South Street

by David Bradley

  Brown looked around at the empty street. Beyond the barrier a car swept past. Brown swallowed, took a deep breath, reached out his other hand, and began to unpile the rags that contained Jake. He pulled the pipe-cleaner-thin legs out straight, lowered the cuff of a trouser leg that had ridden up exposing an indecent ashy band of skin above a dirty sock. He tried to spread out the limp arms but even in unconsciousness Jake hugged his belly tightly, as if trying to hold his guts in. Brown gave up on the arms. He loosened the ties of Jake’s shoes, peering close to make out the complicated collage of knots that served as strings, gagging at the smell that escaped the holey leather. Then he undid Jake’s greasy purple necktie and unbuttoned the collar of Jake’s grimy flannel shirt. “Damn,” Jake wheezed weakly. “Let a man fall down one time an’ right away somebody’s either tryin’ to rob him or give him a blowjob.” Brown gasped and leaped back, caught his heel, and sprawled on his rear end.

  “Y’old bastard!” Brown muttered, getting up. “All that play-actin’—” He stopped as the light from a passing car showed him the pain on Jake’s face. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothin’,” Jake said. “It’s just ma goddamn guts. I ain’t gonna be dyin’ or nothin’, so don’t get your damn hopes up.”

  “I ain’t,” Brown said. “I don’t give a damn if you live forever. That’s why I’ma take you to a hospital. Layin’ where you are, you’re a goddamn traffic hazard.”

  “Well, you just hazard your ass on outa here, nigger, ’cause I ain’t goin’ to no damn hospital.”

  “You need one,” Brown said. “And I’m going to take you there if I have to carry you.”

  Jake looked up at him. “Think you could stand to touch a smelly old wino that long?” Brown’s eyes dropped. “Damn,” Jake went on, “who the hell made you Jesus Christ anyways? You Want to get me somethin’ that’ll make me feel better, you go …” He stopped, looked at Brown suspiciously.

  “Go where?” Brown said.

  “Go to hell,” Jake said.

  “Huh?”

  “Gone, get outa here an’ leave me be.” Jake pushed himself, groaning and gasping, to his feet. “I know what I need, an’ I know where to get it, an’ you just keep the hell away from me, ’cause I know what you’re after.” Brown looked mystified. Grumbling, Jake turned and shuffled off up the street, clutching his middle and, from time to time, looking back over his shoulder to make sure Brown was not following.

  Before he finally made it to the bedroom Rayburn had vomited on the stairs, vomited on the landing, vomited in his living room and in the kitchen sink, had dry-heaved above the unflushed toilet bowl. When his stomach at last ceased its twistings and jerkings, Rayburn waved his hand vaguely at the flush lever, catching it with his fingertips just as he lost his balance. He used what little coordination he retained to pull his face back away from the bowl; his falling dragged his hand across the lever and flushed the mess away. An unpleasant odor wafted gently from the toilet—Rayburn, on the floor, his cheek against the cold cracked linoleum, his lips against unyielding porcelain, retched again before dragging himself into the bedroom. He threw one arm over the edge of the bed and managed to raise his torso a few inches before the aged bedsprings creaked and dumped him back on the floor.

  He lay quietly then, in the midst of a cliché: a neon light outside the window sending red light across the rumpled sheets of an unmade bed, blinking on and off, on and off, like an electric pulse. Rayburn’s own blood pounded in his temples, his lungs sucked in the heavy hot air, forcing out vomit-soured breath which made the dust devils hiding beneath the bed, tinted pink by the blinking light, dance drunkenly across the floor. The sign went on and off. Rayburn breathed and pulsed and fought the urge to defecate in his pants. Inside his head, beneath the dull gray sheath of alcohol, a portion of his brain looked around at him and his surroundings and chuckled derisively. “Shup,” Rayburn mumbled, moving dry lips across dusty floor. The laughter sounded again—bright, hard, not-quite-musical, like the whine of an overloaded motor. “Shup,” Rayburn said. He opened his eyes. The flickering light stabbed back behind his eyeballs—on and off. Rayburn’s eyes blinked closed and open, exactly out of phase, and all he saw was red-tinged darkness, and all he heard was the scratching sound as his eyelash brushed the floor.

  But gradually other sounds came through the darkness. The light outside hummed almost inaudibly and made a small sound like a tiny bell ringing in cotton each time it went on and off. His stomach sloshed its juices, and his pulse beat bass. From above him, through the ceiling, came the sounds of light footsteps, then a groaning as the floor accepted a shift in weight from feet to bed. Some woman, Rayburn thought, some woman up there. He listened for more sounds from above him, slowing his own breathing, fighting to control the hollow gurglings and empty rumblings in his stomach, cursing the cottoned-bell ting and electric hum of the neon light, trying to hear if there were other feet up there moving around, or in the bed, wiggling toes pointed toward the ceiling beside the woman’s toes, or down, above the woman’s curling toes. Rayburn listened carefully and decided that the woman was up there by herself, her body lying in the night’s heavy heat, covered only by a sheet thrown carelessly across her legs. The sweat would be gathered in the hollows of her body—in the armpits, under the flare of the nose, in the warm folds of elbow and knee, beneath the breasts, behind the ears, between the toes, in the tender creases where pudendum met thigh, in the navel. Now, just now, Rayburn knew, the sweat would be gathering, conjured by heat, preserved by humidity. It would be, Rayburn knew, not quite fresh, but not stale; it would be sliding along the thin edge between ripe and rotten, pungent and putrid. She would be lying half-awake, her body swollen with sleep, her legs heavy, her thighs parting at the slightest pressure, her mind unable either to accept or reject. Now was the time to come to her, when she was alone and unaware.

  He levered himself off the floor and sat in the blinking darkness for a moment, his head throbbing, the wide-awake part of him jumbled, confused. Above him, she was waiting. He felt his body stiffen, knew the need to hurry before all the firm ripeness became overripe—too soft, too sweet. He stretched out a hand to the wall, the other to the bed, forced himself to his feet, staggered into the living room. He stood at the door, leaning against it, thinking about her up there waiting, conscious of him as he was of her, waiting and wondering why he did not come, what was taking him so long. He fumbled with the doorknob, dropping to his knees as he tripped in his spoor of vomit, and hit his head against the wall. He paused to let his brain steady, and clutching at himself with his hands he thought about her lying there, heaving, humping the air, thighs parted, love juices mingling with sweat, fingers writhing over mouth, breasts, belly, plunging into the juicy cleft, pumping wildly for an instant before flying up to cover the mouth that called his name. His hand found the doorknob, twisted the wrong way, twisted back. He pulled on the door, realized he was leaning on it, moved back and stopped suddenly. He heard the street door open. Footsteps, heavy, mounted the stairs. A voice cursed as the footsteps paused on the landing outside Rayburn’s door. Rayburn trembled. There was the sound of a shoe sole scraping on wood accompanied by more cursing, then the footsteps continued to climb, reaching the hallway above. Rayburn heard a door open.

  Wide-eyed, wide-mouthed, Rayburn stumbled along beneath the footsteps, following them into the bedroom again. Shoes hit the floor, a belt buckle. Rayburn stood in the flickering light staring upward at the ceiling, holding his breath. He heard the creak of depressing bedsprings, the light murmur of voices. He groaned and half staggered to his own empty, sour-smelling bed, fell onto it and lay, spread-eagle, staring up at the pink ceiling that flickered into being every second or so to hang there for a second or so. Rayburn listened to the mocking voices above him, the filtered alto and bass, and hated them. Then the voices faded, stopped, and he hated them even more. Above him the bedsprings creaked once and then were silent. Rayburn rolled onto his side, Rayburn’s bedsprings
, too, groaned. But then, above him, the springs creaked again, not once but many times, in the slow cadence of love. Rayburn turned and lay staring once again, the rhythm from above him descending slowly, heavily, out of time with the quick electric flickerings of the neon light. Rayburn thought of the motions above. He closed his eyes, shut out the teasing light. Slowly, in time with the rocking rhythm, he unzipped his fly, unbuttoned his pants, unbuckled his belt, sought inside his underwear with cold dry hands. He caressed his body gently to the slow cadence of the bedsprings, thinking of the woman—her flesh, which had been quietly perspiring into the heat and solitude, now sleek with moisture, salty like the sea, every pore a fountain, every hollow a pool, her mouth twisting, her fingers caressing him, stroking him. Rayburn felt himself harden and grow, thinking of her, feeling her hands upon him. And then he opened his eyes. The pink ceiling materialized above him and Leslie’s face smiled down at him. He felt shame, knowing his hands were on his body, but he kept on, fighting, forcing his mind to the woman above. But it was no use. His hands abraded. His body softened.

  Above him the bedsprings creaked and squealed in frenzy for a few moments, then resumed to another rhythm slower still, deeper, before subsiding into silence. Rayburn rolled onto his stomach, then back, lay in the intermittent light, one hand hanging to the floor, the other balled loosely over his groin. The ceiling appeared, disappeared, reappeared above his head. He closed his eyes, but the light came through, dim and mocking. He rolled and lay facing the wall. The light blinked on and off. Mesmerized by that rhythm, he slept.

  The window was open, sucking in great syrupy draughts of dirty air, sounds, smells, South Street. Vanessa lay on the sagging mattress, her body covered by a single sheet and a layer of sweat scented with powder, flavored with salt. Her mind flowed out into the darkness, searching for Brown.

  She had climbed uneasily up the stairs, knocked hesitantly on the door. There had been no answer. She had thought to go away. She had knocked again. Then she had gone in.

  In his absence, Brown’s rooms did not reek of him. She had wandered through them—kitchen, bedroom, bath—trying to find something that would tell her that Brown and no one else lived there. Brown was not spectacularly neat. The garbage bag in the kitchen was full to overflowing with quart beer bottles and odds and ends of paper. She got a feeling of Brown from that. But the trappings of the room could have belonged to anyone—a greasy skillet in the sink, a fork, a cloudy glass, a coffeepot. The bedroom was much the same—a pair of cheap black shoes set close together but at an odd angle, as if they were being worn by an invisible cripple, a pair of blue jeans, two pairs of black pants. In the drawers a few badly folded white handkerchiefs, white tee shirts, black socks, a half-dozen new nylon shirts. Drip dry. Permanent press. The bathroom: shorts, a jockstrap over the tub edge. A Gillette razor. Wilkinson blades. Lifebuoy soap. Prell shampoo. Right Guard deodorant. In the medicine cabinet Bayer aspirin and Alka-Seltzer

  In the kitchen she sat in one of Brown’s hard chairs, took a deep breath, and opened the drawer beneath the table. She had to pull hard—the drawer stuck, as if it were trying to resist her—she forced it, then stared uneasily at the sheaf of poems inside. She longed to rip the poems up, to dump them out the window into the alley below. She poked around in the drawer, found something she had missed. It was another poem, not on the yellow lined sheets like the others, but on the panel of a paper bag. She remembered seeing it before, but it was different now—Brown had been over it, changed it somehow. It was about South Street. She didn’t understand why anyone would want to write a poem about South Street—South Street was someplace you tried to forget. But she read the poem, trying to understand not it, but Brown, tried to imagine him coming off the bridge, moving—not walking or riding, just moving, running maybe—down South Street. She read the poem with that picture in her mind. He would move quickly at first, his feet hardly touching the ground, but then he would slow, float like the shadow cast by a cloud as it drifted across the sun. It didn’t sound like Brown thought South Street was pretty, but it did sound as if he thought it was beautiful. And it sounded as though he hated it, in his own way, as much as she did.

  She had been startled by the sound of the lower door opening, footfalls on the stairway. Brown. She froze for an instant, then began to put the papers quickly back into the drawer. He would hate her for touching them. She pushed at the drawer but it stuck again. She panicked, shoved it. It wouldn’t go. She felt tears of frustration in her eyes, but then she realized that the steps had halted. Below, a door opened, closed with a bang. The sound echoed, faded. Vanessa pushed at the drawer. It slid obediently shut.

  She sat there for a few minutes, wondering why Brown frightened her when Leroy did not, when all the drunks and junkies lined up from one end of South Street to the other did not. She had risen from the table and turned out the lights, drifting in darkness back into the bedroom. She took off her clothes, hanging them neatly in the closet. She had turned down the sheet, climbed onto the bed, and lay, listening, breathing.

  South Street stole through the open window, a sour-sweet stench in the soggy air, covered her body with a layer of moisture. Vanessa lay in the heavy heat searching the darkness with her eyes, trying to find what Brown found in it, in half-dead winos and garbage piles, trying to understand what was so inspiring about elephantine cockroaches and rats the size of cannon shells. It made no sense to her. She was tired of picking up magazines and reading articles about the ghetto. All they talked about was rats and roaches. Brown was crazy. She didn’t give a damn. Among the trash cans and garbage in the alley below, a hungry animal—cat, dog, wino—foraged. She wondered what was down there, what it was looking for.

  She had drifted off to sleep when Brown came in. He smelled her heavy perfume. He smiled to himself, closed the door, slipped off his shoes, and padded into the bedroom. He stood above the bed, looking down at her. The sweat had soaked into the sheet, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark Brown could see the wrinkled whiteness clinging to her dark, smooth curves, her skin altering the sheet’s color, adding a bluish cast. Brown set his shoes down carefully, slipped quietly out of the rest of his clothing, or tried to—the beer had affected his coordination—eased onto the bed, lay congratulating himself on his quietness.

  “You mad?” Vanessa said.

  Brown jumped. “Goddamn! Can’t spooks say nothin’ ’cept boo all the damn time?”

  “Sorry,” Vanessa said. “I forgot you was so damn jumpy.”

  “I ain’t,” Brown said. “I just got hair-trigger reflexes.”

  Vanessa snorted. “Well, are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Mad.”

  “No,” Brown said. “I am drunk. If I acted the way I act when I’m drunk when I was sober instead of acting the way I act when I’m sober, then maybe I’d be mad. But since I only act the way I act when I’m drunk when I’m drunk, I am usually not considered mad. It is the measure of our sick society that a man is not considered insane so long as he only acts that way when he is drunk, and acts sober when he is sober. But not too sober. True sober behavior is threatening.”

  “Anybody ever tell you you talk a whole lot an’ don’t never make no damn sense?”

  “How can you expect me to make sense when I’m drunk? I make perfect sense when I’m sober.”

  “I ain’t never seen you sober,” Vanessa said.

  “And with the luck of Ananse, you never will.”

  “Who the hell is Nancy?”

  Brown laughed. “Never mind.”

  “I knocked,” Vanessa said defensively.

  “What?”

  “I knocked. You wasn’t here, so I just thought I’d come in an’ wait—”

  “An’ then you got sleepy an’ crawled into bed. That’s fine. I like that. Only don’t bust ma chair an’ eat up ma goddamn porridge.”

  Vanessa giggled. “How ’bout if I turn into a pumpkin?”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Brown said.<
br />
  “A warm pumpkin.”

  “How warm?”

  “Warm.”

  Brown rolled onto his side, shifted closer to her, and laid his hand on her belly. She sighed, rolled, backed up against him. Brown stroked her hip, his exhalation tickling her neck. “Brown?” she said.

  “Um hum?”

  “You goin’ to sleep?”

  “Course,” Brown said. “What the hell else do drunks do?”

  “Oh.”

  “Why you ask?”

  “Well, I just didn’t want you to think you had to—you know. I mean, I just come up here to be—”

  “Anybody ever tell you you talk a whole lot an’ don’t make no damn sense?”

  “But I—”

  “Shup.”

  She waited tensely for him to begin, for “the hand that fondled her hip to move on, for his other hand to make the inevitable journey to limp nipples, but Brown’s hands stayed where they were, only the one hand softly stroking. She felt all the tension concentrate on that one hand, sensing the slightest variation in the stroke. The tension coiled inside her and she thought she couldn’t stand it. She squirmed, made impatient sounds, tried to twist and force his hand down. “Shhh,” Brown said. She quieted, tried to relax. She felt as if she were going to sleep. She felt faintly bored. She wondered if she preferred boredom to frustration. She felt Brown’s body pressed against her back, his legs against her legs, his knees in the hollows of her knees, his chin cradled between her shoulder blades. She felt a small urge to scratch somewhere, but she lacked the energy. She felt a slight desire to go to the bathroom, but she did not want to move. She imagined she was paralyzed, that her legs and arms would not work. Then she felt a wetness spring up between her thighs, a slow excitement. She felt Brown, as if suddenly sensing her arousal, come erect and press gently against her buttocks. She tried to roll over but Brown held her where she was, continued with his strokings. She breathed shortly as if she had a pain in her chest. Brown slid lower, insinuated himself between her thighs. She felt him enter her, waited for the usual barrier to come down over her body. It did not. She stared into the darkness, feeling him moving in her, knowing who it was, but seeing no one before her, above her. She felt a sudden lightness, demanding release. The bed rocked. She felt herself softening, felt her body dissolve, tried to hold herself and let go at the same time. She felt a shiver in her belly and her eyes closed, the eyeballs tried to push through the lids. And then the barrier did come down. She hardened. She waited, her body still lubricated, pumping mechanically, until Brown gasped, thrust, subsided. She was glad he was behind her.