Bone

by George C. Chesbro

  "The head needs cleaning," Burt rasped. "That should keep you busy for a couple of hours. Go to it, Mr. Bone."

  Bone stepped through the door into the huge, marble-tiled lavatory and almost retched. Now he understood why the men outside the shelter had been urinating on the wall. The lavatory looked like it had not been cleaned in weeks, and all the urinals and toilets were blocked up. There were puddles of urine and vomit on the floor, smears of feces everywhere. The room was an open sewer.

  Sewer!

  Bone blinked rapidly, momentarily feeling short of breath and oddly disoriented. These smells, this sewer, meant something to the stranger, he thought. But not this place, this room, this sewer. Someplace else.

  Underground.

  Above ground.

  Over and under the ground, filthy smells under, yet something overhead, very high. Over and under . . .

  Peel off.

  The stranger had been in sewers, Bone thought. But where was the sky in sewers? Why should he think of the two things, blue skies and filthy sewers, at the same time? It made no sense.

  Orange, streaked with crimson. Blood. Something buried alive. The orange figure was down there, coming at him. Himself? Purple flashes. Bones, bones, bones . . . underground. The stranger couldn't possibly see the sky from the sewers, or the sewers from the sky, and yet the fetid odor of this room made him think of both.

  Who am I?!

  "At the rate you're going, blue-eyes, we're both going to die of old age before you get finished. You're not getting paid to just stand there."

  Bone turned to find the burly security guard standing very close to him, his gauze mask once again in place over his nose and mouth. For a moment he felt rage at the man with the cold eyes for interrupting his thoughts; he felt he had been close to something, his senses prodding his brain and the ancient, secondary memory system Ali Hakim had told him might exist. It did exist, Bone thought; he had felt its stirrings. But now it was gone. He must be patient; there would be other sights, sounds, smells. Dreams.

  "Here, Burt," Bone said, abruptly handing the mop, pail and rags to the startled security guard. "I've decided to make a career change."

  "You're a wise guy!" Burt shouted after him as Bone strode quickly out of the lavatory. "You've got a bad attitude, and I'm telling you right now that you're going to be waiting in line one hell of a long time before you go down to dinner tonight! You lazy, fucking bum!"

  Sky and ground, Bone thought to himself as he walked away, the security guard's angry words echoing in the long stone corridor.

  Climbing. Underground.

  Chapter Eight

  (i)

  He spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the recreation rooms of the shelter, then walking the streets ringing it, studying faces, hoping for some sign of recognition. But in the multitude of faces he looked into—old and young, male and female, black, white and Hispanic—he saw only despair, loneliness and defeat. And sometimes he saw nothing at all, a curious and frightening vacancy in the eyes of men and women who slumped in the shadows of doorways, or shuffled along the sidewalks, like zombies. There were dozens of drunks sprawled on the sidewalk, or occasionally vomiting into the gutter. The street called the Bowery seemed to be lined with drunks, and by late afternoon Bone found that he was severely depressed. He fought his sadness by pressing even harder to find someone he recognized, or who recognized him, trying—usually unsuccessfully—to strike up conversations with some of the other men. Most merely eyed him suspiciously, and then asked for money.

  The shift of security guards came at five-thirty. Bone, standing in the outer vestibule just behind the metal detectors in order to study the faces of new arrivals coming in for supper, watched as the cold-eyed Burt and malodorous Frank held a whispered conference with three of the replacement guards. Occasionally, one or more of the guards would turn his head and furtively glance at him with open suspicion and hostility. Bone, now virtually certain that he would find nothing of value to him in the shelter, merely stared back.

  He did not even bother getting in line to go down to eat until seven, when it appeared that most of the men who would be arriving were already there. Dave Berryman found him, and they waited in line together. Berryman's boyish face was flushed with excitement; he had been out since early afternoon, and although he had not actually spoken with anyone who might hire him, he had dared to take a bus uptown and had walked past the advertising agencies on Madison Avenue, including the one where he had last worked. He had stopped in a bank and converted part of his welfare allowance into rolls of quarters and dimes, and the next day he hoped to work up the courage to actually make some calls and inquire about openings.

  Bone gave an occasional polite nod as Berryman talked throughout the meal, but he was only half listening to the other man's excited recitation of his adventures uptown; he continued to search faces, but to no avail. He was already thinking about his next step. He was now thoroughly convinced that the stranger had never been in this place, and it was highly unlikely that any of the members of this particular underclass of the homeless would recognize him. Tomorrow he would begin using the maps Anne had given him; he would walk uptown, begin searching through the streets, soup kitchens and temporary shelters there.

  After dinner he resumed walking through the shelter and on the adjacent streets, still searching for someone who might come up to him and say, "Hello, Bone." Nothing. At five minutes to ten he came back inside, just before they locked the doors. Tense, depressed and very disappointed, he suddenly found that he was exhausted. But he found there was something the stranger insisted he do before sleep: wash. He had used the first of his emergency funds to purchase a gallon jug of spring water. He took toothbrush, toothpaste and soap from his package, which he had retrieved from the place where he had hidden it, then brushed his teeth and washed himself as best he could in the corridor just outside the stinking lavatory.

  Then he gave the package to one of the guards to put in his wire basket, and went into the vast main hall of the armory. The cots nearest the entrance were already filled with men, most already asleep and snoring. Bone went to the rear of the hall, found an empty cot at the very end of a row and slumped down on it. He was asleep almost immediately.

  (ii)

  He was awakened in the middle of the night by the hard, persistent, spasmodic coughing of the man on the cot across from him. Bone sat up, looked over at the man and felt a sudden wave of revulsion and fear pass through him. The man was slumped over the edge of his cot, both hands to his mouth as he vainly tried to stifle the coughing. His sheets and the floor beneath his head were speckled with blood. He whooped, coughed again, brought up thick, bloody sputum, which fell to the armory floor.

  Tuberculosis.

  Bone shuddered, quickly turned away and put a hand to his mouth to keep from retching. His first reaction was fear, for he had been breathing tiny droplets of the man's infected sputum for hours. Then came concern and pity for the man, whom Bone could see was old, and who was coughing away his life alone, helplessly adrift in the middle of a vast city which Bone was certain must have among the best medical facilities in the world. It was not right, Bone thought. The old man should be in a hospital.

  He sat up, put his feet on the floor, retrieved his shoes from where he had anchored them under two steel legs of the cot. Then he rose, intending to go to the guards at the front of the armory to report the old man's condition. In the dim light cast by the naked, low-wattage bulbs suspended from the ceiling, Bone peered down the vast length of the armory filled with sleeping men—and stiffened.

  At the opposite end of the hall, near the entrance and backlighted by the harsher bulbs in the outside corridors and vestibule, four men stood huddled together, speaking in whispers. One was an on-duty guard, in uniform. There were Burt and Frank, dressed now in civilian clothes. The fourth figure, in a gray leather jacket, jeans and black boots, looked to Bone to be younger than the three guards, perhaps no more than a teenager.
He carried an empty paper shopping bag folded under his arm.

  As Bone watched, the teenager in the gray leather jacket handed money to each of the three guards, who then stepped back outside into the corridor. The gray-jacketed youth, whom Bone could now see was Hispanic, with long, stringy hair falling down over his shoulders, removed something from his pocket which glinted briefly in the harsh backlighting. Then he began moving up the center aisle.

  Bone quickly moved back into the shadows at the rear wall of the armory, beneath a broken exit sign, and watched as the young man paused and stooped down beside the first sleeping man. The youth reached under the man's cot, dragged out what appeared to be a lumpy laundry bag. The youth searched through the laundry bag, removed a few items and put them into his shopping bag.

  The second man in the row started as the youth approached, sat up. The youth darted forward, held what Bone could now see was a knife against the man's throat and whispered something in his ear. The man fumbled with the buttons of his heavy flannel shirt, removed something from around his neck and gave it to the young man, who dropped it in the paper bag.

  Bone found the fingers of his right hand reflexively clenching and unclenching, and he knew what the stranger wanted—the iron-hard femur, which was locked away in the guards' room. The stranger had, indeed, used the femur as a weapon, Bone thought—perhaps in self-defense against someone like this gray-jacketed youth who might have tried to rob him.

  In fact, Bone thought there was something familiar about the youth—although the face meant nothing to him. His clothes?

  But he had other things to think about now, and Bone let the thought go. There were, Bone estimated, upwards of a thousand men sleeping in the armory—all relatively helpless, disarmed by Burt and Frank, who would also have taken note of anything of value which the homeless men carried.

  Even if the young man with the knife only got a dollar or two from each man, Bone thought, he was going to make quite a haul in the two or three hours it would take him to maraud through the armory.

  Unless someone stopped him.

  "Wake up," Bone whispered urgently as he knelt down in the aisle between the two men closest to him.

  The man on his right, whose breath smelled of cheap whiskey, snorted, then stirred. "What—?"

  "Wake up!" Bone repeated, shaking the frail shoulder of the man on his left. "You're going to be robbed."

  The man on his right nodded, then rolled over on his side and began to snore loudly. Bone, shaking his head in frustration, moved down the aisle to the next man, shook him. "Wake up, damn it. You're going to be robbed."

  This man sat up quickly; he looked around him in alarm, then clutched at something he wore around his neck.

  "Wake up as many of the men around you as you can," Bone continued curtly when he saw that this third man was sober and alert. "Tell them they're going to be robbed if they don't get up and stand together."

  He straightened up and started down the aisle—then stopped when he saw the gray-jacketed teenager with the stringy hair standing still, glaring at him from perhaps twenty yards away; even in the dim light, Bone could see hatred smoldering in the youth's dark eyes.

  The youth slowly raised his hand to show Bone the knife he held—a switchblade, with a notched, six-to-seven-inch blade. He motioned for Bone to back away.

  "Wake up, everybody!" Bone shouted, keeping his eyes on the youth. "Wake up! There's a thief in here! Get the guards!"

  "You motherfucker!" the boy snarled, his lips pulling back to reveal uneven, discolored teeth. "I'm going to cut you!"

  By now a number of men closest to him had begun to stir, and a few had jumped to their feet and were milling about. The steady, low murmur of voices rippled out across the hall. Then the youth, his face flushed and clenched in rage, started toward him, knife extended, pushing people aside and kicking empty cots out of his way. Bone whipped a blanket off the vacated cot to his right, quickly wrapped it around his left forearm and hand, which he held out in front of his chest as a kind of shield as he waited for the knife-wielding youth's attack.

  The men around Bone scrambled to get out of the way, knocking over cots and each other as they did so. The youth, his eyes wide and drug-bright, stopped a few feet away from Bone and slowly waved the knife in front of him in a figure-eight motion. Bone, his blanket-wrapped forearm still held out in front of him, turned slightly, flexed his knees.

  "Who the fuck do you think you are, motherfucker?" the youth said in a voice thickened by drugs and alcohol. "You must be really crazy."

  "Go away," Bone replied evenly, keeping his eyes focused on a spot in the center of the figure-eight pattern formed by the weaving switchblade. "Don't these people have enough misery without you adding to it? Why don't you leave before the cops get here?"

  "First I'm going to teach you a lesson you won't—" The youth suddenly stopped speaking as he squinted, leaned forward on the balls of his feet and stared into Bone's face. Then he dropped his hand to his side, took a small step backward. "Holy shit," he continued, more in amazement now than anger. "It's you."

  Bone felt his stomach muscles tighten and heartbeat quicken, and he almost dropped his guard. "Who?" he breathed, willing himself to keep his gaze focused on the knife in the hand at the youth's side. "What are you talking about? Who am I?"

  "Hooee!" the youth shouted as he feinted with the knife, grinned, then did a little pirouette. "Is Lobo ever going to be one happy son-of-a-bitch when I bring him your balls."

  Then the youth lunged in earnest, feinting toward Bone's right thigh, then slashing up and over the extended arm toward his face. Bone sidestepped the lunge, kicked at the youth's left kneecap, missed. He went back into a slight crouch, turned with the youth, who had now begun to slowly circle him.

  Where were the guards? They had to know something was wrong; everyone was up and milling about.

  Waiting for him to be killed?

  "Who's Lobo?" Bone said to the knife.

  The youth, clearly surprised, abruptly stopped circling. "Are you kidding me, man?"

  "Who's Lobo? Tell me."

  "He's the guy whose eye you put out with that bone you used to carry, motherfucker," the youth said tightly. "And he's been a time hunting you. Well, motherfucker, I've got you, and you're dead meat!"

  The Wolf lunged like a fencer and kept coming, slashing with the switchblade at Bone's forearm.

  Bone spun away from the attack, waving the blanket in the youth's face. Then he abruptly spun counterclockwise, flapping his left arm to unwrap the blanket. When the Wolf turned and came at him again, Bone flung the blanket over his head, then picked up a cot and hurled it at the shrouded figure. The cot crashed into the youth's chest, and he went down. Bone clenched his fists and started forward—then leaped back as the knife blade ripped through the blanket. The Wolf thrashed beneath the blanket, finally managed to free himself. He leaped to his feet, slashing with the knife. Blood flowed down over his left eye from a deep gash on his forehead.

  "Who are you?!" Bone snapped, once again turning sideways and flexing his knees slightly as the bleeding, knife-wielding youth glared at him with frustration and hatred. Unwilling to take his eyes off the knife for even a split second, Bone inched backward, groping for a blanket—anything—with which to defend himself. His hand touched nothing but empty air. "Who's Lobo?! Tell me what happened! Where did it happen?! Where can I find Lobo?!"

  Where were the guards?!

  The Wolf went into a crouch, preparing to attack again, then glanced at something behind Bone and abruptly straightened up.

  "Hey!" a deep voice boomed from just over Bone's left shoulder. "What the hell's going on here?!"

  The youth spun around and began running toward the broken exit sign at the rear of the armory.

  "Wait!" Bone shouted, and started after him.

  Suddenly someone leaped on his back and put an arm around his neck, carrying him to the hard tile floor. Another man piled on. Bone pulled in his chin to prote
ct his windpipe, managed to get both arms over his head to protect it as fists began to pound at him. Finally the blows stopped. He was grabbed under the arms, roughly pulled to his feet. Each arm was gripped by a uniformed guard, and he found himself facing two other guards. The guard standing to his left, a man with a huge paunch and fiery broken blood vessels in his lumpy nose, was the guard who, with Frank and Burt, had taken money from the gray-jacketed youth. The other three guards, middle-aged men, were pasty-faced and puffy-eyed, as if they had just awakened from deep sleep. All of the men stank of gin.

  At the rear of the armory, a heavy steel door banged shut, the sound echoing in the hall like distant thunder before gradually fading away. The youth who knew who he was was gone.

  The one person who had recognized him was a criminal, Bone thought, and had wanted to kill him. Someone named Lobo wanted him dead; the stranger had put out Lobo's eye.

  "What the hell's going on here?!" the guard with the lumpy nose shouted, spraying Bone with his gin breath. His muddy brown, bloodshot eyes flashed with anger—and perhaps, Bone thought, with fear.

  Bone glanced at the guard on his right, who wore a badly fitting toupee. Dandruff speckled the shoulders of the man's blue shirt. He wondered if the guard on his right and the two guards holding him had shared in the bribe given by the youth—and, if so, how much danger he was in. He sensed that he could easily break the grip of the guards holding him, then run from the armory—if he wanted to. But now there were important things here to be discovered; the guard with the lumpy nose and muddy eyes, at least, would know who Lobo was, and might know where he could be found.

  "The guy who ran out of here was trying to rob these people," Bone said evenly. "I was just trying to stop him."