Bone

by George C. Chesbro

  "Oh, God," he moaned, "please don't make me take your thing in my mouth again. Please don't stick it in me."

  "Shut up," one of the youths, a white, said as he reached down and began to undo the buttons of Michael's heavy outer shirt. A moment later the youth gagged, quickly stepped back.

  "Man, if any of you guys want to search him, be my guest. Not me. This guy stinks of shit; even his breath stinks of shit."

  "Fuck it," a black Wolf said. "Let's just take the bags and get out of here."

  "That fucking Lobo is crazy," another Wolf said. "Can you imagine him wanting this guy to give him a blow job? How could he stand the smell?"

  "Lobo will stick his prick into anything that moves," the white wolf said. "You know that. He is fucking crazy, and he's always got a hard-on. I once watched him fuck a Big Mac; he said he wanted to see what it felt like. And he likes to fuck old ladies."

  "Please," Michael whispered, crawling across the sidewalk toward the booted feet of the youths. "Please give me back my things. That's all I have in the world. Please don't take them. Please, please . . ."

  A black-booted foot was placed on his shoulder, and he was shoved face-down on the sidewalk. Through the tears that filled his eyes, Michael watched helplessly, one trembling arm held out in useless supplication, as the gray-jacketed youths hurried to the end of the block, turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

  Numb with grief and a paralyzing sense of loss, Michael crawled back to the trash basket, leaned his head against it. Then he closed his eyes and began to sob again. Everything he had in the world was gone: his two blankets and pillow, his extra coat, the three books he couldn't read but which had given him a sense of belonging to a world where people did sit and read things, his collection of TV antennae which he liked to lay out on summer days and watch gleam in the sunlight, his collection of smooth pebbles, the brush with its yellowed mother-of-pearl handle which, for some reason, he thought had once belonged to his mother.

  All gone.

  Now he would have to go to a shelter like the one where the youth with the chalky skin had raped him, Michael thought. He would be forced to stand under water that was always too hot or too cold. They would jeer and laugh and curse at him, and they would make him throw away these familiar clothes which he had—

  Suddenly there was a loud whoop-whoop which sounded as if it was just behind his right ear. Michael started, opened his eyes and turned his head to find a police car standing at the curb beside him. Michael knew that if the police picked him up, he would be taken to a shelter—after being washed off at the nearest fire hydrant, where the water would be freezing. It had happened before. He was not ready to go to a shelter yet; he still had too much fear. And he did not want to feel the touch of the icy water.

  He struggled to his feet. He wiped away his tears with the back of his hand, then staggered up the block and went around the corner at the first side street. He sighed with relief when he heard the police car pull away.

  Once more lost in his grief, Michael began to wander aimlessly down the street, looking for a place—any place—where he could lie down and sleep.

  "Michael?"

  Michael shook his head and kept walking. His mind was playing tricks on him, he thought. He never heard the voices when he was away from God.

  "Michael, why don't you stop and listen to me?"

  Michael stopped, slowly turned and looked around him, trying to determine where the voice was coming from. It seemed to be coming from a distance, which meant that it could be somebody from another world . . . but this voice sounded oddly familiar.

  "Where are you?!" he shouted.

  There was no reply. A lone pedestrian, a middle-aged man shivering inside a light topcoat, came around the corner, glanced nervously at Michael, then hurriedly crossed the street and walked on.

  And then the voice came again.

  "There's no need to shout, Michael. I can hear you, as you hear me. I'm across the street. Come over and talk to me. I saw the Wolfpack take all your things. I know how you're feeling. You need me now."

  Once again, Michael had the odd sensation that he knew this person who was speaking to him. Although the voice carried clearly across the street, it seemed strangely muffled; still, it was a voice Michael associated with help, with caring.

  He waited for two cars to go by, then crossed to the other side of the street.

  "Here, Michael; to your right. Come over here."

  Michael walked in the direction of the voice, which he could now tell was coming from a wide, deep doorway cloaked in night-shadow. He went into the doorway, abruptly stopped when a figure draped all in shining orange stepped forward. Michael tried to look into the features of the shining figure, but could not see the face behind the flap of material which was pulled up around the neck. Michael decided that, after all, it had to be a being from another world, in some kind of uniform.

  "Hello, Michael," the being said gently.

  It was not a being from another world at all, Michael thought as he finally placed the voice. He smiled. "It's you. I haven't seen you in a long time. I thought you'd gone away."

  "No. I've just been busy elsewhere. I haven't had a chance to visit you."

  "I didn't know you were one of them."

  "One of whom, Michael?"

  "I always thought you were part of this world, but now that I see your clothes, I know that you're not. You're from another world, aren't you?"

  There was a prolonged silence, then: "You believe there are better worlds than this one, don't you, Michael? We've often talked about it."

  "Yes," Michael replied in a hollow voice. "I hate this world."

  "I know you do, Michael. There's just no way to properly care for you here; you can't help yourself, and you won't let others help you. You suffer terribly, but there's no way to ease your suffering."

  "I'm afraid," Michael whispered.

  "Of me?"

  "No. I'm afraid of the shelters."

  "Would you like me to send you to a better world?"

  Once more, tears flooded Michael's eyes; but this time they were tears of joy. "Oh, yes," he sobbed. "I've waited so long. Can you do that?"

  The shiny orange figure stepped back into the darkness. "Come back here with me, Michael. This is the doorway to a better world."

  Chapter Ten

  (i)

  Beyond the Turtle Pond, Belvedere Castle rose into a cloudless sky painted orange by the rising sun, a fairy-tale structure of stone courtyards and balustrades that was a dwarf cousin to the towering skyscrapers ringing Central Park. Stripped to the waist, Bone crouched in the dawn shadows and peered about him; this section of the park appeared to be empty. He walked to the edge of the pond, pushed the brackish surface water away with his hands, then scooped up handfuls of water and splashed it over his face and under his armpits. It was enough; he had already bathed, during the night, in the small lake he had found further to the north. Next, he filled one of the two canteens he carried with water which he would use for shaving; the second canteen had already been filled with fresh, clean water from a drinking fountain he had found near his campsite. This done, he headed back to his camp in a wooded section which a map posted outside the park had told him was called The Ramble.

  He had less than ten dollars left of the money Anne had given him, Bone thought as he headed back up the park, but he was not concerned. The money had been well spent purchasing goods or equipment which he felt the stranger wanted or needed, and he felt good, certain that he was slowly but surely settling ever deeper into the stranger's mind, doing the things that the stranger would do, behaving as he would behave.

  For food, he had discovered a soup kitchen nearby where he could get both lunch and supper—but he had found that he did not require much food. Also, to his astonishment and delight, he had discovered that the stranger could recognize edible and nourishing berries, fruits and roots among the flora growing in the park. With food available and facilities to clean his clo
thes and body, he had all he needed. He was free. He found he was reasonably content, satisfied—and, most important, optimistic that he would eventually succeed in his search for his identity.

  Back at his camp beneath a footbridge in a heavily wooded section of The Ramble, Bone shaved himself with an old but sturdy straight razor he had bought, along with a leather strop, in a pawn shop. The stranger liked these simple but most useful implements, he thought; there was an elegance to the razor's simplicity, utility and durability. The stranger liked to be out-of-doors, but he also liked to be clean and well groomed even when he was alone; it was, Bone had found, very good for his morale.

  His shaving done, Bone dressed in the worn shirt he had originally been given, then took the metal cup filled with hot tea brewed from herbs he had found in the park off the small stove he had constructed with scraps of metal and the can of Sterno. He squatted on his haunches, sipped at the tea, shuddered with pleasure.

  It was a Sunday morning, and from the position of the sun he estimated that he had better than two hours before he was scheduled to be at Ali Hakim's office on Lexington Avenue. And so he relaxed, continuing to sip at his tea while he thought about what he had—and hadn't—learned in the five days that had passed since he had walked out of the Men's Shelter down on the Bowery.

  The footbridge was in a relatively secluded area, and even now in early May the mornings and evenings were chilly enough to keep pedestrian traffic in The Ramble to a minimum, but Bone, in order to guarantee the security and privacy of his retreat, had taken the further step of using his large knife to cut brush along a nearby stream bed, then weave the brush into a series of mats which not only protected the site from view but provided a windscreen. With the small but effectively smokeless fire he built from hardwood each night, he slept very comfortably. Now, he thought as he followed the progress of two early-rising bird-watchers coming over a small rock outcropping to the east, he could see, but not be seen.

  The stranger had excellent outdoors skills and craft, Bone thought. And he had not learned these things in any city.

  On the other hand, there was the continuing and powerful sense of familiarity he experienced whenever he gazed at the towering walls of the soaring buildings that were everywhere in Manhattan. Once again it occurred to him that he belonged here; but he did not. He was obviously an outdoorsman, but he applied his skills in a forest of steel and concrete.

  Where had he come from? What had happened to him?

  The stranger's affinity for the outdoors, his survival skills and meticulous hygiene, simply did not correlate with the panic attack he had experienced in the underpass near Grand Central Terminal—nor with his dreams of graves, bones, death and a gleaming, orange-crimson figure. The affinities, the things he had learned about the stranger's habits, did not correlate with the way he had felt when he had been pressed against the stone wall in the underpass; before the panic had swept away his reason, he had been aware of a keen sense of balance while stepping along the narrow ledge; he had pressed against stone walls before.

  What had happened to his hands?

  And there was a dark side to the initial delight he had experienced as he'd discovered the stranger's abilities. Following increasingly strong urges, the stranger's instincts, he had almost effortlessly found a suitable place to set up a campsite, and he had hidden it well. He certainly knew how to build a secure stash.

  Perry Lightning had told him he had such a cache, and now Bone knew it must be true. Somewhere in the city, there could be another hiding place like this one, a place where the stranger, if he was the serial killer, had hid his weapon, and perhaps even his grisly trophies.

  But it was not yet proven that the stranger was a killer; nothing even remotely resembling a memory of killing anyone had occurred to Bone, and until it did he was determined to keep on trusting the stranger.

  When he had walked out of the Men's Shelter, he had not known precisely where he had wanted to go, but had ended in Central Park. It was just as well. It was in this park that this new life had begun, and thus it was here—or close to here—where the keys to the two previous lives might lie. From the shelter he had gone directly to the Sheep Meadow, to the spot where he had been squatting when Anne, Barry Prindle and Ali Hakim had come to him. He had stood there for almost two hours, slowly turning to look in all directions, thinking, trying to find something that looked familiar, some hint of memory to tell him where he had come from, or where he should look next.

  There had been nothing.

  After hiding his packages, he had spent the better part of the day wandering through the park, searching for some sight, sound, smell or other sensation that seemed familiar.

  There had been nothing.

  But he had immediately recognized what would be a safe, secure campsite at this site beneath the footbridge in The Ramble. He had retrieved his packages and brought them here, then spent the remaining hours before nightfall cutting brush and taking steps to protect the site from the eyes of others.

  He had been up at dawn the next morning—and had found himself very hungry. He had bathed and shaved himself, then—using the maps Anne had given him—he had walked out of the park, emerging on the East Side at the Eighty-fifth Street exit, just above the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had walked to Ali Hakim's office on Lexington, just to see how long it would take him, but had not gone in or left word that he had been there. In Bone's mind, the neuropsychiatrist had already given him all the ideas and psychological tools he needed to carry on his search, and he did not feel there was a great deal else to discuss with the man until he was further along in his quest. He had also walked further downtown, to the storefront offices of Project Helping Hand—but, again, had not gone in. He had merely wanted to see the place where the woman who so occupied his thoughts worked. There had been three blue vans parked along the curb, each with a smiling, yellow "happy face" painted on its side. Bone had stood across the street, in the shadow of a doorway, for twenty minutes; then he had quickly walked away in disgust when he realized that he was wasting precious time simply because he was hoping to catch a glimpse of Anne Winchell. He had not, he had thought, the time—or emotion—to waste thinking about a woman.

  The places on the maps where Anne had noted that he'd been seen on at least one occasion had indicated to him that the stranger had wandered over a large territory. Consequently, he had decided to break down each day to correspond to a grid on the map, then systematically search along every street in that grid, walking and looking, talking to other homeless people he might meet. All five days had been spent searching the Upper East Side.

  And he had found other soup kitchens along the way; each time he had eaten at one, often drawing curious stares from both hosts and clients, he had sought to pay for his meals by working for one or two hours in the kitchen, serving others.

  At one of the soup kitchens he visited, a woman volunteer reported that she had seen him eat there once during the past year. He had not spoken; carrying his bone, he had simply lined up with others for his food, eaten, then walked away. He had been alone. The woman did not know where he had stayed at night, where he came from or what he did during the day. Occasionally, Bone's questions were met by questions. Bone had been vague in his answers, and had moved on. Nothing the woman had told him had been of any use. Bone had concluded that he had indeed walked the streets of the Upper East Side, but not often.

  During these five days, responding to the urging of the stranger, he had made additional purchases, and he kept these items at his campsite. His stash.

  And as he had systematically searched the Upper East Side, he had systematically looked for a job. He had anticipated being able to find work, but obtaining a job proved to be a far more difficult task than he had imagined without means of identification or a Social Security card. When giving a false name hadn't worked, because of suspicions raised by the fact that he had no papers, he had tried telling the truth about his loss of memory. But this had only serve
d to arouse more suspicion—and, sometimes, fear and open hostility.

  After three days, he had stopped asking shopkeepers for a job. The clothes he had, he knew, would last him a few months. He could walk wherever it was he wanted to go, and, if he needed money, he could always collect discarded soda cans and turn them in to stores. He could always go to the soup kitchens for food, but he was not totally dependent on them, for he had learned other strategies: he knew which supermarkets threw out near-fresh produce at the end of the day, and he had observed that many schoolchildren were in the habit of throwing their bag lunches into the nearest trash basket upon arriving at school in the morning.

  He had shelter and clothing, and knew how to obtain food; Bone had decided that he could afford to spend all his time searching for the stranger's identity.

  As he had walked the streets, he had studied the faces of teenagers, searching for the youth in the gray jacket who had tried to kill him at the Men's Shelter. Lobo, the youth had said; Lobo wanted him dead. Either Lobo or the youth who had come after him with a knife would have valuable information about the stranger, Bone thought, and might even be able to tell him who he was.

  But he had not lost sight of the fact that Lobo and the youth with the knife, and perhaps others, wanted to kill him; consequently, Bone always wore dark glasses and a floppy, oversize hat—items he had picked up at a Salvation Army center. However, he had not seen the youth, and Bone suspected that he confined his activities to lower Manhattan. Still, he had kept looking.

  Now Bone finished his tea, once again glanced up at the morning sun. He judged that he still had at least an hour before he was due at Ali Hakim's office, and he decided that he would use the time to walk the perimeter of one of the grids he had drawn in that area around Lexington and Sixty-fourth Street—new territory for him; the grid he had arbitrarily drawn was bounded by Fifth and Third avenues to the west and east, Fifty-fourth to Forty-second streets to the north and south.