Afraid to Death

by Marc Behm

  It was a simple telephone call. Okay. It must have been Michele, in Kenly. The last time he’d seen her she promised to get in touch with him as soon as she had another big game lined up. Right. Michele. Or hey! Wait! That Japanese girl at the garage, about the BMW’s brakes. He told her he’d call her back and never did. He’d forgotten all about her. Sure. This was grotesque! He was falling apart for nothing.

  Somebody shouted, ‘Close the window, numbnuts!’

  Michele … the garage … who else? The old lady at the bookstore. He’d ordered I Rode with Stonewall and Stonewall in the Valley and Sherman’s Civil War from her. She said it would only take a week or so to receive all three books.

  Friday Thursday Wednesday Tuesday Monday … five days ago …

  He closed the window.

  Why wouldn’t she leave her name?

  ‘Huh what?’ One of Ada’s accountants lurched past him. A lout named Dudley, goggle-eyed with booze. ‘You talking to me, Egan?’

  ‘Hullo, Dudley.’

  ‘Hullo.’ He reeled away.

  And suddenly she was there.

  She came out of the dining room and strolled over to the fireplace with the guests crowded around the xylophone player and the singer.

  Joe watched her, too stupefied to move. She was as blond and supple as she’d been on Greenwood Avenue. That was the first thing that stunned him. She hadn’t aged or changed. Not in the least.

  How was that possible!

  She saw him, smiled and nodded to him.

  Then a shot was fired and everybody was screaming and stampeding through the rooms.

  8

  He didn’t know how he got out of there. He found himself on Oberlin Road, standing in the snow, pulling on a sheepskin coat that wasn’t his. Where was Ada? And where had he parked the car?

  He ran toward Peace Street. The bank … he had to get his money out of his savings account. But he couldn’t … not before Monday … tomorrow was Saturday … he couldn’t wait that long.

  He had to leave now. He had his credit cards and some cash. He had to pack. He slid on the ice, banged into a phone booth. No … he couldn’t go back to the apartment! Not away up there on the third floor … a perfect trap! But he had to pack … he needed some clothes … he couldn’t leave without luggage … fuck it! No luggage! He was sliding all over the street, like an ice-skater. He leaned against a mailbox and tried to be – what was the word? – coherent. Okay. (1) He had to get out of Raleigh tonight. (2) No time to pack. (3) Keep away from the apartment. (4) He needed the car. (5) Ada. Oh, God! Ada! He couldn’t take her with him. That hit him like a sledgehammer. Ask her to run away with him? She’d think he was insane. And he was! This was as good a time as any to face that fact. He was crazier than a loon!

  He waited for her in the underground garage, hiding behind the parked cars. It was after midnight when the BMW rolled down the ramp, its wipers slashing like fencers.

  ‘Where the hell did you disappear to?’ She hugged him, her face shining with excitement.

  ‘Something came up, Ada. I have to …’

  ‘Stan Stokowski shot Stony Tony! He caught him getting on Mabel in the kitchen and shot him!’

  ‘Listen, I have to leave town for a while …’

  ‘Where did you get that coat?’

  ‘I have to …’

  ‘Where’s your anorak?’

  ‘I must have left it at …’

  ‘Leave town? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ll only be gone a couple of days …’ A fucking lie! ‘A week at the most.’

  ‘You’ve been gambling again.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who’s after you? Bookies?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Just pay whatever you owe them.’

  ‘I will. Monday. Goodbye, Ada.’

  ‘Wait a second …’

  ‘I’ll be back …’ He kissed her – a cold terrified kiss – then climbed in the car and drove off.

  ‘Joe!’

  He’d never forget her calling his name like that. Never. She shouted at him in a thousand nightmares, over and over again.

  He did come back. Ten years later.

  9

  Route 70 to Durham was snowed under. So was 40. He fled in the opposite direction, back across the city to Carleigh. All the exits were blocked. He spent the night in a motel. He didn’t sleep. He sat bleakly on the edge of the bed, watching TV and urinating every fifteen minutes.

  At dawn he followed a slow-moving snowplow to Goldsboro. From here the road was clear to Kinston. By midnight he was on the coast, in Moreland City. Another motel. He found a clip of six one-hundred dollar bills in the pocket of the sheepskin. A positive omen if ever there was one! But he still couldn’t sleep.

  One more night, one more motel in South Carolina, then he was in Atlanta.

  He decided he’d come far enough. He checked into the New Forest Park, near the airport, and slept for eleven hours.

  He swam in the pool, ate huge meals, bought some clothes, took long walks, jogged. An old bell captain gave him an address in East Point and he began playing poker again. But he couldn’t concentrate and in two weeks lost most of his cash.

  He was paying for everything with checks and credit cards. That meant that all his spending could be traced back to him here in Georgia, but there was no way to avoid that. He’d move on soon enough. To Vegas maybe, or LA.

  Eventually. But not until he calmed down.

  Then, roaming around one night, he was mugged and lost everything. He didn’t report it to the police. The paperwork would just mean further identification. But he cancelled his cards by phone. He was still tidy-minded enough to do that.

  At the end of the month he left the hotel without paying his bill. He slept in the BMW.

  He got a job waiting on tables in a restaurant on Ivy Street. The tips were generous and he moved into a rooming house. He played some more poker. He kept losing. Then he was fired.

  He worked for a while in a carwash, then a supermarket, then in the cafeteria at Spelman College. Then nothing.

  A student bought his sheepskin coat for twenty dollars.

  He sold the BMW.

  More poker, but the losing streak continued. It was definitely hoodoo time.

  On his first night on the streets he climbed up on the roof of a service station and slept there. After that, roofs became his specialty – warehouses, office buildings, department stores, schools, the post office, even Exhibition Mall and the St. Joseph Infirmary.

  His fellow-derelicts called him ‘Housetop Harry’ and began imitating him. Soon the roofs of Atlanta were crowded with squatters. The scandal became nation-wide and the Mayor ordered the Police Department to put a stop to it. Joe and hundreds of others were herded into the slammer. He gave a false name and was released the next day.

  He moved into a large wooden packing case in a vacant lot on Memorial Drive. It was five feet high and seven feet long. He filled it with straw and a mattress and pillows – whatever he could salvage from dumpsters.

  He lived there all spring and summer and fall, begging for handouts during the day, entombed as snugly as a bear in a cave at night.

  Nobody bothered him, except, occasionally, some neighborhood kids who threw rocks at his hovel and once, when he was out bumming, poured paint on his blankets.

  Two black cops visited him and beat him up because he was a honky, but they didn’t evict him.

  After that he was left alone and became part of the rubble.

  10

  He’d lie in his decaying hole for hours on end, eating apples and watching the adjacent streets through peepholes.

  On the edge of the lot was a bus stop. Farther on, up the block on the corner, was a barbershop. Down the block, on the next corner, were a dry-cleaners and a 7-Eleven. And just across the Drive was the playing field of a school, usually swarming with screeching little girls high-jumping and racing and kicking soccer balls.

  Hi
s ancient Discoverer of Secrets gift came into use again.

  He learned that the wife of the man who owned the dry-cleaners would sometimes sneak across the lot to the barbershop. The barber would hang a ‘Closed’ sign on the door for a half-hour, then she would sneak back.

  A lad who worked in the 7-Eleven was gay. During his afternoon break he’d bring certain customers into the lot and they would perform in the garbage.

  And one of the passengers at the bus stop was a smuggler or a spy or something. He would arrive every morning at six-thirty. Another man, not always the same, would get off the next bus that pulled in. As the two of them passed each other, a small bundle would exchange hands, as swiftly and deftly as a magician’s trick.

  But most of the time he would just watch the little girls in the field. They were like birds, swooping in endless flight, pouncing and hopping, never still. At first, he could hardly tell one from the other. But then, as the weeks passed, he began to identify them familiarly. One was taller than the others, already a lovely ballerina, soaring to incredible heights over the hurdles. One was too fat, much too fat, her nimbleness was beginning to falter. Another, the fastest, was an Oriental. She could streak around the entire track in less than a minute. Three of them looked exactly alike, they had to be triplets.

  And one – the smallest – kept trying over and over again to climb the fence, ripping her sweatshirt, scratching her knees, always failing to reach the top. She was just too tiny to make it. But next year she would outgrow them all and be able to ascend barriers twice as high.

  He wished he could tell her this.

  The traffic was unending. Buses, fire engines, ambulances, cars, trucks. Their rolling tires were as perpetual as the ocean tides.

  That’s what woke him late one October night – a change in the tide.

  He sat up, peeked through a peephole. A car was parked at the bus stop, its motor running, a spotlight beside the driver’s window shining on the lot.

  He thought the two sadistic black cops were back … but no. It was smaller than a cruiser and unmarked.

  He crawled outside, crept into the weeds.

  The beam of the light passed just in front of him, then rose and moved on.

  He hid behind a pile of refuse. The beam swept back to him, poured into the bushes, drenching the blackness with pale brilliance … then pulled away.

  He scampered across the side street into the barbershop alley, crouched in the shadows.

  The light found the packing case, blazed around it, making the junk piles glimmer like a sea-bottom of watery pewter.

  Then, abruptly, the beam went out and the car drove away.

  He hid all morning inside a dumpster in the alley, watching the lot from under the lid.

  Everything was normal. At six-thirty the two passengers met at the bus stop and passed their package. The little girls invaded the field, playing baseball today. The imp climbed tirelessly up and down the fence. The dry-cleaner’s wife visited the barbershop – ‘Closed.’

  At eleven o’clock the neighborhood gang attacked the lot for the first time in months. They doused the packing case with gasoline and set it on fire, then ran off, yelling and dancing. The straw and mattress and everything he owned burst into a volcano of flames.

  A crowd gathered in the street and watched. The little girls lined the fence and cheered.

  Inside the dumpster, Joe wondered where he would sleep tonight. Maybe he would just stay here, lounging in the rubbish until the next dumping. It was safe and cozy, and there were plenty of edibles. He laughed, letting his mind sink as far down as it could go. Maybe it would be easier, just to flip out, to loosen all the screws and surrender what was left of his wits to gibbering madness once and for all.

  A bus pulled up to the stop. One passenger got off.

  It was her.

  He wasn’t surprised. He’d been expecting her.

  She walked into the lot and stood gazing at the fire.

  He squirmed out from under the lid, jumped down into the alley and ran for his life.

  11

  He wobbled up Bell Street, all the way to Decatur, lurching and tottering like a cripple.

  Then he stopped, lost. Which way now? Where was his car? Snow. He looked around, the bright sun warming his numbed muscles. Why wasn’t it snowing? No … hold it! This wasn’t Raleigh. He’d left there the night of the blizzard. He’d gone to … to … where? And he’d sold the BMW. In Atlanta. That’s where he was now. What the fuck was he doing in Atlanta?

  And who was that?

  He gaped at a mirror in the window of a drugstore.

  A ragged ghost stared back at him – hairy, bearded, wild-eyed, wrapped in a filthy blanket. He held up his hands. They were as sticky and grimy as crocodile claws. Jesus Christ! What had happened to him?

  He walked on, limping, light-headed, stumbling, climbing slowly out of the abyss.

  Lo the grass withers. And how! He was a wreck. Okay. She’d found him. But now she had to catch him. And in the meantime, he needed a cup of coffee. And he had to wash his hands … wow! How long had he been like this?

  People passed, turning away from him, making faces. A little boy looked at him and laughed. His mom pulled him away, scolding him.

  He asked a natty fellow in a three-piece suit for a dollar.

  ‘Get a job, asshole!’

  Another guy told him to go fuck himself. A pretty woman just snarled at him like a tiger.

  He couldn’t blame them. He was a nightmare. Freddy Kruger!

  In Butler Park, he saw an elderly rabbi sitting on a bench. He limped over to him, trying not to look drunk.

  ‘I don’t want a drink,’ he said. ‘I just want to get cleaned up.’

  ‘That would help,’ the old guy grinned at him. ‘You lost a shoe.’

  Joe looked down. His left foot was scabby and black, covered with a ripped sock. ‘It probably fell off when I jumped out of the dumpster. I can get a new pair for about two bucks. At the Goodwill Mart. Second hand. I need a razor too. And some clothes.’

  ‘And soap.’

  ‘Yeah right. Soap. It would only take …’ he counted on his spotted fingers. ‘Oh, all in all… about ten bucks.’

  ‘And you want me to invest in you?’

  ‘No, not really. Who gives away that kind of money? I’m just thinking out loud. A quarter would be fine.’

  The rabbi gave him a cigar. And a fifty-dollar bill!

  He bought everything at the Mart for less than fifteen bucks. Shoes, trousers, socks, a shirt, a sweater, a razor, a bar of soap.

  He went into an alley behind the Federal Building and bathed at a spigot. He scrubbed his feet until they were raw. He hacked at his hair with a razor blade, then shaved off what was left, leaving his skull as nude as a stone. His beard too vanished, dropping away like wads of malignant seaweed. Then he dressed, feeling clean and sane for the first time since last winter. Was it last winter? Or the winter before that?

  He went back to the park to show the rabbi the result. But he was gone.

  He never smoked the cigar. He carried it in his pocket like a holy relic until it crumbled to nothingness.

  12

  At a snackbar, he ate a hamburger and drank three cups of coffee.

  Then he made up his mind to try his luck again. Now or never! Not in East Point, no, the stakes there were too gigantic. There was an around-the-clock poker game in Deerwood Park. He had thirty dollars left. That was enough.

  The card den was in an abandoned store on a back street. Three tables. Working class. He felt as conspicuous as a leper, but he must have looked okay, because nobody bothered him.

  That’s where he met Maxie Hearn. She was a cheerful redhead wearing big earrings. When he first saw her, she was standing in a corner, naked to the hips, sticking a Catapres-TTS patch between her breasts. Watching her inviting waist, he thought for just an instant about – he couldn’t believe it – sex. But only faintly and briefly.

  ‘High blood pressure
,’ she said. ‘Catch it early and you live to be a hundred and ten.’ She pulled on her blouse. ‘Are you betting on the basketball game?’

  ‘No. What are they playing here?’

  ‘Just draw. Take the second table. It’s warm. What happened to your hair? Are you a skinhead?’

  ‘All the soldiers in my regiment shave their heads. Otherwise the Apaches would try to scalp us.’

  ‘Oh, brother.’

  As soon as there was an empty chair he sat down. He played for twelve hours. When he finally left, he had two thousand three hundred in his pocket. The hoodoo was broken!

  He found Maxie in a bar across the street.

  ‘I lost six big ones on the basketball game,’ she groaned. ‘I don’t know why I even bother betting on sports. Basketball, baseball, football, volleyball. It must be hormonal. All those sweaty jocks just turn me on and I lose all sense of proportion. How did you do?’

  ‘I got enough to buy a bus ticket.’

  ‘I’m going to Nashville. You can come with me if you pay for the gas.’

  Since he had to get away from here as soon as possible, he accepted. An hour later they were in her Toyota, speeding toward Chattanooga.

  ‘Don’t you have any stuff?’ she asked.

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Like luggage.’

  ‘I keep everything in my head.’

  ‘Oh, brother!’

  Driving through Damascus, he saw a billboard in a field. ‘HO! HO! HO! JUST 60 MORE SHOPPING DAYS TILL XMAS!’ As they passed, the 60 changed to 59.

  That’s when he composed his song.

  Ho! ho! ho! ho!

  Just go Joe go go go!

  She’ll get you if you go too slow!

  ‘I try to take a week off from the cards every two or three months,’ she said. ‘Otherwise my blood pressure fluctuates like mad.’

  She’d been playing poker and bridge ever since she left high school. She usually won enough every year to buy a condo. She owned apartments in St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville and KC. ‘I’m looking into a couple of places in Nashville. You interested in investing?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What do you do with your money?’