Everything seemed quiet and peaceful. York could hear Clover’s soft, girly snoring. Insects sang in the weeds, and a minimum breeze blew the smell of those creosote-soaked ties over York’s face. All seemed right with the world.
He relaxed, settled his head down on the sofa cushion he used for a pillow, and let himself drift off to sleep.
Next thing he knew, there was a hand squeezing his foot.
“What?” he said. Adrenaline shot through him as he remembered that they were anticipating some kind of nastiness, and that Sly was on watch.
“Shhh,” came the whisper from Sly. “Enemy approaching.”
York’s heart began to pound big and strong, and he found it heard to breathe. He tried to calm himself, to tell himself that there was nothing to worry about, there wasn’t going to be any trouble, but to be wakened in the middle of the night by someone who was himself scared, well, that just put too much tension in the air.
York was happy his heart worked so well, but he wasn’t so sure about his lungs. He kicked away from Sly’s hand, and heard Sly move around. Denny and the girl were no longer snoring; York felt them wide-awake.
He heard footsteps coming down the path, only one set of light footsteps. He knew that walk, that shuffling cadence. “It’s Chris,” York whispered.
“Hey,” Chris said in his pre-puberty voice.
“What the fuck you doing out here this time of night?” Sly said.
“Came to see York,” Chris said. “Why?”
“This isn’t a good time, Chris,” York said. He sat up and found it much easier to breathe.
“What’s going on?” Chris sat down on the edge of York’s sofa cushions and lit up a cigarette.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” Sly said. “Kid like you’ll ruin yourself by smoking.”
“I can’t sleep,” Chris said.
“It’s the full moon,” York said. “People get restless under the moon.”
“Can’t see no moon,” Chris said. “Clouds.”
As long as York had lived under the stars, youngsters had come around. He never put them off, or put them down. Kids, mostly, who needed somebody to listen to them, and York guessed he could listen sometimes better than their parents, and different from their friends. They rarely came in a crowd, although sometimes two came together for the first time, kind of daring each other, egging each other on, and then acting embarrassed and giggling and shuffling their feet, not knowing what to say. Within a couple of days, though, one of those boys would be back, just to sit and be in the company of men. Men who were different. Men who were free.
Sometimes York had company, and on the occasion when a traveling man came through, a man with not such a great reputation, York would chase off the young’uns. Last thing he wanted was for something bad to happen to one of the kids who was seeking out his company, his counsel or just a safe place to smoke a butt pilfered from his parents, and watch the stars. As long as York had been a bum, there had been kids coming around to talk to him about life.
Chris was one. Clover was another.
“There’s been trouble, Chris,” York said.
“Yeah, I heard about the dead guy.”
“We think they’re coming tonight to try to evict us,” Sly said.
“Evict you? At night? What kind of—oh, I get it.”
“You ought to be home,” York said. “It wouldn’t be good for somebody to find you down here.”
“It isn’t even late,” Chris whined.
But before he could finish that cigarette, before he could stop whining, before he could stand up, give his good-byes and get on his way, a van stopped at the top of the hill. York heard the two doors and the sliding door slam, and he knew they’d come.
“Get out of here,” he whispered harshly to Chris, and the boy lost no time scampering off down the tracks.
The first thing Sly noticed was that they had baseball bats, or at least two of them did. The third was Deputy Dawg Travis Twit. Asshole Supremo.
Sly stood up, and as he did, the clouds parted and the moon shone down on the whole scene. For a brief moment, in the black-and-silver light Sly saw their camp as everybody else must see it. It was a dump. It was a roofless house with little rooms, the short walls separating them made out of found materials, newspapers, chunks of concrete and dirt. The ever-present campfire glowed in the common area, and that’s also where York slept, without walls. It looked like trash. No wonder the railroad guys and the city fathers wanted them out of there. Who was in charge of policing up this area?
Just before one of the intruders spoke, Sly had a flash of gratitude that his mother wasn’t alive to see him live like this.
“Thought you were going to be vacating these here premises,” one of the guys said, and he swung his baseball bat like a pendulum by his side.
The other one had his bat resting gently on his shoulder.
“I’ll handle this,” Deputy Travis said. “C’mon, York, we don’t want no trouble, do we?”
“York’s got nowheres to go,” Clover said, and stood up.
“Clover? What the fuck you doing here? Why aren’t you home? Didn’t your mother tell you to stay away from here tonight?”
“She did, but I’m here anyway. Let one of your gorillas there take a swing at me with that big honkin’ bat.” She took a taunting step out. “C’mon, tough guy.”
“Hey, hey,” Travis said, stepping between them. He took her arm and handled her back toward Denny.
“We don’t want no trouble,” the other guy said. “We just need you to vacate the premises, and we need you to do that nice and quiet, and right now.”
“Or?” Sly asked.
“Why does there have to be an ‘or’?” The other one said. “This is railroad land, and you’re trespassing. It’s our legal right to shoo away trespassers. It’s our right to defend our land.” He let his bat swing down and crunch into Denny’s bedroom wall.
“Hey!” Denny jumped up and lunged at him.
“But we don’t want to have to do no defending. Right, guys?” Travis was quick to jump in front of Denny and put a hand on the offending bat. He turned back to York. “Help us out here, York. Can you guys find somewhere else to live?”
“Right now? This minute?” York said. “Doorway at City Hall.”
“We ain’t hurting anybody,” Denny said. “Y’all can just leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone, and we’ll all just live in peace.”
“The way it’s been for the past twenty years,” York said. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I don’t know why suddenly, after all these years, you want to evict us.”
“Because we can,” one of the toughs said, wound up and took a swing at the coffeepot. It was a direct hit, and that little pot sailed into the dark, trailed by sparks from the poor fire. The clouds moved back over the moon again, plunging everything into relative darkness.
“It’s the mayor,” Travis said, and York heard the desperation in his voice. Travis didn’t want violence, either. For the first time, York felt a kinship with the guy. “The murder. It’s just flat-out trouble, and we don’t want any more of it.”
“That wasn’t our trouble. Not our fault, and we shouldn’t be punished,” Sly said.
“Take that up with the mayor,” Travis said. He walked over to Clover. “You oughtn’t be here, honey.”
“Don’t honey me,” she said. “You go on home and leave us. We ain’t hurting nobody.”
“Okay,” Travis said, positioning himself in front of the two dudes with the bats. He was taking charge, and because he had a badge, he could. “This is the deal. Consider this fair warning. Tomorrow night, I want this place empty. Bulldozers are coming in the morning after, and we’re cleaning up this place. Tomorrow night, we’ll be back, and you best not be here, because all three of us will have these persuaders greased up and ready for evicting.” He spread his legs and put his hands on his hips. “Don’t make us use ’em.” He turned to Clover. “And you, little lady, you ke
ep out of this. You have a nice mama and a nice apartment. You go on home and take care of that stuff and leave these here bums to the law.”
“You ain’t no law,” Clover said. “Not with those clothes on. Not with baseball bats. You’re just a bully for hire, and you ain’t fooling anybody, Travis.”
For a second, Sly thought Travis was going to raise his hand to Clover, and he tensed, ready to jump on the asshole the second he did it. But apparently, Deputy Dawg thought better of it because he took a step back toward the goons.
“You need help finding a place, York,” Travis said, “I’ll send social services down. You want me to do that?”
“No, he doesn’t want that,” Clover said. “And he doesn’t need any help from you. You just get your ass out of here. We’ll figure out what to do. Just go.”
“You got some mouth on you, girl.”
“Go away, loser,” Clover said.
Travis tore his eyes from her and her hurtful words and laid them back onto York, the pitiful old man. Along the way, he surveyed the sad little domain he had been sent to dismantle. “Tomorrow night,” he said. He jabbed Sonny Topolo in the ribs, and they turned and filed back up the pathway. He turned back, just to make certain he got the last word in. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “Be gone.”
Nobody said anything until the van doors had slammed. The van started, flashed its headlights, and drove off.
“Fuck you,” Sly said to nobody and everybody.
“We got rights,” Denny said.
York was quiet for a long time. “Clover?” he asked quietly.
“Hmmm?”
“Would you call social services for me tomorrow?”
“Sure, York,” she said.
Sly kicked at things and cursed under his breath. Denny remained quiet. York thought his life had ended, and reminded himself that it had been a long, wonderful ride, and maybe it was time. Clover started to cry.
And then it started to rain.
~ ~ ~
Bully for hire. The words echoed through Travis’s head all the way back to the railroad yard, and then he wordlessly shook hands with the toughs, got into his own car, and headed home.
Bully for hire. That wasn’t who he was when he was in uniform, but that’s exactly who he was when he was working his nose up the mayor’s ass, that was for certain. He pulled into the driveway of his house, turned off the ignition and sat there, his guts burning.
Is this who he intended to be? Is this what he wanted for his life? To strong-arm old men out of their well-worn rat holes? To push little girls around? To threaten harmless old fools with a baseball bat? He hadn’t carried one, but he might as well have. And now what was going to happen the following night? He’d given them an ultimatum. Now he had to follow through. He and the railroad guys with their baseball bats. He had to follow through.
He didn’t want to follow through.
He rested his hands on the top of the steering wheel of the Pontiac muscle car he couldn’t afford and he looked at his house. It was a typical, no-personality, cookie-cutter ranch house that he couldn’t afford. No furniture to speak of inside. No food, no dishes. No pots and pans. One sofa, one coffee table, one television. In the bedroom was a cheap bed and an even cheaper dresser, and the only thing on any of the walls was a poster of Janis Joplin in his bedroom. If he remembered right, he was still out of toilet paper, and the roll of paper towels he had been using for the task was about empty as well.
His life was headed the wrong way. He didn’t have enough money to make his car payment and his mortgage payment. He was bullying the innocent guys down by the railroad, and he was doing it for some future favor from the mayor, not for any immediate gain, but immediate was exactly what he needed. He was in deep trouble, borrowing from his credit limit on his credit cards to cover his ass every month. Sure, the mayor would probably back him when it was his turn to run for sheriff, but that wasn’t anytime soon, and the mortgage company wasn’t patient.
Bully for hire. Loser.
Boy, she’d nailed it right on the head. He was a loser.
Raindrops started dotting the windshield as he sat in his driveway.
Funny thing about Sheriff Goddard. He was a man that Travis had always looked up to, but Travis was acting exactly the opposite way that the sheriff would. It was as if Travis was still a teenager, with that authority thing—that pissy, don’t-tell-me-what-to-do thing. He thought he’d gotten over that a long time ago, left it behind him when he left home and joined the force, but he still felt that way about Sheriff Goddard. Maybe because Sheriff Goddard was so much like his dad. Smart, authoritative, respected, right. He was right. He was always right, and Travis rarely was right, and that’s what pissed Travis off. So he kept pushing it, waiting for a time when he’d be right and the sheriff would be wrong, and then he’d feel good about himself.
Maybe.
He wasn’t feeling so good about himself at the moment.
He needed something and he didn’t know what.
Yes, he did. There was one thing that made him feel good about himself, only it was just a surface bandage and he knew that. Still, it worked. She liked him, she liked him a lot. She made him feel like a king at times, and if the light wasn’t too bright on her aging face, and she didn’t breathe cigarette breath in his face, for a few minutes, he could make her sigh and squirm and he could pretend that he was king of the world.
It was late. She’d be mad.
He looked again at the solitary porch light over the door to his house, his albatross, then he punched in the clutch, turned the key, and backed out of the drive.
~ ~ ~
Steve Goddard watched the slatted light from the moon slide across the sheet that covered the contours of his sleeping wife. He sat up, pillow against the headboard, knee raised, sweaty and sleepless, and worried about York and the boys down by the tracks. He had a bad feeling about Travis and those railroad guys and that slimy mayor, and he wanted to go down there just to check on them, just to make sure that one broken-necked dead guy didn’t turn into a blood bath on his turf.
He had watched the red digits of the clock click by for over an hour, and there was no way he was going to sleep without going down there to make sure things were all right.
He slid his hand along Athena’s muscled rump, up across her back, felt the “Hmmm?” of her sleepy question as to why he was waking her up while the full moon was still high.
“Honey?” Married to a sheriff, Athena was used to being roused in the night, but it was always prompted by the ringing telephone. “Baby?” He rubbed harder until she began to make a little whining noise. “Honey, I’m going to go out for a while.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You okay?” she asked, her voice clear.
“Yeah, but we’ve been having trouble down by the train tracks, and I’m worried about York and those guys.”
“They can take care of themselves,” she said, and reached an arm around him. He slid down the bed and she fit snugly into the space that God had made for woman next to man, under his arm, her soft hair on his chest.
“I can’t sleep,” he said.
“Want to make love?”
“I think I better go check on those guys. Travis and the mayor are up to something, and I don’t like the sound of it.”
Athena’s muscles tensed a little bit as she came more into awareness. “Maggie Sweeney’s son Chris hangs down there a lot, and it worries her.”
“I used to hang down there a lot,” Steve said.
“I know, but I think Chris is more . . . malleable, maybe. More easily influenced than you were.”
Steve doubted that.
“Anyway, she’s going to get up a petition or something to get those guys out of there.”
“Well, that’s the way to do it. Nice and legal and safe. York needs to go to a place where he can get medical care.” He moved her arm away. “Anyway, I’m going to take a run down there.”
“Hurry back,” she said
.
“Okay,” he said and kissed her cheek.
~ ~ ~
Everything was quiet when he got to Yorktown, but it looked as though there was a little town meeting going on. The fire was blazing in the drizzling rain and he could see people sitting up around it. He donned his rain slicker and carefully walked down the hill toward them. For a moment he felt like a little boy again. He wished he could be Chris Sweeney, young and innocent, trying to figure out what made a man a man. At forty-six, Steve Goddard wasn’t old, but he felt creaky and jaded. And he hated like hell to do what he felt he had to do.
“Guys,” he announced as he tripped down the path.
“Sheriff,” Sly said, jumping up and throwing off the sheet of polyurethane that he’d wrapped around himself. “Travis was just here with railroad guys and baseball bats. They gave us until tomorrow night to be gone, or they’d be back to beat us all to death. Isn’t there something you can do about that?”
Steve wasn’t surprised to hear it, but he was saddened just the same. Tomorrow night. Next to Denny sat Clover, who sat next to York. They all shared a plastic sheet over their heads. “Miss Clover, now what are you doing here at two o’clock in the morning?”
“I’m going to take York to social services in the morning, Sheriff,” she said.
Steve nodded. If York were safely out of the way, well then Denny and Sly could do whatever they wanted to. It might be best if they went back on the road and settled someplace else. “You okay with that, York?”
“Hell, no, he’s not okay with that,” Sly said. “York in some old fools’ home? Can you see it, Sheriff? Huh? Can you see it? He’ll die of suffocation in a week. York needs to live out here with us.”
“York?” Steve said again.
“I’m old,” York said. “Not much fight left, so I’m paying attention to the signs. And they all say to go.”
“Ain’t there something you can do about Travis, Sheriff?” Denny asked. “He’s turned into a goddamned goon.” He scuffed his foot in the dust and then spit. “Goddamned goon.”
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