Rain Down

by Steve Anderson

  After about ten minutes I see Jack outside talking with a uniform cop. Jack is a woman, but she dresses like a man even when she’s not pretending to look like a contractor. Right now she’s wearing a Gore-Tex jacket and a Portland Timbers baseball cap, looking more like a dad going golfing. It’s all smiles and banter over there.

  “How’s it going?” someone says next to me.

  It’s Matt, Jack’s partner. His cap is U of O but the rest of him looks almost identical to her, only he’s about a foot taller and Jack looks tougher.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Didn’t mean to freak you out,” Matt says, leaning on the doorway.

  “All right.”

  “You been doing okay? Hanging in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  Matt pats my shoulder, and begins to stroll off.

  “Question for ya,” I say.

  Matt turns back, shows me a little smile. “Shoot.”

  “If I can’t find someone, and I think they're missing, what’s the best way to go about it?”

  “Missing, like, you think something’s happened to him? Or is it a her?”

  “Him. Not sure. I can’t find him.”

  “Does he have a phone?”

  “Yeah, but, it’s in Spanish. I mean, it’s some message.”

  Matt frowns. “Makes things harder without a phone.”

  “I don’t want one,” I blurt, my voice raising. “All I mean is, it’s just not like him not to show up.”

  “Well, tell you what: you can always head across the street there, check in with us. Tell them I sent you.”

  “All right.”

  “Or you can talk to me. Tell me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Look,” Matt says, “I know you don’t exactly trust us. But, we’re not the old school. It’s a new day, has been for a while now. If it’s got to do with the four corners, we’d be the ones who might know something about it.”

  “I know. Still, I think I might know one or two places he could be yet.”

  “Fair enough.”

  And Matt strolls off faster, like he really wasn’t leaving the first time.

  It’s getting to be late in the afternoon. I think about places I could go, but they are places I used to go, and I remind myself, again, that I can’t just go to a place because I been there before. The only thing is finding Oscar. So I head back up Grand toward Burnside and the corners, hoping, telling myself that when I get back Oscar will show with some excuse he forgot to tell me about. Lots of jornaleros head back home to la familia for this or that emergency.

  Among the traffic, I see Gerald Tappen’s big black Cadillac SUV pickup.

  I hustle along the sidewalk to follow but it’s in the farthest lane on the other side. It stops at a light ahead. I run and dodge people but feel my limp.

  “What the fuck? Freak!” a delivery guy yells at me. I keep going.

  The light changes, the SUV rolls on. A break in traffic—I run out into Grand but more traffic’s coming. A semi’s brakes moan, horns honk, bicyclists yell. I’m in that video game Frogger. I zigzag, stopping and starting till I reach the other side. Two macho dudes in a parked mustang laugh at me so I lunge and scream at them and they roll up the window. I glance back over my shoulder to see Matt and Jack down the street, watching. I keep on going.

  I lost the SUV. I turn down a side street, panting and sweating. And I see the SUV parked, two streets down. There’s a coffee place there. I pull my jacket hood up over my head and come around the rear of the parked SUV, just as a man comes out the coffee pace holding a to-go cup. It’s him—Tappen. He’s talking to the air with one of those blue-flashing earphones on like some kind of cyborg robot. Vacation tan, white teeth, the Pearl District poster boy. He’s changed into an adidas sweat top that probably cost more than my tent brand-new.

  I walk up to him. He has gone quiet, listening to someone on the phone. He stares at me blankly. This Tappen has no idea who I am. And why would he? Day laborers just spontaneously appear from 7:00 am and stay till whenever they're done for the day, as if formed right from this wet sidewalk. I step closer. That Eva women gazes out the passenger window, out beyond the street, unaware of me for sure. I pull my hood down.

  “You still on the phone?” I mutter.

  “We’re working on that,” Tappen says. “We are. I’m promising you, right here and now ...” He’s talking to someone.

  That Eva women watches now through the SUV windows.

  I stay there, my feet planted.

  As Tappen listens to his phone, he stands stiff and looks pale as if he’s just heard he has blood cancer. The guy has played sports, you can tell by the way his neck muscles stretch, but he also has something desperate about him, around the eyes. Stressed. Guys like this have their own types of pressure—credit cards, car loans and mortgages maxed out, taking on too many jobs to keep it all going, meaning his family never seeing him. The economy tanking did not help matters one iota. I should know. I know it all too well. Tappen seems all right. He has given us work and wasn’t one of those scumbags who tried not to pay the cash at the end.

  He hangs up. He seems to sense me, or at least he sees me in a reflection and he turns to me.

  I say, “I’m not asking for money—”

  Beep-beep-beep-beep—his phone rings. He studies me as he speaks into the phone, and something flashes in his eyes, and he squints at me as if trying to decipher some assembly manual. He holds up a finger like I should wait. “Hold on. I’ll call you back,” he says and hangs up.

  He smiles. “You’re that guy Oscar brought in,” he says all loud, as if I might be retarded, or whatever the word for it is these days.

  I nod, yep.

  “Oscar said you could do whatever. Oscar was never wrong, I’ll give him that. Right? No one’s ever what you think.”

  “You seen him?” I say.

  “Me? No.”

  “He work for you today?”

  “No. Nope. A couple days ago he did—with you, right?”

  I nod. “If you see him, can you tell him I been looking for him?” I tell Tappen my name, but he doesn’t repeat it to remember.

  “Sure, man. Sure,” he only says.

  “Okay. Thanks. Have a good one.”

  “No work just yet,” Tappen blurts at me, kind of going out of his way. “Waiting for codes and shit. Fucking city,” he goes on.

  And I feel a little rush of heat run through me. Cussing for my “street” benefit has always rubbed me wrong. “Okay,” I grunt.

  “Oh, hey. You see Oscar, can you tell him we’ve been looking for him? He sort of left us hanging.”

  “I ain’t seen him. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “I understand. Sure. Man, I just hope he was not doing drugs or something.”

  Always with the drugs—as if they’re all addicts, all of Latin America, just junkies. Or did this Tappen really mean me, like I am the bad seed? As if Oscar would somehow be here if it wasn’t for me?

  “‘Course he’s not,” I say, done with this. I start to go, yank my hood over my head.

  “Okay. Later,” Tappen says to my back.

  I can feel him watching me, just like Manny and I were watching him. And it does not escape me that he’d said Oscar was instead of is. He said it twice.

  *

  I try an outside pay phone I know that’s not broke and I get the same voice mail message in Spanish and I realize I don’t even know if I got Oscar’s current number. I never used it or needed it, he just wanted me to have it. I ram my hands deep in my pockets, all fists, my knuckles banging together. I pass Oregonian and Willamette Week paper boxes and want to kick them, knock them right into traffic. I haven’t felt this way in a long time, and I’m glad Oscar isn’t witnessing it.

  I bound back across Grand, screw Frogger, screw the honks and shouts at me. Then I’m back on my bike and pumping the pedals as hard as I can, jumping curbs and swerving between people, cars, other bicyclists. I can’t help it. T
he hot blood has gone to my head. I fly down a side street and a delivery truck almost hits me but I sneak by so fast the driver never would’ve seen me before I was dead.

  I end up close to the river near the Burnside Bridge, past the skateboard park underneath, keep going north on Second till it stops. I leave my bike locked to a Dead End sign, my own little joke to myself. An elevated stretch of the I-5 freeway looms ahead. I head toward a gravel service road. A fence has a sign: No Trespassing. I know this railroad zone by the river bank like some know the house they grew up in. It’s a wasteland of rail lines, overhanging overpasses, more fences. I’m still feeling out of control. I slap at my head. Kick at air. I need to get ahold of myself. I cross the tracks. I pass the remains of a homeless campout, keep going. I find the spot near the water’s edge, looking out on the floating Eastside Esplanade with its happy bouncing joggers and bicyclers. Boats move along the river. Right above me is a low, leaden sky of that sooty concrete overpass and those squared pillars, so close the under-highway would hit my head if I was standing. At my feet are slimy boulders, gnarly wood flotsam, and mangy river crows with their frantic pecking beaks.

  This is my spot. This is the place I go because I been here before. This is my good old hideaway, the only place that can stop my blood from boiling. No one else ever finds it. The boulders and logs help hide me. I’m cradled here, like I’m cupped in a giant hand. I look out. Across the river, the city skyline mixes with the West Hills beyond.

  The best part, though, is my view to the north. Dominating the horizon is that black skeleton that is the Steel Bridge. I hold my knees to my chest staring at it and, in awe, I imagine the bridge collapsing and hurtling down into the dark mass of river. And I’m on that bridge when it goes. I think on that a while ...

  I hear sirens.

  It perks me up, something about it. I stick my head out and look back toward the river bank no-man’s land. I can see white forms and blue and white color; what look like the shapes of police cars. They’re just beyond a boarded-up old railway switch house.

  I make for the switch house, using bushes and the freeway pillars for cover. The shapes are definitely police cars, three of them—one unmarked. Police and rail workers mill around. One cop leans against a fence, facing away from the scene while another holds him up.

  A decrepit iron fire escape runs up the rear of the abandoned switch house, out of sight of the cops. I climb the thing, up to the top of the two stories. I’m sweating now, panting, pushing myself upward. I’ve always been curious but this is different, like someone’s got a winch cable on me and they’re pulling me up and in.

  I get on the flat roof, crouching, and move across the splitting sticky tar. I approach the edge and look out, and down: The rail line runs through a shallow gully. The ties are oily and the earth dim. Along the tracks and ties, I see…

  Blood. It’s dark and drying, in splatters and pools.

  Two legs lay beside the tracks, but they’re not attached to anything. They’re severed at the hip. Wearing work pants. One work boot, one foot bare.

  One arm lays nearby. The hand wears a work glove, and it’s orange just like my new one.

  A torso, with one arm attached, all still clothed in a blue soccer jersey. The back of the jersey reads Alvarez and has the number 9.

  Oscar was wearing it the last time I saw him. I’d bought the same gloves as his because they had worked so well for him.

  I collapse. I slump. It’s like someone dumped a truckload of sand on me. Then it’s a hose of cold water. I tense up. I press myself to the roof’s edge. My eyes search for Oscar’s head or other arm but only tall grasses and litter line the tracks.

  A police van pulls up below. Men unload investigations gear from trunks and cases.

  My stomach rolls, pinches, and my throat swells up and squeezes. I turn away, feeling paler than the gray-white sky above me. I vomit onto the roof. I get it all out. My mind racing.

  I hustle down the fire escape sweating, moaning. I jump to the ground too soon, wince at the pain in my ankles and shuffle around to the corner of this building that stands between me and what’s left of Oscar. I cling to the wall.

  I got to get out of here before they come over, before they see me. Farther away from the crime scene, from the way I came, I see a gap in the bushes. I scramble over like a crab and on through, to a hole in a fence. And I’m gone.

  *

  My eyes grow hot. Tears run down my face, mixing with the sweat.

  Someone killed Oscar? I can’t fathom this. Who would want to harm him? It just can’t be.

  I find my way back under the overpasses to my riverbank hideaway. The rain’s pouring down now, and the freeway above mixes with it to create a thunder-like droning. It’s dry here. I have a blanket stashed. I wrap it around me and stare at the grim Steel Bridge. I try to close my eyes. Tears find their way out anyway. I pull the blanket tighter; I stuff it with newspaper and rags to keep me warm. I’d given my sleeping bag to Amy. Another bad idea.

  Again, I wonder what it would be like to climb that bridge and never have to climb back down. It’s far from the first time I’ve had such thoughts. They reach back to before I came to the city and are probably what sent me here in the first place, fooling me into thinking I could escape them. It was way back in Oregon City, one foot out of Canby. I had it going on back then. That part of the Willamette Valley wasn’t ever doing well, but I had a shiny king cab pickup, a brand-new model with every snazzy option, including multi-sport racks and canopy and a trailer for my new jet skis. The graphic airbrushed on the door read, Bruner & Son Construction. My dad had started his own business. I would have inherited it too, if life hadn’t started getting up on top of me. The pressure. The demands. The fear of failing. I used to smoke back then, menthols. One day when lighting a Salem, I could feel my face turn into a stone mask. Then the mask shuddered, and it cracked, and it felt like the skin of my face had been ripped clean off. I felt like my heart hung out in the air, stinging, throbbing, dangling from a chain around my neck. I couldn’t breathe. Tears ran down my face and my mouth wanted to scream but nothing could make its way out.

  I was on a side street in downtown Oregon City. I couldn’t move. I sat there in my truck, my cigarette butt embering on the dash, melting the new plastic. I tried talking to myself, I did. I had too much stuff—that was my whole problem, I told myself. So I was going to get rid of my stuff. Next thing I knew, I saw my glove box hanging open. CDs and cassettes, baggies of pills, pot and coke, and all my many credit cards lay across the seats and floor. My beeper. That bulky early cell phone I had then, that kept ringing all the fucking time.

  My beeper was beeping away now, and my phone ringing. But I felt like if I picked them up I would explode; to me, they were grenades.

  I had dumped out my wallet and the business cards and cash on the seat. I had such a great girlfriend then. I pulled out the photo of her and tossed that on the pile.

  My cell phone kept ringing. The beeper. Live grenades.

  This went on into the night. At dawn, I had managed to get all the truck doors open. Heaps of my stuff lay scattered on the truck and around it—wet suits, boom box, new clothes, electronics and more, some still in shopping bags.

  I remember lighting another cigarette. My beeper beeped again. I should have just turned it and the phone off but I couldn’t do that either. My dad was depending on me too much, but what if I couldn’t make good? What if I failed? I remember thinking.

  It was all too much.

  I remember walking away from the pickup and tossing the keys over my shoulder at it. Tears ran down my face, I was shaking, and my chest felt like it wanted to explode.

  I had walked down a connecting street near the old paper mill and made for the old Oregon City Bridge, narrow and tall over the Willamette River, the mist rising off the nearby falls. The bridge’s arch was sheathed in concrete but its skeleton was all cold steel underneath, just like this one in Portland I can’t ever stop looking at.
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  I didn’t know what I was going to do, with myself and to myself.

  Just like now.

  In the morning, the sun gleams the city skyline, the metal and glass glaring. The sun can’t find me here though. I have to know what happened to Oscar. I unwrap my blanket. I push myself up and I stand, aching as if suddenly ten years older. My back wants to spasm but I go easy.

  I hit the sidewalks. Over at the mini mart at Burnside, I yank a newspaper from a recycling bin. I find the Metro section and take it to the side of the building, sit with my back to the brick wall. I flip the pages.

  BODY OF MAN FOUND ALONG RIVER TRAIN TRACKS

  Police are investigating a body found on the rail line running along the Willamette River near the Steel and Burnside bridges. The man has been identified as Oscar Alvarez, 32, of Portland and Guatemala. No cause of death has been determined. A police spokesman said the body was hit by a freight train, which has hindered evidence gathering. No details were immediately available. The investigation is continuing.

  I read it twice. A third time. I can’t look up. My face aches, hot behind the eyeballs again. I put down the paper, between my legs. I sit there a while letting the bricks dig into my back, the wet sidewalk soaking through my jeans. It’s raining out, then pouring. People pass, not even seeing me.

  *

  I don’t know how long I sat there outside the mini mart, but it helps me focus. I need to think. Oscar would want me thinking. First, I find my feet. Then I pull off my telltale starter jacket, turn it inside out so it’s dark blue instead of black-orange-white, put it back on. I go to the recycling bin, make sure no one’s watching, and set the newspaper back inside. It’s raining harder. The wind’s picking up. I walk the battered sidewalks keeping one eye over my shoulder. I use store windows to check for anyone trailing me. I also see how dirty I am already back on the street, with a tangled beard growing.