Book Case

by Stephen Greenleaf

  By the time I parked the Buick on an unobtrusive block of Beulah Street and had made an unsuccessful trip down Haight on the chance Wade Linton had revisited the scene of his most recent legal skirmish, it was after noon. On the corner of Haight and Stanyan, already reeking with sweat and embarrassment, I experienced a strange sensation. In the glade across the street, a curious ebb and flow seemed under way, as though the forest had come alive à la Shakespeare’s Birnham Wood.

  I blinked and looked again. What was on the move was not trees but people, a score of them or more, bedrolls on their backs, knapsacks under their arms, plastic bags over their shoulders or gripped tightly in their hands, converging from all directions. Few words were exchanged, few eyes sought peers or were raised above the ground that stretched before their ill-shod feet, but there was a sense of common purpose in the air as the migration began to coalesce and meander across from where I stood.

  In the hope Wade Linton would eventually join the throng, I entered the park, found a place on a bench and sat down to wait next to a woman who was clearly one of those I sought to ape. Before I could strike up a conversation, the woman took off her socks and shoes and started rubbing her feet, which were swollen and scabbed and the color of mud. Her clothing swaddled her like bunting; her scent was reminiscent of cooked cabbage.

  The massage was comforting only briefly. Shoes and socks in place, she became hyperagitated—the object of her wrath seemed to be the heavy woolen sweater which was buttoned to her neck.

  With a feral curse, she tore at the garment until a button popped, then looked at me accusingly, as though I’d done it by some trick. “They’re not sick, you know,” she spat.

  “Who’s not?” She was so inflamed and active, I was afraid she was going to hit me.

  “The trees.”

  “Oh.”

  “They say they’re sick, but they’re not.” As if to prove her point, from somewhere beyond us the chatter of a chain saw tore the air. “They’re just cutting them down so we won’t have any place to hide.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’d rather destroy the park than give us a place to sleep. Isn’t, that amazing?”

  I agreed it was.

  The woman tugged at her sweater once again, with hands that were gnarled and chewed and blotched with blood, still agitated by the fate of the trees and her excessive warmth. I wondered why she didn’t take the sweater off, until I remembered Charley Sleet had told me that homeless women wear far more clothing than they need in order to deter men from attacking them, on the theory that the rapists will give up in frustration before they make their way through the maze. It sounded like a flimsy defense. Charley had agreed, then told me about a woman named Donna who lived in a stairwell on Minna Street and wore eight pairs of panty hose and had been raped a dozen times.

  “The other way they stay safe is keep awake all night,” he’d continued. “Every stinking night, and most of the day as well—always on the move, keeping an eye out for the fiends. You see a woman on her own on the streets—any woman—you can bet she hasn’t slept more than an hour in the last twelve.”

  The woman next to me on the bench was unquestionably such a victim—exhaustion branded her face like a birthmark. My impulse was to say something to her, to somehow acknowledge her existence, but I couldn’t think of anything that would remotely touch her. In something like a panic, I reached in my pocket for Wade Linton’s mug shot and held it out. “Seen this guy around lately?”

  She didn’t even look at it. “What you want him for?”

  I thought I was ready for it. “He’s my brother.”

  She regarded me with generic distaste. “Like shit.”

  She gathered her belongings and lumbered away, cursing all the while, on feet that must have made it as pleasant as a walk on coals. I hadn’t noticed before, but among her effects was a baseball bat which was brandished at her side in a strong right hand. I don’t think she used it for sport.

  While we’d been talking, several more park people had gathered in the area, some waiting stoically, others almost slavering in anticipation, still others, like the young man in the faded yellow slicker who was seated on the bench across from mine, crying silently, from woes as invisible as the curse that spawned their suffering.

  It was too depressing to continue, was what I decided as I watched my benchmate take her bat off into the trees, too much in the nature of a tease to pursue Linton in this way, too much a mocking of these people to maintain my absurd disguise. Feeling profane and craven, I abandoned the bench and started back to my car. A moment later, as I was waiting to recross the street at Stanyan, I heard a screech and a thump from somewhere to my side.

  As though on cue, the multitude looked eagerly toward the sound as two young men and one young woman clambered out of a battered blue van that had just pulled to the curb. After a moment of discussion and an exchange of greetings with their audience, they started hauling tables and boxes and insulated metal canisters out of the back of the van and setting them up just inside the park. The last item put in place was a handmade sign—FOOD NOT BOMBS.

  As if a Pavlovian bell had sounded, the homeless began to fall in line, silently, ineluctably, and somehow reluctantly as well, as though lining up for a wage they hadn’t earned. One group in particular caught my eye—a family of three. The father was young and vibrant, his energies harnessed by his circumstances in a way he clearly resisted, his backpack bulging with the family’s meager possessions and, it was somehow possible to believe, with a tuck of dignity as well. The mother was a different story—thin and harried, her surfaces pale and blank as though all vestiges of vitality had been worn away. The roll of bedding hunched high on her shoulders made her slumped and humped; the vacancy in her eyes was the look of an hysteric. And then the child, a girl of three or so, who looked toward the food tables with an expression so ecstatic it could only have had its roots in starvation.

  As I watched, the little girl tugged at her father’s hand, then said something to him. He smiled in reply and reached to the top of his pack and untied it. After a moment of fumbling, he found her prize—a teddy bear, its fur soiled and matted, its form and function still undamaged.

  The girl clutched the bear to her chest and began to speak their private language: “They’ve got plenty today, Sally. See? They won’t run out this time. But don’t eat too fast; if you do it will make you sick.” I closed my eyes and tried to understand why the city I lived in had determined that Food Not Bombs constituted a public nuisance.

  I was still contemplating that and other travesties when I saw him, coming from the direction of Kezar Stadium, looking left and right, as alert and wary as a buck. Without question he lived in the park—his face was smeared with dirt, his hair was tangled with twigs and leaves. A grimy raincoat came to a ragged end just above the drooping cuffs that ringed his sockless ankles, which were as bright as bone above his laceless leather shoes. The yellow scarf around his neck was the only splash of color in the ensemble, but when he joined the line for food I noticed there was a number 7 stitched on its center, which made it not a scarf at all but the flag from the pin on the seventh green of the nearby golf course. It took a leap of faith to believe that this was the man that Hammurabi said he was.

  When Wade Linton had taken his place at its dreary end, I joined the line as well. He got his food—a thick stew, a hunk of bread, a cup of coffee—three places before I did. When he wandered behind a bush to eat his feast, I marked the spot in my mind and when my own plate was full I headed that way.

  I was balancing my foodstuffs carefully, trying not to trip or spill anything, so when I rounded the bush I had to swerve to keep from stepping on him. I muttered an apology, went to what I thought was a suitable distance, then sat on the sodden grass and began to eat.

  A few bites later I looked up and found Linton staring at me, his eyes deep pits of consternation that deemed my presence an affront. To disturb him further, I waved affably. “Not bad today,�
�� I said, gesturing with my plate.

  “Compared to what?” Linton grumbled.

  “Compared to yesterday.”

  “They didn’t come yesterday—the van broke down.”

  “Then compared to eating out of a dumpster.”

  “I wouldn’t know; I don’t eat out of dumpsters.”

  “Does that mean you got a steady source?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “I been told that before; it’s sort of a habit.”

  “Then maybe you should get another one.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like keeping your mouth shut.”

  Though his plate was still half full, Linton clambered to his feet, brushed off his coat, and started to walk away from me.

  “Emma Drayer says hello,” I said easily to his departing back.

  He took two more steps and stopped. In the interval, I had gathered my feet under me and was about to stand, but I was still crouched near the ground when he turned and rushed me. With a grunt he threw his plate and its steamy contents at my face, aimed a quick kick at my throat, then took off running for the trees.

  The kick was off-line just enough to barely brush me, so the only loss was my balance. But the stew was effective as a blindfold, and by the time I cleared my eyes I had only a brief glimpse of Linton, well in the distance, as he dodged behind a tree and disappeared. I got to my feet and started after him, slipping in the puddle of food, cursing the tactic that had driven him off before I got a word in edgewise.

  He reappeared a second later, still on the move, but he was younger and quicker than I and I couldn’t offset either advantage. Although I pursued him as fast as I could, within seconds he had vanished once more, this time in a grove of eucalyptus that bordered Kezar Drive on the west. When I got to the street I tried to spot him beyond the honking stream of traffic, but Linton seemed long gone.

  I muttered another curse and stood on the edge of the roadway trying to decide what to do next as cars raced by me at distressing speeds. My only alternative seemed to be to abandon the chase, go back to the apartment and divest myself of my ersatz homelessness, and seek out Jane Ann Gillis in the hope that she knew the Sebastian story well enough to tell me where Linton might be headed when he left his lair in search of the person who had stolen six years of his life. But as I started to do just that, something caught my ear and eye—the bark of a dog and a blur of movement.

  Flushed from cover by the dog that was no doubt as ravenous as the little girl with the bear named Sally, Linton had abandoned his sanctuary in the eucalyptus and was on the move in the direction of the ocean, ever deeper into the park. I edged behind a tree, then peeked out just in time to watch him vanish yet again, this time behind a hedge of oleander.

  I waited for a gap in the traffic, then crossed the road and hurried through the grove where Linton had taken temporary refuge. When I emerged in the meadow on the other side, Linton was visible again, raincoat flapping around his legs, scarf trailing down his back, trotting along the hedge that bordered the bowling fields where he used to meet his son. I stayed put until he disappeared beyond the bowlers’ nifty clubhouse, then set out in hot pursuit.

  He led me a merry chase, over hill and dale, through grove and meadow, past the aquarium and the Temple of Music, behind the Japanese Tea Garden and the Boathouse at Stow Lake. Eventually, he must have decided he’d ditched me, perhaps because from a distance I looked more like friend than foe, because at that point it became less a chase than an odyssey.

  His mission became not flight but food—at every opportunity Linton examined the contents of trash barrels and dumpsters, picking up any empty cans he came across and sticking them in the pockets of his raincoat to redeem for the deposit pursuant to the state’s inadequate recycling program. Occasionally he would sniff at a bag or bottle and, if no signs of spoilage were evident, would consume the dregs before adding the container to his stash: supper alfresco and on the run. I could only gag and watch.

  I stayed some thirty yards behind, far enough to avoid detection on the few occasions he looked my way. By the time we crossed Kennedy Drive and made our way around Lloyd Lake and the Portals to the Past, I was eager to get where we were going, which I assumed to be his home. My car, I estimated from the state of my fatigue, was at least three miles at my back.

  At about this point it occurred to me that if I was going to write a book about the Linton case, this would be the chase scene. A few minutes later, as I felt a blister rising on my heel, I decided that if I was going to try to interest Hollywood in the story, I would have to spice it up. Motorcycles, maybe. Or, given what was the most popular mode of conveyance through the park on summer weekends—roller skates.

  The journey hadn’t ended. After wending our way through the forest west of Marx Meadow, we crossed a slender bridle path, skirted the miniature boats on Spreckels Lake and the hulk of the Senior Citizens Center, crossed the deserted dog training area, then plunged into woods again. This time we proceeded north to a point where I could hear the roar of traffic from somewhere ahead of us. For a moment I thought we were going to leave the park entirely and continue the chase through the city streets, but as I was trying to guess Linton’s true objective he ducked into a bulge of vegetation and disappeared from view.

  I was only twenty yards behind, but in no hurry to make up the distance until I knew what he was up to. When nothing had happened two minutes later, I moved forward, using techniques I’d learned in basic training at Fort Lewis a quarter century before, lacking only a weapon and a war to make it real. But when I got to where I’d lost him, I could find no trail to follow; my way was blocked by the dense tangle of brush that flourished beneath a stand of pine and cypress.

  Surprisingly, I was within spitting distance of Fulton Street, so close I could see cars flashing past gaps in the greenery. I broke through the shrubs and looked up and down on the chance that Linton had left the park, but I saw no one familiar on either Fulton or Forty-first Avenue, the nearest cross street heading north. I ducked back into the park, took off my bulky jacket, took out my knife, and descended, tentatively and reluctantly, into the thicket that was the only place left to look.

  The going was tough—I could have used a bearer or a bulldozer—and the more avidly I attacked it the more impenetrable the underbrush seemed to be. But at least the way was downhill—the undergrowth masked a steep falloff of topography. Before long I formed the distinct impression that I was hacking my way into a grave.

  Ten minutes later, all I could see was more of the same—vines and branches interlocked in a leafy net so tightly woven its primary purpose must have been to keep me out. Spitting bark dust from my mouth and picking thorns from my hands, I resolved to push through to the other side, more because of the challenge in the task than the prospect of finding Linton squirreled away somewhere en route.

  I shoved yet another branch out of my way and ducked beneath a sweep of cypress. Then, two steps deeper into the gloom, I heard the clank of bending metal. I stopped my dig immediately but heard nothing more revealing than the labor of my tortured lungs, so I took another cautious step. As the ground gave way a trifle, a metallic burp echoed in the arbor once again, this time from beneath me.

  I eased to my knees. After brushing away the leaves and bark, I discovered I was kneeling on an indeterminate expanse of blue, scratched and rusted, thick enough to hold me, apparently immobile. I crawled forward, one step and then a second, scraping away detritus as I went. Although it took only seconds for me to figure out what it was I had discovered, by the time I did so I was tumbling helplessly through space, as though I’d fallen off a cliff.

  Luckily, the drop wasn’t far. Shortly after impact I had caught my breath, collected my wits, and moved enough joints to know I wasn’t badly hurt. From my new perch it was obvious what had happened—I’d fallen off the top of a car, Wade Linton’s presumably, the one he’d inhabited at the Panhandle, then driven under cover of night into the thi
cket bordering Fulton Street after being ousted from the former location, the one he’d painstakingly enshrouded in leaves and branches and earth and sod in order to hide it from the legions of gardeners bent on rooting out the homeless from the park. With a mix of effort and admiration, I replaced the camouflaging canopy as best I could and then took stock.

  The hollow I’d fallen into was a makeshift patio adjacent to the passenger side of the car, carved into the hillside and topped by a handmade weave of vegetation. Given the circumstances, it was furnished in high style—car seat easy chair, air filter lid frying pan, radiator barbecue grill, hubcap lazy Susan, spare tire coffee table. In contrast, the car itself was comparatively barren—little more than a bed in a steel shell, littered with linens that ranged from grimy bed sheets stolen off a nearby line to strips of roofing felt pilfered from a construction site. There were a few luxuries—portable radio, tiny reading light, several well-worn books—but when I searched for a typewriter or other tools of authorship, I didn’t find any. And Linton himself was nowhere to be seen.

  I wondered how long he’d lived down here—Robinson Crusoe come to San Francisco—wondered how long his idyll could survive before it was discovered and dismantled, wondered who or what it harmed that people like Wade Linton had homesteaded a corner of a public park.

  Wondering at that and more, I was languishing on the car seat, feet stretched to the spare tire, when I heard a sound from somewhere behind me, possibly a pinecone that had dislodged and plunged to earth, possibly Wade Linton returning to his lair.

  I turned but saw nothing. In the next moment, as some sense told me the noise was both deliberate and human, someone clubbed me from behind and I sank into a pit far deeper than the one in which Wade had made his stand.

  Some people will sacrifice anyone or anything to save themselves. There are others whose chief impulse in the face of adversity is to sacrifice themselves. I tend to be one of the latter, but I take no credit for it. Indeed, I have come to believe that self-sacrifice is the most basic form of cowardice.