Trigg had not acted edgy before. Roy glanced at the glass desk top for signs of cocaine, but the glass was clean. Trigg had laughed nervously. “No, it isn’t that,” meaning cocaine. “I have something I want to talk to you about.” Trigg kept his eyes on Roy’s eyes. Roy wondered what meaning a blink might have had then. Would Trigg back down?
Roy could see Trigg was uneasy about something but at the same time anxious to talk to Roy. A sixth sense Roy had developed in ’Nam told him when a woman or a man wanted to talk about sex. Roy had not pegged Trigg for a faggot, just a pervert in a wheelchair. Roy expected a double date with a couple of whores to the hot tubs or maybe dirty videos of Peaches going down on Trigg in his chair. Later when Roy had been rethinking everything, he had to laugh at himself for being so slow. Born yesterday.
Roy had always known Trigg felt inferior. At first Roy had assumed it was the wheelchair, but Trigg had felt inferior long before he had collided with the car. Trigg liked to get drunk with the help, that had been one of Trigg’s negative points according to Peaches, who took her work for Bio-Materials seriously. Peaches had caught Roy staring at her titties. Still she had happily talked for hours with Roy about “negatives and positives.” Peaches didn’t consider discussing negatives and positives about coworkers as gossiping or snitching. Impulsively Roy had asked Peaches to tell him his own negatives and positives, but she had refused, saying she did not know him enough to say anything. Roy had looked down quickly before she could see his face. He had been surprised at the pain her words had pushed into his chest. He wondered how it felt to have a heart attack.
Peaches knew but did not care about Trigg’s “illegal” sales to certain West German biomedical consortiums. Peaches said once you were dead, it mattered little what became of your body. Peaches had seen something, but later when Roy had tried to get Peaches to talk, she had refused. Trigg had to be very drunk and use a lot of cocaine before he would start talking about “it.” That had been all that Peaches would say.
Trigg did not consider the subject sexual, but rather a story about the blood plasma and biomaterials market worldwide. Trigg disliked psychiatry and psychology, which could be twisted to explain anything. Trigg had never denied that picking up hitchhikers had excited him. He had thought of it as a roll of the dice or a hand of five-card draw. The winners and the discards. Discards were “locals” or those with too many kin. Trigg had found that his wheelchair automatically took the suspicion away from the hitchhikers who might have been uneasy about a drive with him. Trigg would always wave his hand at the backseat and his wheelchair. Trigg had not minded the killing.
They are both getting drunk and they have snorted a gram of cocaine between them.
“Nobody ever notices they are gone. The ones I get,” Trigg had said, looking Roy in the eye. Trigg had been too drunk to remember that Roy was himself “homeless.” Trigg talked obsessively about the absence of struggle as the “plasma donors” were slowly bled to death pint by pint. A few who had attempted to get away had lost too much blood to put up much fight even against a man in a wheelchair. Of course the man in the wheelchair had a .45 automatic in his hand.
Trigg had paid extra if the victim agreed. Trigg gave him a blow job while his blood filled pint bags; the victim relaxed in the chair with his eyes closed, unaware he was being murdered. What Trigg does with the swollen cock in his mouth never varies: he catches an edge or fold of foreskin between his teeth. The cock might shrivel temporarily, but then it would encourage greatly from the nibble. All this Trigg performs from the wheelchair. Trigg blames the homeless men. Trigg blames them for being easy prey. He holds their jizz in his mouth until he gags. They got a favor from him. To go out taking head from him. He doubted any of them could hope for a better death. They were human debris. Human refuse. Only a few had organs of sufficient quality for transplant use.
“Trigg the Pig,” Peaches had said bitterly, “he blabs his big mouth too much.” Peaches had been upset about Trigg’s drunken ramblings. Her face had reddened. “Did he tell you about ‘the harvests’?” Roy nodded his head, but Peaches had refused to talk any more except to say everything was done legally. She had seen court papers signed by a judge authorizing everything. Peaches recovered her composure. “Transients die all the time. They don’t go to doctors and they don’t eat right,” Peaches said. She had looked Roy squarely in the eye to let him know that was how she would testify under oath.
Clinton said there had been some grumbling among the men because their leader was not eating with them and sleeping in the tin-and-cardboard hooch the men called Command Headquarters. Roy told Clinton to tell them to assemble that night and he’d give them a full report. Rambo had no secrets from his men. Rambo had been working on secret sources of money for their group.
Clinton had got a group of blacks and a few Hispanics together for his own brigade. All of them were older men, and one look in the eyes and you could see they’d been there all right. Clinton’s men said they’d take women in their brigade too, although this was a signal for joking and laughing about the “orders” they’d give these women.
In private Roy had warned Clinton about accepting women into his unit. An integrated unit was one thing; all the men had fought together before in Vietnam. Most homeless women had a bunch of kids; they would be a mess. Women would be more trouble than they were worth.
Roy would not tell Clinton his suspicions about Trigg’s biomaterials business until the right moment. Unless they found a better “incident,” Rambo planned to mobilize and rally his army of homeless to accuse the blood and biomaterials industry of mass murder.
KILL THE RICH
THE DAYS WERE GETTING COOL by evening, and when Rambo came to “brief” the men in the evenings, they would be standing around bonfires, passing bottles, smoking and talking. Each week more tents and lean-tos appeared along the gray clay banks of the Santa Cruz River. The mesquite groves along the riverbanks were checkered with plastic-tarp shelters, and blankets and sleeping bags drying on mesquite branches. Rambo and Clinton marched their men in Homeless Day rallies, but they were careful not to have any member of their unit arrested in the protests. Rambo and Clinton got high just retelling the events over and over again, how the “activists” were keeping the poor and homeless stirred up and assembled, which was all Rambo and Clinton wanted or needed. The activists had urged the people to occupy vacant government buildings, but Rambo and Clinton were no longer interested in the scraps thrown to them.
Rambo let Clinton evaluate the volunteers. Clinton had a good eye for white men. Clinton’s blacks were always doing comparative studies among themselves, and they’d compare notes on white-man behavior. All Rambo said was he was glad it was they who had to observe white men’s behavior and not him. Observing the behavior of “white” people, his “own kind,” had been what had cut Roy loose from the world. He had no regrets. He was where he belonged. Corporations and big business had seized control of America during the Vietnam War, and only a poor man’s army of patriots could hope to restore the people’s democracy to the United States.
Clinton and Roy inventory the empty vacation houses twice weekly as the winter visitors begin to arrive in Tucson for the winter holidays. Clinton keeps the records and sorts through the mailboxes at each of the vacant houses. Some were so rich they forgot they had Tucson bank accounts. In the piles of letters at one house they had found blank checks and an all-time teller card; in a separate bank envelope they had found the personal code number.
Roy and Clinton regret they can’t tell the others about the vacant houses, but they don’t want to move too soon. Their operation requires a great deal of planning and thought. But when the cold rains come in November, Clinton is angered by the men who are shivering, and they begin to outfit their men with used field jackets from the surplus store. The bankcard works every time at the automatic teller machine. Clinton keeps careful records. Clinton organizes reconnaissance marches into the desert on the edge of the northwest side o
f the city where the men scavenge firewood for the camps. The trouble with these men is they are all wrecks—smashed by cheap wine and car wrecks, ruined by police and nightsticks. Clinton takes all the men who volunteer to go. He uses his wood-hauling patrols to weed out the drunks and the crazies from the “dependables.” Clinton organizes patrols when he feels the jumpiness begin to spread from his hands into his stomach. Moving the feet always helps, he says.
Clinton claims he can tell if owners of the vacation houses are keeping close watch or not by the mail that keeps coming to the home. Clinton is careful to avoid creating suspicion. The thrill was to open the mail, read it, and reseal it. Clinton had known guys who worked for the censors in Vietnam. The only tricky part, Clinton thought, would be to empty the automatic teller machine at the rate of $400 a day. “Did you ever stop to think how long it will take us to get that much money out of the teller machine?” According to bank statements, the account with the automatic teller card has thirty thousand dollars in it.
Late at night Roy and Clinton had talked about money—what they would buy with it, what they would do to get it. Neither of them wanted the usual stuff such as fancy cars, women, investments, or silk shirts. Roy had decided he would buy his own island to live on. Clinton said he didn’t know what he would do. Maybe he would travel to Africa and to Haiti to learn about the old religion. But after Roy had bought the island, and after Clinton had learned voodoo, they could not think what else to do with their imaginary money. Roy could not think of anything he needed beyond his jacket and sleeping bag. Clinton had done a lot of background work on “their” money-machine bankcard. The card would work at bank machines in fourteen western states.
“Meaning what?” Roy said.
“Meaning I could go and keep on going.” Clinton was smiling, watching Roy’s face.
“I already thought about all of it. Before we ever started this. Before I ever saw you. I decided to let things fall where they will.”
“You mean you figured me for a thief?” Clinton said, still smiling.
“No, not that. I just mean that whatever turns out, all of this has happened before, somewhere in the world. Some will go and some will stay.”
Clinton had touched Roy lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. Me and this bankcard, we’ll be back.”
Roy touched Clinton’s sleeve. “You don’t have to say anything. You probably should just take it all and go. You, me, probably we’d be better off.”
Roy didn’t like the idea of trying the bankcard out of state, but Clinton assured him they had nothing to worry about. Clearly the owner of the vacation house used his Tucson bankcard as infrequently as he used his winter vacation house. Roy trusted Clinton to come back with the bankcard because they had talked about that.
Roy said, “We have endless wealth.”
Clinton’s face got tense. “That’s stupid. No one has endless money—”
“Except the U.S. government, who just prints more.”
Roy had tried to lighten Clinton’s mood, but Clinton sometimes got set off.
“Rich don’t want to give away any, but poor will come and take it all.”
The others in both units were afraid of Clinton’s storms of anger. Roy had overheard the men discussing him. The men had been drinking and were talking freely. A young white kid about eighteen said he was scared Clinton wanted to kill all whites. But the Mexican called Barney shook his head.
“Clinton, he’s after the rich. Clinton, he’d even go after Oprah Winfrey because the bitch is rich!”
“Kill the rich?” the skinny white kid said. “But someday I might get a lot of money.” All of them had started laughing then, even the guys who hated niggers and expected race wars, because the skinny kid was really stupid if he thought he’d ever have any money, let alone get rich.
The bank statement for the automated-teller card arrives at the house each month. Clinton says he is counting on there being only one bank statement sent out, the statement sent to the vacant house. They both agree they will have to clean out the bank account before cold weather to play it safe. They do not want to chance losing that kind of money. Because with that kind of money, they could equip their little guerrilla army. Speed was more important than size in guerrilla armies. The money was going to buy them everything they needed, the money was going to get them launched.
Clinton drops off to sleep every night thinking about the others. Far far away there are others like himself, men, right here in the United States, with nothing to lose. In the morning while the coffee is still heating in the campfire, Clinton tells Roy he wants to do some traveling.
Clinton’s argument had been a good one: they had some money to cover traveling expenses; the thing was to take advantage of the cold weather, which drove all the homeless and able-bodied to travel far to the south. Clinton could get one of those $99 bus passes and go right across the country. But Roy did not like the idea of Clinton moving around like that, from homeless camp to homeless camp. A black man in army camouflage pants was sure to get the wrong kind of attention.
Clinton had laughed bitterly. “Oh, I see. I travel like a bum and sleep in the ditch.” Roy realized his mistake then. Clinton was going to talk to people on the street, but he wasn’t going to sleep there. They wouldn’t find Clinton haranguing crowds outside soup kitchens. Not yet. Roy had only sighed loudly and walked away. He stopped himself from explaining. Explanations meant nothing. Clinton might figure it out for himself later; Roy had assumed Clinton would travel the way Roy traveled. Roy got a rush out of hopping freight trains. Roy liked to imagine he was a bullfighter with only split seconds and inches standing between himself and the charging freight train.
Clinton was quiet the night before he caught his bus. He was going to San Diego and L.A. first. The California riots had stopped when the weather cooled off.
Roy had told the men Clinton had to go to his grandmother’s funeral in Los Angeles. Roy tried to avoid the appearance of secrecy. Week by week the homeless men arrived, and always a few drifted to the ’Nam Veterans’ Camp, especially if they had run afoul of regulations in church soup kitchens or city shelters. The men who came to the ’Nam Camp were usually the crazies—the ones who “believed” they had fought at Khesanh or Mylai. Roy did not turn anyone away, but he had to watch each new arrival carefully because sooner or later the government would send undercover men posing as drifters as they had earlier in October, to report on any political activities by the homeless.
Roy had made it his business to listen closely to the men when they talked and drank; Roy visited Clinton’s unit each evening after he had checked with the men in his own unit. The fatigue jackets had helped pull the two units together. Just as uniforms were supposed to.
Roy was not as worried about police spies and informers as he was about the questions that came from local advocates for the homeless—Tucson church people and “liberals.” “Why don’t more veterans join in class-action lawsuits? Why don’t more veterans join in the marches and demonstrations?”
“More? You want more of us? You’ve already had enough!”
The men in camp had cheered Roy, and the “advocates” had hurried away. Later in the week, Roy read a newspaper article on the “apathy” of homeless Vietnam veterans. For Roy the article couldn’t have been better.
Apathy. Let them believe what they want to believe.
.44 MAGNUM HAS PUPPIES
STERLING HAD SEEN BULLETS and guns everywhere for days, but he had tried to avoid looking directly at the weaponry. He had tried not to be within earshot of Zeta, Ferro, or Lecha, who seemed to be constantly crowded into Zeta’s office door just as the computer printer began to chatter. Paulie had been strangely inactive during this time, and Ferro had complained about Paulie’s lethargy when they were loading or unloading gear. Sterling had also noticed the change in Paulie because one of the Dobermans had had puppies. Paulie had spent hours watching the dog before the pups were born.
Sterling could
tell Ferro and Paulie had been fighting because more and more Ferro called Sterling to help him lift tarps into the back of the pickup while Paulie repacked the hot-air balloon or refilled water cans and plastic bottles. Paulie moved more slowly when Ferro was not speaking to him. Sterling had learned to stay out of Ferro’s way whenever Paulie’s eyes were swollen.
Sterling had found out a little from Seese about homosexual men. She said they were no different from other lovers, or other couples. Sterling could not explain his curiosity without sounding prejudiced. Paulie would have been strange even if he had not been gay. That was Sterling’s point. Sterling had watched Paulie become more and more worried about the pregnant dog. Mag had been a favorite of Paulie’s because she had crouched and growled at him even when he brought her dish full of food. “Mag” was short for her full name, .44 Magnum.
Sterling hosed down the kennels, raked dog turds into piles, and shoveled them into the wheelbarrow. The daily schedule was always the same. Paulie had been adamant about consistency. No consistency and these high-octane dogs would explode all over the place, and someone, probably Sterling, would get killed. At eight A.M. Paulie brought in the night dogs and set loose the day dogs in the twenty-acre outer perimeter. Paulie had trained the dogs to accept only the food either he or Ferro fed them. Under no circumstances were others even to attempt to feed the dogs. When Ferro and Paulie were away on business, the dogs ate from automatic feeders full of dry dog food.
Sterling was used to being ignored by Paulie. Sterling had ignored Paulie so they were even. Weeks had passed without either of them speaking to the other. Sterling had found Paulie in the kennel stroking the bitch and examining her belly. Sterling had stopped in his tracks with a wheelbarrow full of dog shit because he had never seen Paulie’s face so strangely expressive; Paulie’s eyes were filled with tears. Paulie’s voice sounded thick with his concern for the dog. He didn’t want the red bitch to die. Sterling asked if the dog was sick or having trouble because he had been cleaning kennels all morning and had not seen the red bitch lying down or vomiting. Paulie had seemed to misunderstand the question because he had started talking about there being “too many puppies.” “Too many” would kill the dog. Paulie’s voice had quickly dropped almost to a whisper, as if his throat were tight. “Too many.” Sterling could see emotion had choked off Paulie’s words, so he nodded and pretended not to notice the tears.
The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Page 53
