Man Gone Down

by Michael Thomas

  “Hey, man,” he wheezes groovily, like he’s stoned. I blindly slap at him, but he won’t stop. “Remember when I called you from that public joint in Waltham and I thought the doctors had turned me into a donkey?”

  I let out a screeching laugh and wave for him to stop. I take my hands away from my eyes, and wipe the few tears. He smacks my shoulder. “Had to make an ass of myself to get you to quit your moaning—whatever it takes.”

  I gesture blindly to him for a cigarette. He gives me one. I exhale to regain my composure, turn, and get a light. He points down at the women. They’ve packed up their picnic. The olive one shoots up a look that I assume to be withering. She nudges her friend with the bag, and they leave.

  Gavin wheezes over a drag. “Some things never change.” His face lights up as though he’s just remembered something. “Ricky, oh Ricky. They finally dragged him out of there.”

  “What about Mindy?”

  “Oh, she just sat there, lowered her butt, and slumped. I went back to my room. I couldn’t help but try to tie this kid into DuBois. It worked for a while, you know—one body, two souls—and that kid punching himself out as a sign of his love and reconciliation.

  “And then my head was a little clearer the next day. Ricky came in and started to pack his bag. He got the banana peel out—it was black, with white mold—and a little pipe. He stuffed a piece into the bowl and tried to smoke it. When he saw that it wasn’t going to work, he ate the peel. He packed the rest of his things, said good-bye, and checked out.

  “So I just sat there and it started coming back to me—picking up this last time. Your dinner party: Drinking that wine. It wasn’t about the poems—not entirely at least. That woman liked me. I knew it. It wasn’t just the poems. It was that quick calculation she did to see if she could be with me, regardless of whether or not there was love. It’s funny, though, the few girls I’ve been with, they put up with a lot of shit. I know I’m not easy. So why would they split over the size of present and potential paychecks? Doesn’t that strike you as kind of odd? I mean, I liked her, she liked me— I could tell. I know it sounds stupid, but if you love someone, would the fact that they might be a bit of a bum stop you from seeing it through? Ridiculous—after all that’s happened—that what she did hurt me. Anyway, I started writing a play about it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I think I may turn out to be a half-decent playwright.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s a farce.”

  I nod. A bell tolls from somewhere north. We both listen. Gavin claps, stands, and stretches his lower back by swaying side to side. “Getting old,” he grumbles. “You get all bound up so quickly.” He gets into his batting stance, watches the pitcher’s windup. He doesn’t offer at the first one, “Uh-uh. Low. Outside.” He swings at the second in slow motion—watches the ball into the barrel of the bat, his hands roll over, then the flight of the ball uptown. He lowers the bat onto his shoulder and sighs heavily. He looks sad, like he used to, when he was a boy.

  “So it made me think about picking up—drinking that wine . . .” He takes some slow practice swings.” That wine—I was like, ‘This’ll show ‘em’ . . . you know—like . . . ‘She’ll weep when she finds me gone.’”

  “Then what?”

  “Fuck. What—then I was drunk. And I lost more time.”

  He starts down the stairs, and I don’t want him to go. He gets to the bottom and turns back to me. I lean back and chug the coffee. He watches me, holds his ground, and the people walking by have to pass behind or in front of him. I can still see his face—tall man. I think he nods. He waves for me to stand and descend the stair. I don’t get up. He cocks his head to the side, squints, and starts back up. I put my head down in my lap. He sits down next to me, leans forward, and whispers low.

  “What’s up, captain?”

  I feel tired again—sick and trembling.

  “Gav.”

  “Yeah, pal.”

  “You ever feel too damaged?”

  He exhales and straightens—trying to respect the question. And it’s not respectable. So when I hear him gathering his breath to speak without mocking me, I almost cry. Then he leans back down.

  “The day I was getting out I called Ma from detox. I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t even going to tell her that I’d slipped.” His voice cracks to a falsetto. “You’ve done better than you think. And forgive me, please, for saying this, but your mother never saw you go down.”

  He breaks. I find his wrist and hold it. He lets me for a moment and then softly pulls away. “That may have been the most selfish thing I’ve ever said.” He exhales and tries to compose himself, but there’s still a high tremor in his voice. “So I call her and tell her that I’ve been out on a mission for the last few months, and she doesn’t say much, just, ‘Wow kid, I’m surprised you’re not dead.’ I don’t know what to say to that. So we’re silent on the line, and then she says, ‘Remember when your father called you out?’”

  I turn my head to him. He looks at me and nods.

  “Yeah, I don’t think I told you this one. It was just before we met. My old man had sobered up, was on good behavior—he got me Ted’s book that year. He was making some decent dough—trying to come back into our lives by spending. Anyway, he lost that job and went out on one of those jazz club benders—tears through his savings. He calls up Ma asking for money, and she tells him to go fuck himself or whatever—you know Ma. So he tells her to put me on the phone. I pick up, and he tells me that he’s coming over to teach me a lesson. I hang up, and I decide that I’m going to kill him—and I wish I had a gun. And I’m looking at my bat. Anyway, he shows up and drives up on the sidewalk and starts calling me out—‘Come and get your beating, son!’ Just standing there, real calmly, with his hands behind his back like he was giving a lecture.”

  He pauses, grins, and starts to nod.

  “So I decide, you know—fuck that—I’m standing up to that fucker. So I open the window and yell out, ‘I ain’t comin’ out there, you drunk bastard!’ So we go back and forth like that—me yelling and him being cool—‘. . . come and get your beating, son . . .’ Ma’s pleading for me not to go—he’ll kill me. And a crowd gathers outside, but no one will do anything. So finally, he comes up to the window and he says, so just me and Ma can hear, ‘I don’t know if you’ll win or lose, but I do know that I can’t do anywhere near the damage to you that you’ll do to yourself if you don’t come out.’”

  “So you went.”

  “Yeah. Son of a bitch had a pandy-bat behind his back.” He shakes his head. “So I tell Ma, ‘Yeah, I remember.’ And there’s more silence on the line. Then she asks me if I’m sober, and I say’Yes.’ And then she asks me if I’m going to stay sober, and I say, ‘For today.’ Then she says, ‘You’re a good boy, Gavin—you’re a good man. I’m proud of you.’ I fuckin’ lost it.”

  He forces out a chuckle, crushes his cup, and stands.

  “Then she wired me some dough. I didn’t even ask.” He looks down at me. “How you doing?”

  I nod and stand slowly. He slaps my back. We both look out over the avenue.

  “You know,” he breathes. I try to find what it is he’s looking at but can’t pick it out. “Maybe the only thing worse than believing everything has some kind of meaning is believing that everything doesn’t.” He shrugs his shoulders. “That don’t make no sense.” He turns to me, studies my face, and then turns back to the street. “I miss you, man, it’s been too long.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can’t fall out of touch like that.”

  “No.”

  “How do we not?”

  “Stop going out on missions.”

  “Oh shit! Touché. All right—stop hanging out with assholes.”

  “I’m not hanging out with anyone.”

  “Dinner parties with the smart set. Golf with I-bankers at the club—fuck you.”

  “Marco’s okay.”

  “Yeah?”


  “Yeah.”

  “Well then, maybe we’ll all go out to the club when you get back.”

  “I don’t know if I’m coming back.”

  “Finally getting the brood out—good for you—this is no place for a family. I’ll bet you have to plan a whole day just to find a couple of blades of grass.”

  I say it weakly, without thinking. “I’m a dead man, Gavin.”

  “Pfft,” he spits. “Who isn’t?”

  He extends his arm to the sidewalk, and then we descend. We stand facing each other for a moment. The waves of walkers part around us. Gavin bends his arm and taps at his bare wrist.

  “Your ride’s here.”

  I nod.

  “So you’re getting on a bus?”

  I shrug.

  “A rolling obstreperous ass? You know, when the seats on those things warm up, the smell of every butt that ever sat in them is awakened.”

  He points in the direction of Penn Station. I shake my head. He nods with mock gravity. “Ah yes—you are a true American. Nomadic. Romantic. Appearing out of nowhere to stake your claim on a place of dreams. Down the highway with you.”

  I look at the clock. He doesn’t. He points over my shoulder toward the Port Authority. “You know I got here early and I got confused, so I went to the station to look for you. You’re taking a Greyhound, right?”

  I nod weakly.

  “Right. Well, there isn’t a 5:15. There’s a 5:33—express to Providence and Boston. Is that it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He taps his wrist again, then points north. “Skedaddle.” He holds out his hand as if to shake, but he’s pinching something in it—a folded bill. I hesitate. He pushes it at me.

  “For your eczema.”

  I look down, shuffle, reshoulder my bag.

  “No, I owe you. Anyway, I’m set for a while. I’ll try and get you more later.” I take the bill and put it in my pocket without looking at it. We shake. He slaps me on the shoulder. “All right, captain. I’ll be seeing ya.” He starts to turn away.

  “Hey, Gav?” I mumble.

  He cocks his head to one side, smiles, and croons in a baritone. “Mmm-yess.”

  “What’s the B-side of oblivion?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Its inverse.”

  He smiles mischievously, squints. His eyes move slowly back and forth and upward behind the lids, as though watching something secretly ascend. He opens his eyes. They’re bright. He leans in and whispers.

  “Heaven.” And leans back.

  “Is there beer in heaven?”

  He rubs his whiskers. “Mmmm-yess.”

  “Can we drink it?”

  He smiles wider, clasps his hands together, and croons again.

  “Why, mm-yesss.” He waves, points uptown, and whispers, “Godspeed, brathir.”

  20

  Port Authority Bus Station is crowded and noisy, so I get on line without thinking. I don’t feel sick or weak, just tired. That feeling grounds me, though—my limbs and eyeballs pulsing. It keeps me, oddly enough, awake on line—mindlessly though. I don’t even think about Gavin’s money until I’m given back change for a hundred.

  I have a little time, so I go to the men’s room to change. Strange: no junkies, no winos, just people going to the bathroom. I know it’s filthy and it stinks, but my senses seem to get it only in part. I lock myself into a stall, knowing that I should feel a certain terror, but I don’t. I don’t even mind letting my bare feet touch the floor when I change my socks. I wash my face and look into the polished steel mirror. Come and get your beating. Out of the wool suit I feel the chilly air. This place is conditioned for summer’s dog days, not its temperate ones. Now a shiver. I tell myself that it’s the caffeine and hunger.

  I go into a strange little store—part deli, part drugstore, part newsstand—a part of the strange fluorescent mall. I don’t know what I’m getting, but then I taste my breath—gum, water. On the way to the counter I pass a bin of plastic dinosaurs. They look better than the cheap, squishy ones they usually sell in places like this—generic gestures at some sort of extinct monster type. These look to be near museum gift shop quality. I pick out a gray-green carnivore. It’s hard, heavy. ACROCANTHASAURUS is written in embossed letters on its belly. I wonder if X has ever heard of this one.

  I keep moving down the aisle. In another bin are some coloring books and a couple of stacks of random small notebooks. On the cover of one of them is a watercolor of a beach. It’s actually quite skillfully done—simple quick strokes. The perspective seems like it’s from a high dune, and out near the horizon line a great whale is breeching. I take that, too. I scan the rest of the aisle for C—nothing.

  I look over the food, but all the meats in the deli-case look old and crispy, and the offerings on the steam table are gray. I take a small warm bottle of water, then go to the candy aisle and get two oversized Snickers, mint gum. I see the packs of baseball cards and next to them football and soccer. I take three packs of soccer cards and go to the front. I lay my things out on the counter, and the grim old man begins to silently ring them up. I give him a twenty. He swabs it with a marker, holds it in the air, and waits. I look over my offerings and get a sharp pang in my chest, which shoots down to my gut. Bringing these things is worse than coming empty handed. He gives me my change, reaches under the counter, but I wave him off. I stuff them in my bag and go.

  The bus is strangely empty: Only one side is filled. I pick a seat in the beginning of the back third and drop into it heavily. I lean against the window and look across the aisle. There’s a woman across; from the way she’s settled in, looks like she’s been riding this bus awhile—long overdue up south. She’s older—maybe in her sixties, dark brown, a bit heavy, and her eyes are almost closed. She holds a summer hat in her lap. Her hands rest on her stomach—thick, long, ringless fingers interlocked. Her thumbs circle each other slowly. She turns, smiles, and nods. I nod back. We turn away.

  The bus is warm, but not so much as to release the trapped smells that Gavin had warned of. There’s a rumble I can’t place, then realize that it’s the diesel engine echoing in the garage. The driver climbs aboard, looks down the aisle, sits and closes the door. And then we’re out on Eighth Avenue. I look for Gavin on the sidewalk, but I know he’s gone. I don’t know where he will go and I think for a moment that I should’ve asked him to come with me. I close my eyes and see his face—what it is now—“God bless Gavin,” I mouth. I open my eyes and roll my head to the side. The woman across the aisle smiles as though she’s the recipient of my benediction. I fight back a yawn and nod back to her. She turns to the window, looks at the east side of the avenue rushing by—the remaining porn shops and troubled minds out in front, people in suits and people in coveralls. I’ve always liked New York City at times like this—the emptiness of late summer, the gestures of the absent population, the space and the silence, and the sun starting to fade and go down. All of it through a closed window. In motion. The city offered a perfect opening when we all rolled into it. I was anonymous, had my notebooks, and couldn’t wait for my arm to heal so I could play guitar. Shake’s now old used car, the Plymouth Duster—he called it the Feral Coupe, and he drove me down the West Side before cutting across Houston—sharp Indian-summer day. I’m not nostalgic. I’m out of that memory’s orbit anyway, and now the closure is just right, as well—late-summer sunset with sleep coming on.

  I take out the list once again and open the little table. I write, “Get on the bus,” and then cross it out. I reread the list and make dots next to each task, just to be sure. I fold it and put it away. I take out the little notebook and open it—more like a sketchbook, the pages unlined. I write on the inside cover, “When you were born, you were so small I could hold you in the palm of my hand”—I close it, and then question what I wrote—if I omitted, repeated, or misspelled any words and then what it even means. The book suddenly seems too private, even for me. I
wonder if I should send it later—if there will be a later, or if it, like so many other plans and stories, will sit under a bed or in a closet, get lost or smudged and torn till it’s illegible. I don’t know how I’ll give them these things: in private, each child alone, trying to understand the significance of my calling to them. And then later, much later, them finally understanding that it was the last time I was their father. The old woman groans. I put it away.

  I get brief glimpses of scenery—the sun at the west end of 125th Street, the warehouses of the South Bronx, the thick stream of cars going past my window. We make the expressway, but the bus stops and starts like we’re still on the city streets. I have a quick hunger pang and remember the candy bars. I take one out, start to open it, and feel the old woman watching me. I turn. Her eyes look sunken, and her breathing’s rapid and shallow. She fidgets with her hat. I lean over to her.

  “I’m sorry, are you okay?”

  She nods weakly, not bothering to raise her head from the seat.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nods again and leans to me. “It’s okay, baby,” she says slowly with a thick drawl. “I just have a touch of the sugars.”

  I slide over to the aisle seat and offer her the Snickers. She looks at it, closes her eyes, and shakes her head slightly. I put it on the seat beside her.

  “Sweetheart,” her voice brightens, but she keeps her head down. “I can’t take this.”

  “It’s okay,” I point at my bag. “I have another.” Then I whisper, “I’m not really hungry—just trying to pass the time.”

  “Thank you,” she exhales but still doesn’t move. I must look worried because she nods and says, “Oh, I’ll be fine now.”

  I must doze off because when I look out the window again, there aren’t any more buildings, only trees going by. We’re moving quickly—no traffic, no city—now a break and a shore and the beginning of a bridge. We mount and I look west, up the twist of water. It must be a sharp bend up there, because even though we rise and cross, I can’t see beyond the turn. So I forget about it and concentrate instead on the straight I can see—just beyond the obstructing bridge. I wonder what it was like one hundred, two hundred years ago. Who fished? Who drowned? What was it like to settle on these banks without the concrete and steel? Then, perhaps because of how the late light has cast the top of the dark water silver, I think of Pincus and his mustache—the river as mustache. I think the banks are moving inward, narrowing the water, but it’s blackness on the border of my vision—a darkening, contracting scope. And I’m gone.