At the Edge of the Haight

by Katherine Seligman

  “We want to talk to you about Jeremiah Wakefield,” I said, surprised by how steady my voice was.

  She let go of the curtain and we heard the unclanking of locks. She opened the door about two inches and looked at us through the security chain. She was small and solid, with brass-colored hair twisted around a pencil and piled on her head.

  “What about him?” she said, her head cocked to the side the way Root looks at me, when he is trying to understand.

  I knew how she must be seeing us, in clothes from the free basket, Ash’s hair in dreads, mine all tangled. She didn’t look much better, but we were the ones knocking on her door. At least I was carrying a pad of paper, so I didn’t look like I wasn’t going to attack her.

  “I am Maddy and this is Ash,” I said. “We’re here to talk to you, if you are Laurel Wakefield.”

  She shut the door. I don’t know why I thought this would work. If it was so easy, the cops or lawyers might have done it.

  “Just a minute,” she said. “Let me get myself together.”

  We sat on the front step. She didn’t have to tell us anything. Why should she? I folded the end of a piece of paper into a neat square and then unfolded it, over and over, until Ash stuffed it in his pocket.

  When she reopened the door, she’d changed into harem pants and a T-shirt. She’d reassembled her hair, but it was still twisted around the pencil. She looked like some tiring things had happened to her.

  “Laurel?” I said.

  She had a deep raspy voice. “I used to be.”

  She sat down on the step next to me and lit up a cigarette. She didn’t call herself Laurel anymore, she said. The smoke trailed out while she talked. Now it was Loretta, a name she’d been born with and never liked. But after splitting from her husband and getting a legal order for him to leave her alone, she went back to her original first and last name. No one called her Laurel anymore, unless they knew Jeremiah, in which case she didn’t want to hear from them.

  “What’s he done this time?” she said. “He was one piece of bad news after another. I hear his name and I want to be sick.”

  I apologized all over the place and told her I knew exactly what she meant. She took another hit off her cigarette. If she’d had one thing to do over, she said, it would have been to press charges the first time he touched her, get him out of circulation. I asked her if she’d heard about the kid who was killed in Golden Gate Park. She said she never got over to the park. It was too far away. Enough kids were killed right there, in her own neighborhood, and no one ever heard about them either. I said that we lived in the park actually, but I could see how she wouldn’t want to go there.

  She said she didn’t work and had been on disability pay ever since Jeremiah broke two of her ribs. They’d healed a long time ago, but she didn’t feel like going outside most days, even though she hadn’t seen him in years, thanks to the Lord. He had started out so sweet, always brought her something when he came around. He knew how much she liked orange roses because they didn’t seem real, but they were. “He used to be,” she lowered her head, “considerate. He paid attention, you know?” He had a car and he’d drive her to work and then wait for her to come home. He would be there sitting on the couch, not like most men, who go out all the time and pretty soon you can’t trust them. But then he started telling her she couldn’t go out with her girlfriends. She couldn’t go out at all, except with him, and he didn’t want to go out. He thought everyone was out to make him look bad, even her. There was nothing she could do that was right.

  “I didn’t say anything as long as he kept to himself and didn’t bother me,” she said. “That’s all I hoped for, because when he turned the bad juice on me, there was no end.”

  “Did he ever go to the park?” I said.

  She didn’t know what he did. Whatever it was, it didn’t make him easier to live with. He was hopped up on something. If she wasn’t at her secretary job, he wanted her at home, where he could keep her safe. He got mad if she talked to the neighbors or the guy who delivered the mail. He went off on her all the time, slapped her, broke a tooth, but she didn’t say anything, until the last time. Then she called the cops and they filed the report. He was supposed to get anger management counseling and go to AA meetings, but she didn’t care what he did as long as she never had to see him again.

  “I knew if he came back, he would kill me,” she said. “I saw it in his eyes. And you want to know what’s weird? After he left here, I felt bad for him. There was a time I dug Jeremiah. Things were past over for us, but I was torn up inside, thinking of him with nowhere to go. His own family, over in the Central Valley, wouldn’t have anything to do with him. I wondered if I didn’t cause what happened to us, a little bit. There is only so much a man can take. That’s what he told me.”

  A few times he stood outside across the street and stared at the house and then sometimes he opened his pants and pissed, like he was marking his territory. Once he knocked on the door and she called the cops. They arrested him even though she said she didn’t want him locked up. She thought maybe the cops would threaten him. She didn’t want trouble, as long as he didn’t come over and bother her. The look he gave her when they put on the cuffs was pure hatred. You can’t shake that off.

  I took a sharp breath. I knew that look. I told her how he had killed a kid who was staying in the park. She didn’t seem surprised that the police didn’t care one bit. They were not trying to figure out what happened. The kid was buried and Jeremiah was out there, free.

  “They figure one less shit in this world is a good thing,” she said. “I hope you’re not expecting them to make it right.”

  “Shane was not a bad kid,” I said. “His name was Shane.”

  “Well then you want to tell me why he was out there?” she said. “There are people in this city who think they have a right to live wherever they want. We got them here. I see them every day. You can’t go to the grocery without them asking for your money. Anyone with half a brain can get some kind of handout. Just ask me.”

  “How would you know why anyone stays in the park?” I said. “You spend all your time hiding inside your house.”

  I moved closer to her, my voice louder. Maybe Shane didn’t have a choice. Not everyone is looking for a handout.

  “Whoa.” She stood up and moved into the doorway. “This is my property and you are on it, in case you forgot.”

  She looked scared, which made me stop yelling.

  Staying in the park was better than staying at a shelter most of the time, I said in a normal voice. I told her about Dave and Marva and how they needed to figure out what happened, which meant finding out about Jeremiah. I would have kept talking, but she gave me a look like either she didn’t understand or she didn’t want to know.

  “As far as I know he never killed anyone, but now you say he did and got away with it,” she said. “I can tell you, it doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

  She put a hand on the door. “If I was you, I wouldn’t look for him,” she said. “Jeremiah feels like he can take whatever he wants. If you came here to warn me, you don’t need to.”

  “We didn’t come to scare you or warn you,” I said. “We wanted to know what else he did, before he killed that kid. Shane.”

  “I can’t help you with things I don’t know about,” she said. “He never answered to anyone. He must have had business with your friend at the park. You do business with Jeremiah, you come out on the wrong side. He never forgets what anyone owes him.”

  She half closed the door and then stopped. “You are better off with an animal than a man,” she said, looking at Ash. “They don’t hit you.”

  She left us standing on the porch. We could hear her inside, clicking the locks shut.

  chapter 19

  A few days later Dave came by the shelter with a sack of bright green apples he’d picked at an organic farm near the cabin. Back in New York the trees would have lost their leaves already, he said. The ground would be half froz
en. He handed me the sack awkwardly and I felt like I had to give him something in return, so I told him about the court records I’d found and how I’d gone to see Jeremiah’s ex-wife. I thought he would be impressed that Ash and I had tracked her down and gotten her to talk. But he didn’t ask me anything about her, so I didn’t tell him that she was so done with Jeremiah she’d changed her name.

  He looked ten years older. His hair was grayer and his skin was like pale tissue paper. He said Marva was thinking of going home, but he had to stay until he sorted things out. All I wanted was for him to leave me alone and now I was surprised to hear that Marva was giving up. Or maybe she was leaving him, going to live in a city where she would not be looking at Shane’s closed up room.

  He said he wanted me to keep looking for people who knew Shane, as if that was something I could do. I’d been to see Jeremiah’s wife and that didn’t do anything but make her want more locks on her door. What did he expect? As if I could go where Shane was killed and keep asking people if they’d seen anything or walk around with a picture and ask people if they knew him. It didn’t make sense. Even Marva was quitting.

  “It’s just that—” Dave stopped mid-sentence and took my hand in both of his. “I need to see his life so I can walk part of this with him.”

  “What?” I took my hand back and held it close to my own chest. I should have been yelling at him, not Loretta. “It’s not like I can see what his life was like.”

  “Or course not.” He said he was sorry and then apologized for that too. “I just need to understand. Maybe I never will.”

  When he walked out of the shelter I could see he was emptied out of everything but sadness. I thought about running after him, but I didn’t know how that would help.

  I got used to half sleeping, being on alert so I could get up and run, especially if I was at the shelter. I felt safer outside, with Root on one side and Ash on the other. Hope was there, although more and more she was in Santa Cruz. She said she felt free sleeping on the beach and was learning to surf. Fleet perked up after she got a white rabbit that she called Robo and took around on a leash. She said someone on the street gave him to her, but I wondered if her mom sent her money and she went and bought him. No one was handing out rabbits.

  We were sitting on the grass, Robo scraping around in the middle, when Dave walked up carrying a blue backpack a few shades too cheerful that said happy trails on the straps. He sat down next to me, no explaining. Root nosed his way into Dave’s pack and pulled out a box of Milk-Bones. It didn’t take him long to bite through the cardboard and scatter them on the ground. Dave tried to grab them up before Root finished them all. He said to carry on like he wasn’t there, he was sorry to visit without warning, but he had to see for himself how Shane lived. He had gone over it in his mind and figured this was the only way. I wanted to tell him that Shane had never stayed with us, that we didn’t know where he’d spent the night. Maybe he was out dealing or shooting up or waiting until the light came up and he could, at last, fall asleep. But I looked at Dave and I couldn’t. In some weird way, he looked like one of us, scraggly hair, baggy jeans, fingernails bitten down raw. He sat against one of the short twisty trees and crossed his legs. “Coastal oak, nice tree, but I prefer cypress,” he said. He couldn’t help himself, reeling off tree facts the way he had about birds. Ash passed him a bottle of Wild Turkey and he took a small sip and swallowed loud, forcing it down. He turned down the joint, but Ash told him he should try it, if he really wanted to see how Shane lived. No one was going to come and arrest him for blazing a little weed, not here. So Dave took it, pinching the joint like was it was burning his fingers. He took a small hit, held it a long time, then breathed out and said he didn’t feel a thing. Ash told him to go harder. Dave inhaled deep a few more times, blew out rings as if he knew what he was doing, coughed and said he still didn’t notice much.

  “Just a fullness, kind of a pressure in my forehead.” He rubbed his temples, but his eyes were out of focus. His mouth was smiling on its own. We made a tight circle and Dave said we needed a talking piece. When Shane was in grade school his teacher had a plaster sculpture of a tiger paw that she passed around to each kid, which meant it was his turn to talk.

  “Dave is so fucked up,” said Ash. Dave laughed.

  I said it wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe we should use a talking piece and see what happened. Dave went looking around in the bushes for something we could use. He came out a few minutes later with a tennis ball covered in dirt.

  “Better than nothing,” he said. “I’ll start.” Root sat up and stared at the ball, waiting for Dave to throw it.

  I was waiting for another story about Shane, but instead Dave looked around at all of us. He held the ball clenched in his fist.

  “I feel that this is an important moment,” he said. “Maybe it’s impossible to really know another person, but I feel I’m understanding you better.”

  “It’s called being baked,” said Ash.

  “No,” said Dave. “I’m getting it. Getting you. Why you’re here. You have found something here that maybe the rest of us lack.”

  “Sour Diesel,” said Ash. “It’s good shit.” He put his arm around Dave and clenched his shoulder.

  Dave passed the ball to me and it was like holding a half-cooked egg, slimy and firm at the same time. I was trying to come up with something to say, but I was afraid I’d laugh if I tried to talk. Dave was serious. Root pounced and grabbed the ball out of my hand. He bent down in front of me, whimpering, so I tossed it as far as I could.

  “He wanted a turn,” I said.

  Dave smiled, but I could tell he was disappointed. Root ran back and forth with the ball, which was no longer the talking piece. Ash lit up again and handed the joint around. We all took long hits. Dave held it and took two in a row. “Quick learner,” said Ash. I laughed and couldn’t stop. I was so gone it burbled up out of me. After a while, we got up and walked, single file, to 40 Hill. Dave was at the end, not bothering to hold back the brush, which scraped against his pants. At the top, he felt the ground to make sure it was dry, crawled into his sleeping bag, rolled on his side and was out. He snored so loud that Hope collected some sticks and threw little pieces at his back. That shut him up for a few seconds and then he started in again, gulping air and grunting. He was an old guy, so of course he snored. I told her to leave him alone.

  Ash got out his ukulele and Hope sang in her screechy voice, but that didn’t wake up Dave either. Only Fleet was quiet. She was not all there since she got out of the hospital. She acted stoned when she was straight, and she talked in a hushed private voice to the rabbit. She stared at a book but didn’t seem to be reading. Ash said to give her time, she would start acting normal.

  Ash finally put the ukulele down and wiggled into the bags we rolled together to keep us warm. We’d fallen into this habit, like we had been together forever. We didn’t talk about it. And we didn’t get loud in front of other people. I wasn’t going to put on a show if Fleet and Hope were there. And forget when Dave spent the night. It was like doing it in front of your dad. I kept my hands to myself.

  Just before four, Ash’s alarm sounded and Dave sat up, his hair scrambled. He didn’t know where he was, but it came to him quickly when he looked at us, untwisting from our bags and stumbling onto the dirt. He walked with us to the bus stop, then to McDonald’s and acted like it was a usual thing for him to file into the bathroom with Ash. He was lucky because early morning was the best time, before the toilets got stopped up and stinking, before paper was scattered on the floor and the sink filled with bits of food, dirt, and whatever else fell off a person during the day. Dave came out with water dripping off his face and hair, imitating Ash’s quick sink bath. Then he bought us all breakfast sandwiches and extra-large coffees and watched us intently while we ate. But he wasn’t any closer to knowing Shane. He was looking for something that could not be checked the way I looked up the court records. He could not see the secrets that were inside a person. />
  “What happens now?” he said, leaning back in the booth and crumpling up the empty sandwich wrapper. “Where you all headed?”

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  “The shelter,” said Ash. “It’s almost time for breakfast.”

  I hoped he wasn’t planning to follow us around all day. It turned out I didn’t have to worry because he left us on the sidewalk outside McDonald’s. He said he’d eaten enough and he waved, keeping his hand up in the air stiff as a talking piece, and walked away, back into the park.

  chapter 20

  The rest of the world started to celebrate. The smoke shop threw strands of red and green tinsel over a turkey statue and the corner grocery hung little happy thanksgiving tags on its faded plastic tree, turning it all into one giant holiday. Hope wore a green plastic tiara she found on the ground. She said people liked decoration, that it put them in the right state of mind. It might help me to try, she said.

  Ash was tired of my research on Shane, which he said was changing my personality, and not in a good way. I was edgy and wiped out at the same time. He said to let it go, but he didn’t get it. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dave looking at a blank wall.

  I found a poster with Shane’s picture still attached to a light pole and had started showing it around the park. At first Ash went with me because he said you never know what people are going to do. They could act friendly and then rip you off. Everyone had a game. But there was no way anyone was getting over on me. I could take care of myself. No one was going to think I was an undercover cop, carrying a notebook and pulling Root next to me.

  The first day I started on the grass near the lake. I forced myself to walk up to a group of guys sitting next to a pile of guitars and packs. They’d only been around a few days, they said, following some copycat Grateful Dead band, but I showed them Shane’s picture anyway. They had no idea who he was.