bag close to the woman on the couch. As I began to sink, I felt her hand pass once through my hair and heard her voice say softly,

  “It goes to show, ya never really know.”

  8

  I’d grown used to the idiosyncrasies of the truck, to its desire to tilt right, its hesitancy in third gear, its instruments with their separate reality. Moving in light traffic over the expansion bridge connecting Boston to Chelsea, I had a brief sweeping view of the harbor and the islands that protected it stretching flat and pale to the horizon.

  I was moving fast because I knew I w
ould lose time in the labyrinth of Chelsea’s streets; random by ways with the pattern of pick-up sticks thrown by a spoiled child.

  The poorest city in the state, the most densely populated, it was once a stronghold of immigrant Jews in the process of seizing the American dream. Now almost all the Jews and the dream were long gone to the suburbs, and Chelsea was a place of blowing litter, whores, truck yards, Puerto Ricans, Cambodians, and white trash. The elderly Jews who remained ventured out morosely, limping to local benches to nod and scan obituaries.

  Atop this mixture, like sweet cheap frosting on a stale cake, were the yuppies. Holed up in their condos behind home burglar alarms, they listened to their stereos, gentry in their castles, laughing at the peasants who frightened them so.

  The gears banged down and I took the fish-hook curve of the Chelsea exit, went down a narrow street jammed with pedestrians, and stopped at a set of lights, knowing at once that I was lost.

  Funneled toward the city hall by trucks and cars, I watched the swarthy faces watching me. The Spanish figures slouched as though under native sun, the cold not concerning them. I remembered something Puma once said. “Sunny countries are nice. People who live in sunny countries are not nice.” I assumed it was true if Puma had said it, but I had never dwelled in sunny climes.

  I drove around the diamond-shaped center of the downtown area of Chelsea once, then again, and on the second loop I was as confused as on the first. The street signs had either been removed for repair or were stolen. I tried a side street and came to a dead end.

  I had three deliveries to make, two to offices sharing the same address; the third stop would be several small pieces for a barroom.

  Backing into traffic, ignoring horns and gestures, I pulled to a curb asking directions. I was given pure smiles, empty gestures, foreign words.

  I tried again, this time getting out of the truck to make an unsuccessful tour of a convenience store, drawing blank stares, shrugs, and wishes for a nice day.

  Knowing that Chelsea was only 1.8 square miles, I was considering a random drive through the place as I walked back to the truck. Calling the office for directions would be futile; my ignorance of this city left me without points of reference. I couldn’t tell them where I was, ergo they couldn’t tell me which way to go.

  Staring down the streets, trying to find something, anything that would connect the packages to their destination, I heard a voice come over my shoulder, clear and distinct, mocking a British accent.

  “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”

  His German sports car was at a sharp angle to the curb, inches from the truck’s front bumper. The driver’s door of the car was open and he was leaning against the door of the truck, arms folded as he resumed speaking.

  “It’s fate, lad, fate, the only two white folks in the jungle stumble into one another. Not only that, but one is lost, the other awaiting his arrival. Stop me if you’ve read the book or seen the movie. Six rolls of adding machine tape, two ledger books essential for gouging tenants, and closest of all to my hymie heart, you have, I pray, brought the little gizmo that makes my cash register go ding ding ding?”

  With that he pointed to the company logo on the side of the truck, then unfolded his arms and held between his outstretched hands a bumper sticker proclaiming the name of the bar I was seeking. The same bumper sticker was attached to the rear of the sports car.

  He was tall, thin but fit, dark-complected with close cut black curly hair. His deep-brown eyes overflowed with energy and confidence. The impression he made suited the Biblical name he offered with his outstretched hand.

  “David.”

  After I had grasped his hand he turned to gesture at the truck.

  “I was at the bank and on your third orbit figured you might need directions. It would be easier to ride along than try to explain the streets. Mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  Jamming the bumper sticker in his belt he pulled himself into the cab beside me. His car, being almost at a right angle to the curb in front of the truck, bothered me. I turned to him.

  “You’re going to leave it like that?”

  His gaze went from the car to me and then to the litter tumbling in the frigid breeze.

  “Why, do you think it will decrease property values?”

  As we caught the flow of traffic, he pointed the way, accompanying his directions with quick doses of local history. One street we came to was blocked by wooden barricades. A lone fire engine stood guard in front of a burned tenement building; a red exclamation point to the block-wide ice sculpture.

  David’s hands framed the structure as we drove past.

  “Fortunately, not one of my edifices. Quite a sight yesterday morning. About 600 Cambodian lads or perhaps Vietnamese, I never could tell the difference, running down the street holding their widescreen color television sets. Terrible moments of panic as they squatted on the curb wondering why there was no picture on the screen. Several of the lads so upset they ran back into said burning edifice to see if perhaps mom or kids, understandably left behind in priority evacuation, had light to shed on the issue of blank screens. Tragedy further compounded by 800,000 homeless roaches, not to mention scores of rodents missing in action.”

  After a few more blocks we arrived at the building where two of the packages were to be delivered. David had his door open before the truck was at the curb, dismounting as I stopped the vehicle. The building was three stories high, and David told me the offices I wanted were on the third floor.

  He got back in the cab as I pulled the bundles from the rear of the truck and went into the building. When I had made the deliveries I pushed the two-wheeler out of the building with one hand.

  I stopped when I saw the truck was empty, checking once around the vehicle, even peering cautiously into the cab wondering if he were crouching down inside it.

  “Up here, lad.”

  On the roof of the building, he was framed against the sky, feet spread wide, arms raised above his head, seemingly unable to decide between flying up or down.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He spread his arms further apart, tilting his head back. He let his coat fall open to flap black against the pale sky, his arms rising almost vertical above him.

  “Taking the lay of my kingdom, lad. What was it Satan said to that misguided Jewish fellow? ‘If thou art the Son of God then cast thyself down and the angels will not allow thy foot to strike a stone. All you see before Thee will be Thine if Thou wouldst worship me!’”

  He stepped onto the metal parapet of the roof, then, leaping back, shouted.

  “Begone, Satan!”

  He came back onto the parapet.

  “How’d I do? Do I get to be in the Christmas play?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Yes, but I’m also rich, are you?”

  “No.”

  “So who’s crazy? I’ll be right down.”

  In seconds he burst out of the building, coattails billowing behind as he clambered into the cab.

  “Press on lad, only one stop left, and I happen to know where it is. It’s a pub owned by a crazy rich Jew who doesn’t drink.”

  We went through another square, this one bordered by bars, liquor stores, a Spanish market, and a police station. At the edge of the square he asked me to stop. I pulled the truck over to the side of the road as he pointed at a three-story building that seemed thin and frail, dwarfed by the nearby mammoth bridge carrying the interstate traffic.

  “See that building?”

  His finger was aimed at the house.

  “Yes.”

  “This morning at 6:30 I went to see the fellow who lives there, lives being perhaps too generous a word, but anyway I went to see the fellow who has dwelled within said structure for six fucken months, never paying me a dime in rent, and at 6:31 ante meridian, I threw his fucken belongings off that porch, then I threw his worthless black ass out of that building. That, my boy, is how one is forced to do business in
these troubled times. Know anyone looking for an apartment?”

  “Not offhand.”

  I pulled back into the traffic as David raised one finger and began to recite part of a poem.

  “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

  The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.”

  Trying to inch forward, a light turned against us and I stopped.

  “The proof of the pudding, lad. But not to worry, we are almost to safe harbor.”

  The light went green and I followed his directions. We came to a dead-end cobblestoned street where the tongue of the sea lapped at the frozen roadway.

  The bar stood on a corner opposite a bait and tackle shop. David waited behind me as I opened the back of the truck and tossed him three bundles. I followed as he entered the dimly-lit barroom, calling over his shoulder.

  “Lunch is on me.”

  The place smelled of frying meat mixed with the stale promise of beer and perfume. He put the packages on the bar, then went behind the counter.

  “I recommend the turf ’n’ surf.”

  “Done.”

  He gestured to a waitress who came out of a dark corner of the room, dressed in black, her brunette hair in a long, twisting ponytail falling to her waist. Her face held onto its baby fat even as the lines of 30-plus years crept around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. She nodded as she took the order. Padding into the kitchen, she repeated the order to an unseen cook. David drummed fingers on the bar.

  “Drink?”

  “No thanks, I’m working.”

  “Ah, self-discipline. I like that.” He paused. “Your first trip to our little kingdom of Chelsea?”

  “First in a long time.”

  He leaned closer.

  “Something for every taste here, lad. An up and coming community. A microcosm of the land of the free, the home of the brave. A place where a man can make his mark in the world. We have a government of open minds and similarly inclined palms; we have pimps, hookers, drug dealers. We even have our very own newspaper ever ready to cover any number of ribbon cuttings or Elks cake sales. Yessiree Bob, despite the best efforts of bad dope and good handguns, the population just grows and grows; why lad, a sensitive fellow could sit right here and watch America turn brown before his very own eyes.”