So far from home.
St. Luke’s has a small neon sign out front. There are a few men loitering about.
First day at the new high school.
He’s sitting in an office with Pastor (Principal) Donaldson.
‘Name please?”
“Frank Manz…”M A N Z.”
“That your full name Mr. Manz?”
“Middle name, Hector.”
“Where and when were you born?”
“Sioux City, May 5, 1974.”
“You don’t look that young.”
“Clean living, I guess.”
“Do you have any ID?”
“Stolen.”
“That so? Seems like an epidemic going on around here. Do you have any family?”
“None remaining.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“My wife died in a freak accident. We didn’t have any kids. After that I took up drinking. Lost my job. Lost my home. Family disowned me. Moved here to escape someone. I’m sure you’ve heard the story before.”
“Too many times. So many times I stopped caring. Lord knows that there’s lots of help available to you if you want it. Do you read the Bible, Mr. Manz?”
“Probably not as much as I should.”
“Well, this isn’t even in the Bible. It’s an inspired pearl of wisdom found outside the good book. It goes like this…the Lord helps those who help themselves. Ever hear that?”
“I have.”
“Well, then it’s about time you started putting it into practice. We expect you to look for work, Mr. Manz. We have regular AA meetings right here in the Mission. Everything you need to turn your life around is here.
“Consider this place your rock bottom, Mr. Manz. You are either going to find your way out into the light, or you’ll die down here among the cockroaches, drunks and druggies. You’re going to have to decide that for yourself, understand?”
“I do.”
“Show up too drunk, you can sleep out in the street. Don’t make curfew, act up, bring in contraband, step out of line, backtalk staff…it’s the street. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“You can pick up a token for a mat to sleep tonight. Dinner is at six, lights out at ten, awake at five-thirty, breakfast is at six. Doors close at eight and don’t open until four. We have showers. For all this luxurious living, all we require in return is that you attend church in morning for my inspiring words on repentance and salvation.”
“Seems reasonable enough to me, Pastor. And thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Yeshua loves you. Good luck finding someone else around here that does.”
Andron feels as though he’s been called up by the union. He’s got a posting, loafing, panhandling and room and board in a high school. He feels qualified. He has no problem with the routine. He doesn’t intend to make waves.
The shower goes off without incident. Worst fear. So did the rest of the early evening. No one talks to him. The high school is flooded at night by ragged refugees.
He’s looking forward to sleeping. He trades his token for a bright blue mat and brown blanket and brings them into the school cafeteria. He can’t find a spot on the checkered floor. Everywhere he tries to put down his mat someone yells at him.
Fuck off, you can’t sleep here.
He finally finds a spot near the hallway to the toilets. He tries to sleep, but the noise and smells are unbearable. All the other refugees are turning the cafeteria air into farts and snoring. The toilets are busy. Nothing has prepared him for the stench and cacophony. Not even a black-ops detention facility.
He doesn’t sleep at all.
He doesn’t like his new school.
After he’s kicked out in the morning, he shuffles around the streets looking at his shoes with his hands in his pockets. He finally collapses against a dirty brick building. In spite of himself, he falls asleep for a few hours. When he awakes he find some change and a few dollar bills on his lap.
First day on the job.
Andron uses the charity to buy a sandwich. The bulk of his real cash is in a bus locker. He made a pocket on the inside of the back of his pants where he has an emergency reserve and the key. He intends to live on charitable donations. He spends the rest of the afternoon looking around.
He thinks about buying earplugs somewhere, but decides it would be best to keep moving and not show his face where they might have security cameras.
He comes to an underbelly of overpasses descending into the city. Graffiti says it’s the Garden of Eden in big balloon letters. He recognizes some of the men standing near an oil drum on a clearing of gravel, weeds and broken bottles. He thinks that he might try to make some friends in his new school.
He walks over. He says hello, but is tapped on the shoulder.
He turns to see a stout man with a round face, sideburns and beard, no mustache. His lips are downturned into a natural fuck-you expression. He has mahogany eyes. He wears a long leather jacket and a NL Leviathans ball cap. The man is standing with a few of his friends. The tough kid and his mean buddies.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Frank.”
“I’m Frank. Well, Frank, I’m Donny and you fucking owe me rent.”
“For?”
“For as long as your homo hobo ass sits on one of my sidewalks working my streets, dipshit.”
Andron looks around. Everyone looks away. No support for the new kid. He tries backing away, but the drum is behind him and Donny’s buddies are flanking him
“Hey, where the fuck you think you going, homo hobo? You work my streets, you pay the Piper. Meet the Piper. Now pay up.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“I said pay up.”
Donny shoves him.
Andron stumbles back.
Donny cracks him in his mouth.
Andron falls backwards, nearly knocked out.
Donny bounces after him with erratic punches and kicks, like a gorilla.
Andron tries to get up with confused eyes and an ironic grin. Wounded animal on the Serengeti.
Donny catches him in the head with a pointy shoe and Andron is out.
He resurfaces on the cold gravel with pain screaming everywhere. His head feels like dented steel ball. His jaw won’t close right. His nose is bleeding.
“Hey, you okay, y’no?”
A milk-chocolate young man blinks down at him. He’s towering thin, with a blue topcoat that has silver buttons. His face is smooth-shaven with a strip of a mustache above wide, full lips. His has a wide nose, bushy eyebrows, bushy hair in a half-afro. His eyes are big, brown and penetrating. Andron feels as though he should know him.
“You better get going. The police are worse than Beercan, y’no.”
“Beercan?”
“Ha-ha, that’s who whup you up, y’no.”
Andron gets up on his elbow. His back and ribs send sharp pains that nearly make him go out again. He suspects fractures. He suspects the fight didn’t end when he was knocked out.
“There’s a nurse at the mission, she can get you fixed, y’no. I wouldn’t tell her you got a whuppin or anything. Snitch on Beercan and you’ll get shanked, y’no.”
“I wasn’t planning. I’ll just tell her the truth. That I got thrown from a fucking car off the overpass.”
The man extends a hand and helps Andron to his feet. Andron nearly falls over. He can’t put any weight on his right foot. He stands for a while and waits until he can. The blood pressure in his head is thundering pain.
His pockets have been emptied but he can feel the weight of his secret pant pocket. He limps to the mission, bent.
“Hey, who are you?”
“Andro…I mean, Frank.”
“Ha-ha, Beercan whupped you so good, you don’t know who you are.”
“What about you?”
“Rye-Chus J. You probably got one of my CDs, ha-ha.”
He gives Andron a big smile, lights up a joint and hands it to Andron.<
br />
“First one’s free.”
Dear Ma,
My first day.
I ran into a bully and half made a friend.
I’m busted up and wanna go home.
Frank
Chapter 30:
Jim the Chisel
The pain gets worse. He has purple welts everywhere. He has trouble walking. The nurse wants to send him to the hospital. He refuses. He says he fell down some subway stairs.
Another night on the cafeteria floor at Analog High and he’s nearly insane. Pain joins stench and noise in an unholy trinity of torment. He’s also coming down with a cold thanks to everyone else’s coughing and snorting.
He has a pot hangover.
He limps around the next day wanting to limp right off the planet. He prays to Yeshua for mercy. For help. For a sign. He looks up and sees mercy, help and a sign all in one. Plain as day, in green neon. Open twenty-four hours…Chelsea Liquor.
Yeshua works in mysterious ways.
Andron enters and scours the bottom shelves for bargains. He finds a good one in a bottle of Ron del Sudario for $8.99. He digs out a ten from his reserves. He has another earmarked for Beercan tribute later.
He plops his ten and the bottle on the counter.
“A mickey of your finest.”
He smiles.
“Where in Kanada are you from?”
Andron blinks. He tries to stay smiling.
“No one calls it that here, bro, that’s a short dog.”
“Guess I spent too much time up in Toronta.”
The man hands him his change.
Shitfuckballs.
That could have been a game-ender.
He uncaps his short dog and gulps some down. He wipes his mouth and looks at himself in the store window. He sees a refugee with the start of salt-and-pepper beard. His clothes are dirty. He watches his new self gulp down some more bum rum in a paper bag.
Bum rum. Yeah, let’s go with that. He belches.
With the throbbing numbing, he buys some McDavid’s coffee and adds a splash of bum rum to it. Okay, two or three splashes. He finds a prospective spot on a busy sidewalk suited for begging. He stuffs a five in his empty paper cup as a starter tip and watches the people walk by.
Non-billable hours. His new job is mostly sitting like his old one, but with none of the worries or tyrannical timesheet. No one owns his time or his thoughts, so he’s free to spend his time people-watching and his thoughts wandering. He’s free to pass out for a while.
There are sharp smells, sharp corners and hard concrete. There is hunger and shame. He’s the lowest of the low. But the rum dulls the rough edges. There’s no one to impress and nothing to do. Derelict sidewalk freedom.
He counts in his rake at the end of the day. $5.75 subtracting the float. His expenses are $19.60 for the rum, coffee and Donny overhead. His business model is failing, but start-up losses are to be expected. He’s feeling more positive about things with his rum-colored glasses.
He hands a ten to Donny on his way in to the mission doors. Donny doesn’t say anything, the way a bully doesn’t say anything to someone who took his beating, never ratted and is paying.
He’s still a ghost around the shelter, his bruises and swollen face have marked him. He tries sitting at the same table as Rye-Chus and his crew. But one of them says, who the fuck is you, and Andron has to find a new place.
Still the new kid.
There’s a corkboard near the cafeteria advertising a poetry reading contest. So he works on something before the lights go out. He’s on his rollout mat near the toilets with a scavenged pen and napkin.
Writing shelter poetry.
He’s still sore and it’s still awful, but the rum helps and he has his first sleep in days.
Yeshua have mercy.
The cafeteria has plastic chairs around a makeshift stage. There’s a microphone, stand and amp. It seems like there’s a spotlight on it, but there isn’t. It’s just the center of attention.
Pastor Donaldson walks up, a fat man in black with a collar.
“Okay…
“Okay…welcome to the third annual St. Luke’s poetry contest.”
Applause.
“Here is an opportunity for you to join ranks with loftier souls who rose above their hardships with sobriety and hard work to give us immortal words. Immortal words like If by Kipling.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
“Now aren’t those inspirational? If only you lazy sods could turn away from the bottle, the pipe and slothfulness, you might become men, too.”
Donaldson looks at his list.
“Okay, to start us off Aaron Gills has a composition that he calls My Mat.
“Mr. Gills.”
Aaron is one of Donny’s thugs. He’s nicknamed Gills not because of his surname, but because of the scars on the side of his face. He’s short, bald and round.
Gills squeezes out of the crowd, walks up to the microphone and thumps it with his fat fingers
Uh…
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Take my spot again.
I’ll fuckin’ cut you.
He bows for the applause.
Father Donaldson grabs the mic.
“Thank you for your fine contribution to literature, Mr. Gill. Our next contestant is Jerome Henderson, who insists on being called Rye-Chus J. Why? I have no idea. Mr. Henderson has a composition based on Brother, Can you Spare a Dime that he has worked into that vulgar music called rap that is neither poetry nor music.
Rye-Chus sets up his boom box while his friends holler and cheer.
Check it…
From what Andron can make out, his rap tells the story of his father and brother, both called Al, who are sent off to fight in the Gulf Wars and return in coffins. His mother gets next to nothing for her sacrifice and winds up addicted to crack and dead of HIV. This leaves Rye-Chus J surviving on the street by hawking his CDs.
Though Andron isn’t exactly familiar with the genre, it is as good as any other he’s heard.
It has a great hook.
Yeah.
My family die for the Amerigo dream and I’m out with the pushers and slime
asking white folks if they can spare a dime.
Yeah.
Still chasin’ that Amerigo dream and I’m out with with the hookers and grime
asking whitey if he can spare a dime.
“Okay, thank you for that, Mr. Henderson and thank you for turning off that detestable music. But I have to say that what little lyrics I was able to make out have a positive message for us about the pitfalls of drugs and vagrancy. So thank you for that, Mr. Henderson.
“Up next is…errr…. Frank Manz, who has a wonderful composition, I am sure, called…err…Jim the Chisel.”
Andron is high on pot he shared with Rye-Chus earlier, mixed with a lingering rum buzz. He’s used to public speaking, but not half-cut and high.
He walks up to the mic watching the floor pattern go by. There are chairs on the floor pattern and people sitting on the chairs on the floor pattern. There’s still a hitch in his step. He wears the same ironic grin he did during his beating. He surveys his audience of outcasts and rejects.
He runs his fingers through his new beard, feels the bruising.
He’s conscious of his pain and breathing.
He delivers his poem with voice all scratchy and raw from rum, a sore throat, and ditch weed.
Jim the Chisel stepped on a crack
Went down a hole and m
et the Shaman
A wicked man with electric hands
Who tied Jim up and broke him
But Jim didn’t break
He caught a snake
Past a hundred lakes
To a dead brown forest
A witch with scream and twitch
car alarms and incomprehensible curses
A belly rumbling with screeching trains
And breath of rotting hotdogs
She suckles him with tits of rum
And squeezes out yellow puss taxis
She lifts rotten boards to a floor
Down to where the Shaman can’t find him
Jim the Chisel steps on a crack
He don’t know who he is anymore
So he hides beneath the floors
And cries out Death to the Shaman
There’s a long silence, few cough, then Beercan Donny stands and applauds.
“Way to go…Jim the Chisel.”
From that day forward, Andron/Frank was known by one and all as Jim the Chisel. No one remembered him by any other name.
His beard grew, as did he into Chisel. No one would imagine a former lawyer as the bearded, unkempt, fetid drunk he became.
Days roll by where he forgets the purpose of his flight and mission, when he’s simply Jim the Chisel. It no longer strikes him that he’s obliged to do anything at all, much less rid the world of Cygnus.
It is from his stench and snoring others are recoiling now.
Chapter 31:
Graduation Day
Pastor Donaldson’s homily is about The Multiplication of Loaves. A sermon written by Father Francis Maloney fifteen years earlier. Pastor Donaldson adapts it for his present audience, many of whom are sleeping.
So, how will the Savior find our baskets?
Hopefully full, but try as I may, I am not able to multiply anything around here, much less bread. If I figure it out, I’ll tell you. Meanwhile, we have to supply ourselves with bread and fish the old fashioned way. And there isn’t an endless supply of it for freeloaders.
The Cygnus Virus Page 18
