“I have to get home,” the girl said. “It’s late, Mario. I have to get home.”
“We got time,” Mario said. “Your people won’t raise a fuss if you’re a little late. Not with this kind of weather.”
“It’s dark,” the girl said, and she giggled.
“Yeah,” the boy answered, his voice very low.
“Mario . . . ?”
“Um?”
“You’re . . . you’re standing very close to me.”
“Um.”
There was a long silence. Then the girl said, “Ohhhhh.” Only that single word, and Tony knew she’d been kissed, and he suddenly hungered for Laura’s mouth, hungered for it with a fierce, painfully sweet nostalgia. It was then that he wondered if he would ever kiss Laura again. It was then that he wondered if he was dying.
No, he thought, I can’t be dying, not from a little street rumble, not from just getting cut. Guys get cut all the time. All the time in rumbles. I can’t be dying. No, that’s stupid. That don’t make any sense at all.
“You shouldn’t,” the girl said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“I don’t know.”
“I love you, Angela,” the boy said.
“I love you, too, Mario,” the girl said, and Tony listened and thought, I love you, Laura. Laura, I think maybe I’m dying. Laura, this is stupid but I think maybe I’m dying. Laura, I think I’m dying!
He tried to speak. He tried to move. He tried to crawl toward that doorway where he could see the two figures in embrace. He tried to make a noise, a sound, and a grunt came from his lips, and then he tried again, and another grunt escaped his body, a low, animal grunt of pain.
“What was that?” the girl said, suddenly alarmed, breaking away from the boy.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“Go look, Mario.”
“No. Wait.”
Tony moved his lips again. Again the sound came from him. “Mario!”
“What?”
“I’m scared.”
“I’ll go see,” the boy said.
He stepped into the alley. He walked over to where Tony lay on the ground. He stood over him, watching him.
“You all right?” he asked.
“What is it?” Angela said from the doorway.
“Somebody’s hurt,” Mario said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Angela said.
“No. Wait a minute.” He knelt down beside Tony. “You cut?” he asked.
Tony nodded. The boy kept looking at him. He saw the lettering on his jacket then. The Royals. He turned to Angela.
“He’s a Royal,” he said.
“Let’s . . . what . . . what do you want to do, Mario?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to get mixed up in this. He’s a Royal. We help him, and the Guardians’ll be down on our necks. I don’t want to get mixed up in this, Angela.”
“Is he . . . is he hurt bad?”
“Yeah, it looks that way.”
“What shall we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can’t leave him here in the rain.” Angela hesitated. “Can we?”
“If we get a cop, the Guardians’ll find out who,” Mario said. “I don’t know, Angela. I don’t know.”
Angela hesitated a long time before answering. Then she said, “I have to get home, Mario. My people will begin to worry.”
“Yeah, Mario said. He looked at Tony again. “You all right?” he asked. Tony lifted his face from the sidewalk, and his eyes said, Please, please help me, and maybe Mario read what his eyes were saying, and maybe he didn’t.
Behind him, Angela said, “Mario, let’s get out of here! Please!” There was urgency in her voice, urgency bordering on the edge of panic. Mario stood up. He looked at Tony again, and then mumbled, “I’m sorry,” and then he took Angela’s arm and together they ran toward the neon splash at the other end of the alley.
They’re afraid of the Guardians, Tony thought. Why should they be? I wasn’t afraid of the Guardians. I never turkeyed out of a rumble with the Guardians, I got heart. But I’m bleeding.
It was 11:49. It was eleven minutes to midnight.
The rain was soothing, somehow. It was a cold rain, but his body was hot all over, and the rain helped to cool him. He had always liked rain. He could remember sitting in Laura’s house one time, with the rain running down the windows, and just looking out over the street, watching the people running from the rain. That was when he’d first joined the Royals. He could remember how happy he was the Royals had taken him. The Royals and the Guardians, two of the biggest. He was a Royal. There had been meaning to the title.
Now, in the alley, with the cold rain washing his hot body, he wondered about the meaning. If he died, he was Tony. He was not a Royal. He was simply Tony, and he was dead. And he wondered suddenly if the Guardians who had ambushed him and knifed him had ever once realized he was Tony? Had they known that he was Tony, or had they simply known that he was a Royal wearing a purple silk jacket? Had they stabbed him, Tony, or had they only stabbed the jacket and the title, and what good was the title if you were dying?
I’m Tony, he screamed wordlessly. For Christ’s sake, I’m Tony!
At 11:51, the old lady stopped at the other end of the alley. The garbage cans were stacked there, beating noisily in the rain. The old lady carried an umbrella with broken ribs, carried it with all the dignity of a queen. She stepped into the mouth of the alley, a shopping bag over one arm. She lifted the lids of the garbage cans delicately, and she did not hear Tony grunt because she was a little deaf and because the rain was beating a steady relentless tattoo on the garbage cans. The old lady was a little deaf and a little tired. She had been searching in garbage cans for the better part of the night. She collected her string, and her newspapers, and an old hat with a feather on it from one of the garbage cans, and a broken footstool from another of the cans. And then she delicately replaced the lids, and lifted her umbrella high and walked out of the alley mouth with queenly dignity. She had worked swiftly and soundlessly. When she left the alley, it was only 11:53, only seven minutes from midnight.
The alley looked very long now. He could see people passing at the other end of it, and he wondered who the people were, and he wondered if he would ever get to know them, wondered who it was on the Guardians who had stabbed him, who had plunged the knife into his body.”
“That’s for you, Royal!” the voice had said, and then the footsteps, his arms being released by the others, the fall to the pavement. “That’s for you, Royal!” Even in his pain, even as he collapsed, there had been some sort of pride to knowing he was a Royal. Now there was no pride at all. Now, with the rain beginning to chill him, with the blood pouring steadily between his fingers, he knew only a sort of dizziness, and within the giddy dizziness, he could only think, I want to be Tony.
It was not very much to ask of the world. He watched the world passing at the other end of the alley. He lay unnoticed, and the world passed him by. The world didn’t know he was Tony. The world didn’t know he was alive. He wanted to say, “Hey, I’m alive! Hey, look at me! I’m alive! Don’t you know I’m alive? Don’t you know I exist?”
He felt very weak and very tired. He felt alone and wet and feverish and chilled, and he knew he was going to die, and the knowledge made him suddenly sad. He was not frightened. For some reason he was not frightened. He was only filled with an overwhelming sadness that his life would be over at sixteen. He felt all at once as if he had never done anything, never seen anything, never been anywhere. There were so many things to do, and he wondered why he’d never thought of them before, wondered why the rumbles and the jumps and the purple jacket had always seemed so important to him before, and now they seemed like such small things in a world he was missing, in a world that was rushing past at the other end of the alley.
; I don’t want to die, he thought. I haven’t lived yet, so why should I die?
It seemed very important to him that he take off the purple jacket. He was very close to dying, and when they found him, he did not want them to say, “Oh, it’s a Royal.” With great effort he rolled over onto his back. He felt the pain tearing at his stomach when he moved, a pain he did not think was possible. But he wanted to take off the jacket. If he never did another thing, he wanted to take off the jacket. The jacket had only one meaning now, and that was a very simple meaning.
If he had not been wearing the jacket, he would not have been stabbed. The knife had not been plunged in hatred of Tony, the knife had hated only the purple jacket. The jacket was a stupid meaningless thing that was robbing him of his life. He wanted the jacket off his back. With an enormous loathing he wanted the jacket off his back.
He lay struggling with the sleek, shiny material. His arms were heavy, and pain ripped fire across his body whenever he moved. But he squirmed and fought and twisted until one arm was free and then the other, and then he rolled away from the jacket and lay quite still, breathing heavily, listening to the sound of his breathing and the sound of the rain and thinking, Rain is sweet, I’m Tony.
She arrived with the policeman at 12:05.
She had found him in the alleyway at 12:01, a minute past midnight. She had left the dance to look for him, and when she found him she knelt beside him and said, “Tony, it’s me, Laura.”
He had not answered her. She had backed away from him, tears springing into her eyes, and then she had run from the alley hysterically, and she had not stopped running until she’d found the cop.
.And now, standing with the cop, she looked down at him, and the cop rose and said, “He’s dead,” and all the crying was out of her now. She stood in the rain and said nothing, looking at the dead boy on the pavement, and looking at the purple jacket that rested a foot away from his body.
The cop picked up the jacket and turned it over in his hands.
“A Royal, huh?” he said.
The rain seemed to beat more steadily now, more fiercely.
She looked at the cop, and very quietly she said, “His name is Tony. ”
The cop slung the jacket over his arm. He took out his black pad, and he flipped it open to a blank page.
“A Royal,” he said. Then he began writing.
The Seventh
Grave
Vann Anson Lister
Vann Anson Lister is a name on this story. I know nothing about him other than he lives in the Midwest and is exceedingly polite on the phone. I read this two or three times a year. It never quite leaves me.
First published in 1986.
The old-timey wino on the North Avenue Bridge seems to know where he is going. His shoulder bag swings against his baggy corduroys in well-rehearsed rhythm. Beneath the wide-lapel jacket he wears at least six shirts, even though it is not cold.
Looking over the railing at the east end of the bridge, he shakes his head and crosses the street to look over the opposite rail. Odd, he thinks. No trails.
He eases his frail-looking body around the end of the rail into the thick bushes, and hugging the concrete of the bridge, he pushes his way down the slope to the river.
Since the city of Milwaukee consumes more beer per capita than any city in the U.S., the old wino is very alone. The Milwaukee Road Railway runs along the west bank of the river, so the bridge is high and wide and long, to allow the trains to come and go beneath the bridge, along the river. It is a perfect wino bridge, but this is Beer City, U.S.A., and winos rarely trespass here. Beer drinkers prefer bars or parking lots or alleys or beaches. They never sit under bridges. Bridges are the sole province of the winos of the world.
There is a silent beauty and an art to sitting under bridges that only winos know. The traffic noises and shouting of cabbies and children are muted by the dense foliage and trees along the riverbank. The sounds drift down from another world. Sunlight reflects off the river to dance on the dark belly of the bridge. Between the arched concrete pilings is a bald spot of hard- packed dirt where nothing ever grows, the sun never shines. Here the wino builds a small fire in an ancient circle of stones in the center of the clearing that must surely have been used in bygone days to chart the rising of the moon.
An old coffee can of river water boils gently in the circle of stones. Filleted chunks of catfish churn slowly around in a stew of roots and greens. The fishing line, tied to a crooked limb, still dangles in the water. While the stew cooks, the wino wanders out into the thicket to piss. There are no trails.
Not even adventurous children play here, he realizes. He is thinking he could camp here for weeks, undetected, when he sees a brake- man across the river waving to him, friendly. He watches him walk the train, stooping between boxcars to couple air hoses, climbing steel rungs to release brakes. The brakeman hasn’t seen a wino here in Beer City for months. When he clocks out at the yard office he will be inspired to purchase a couple of bottles of wine, for old time’s sake.
The wino’s name is Sinbad, and he has sailed the seven seas as a merchant seaman. He has a steel plate in his skull where the doctors once peeked into his brain and cut out a black demon that lurked there. He wears a beret to cover the patch of odd- colored skin where no hair will ever grow. The beret is black, to remind him of the demon.
There is a grave where Sinbad is pissing in the bushes. He shakes the last drops away and fumbles with his zipper as he leans through the dense foliage for a closer look. There is a rotting wooden cross with the name Rangoon carved on it, lying fallen on the ground. The grave has been desecrated by some marauding mongrel. The bones of a cat are scattered around a shallow indentation in the soft loam of the forest floor.
Sinbad reads the grave. The steel plate in his skull prickles. It is the steel plate, he claims, that gave him this gift; he can know about things just by touching them. He places the scattered bones back in the hole, covers them, and rights the marker, shoving the point deep into the black loam while he talks to the ghost of Rangoon, as dappled sunlight plays on the foliage.
Rangoon was a wino; his masters were fond of wine, and often let him drink from their glasses. It is quite appropriate that they buried him here, in wino paradise. They were a young couple, very much in love. They wanted a child, but the girl had problems, ovarian tumors, the doctors said. So Rangoon became a child to them, an only child; a big blue-eyed lynx-point Siamese, terribly intelligent, as near true sentience as only certain Egyptian cats, or a few very old parrots and perhaps porpoises, can be. And terribly pampered . . . until the joyful day the girl announced her proud pregnancy; her impossible, miraculous pregnancy. And Rangoon was no longer pampered. He was all but ignored in the couple’s parental bliss. He grew weak and sick and went away and died of loneliness while the couple practiced their Lamaze, Leboyer, and La Leche for natural childbirth. There was no longer room in their lives for a sentient cat. But they wept when a neighbor told them where to find the body, and they carried him in a cardboard box across the North Avenue Bridge from their apartment to bury him on the riverbank. They shared a little bottle of wine under the bridge; a toast to the dead, and to the new life in her belly.
The child was stillborn, and Sinbad finds that grave near Rangoon’s. Unmarked. The couple had tried to have the child at home, alone, the husband as midwife. They blamed themselves, and their guilt ate them alive.
They had no friends in Milwaukee. The husband’s job had brought them here from Houston. They were alone, with no one to share their grief, and they wanted to hide what had happened. It was against the law, after all; they could have been charged with murder for not having an authorized state-licensed doctor present, even though they trained well and studied the books, even though it was not their fault. It was the black demons; tumors.
To hide their shame and guilt they buried the fetus and placenta in a little grave under the bridge, but they hid this grave deeper in the black loam and foliage, and lef
t no marker. They drank a big bottle of wine under the bridge to drown their sorrow.
The husband began drinking heavily, coming home late, missing work. He was a standards analyst, brought in by a local foundry to supervise time studies. He hated it. He wanted to finish and get back home to Texas, but the work dragged on and on.
One night in a drunken rage he struck his lovely wife, too hard, with a half-empty bottle of wine. Sinbad finds her grave in the black loam not far from the child. He reads it, and knows that she was not sad to die. She could not bear to live with her guilt, and had taunted her husband cruelly, questioning his masculinity in the feeble hope that he would break and lash out at her, end her misery. He did, and only Sinbad knows it was a suicide.
Sinbad has crawled deep into the foliage. His hands and knees are damp and black. Back at his small fire in the circle of stones in the clearing under the bridge there is a dark shadow of a man with a brown paper bag in his hand that can only be a liter of wine. Sinbad’s bones, old as the sea, creak like straining mizzenmast in a high wind as he crawls back toward his fire. The steel plate in his skull stings; tells him the shadowman is not a wayward wino. It is him. Sinbad crawls through the dense foliage toward his fate, and cringes suddenly, trembles. He has crawled across another grave. A wino. Stabbed to death when he passed out in a drunken stupor, because he was too near the graves. Stabbed to death by him: the shadowman waiting by the fire. Sinbad brushes at the loam and a skull grins up at him through black rotting leaves. Not just one, he reads. He glances around through the whispering leaves and sees the skulls of two more winos, drinking black loam wine.
“Howdy,” the shadowman says.
“Hello.” Sinbad recognizes the brakeman from across the river as he walks toward the fire, brushing black loam from his baggy knees.
“I seen you from across the river, there,” the brakeman says, pointing to the tracks across the river. “Don’t see many folks over here. I thought you might like to share a jug or two. I sneak down here a lot. It’s quiet. Peaceful.” He extends the brown- wrapped jug to Sinbad. “Mad Dog? Or Thunderbird?” He pulls another jug, a flat hip flask, from his pocket, offering an alternative.
Great Noir Fiction Page 4