by Marc Parent
He turned around in the booth and asked the crowd passing by for the time. There was no response, and so he cleared his throat and asked again, louder. Someone, he couldn’t tell who, shouted that it was just after ten. Earl Strugg bobbed his chin to his chest in acknowledgment and began a quick deluge of remarks that brought the man forward. Earl thrilled as he approached to listen—the blood in his veins turning a brighter shade with every step the man took. He wanted to say hello and how are you but his mind flooded with thoughts. His hand flew to his chin and began stroking furiously. The man listened courteously, but Earl could see that he would be moving on shortly and taking the warmth of his regard with him. He struggled to grab hold in the tangled rush of words flying through his head, to fix on something that would get the man to stay, but all his mouth could find were rambling incantations of conspiracies and paranoid contrivances—cops and the government and aliens—most of which Earl didn’t even believe or understand himself. He was as confused by the words rattling his mouth as the man listening and it made him want to yell and pound his head but that would make the man go away instantly and he didn’t want that so he continued—riding his voice like a rapids, waiting for a smooth spot where he could put down the paddle, take a deep breath, and just say, simply, “How are you this fine day? Thanks for stopping. Listen, I’m about to fall over with hunger and if you wouldn’t mind, I could really use an egg sandwich—two scrambled with cheese on a roll with butter would be divine. Salt and pepper too.”
The man nodded and listened politely. Earl looked up at him for a moment as his mouth motored on uselessly, as if he and the man were standing on opposite sides of a large fish thrashing in the bottom of a boat, only it was his tongue and not a fish that was between them, acting of its own accord with the same aimless intensity as the flexing that throws the catch against the rods and tackle. Earl could stop his wagging tongue no better than the man, so they both just stood there waiting to see if it would tire.
Then he heard the words crack the air almost before the man spoke. They jangled his head as they came out, because Earl knew the face and he knew the backing away and the hand that raises when they say it like they always say it—everyone who stops for a lunatic is on a borrowed minute. The man’s face went apologetic, he stepped back, his right hand raised with the palm down just above waist level, and he said just like they all say, “All right, I gotta go now.” Earl made a mad attempt at coherence but the fish thrashed even harder. The man took another step back and said it again, “Okay buddy, I gotta go now.” He told Earl to take care of himself and then turned and disappeared into a swarm of receding backs. The fish croaked at the bottom of the boat and Earl had a quick mental image of bashing it to a pulp—biting his tongue from his mouth and tossing it under the wheels of a passing truck.
He turned back to the phone and hit the number pad three times. After waiting a moment, he shouted into the receiver that there was no way it was possible, and again, that he was very, very sorry. He laughed cunningly at the dial tone and then hung up. Staring at the number pad, he took a deep breath and thought about making another call. He lost track of time for a moment and it could’ve been a minute or a whole day that passed before he crunched his eyes into fists and rubbed the sides of his head briskly. Then he knew he had to leave or he’d be on it the whole morning, his sanest hours gobbled into the slobbering mouth of another damn compulsion.
So he went back to lie across his belongings and take a roll call of his faculties before heading off to do his chores, which always involved getting some food into his stomach. Today, he would look for a plate of poached eggs with salmon, new potatoes in olive oil with fresh thyme, a slab of country ham, a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a hot glazed cinnamon Danish on the side. He would read it off the menu in a window as he ate a piece of toast with coffee.
But instead, with the change in his pocket—a dollar and sixty-three cents—he bought a package of chocolate Ring Dings and a bag of Bugles that he devoured soundly. He poured six sugars into a steaming cup of coffee and gulped it down like it was a glass of water. Then he dabbed the napkin at his mouth daintily and followed with a long, holy blow from his nostrils that raised the hackles of most everyone in the store and made the owner ask him to leave. As he stepped out, he turned and begged the pardon of a group waiting for checkout. Then he straightened his back, pulled his legs together, and did a stiff salute followed by two peace signs stretched over his head with a quick shake of the jowls, and then clasped hands, lifted to his left and right, where he clapped three times at either ear and did a quick three-step. The owner of the deli raised his hands to Earl and said please. Earl jerked the pantomime shut and rode out on a tumult of profanities.
Outside the deli, he broke into an indignant stride with his left hand arcing backward and forward and his right sitting high on his hip. He muttered a reprimand to the owner and the people at the checkout for a full six blocks before his mind ticked off the warning that the next street marked the end of his territory. To anyone else, the Burger King on the other side of Thirteenth and Seventh Avenue was nothing special, but to Earl Strugg, the orange and yellow building marked the very edge of the planet.
He stopped abruptly and looked out across the street, marveling for a moment at the people who crossed, effortlessly moving themselves into the oblivion of the other side. His face screwed up at the sight of a woman in delicate pointed shoes crossing such an impossible chasm. People streamed over the curb and over the edge like ants on the march. One by one and over they go and where they stop, nobody knows—like ants, a whole doomed roiling swarm of ants. There were days when everything was like ants—when there wasn’t a thing he could point to that didn’t seem just exactly like a mealy tickering damn ant. He wiped his face with his forearm and said a quick prayer that it wouldn’t be one of those days. Then he turned to make his way back into the heart of his world.
He walked for six blocks like a man on a mission—steady gait, eyes fixed forward, head low on his shoulders. He would stop for no one, including the trucks and buses whose drivers slammed the brakes and cursed the dashboards as he plowed headlong across the streets, oblivious to all of it. He was breathing heavy at block five and sweating like a wrestler as he began the sixth. He fought his fatigue and did a galloping sprint all the way to the curb, where he hunched forward, grabbed both knees, and fell into a heavy pant. When his breathing slowed to manageable, he did ten deep knee bends with his face fixed to a distant focus point and his arms straight out at his shoulders. Then he did fifteen toe touches with impeccable form and controlled breathing. After that he tried some sit-ups but could only knock off three of them. He was straining on the fourth when he was tapped on the shoulder by the shoe of a waiter from the restaurant he was in front of. He started to his feet with his pockets emptying a collage of cigarette butts, milk-jug caps, balls of paper, rubber bands, stones, pennies, business cards, cotton balls—he didn’t know where most of it came from, but he scrambled to retrieve everything because it was in his clothes so it was his.
Morning exercises done, it was time to work, because he was broke and because a Ring-Ding-and-coffee breakfast doesn’t last long and a handful of pennies and cotton balls is no way to buy dinner. So he did the remaining block to his corner on his knees. Darwin’s theory of evolution works as well for begging as it does for the species, only it’s quarters and dollar bills instead of mating and predators that shape the selection. Over his twenty-two years, Earl found the most profitable go at begging was to simply make his way on his knees. He didn’t need to utter a word. Sooner or later the bills would come. It was easier than constructing a plea and trying to speak it over and over with a fresh delivery—reciting it day and night in rain and shine, without letting the anger seep in and screw the whole thing up. And then when the occasional person decided to give a dollar, they always wanted to talk, give some sort of advice— about where to spend it or to stop drinking or to stop smoking and the endless questions�
��all for a dollar: do you use drugs and where’s your family and why aren’t you in a shelter? People gave him directions to flophouses they wouldn’t even set foot in, and it had less to do with securing a roof over his head than it did with just getting him off the street so they didn’t have to feel the guilt of having such a nice life with old Earl sucking the tar off the road and calling it a square meal. Going on the knees was just easier. The people who gave were so horrified by the sight of him that they’d drop the money and keep moving, either out of disgust or shock or because they thought he was too far gone but, whatever—it made no difference. Earl didn’t care. They didn’t talk. That was the main thing. They didn’t give any sticky-voiced lectures of outworn advice like a bucket of piss-water over the top of his head and the windchill way below zero and who the hell needs it. They didn’t say a thing to a man on his knees but they did give money and the rest didn’t matter.
HIS POCKETS JINGLED by the time he made it to his corner. A few dollar bills too. And hardly a spoken word. He crawled onto the island of his belongings and laughed hysterically for a full minute. He’d lose the bills before the sun went down, but the coins would stay put and a pocket full of money was as good as it got sometimes—with only one block on the knees. Sweet. He said it out loud, “Sweet . . .” and laughed and said it again, shaking his head with a wide grin, and then again several more times—“Sweet . . .” as his hips began slowly rolling him back and forth.
And he began to ride.
He knew he should stop and buy more food but the ride seduced him with its rhythm. It was the one he took every day— weekends and holidays included, the same ride he’d taken since he was a boy. A ride that went back and forth. Three inches forward, three inches back. That’s just how it went. Back and forth. He’d gone thousands of miles like that, seated and rocking at the hips. Sometimes the ants would get in front of his face just at the tip of his nose, fluttering their little legs in time to the ride. After a while, the trees and the cars, people on the street and everything and all of it, pretty soon they’d all get on the ride going back and forth with the ants—their legs like his own fingers, just like them with flecks of blood under the nails, waving their little legs and all of it going back and forth. Sound even. He’d let a noise pour from his mouth and listen as the sound waved and pulled like water around his head on the ride going back and forth.
The ants tickled at his face—fingertips brushing lightly against his eyelashes, and he watched them flicker like a fleshy fire burning so close that they might actually be his fingers and not a fire and not ants but just his fingers tittering rhythmically with the ride. Shadows danced with the movements and the whole blessed thing grooved magically with the bump-up and fallback of the entire universe going back and forth and back and forth. He would go until he got hungry or cold or until he got moved along by police. He’d ride until the voices came scratching at his ears and he had to fly or talk on phones or scream into the air to drown them out. But it was a sunny day. There was no one to bother him at the moment and his belly was full of sugar and carbohydrates. A perfect day for the ride, with the sun’s warmth beating down on the sidewalk and up into his glowing face—eyes closed, mouth turned up. Just a perfect day for it. He would cover miles.
Four hours later, he was well on his way. People on the sidewalk sped up as they passed him. Dogs growled as they went by. A young father took his toddler by the shoulders to avoid the disaster of the little one turning headfirst into the lap of a smelly old bum. Earl rode through all of it—through the stares and the pointing, through sneers, through the taunts of teenagers with something to prove, and a whole sea of disgusted looks, because he smelled bad and he looked bad and who knows?—he might even be dangerous.
It didn’t matter that his mind was a catastrophic hall of mirrors. Never mind the fact that his identity changed like a stoplight—that he’d gone from Batman to Dalí over the last forty-eight hours, that in the last couple of days he’d had moments where he was absolutely certain he was Jesus Christ. Never mind the small pieces of Scotch tape in his hair. Never mind the tinfoil necklace tight around his neck to ward off Martians from Venus. (He wore it ever since overhearing a group of teenagers discussing the possibility of water on Venus, because water is the building block of life and if it’s life from outer space then it’s coming to get us for sure so watch your back and pass the tinfoil.) It didn’t matter that he’d lost three toes on his left foot from two cold days during the previous winter. Never mind the limp. People don’t care about all that. Everybody’s had it tough. Everybody’s got it tough, while you’re at it. Nobody’s got room for hard-luck stories anymore—the house crammed full of them and the rent’s due and the mortgage is due and don’t forget the bills for power and light, the car needs a new muffler and the kids need stitches and the cats need shots and a man rocking back and forth in a puddle of his own urine is a sad, sad thing, but who the hell needs it.
On some level, Earl Strugg understood that very well. You don’t survive on the streets for twenty-two years without understanding a few things on a very basic level. Go ahead and pee on yourself all you want, but leave your coat on the subway in January or get too loud with the wrong pusher, jog across the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or swallow a whole bottle of Thorazine, and it’s over pal. He’d seen so many come and go. Crazies are a dime a dozen on the golden streets of the city and only the stupid die young. Be a lunatic but don’t be a moron. Talk to yourself, wrap your arms with cellophane and flap like a pretty bird, but don’t leave your shoes in a shelter and never turn down a sandwich or a hot cup of coffee.
THE SUN SAT low at four o’clock. The days getting shorter. The change in light ticked off a part of Earl’s mind that brought the ride to a stop. That, and a sudden pain at his shoulder at the place where the scab used to be. Now the place was mobbed with blood. A stain like a brown fan spread across his shirt and lapel. The fingers of his left hand were dark red and tacky, the nails dirty like from a whole day of working the soil. He wiggled them in front of his eyes. Ants, he thought, and cursed them out loud. They’d perpetrated their destruction while he was on the ride. He was vulnerable when he was riding and they knew it. They knew it because they’re ants—the most cunning, most blindly vigorous, untiring, vicious, most overachieving damn insects on the planet. He twittered their little legs again, just off the tip of his nose before letting them drop back to his lap where he’d try to keep a better eye on them. Ants were the last thing he needed. Easy to brush away but so damn persistent— resting across his thigh but ready to rise to his shoulder as soon as his mind went elsewhere.
Lifting his gaze out across the street, he saw a small dog straining over a piece of newspaper while the owner held its leash and watched. The dog and the woman wore matching coats. The scene spun to the left as his body adjusted to being off the ride. Things turned a little after a short ride, but when they spun and throbbed it was a sure sign of a long time on the back and forth. The sequins of the little dog’s coat pulsed as he watched them, leaving no doubt in his mind about what had occupied his last hours. He felt it in his hips too—the dull ache of a repetitive strain. A cool breeze caressed his shoulder and he looked down at the stain of damp blood. “Ants now,” he groaned out loud, shaking his head. A man passing him stopped and looked back. “Beg pardon?” he asked.
“Ants,” Earl croaked, his face twirling. “Ants damn it—damn it, all this and damn ants now— Christ. . . .” The man turned away and continued walking.
Earl returned his gaze to the little dog who’d just finished up and was watching its owner carefully fold and deposit its steaming turd into the trash. They walked off, their coats shimmering with the orange glow of the setting sun. Earl followed them with his eyes until the glimmer faded into a gray haze of distant buildings and the coming dusk.
His stomach rolled with hunger—a bad feeling with the night pouring in. On good days he’d get fed in the earlier, clearer part of the day, but he’d been lured onto the
ride before finding someplace or someone to help him out, before finishing his chores. And the voices were coming. He could hear their raucous filth like an army at the horizon. They were coming like they came every night, to swallow him whole. He’d be lost in a howling onslaught—dodging the rabble between cat-naps and panic-driven sprints until the whole thing spit him out across a heap of trash with the morning sun.
He asked for the time but no one answered because people get meaner as the sun goes down. So he asked again, screamed it really, but no one even slowed down and it didn’t really matter anyway—time of day wouldn’t change the hunger or the voices or the falling sun. The whole mess was coming down on him— caught by the blizzard before getting the tent up, but you get the picture. It didn’t usually go like that, but sometimes, that’s exactly how it went.