From Ya!

Out in the early morning, a gentle snow brushed his face, the blacktop was white. Everywhere the old folk sat behind their windshield wipers waiting for the parking lot to clear so that they could get home to bed. Here and there a red-eyed flashlight waved at them. Beneath these lights the attendants huddled in their parkas like red-nosed Eskimos. Al stepped among them carefully. If ever those drivers decided it was time to move out, a pedestrian would not want to be caught too near a beckoning light. He called to one: “Traffic a little slow just now?”

“Ninety cents a hour, they can sit all night.” “Hell yes.” With help like that he reached the street before the rush. Down by the corner, on a bench, a life-size snowman sat. Nearby hung a weak street lamp, which seemed to be spewing snow on that white man alone and on his bench. Upon his shoulders and arms and the back of the bench snow was piled to the depth of an inch. A few leftover flakes swirled at his feet. One knew he was alive by his sputtering pipe, and he spoke.

“Don’t these big-assed buses ever stop?”

“You’d think they would.”

“This here’s a big-assed bus stop, isn’t it?”

“It sure looks like one.”

“I been sitting here since eleven o’clock. Every damn one is either barrel-assing for the garage or all filled up.”

Al shook his head. “Did I see you working the show tonight?”

“Me? Yeah, you did.”

“How’d you make out with the drinks?”

“Oh, big-assed,” he said. Even his frowning eyebrows were turning white.

“It looked like you were running circles around the kids.”

The snowman sucked snow through his big pipe. “Shit, I thought he said his drinks was a dime apiece. By the time anyone told me they was fifteen cents I was in the big-assed hole five ninety-eight.”

“Ow. You have to pay up?”

“Me. You can’t suck honey from a welfare check. I gave him seventy-five cents.”

“That still hurts.”

“Hell, I kept my bus fare out.”

“You coming back for the Auto Show?”

“Pepsi on the Auto Show. I’m going to stay right home and wait on my check. If I’d known how these buses was going to run I could have walked and been home by now.”

“Hell yes, you could.” Here came one now, sliding out of the parking lot, half filled with the last remnants of the ambulatory audience. Sucking his pipe, the snowman eyed it disgustedly. Al raised a hand. The astonished bus driver hit his brakes, skidded to a big-assed stop half a block beyond. Al turned back to the bench. “Man, there’s your bus.”

The snowman pocketed his pipe, heaved to his feet, and shook himself. Cold or the weight of remaining snow, seemed to impede his progress as he stamped after the bus, but soon his arms began to swing and he gained a little momentum by the time he got to it. Al could hear him stamp each step as he climbed in. He could see him stamp down the aisle, past his watchful audience without glancing to right or left, drop heavily onto the wide back seat as the bus blasted off. Stepping around the broken pile of snow before the bench, Al followed south.

Now he had the sidewalks to himself, and quietly. No one had ever walked on them before, they were being made fresh tonight. They were being made of a perfect material that required a perfect temperature to set. Rubber soles pressed their marks on it reverently. Each step was its own discovery waiting to be lost. If conditions continued perfect for one hour more, the world would be all new again.

Not tonight. Up on the bridge ahead a red light blinked emergency, two big men were out and running toward a little one. He was leaning against the rail and vomiting. “Hey! Hold it there! Hold it there!” They grabbed hold of him. “What do you think you’re doing out here?”

“Me? I-I-I . . .”

“Don’t you know you could fall off of there?”

“I . . .”

“Christ, you can’t even talk. What are you, froze or stoned or what?”

“Ah-ah-ah! I didn’t recognize you officers at first. That your car there?”

“Where? Yeah, that’s our car.”

“Ah-ah-ah! You’re officers from the Patrol!”

“Yeah, we’re from—”

“Good! Good! I thought you was some of them city boys—you got to be careful with them!”

“That right?”

“I know you officers from the Patrol. I like your work!”

“That ri—”

“Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!”

“O.K., now—”

“Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!”

“Look, dad, you don’t belong up here at night, you know that. You better get in this nice warm car and we’ll take a little ride down south.” They began dragging him towards the car.

“Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!”

Al stepped carefully around the scene, eyeing it with only the politest curiosity. Behind him he could hear doors open, slam. A laconic voice spoke on radio. The motor started up. “Get ‘em! Get ‘em!” the old man croaked, and then he seemed to be vomiting. The car slunk quietly by. Twenty feet farther on, its chains suddenly bit ice, the car leaped south. Just before the crest of the bridge it hit a post. It bounced off, spun slowly north, and then slid cockeyed to a stop. Al was half blinded by its one light. He slowed a little as he passed, but the officers did not seem to wish to notice him. They were on radio. Their motor still turned, their heater worked, as did their blinking light. The old man himself seemed to be having a lovely time. “Get ‘em! Get ‘em!” he encouraged them from the back, drooling happily on their red necks. Suddenly sirens were everywhere, and heading here. Al quickened pace, anxious to be off that bridge before they met. He made it, as cars raced by him from the south. They wailed and blinked. Inside each car, the cops peered straight ahead. They weren’t interested in him tonight, they had a rendezvous to keep!

From John-Juan

He arrived in town with his pajamas, his slippers, three NōDōz pills, an uneasy feeling that he had known himself in better times. Normally he would have guessed that he had driven, what with those pills and that sense of having been slammed in alone too long, but when did a man drive off without his pants and driver’s license, and he had no key. He might have delivered the car somewhere, of course, but in this attire? Furthermore, his legs, back, shoulders, neck, even his hands, had a marvelous tone; only his mind was tired. His feet perhaps were a little sore. He was not asleep: in a dream he would have clothed himself and been long gone from here by now, with safer thoughts. Awake he had less fine control. Nor was he drunk. He could not drink, these days, that much, he felt. He was cold-sober wide-eyed on foot in town, and the citizens were aware of him. They stared, not at his pajamas but at his watch. He had his watch.

It seemed to him that he had lived in Texas once, during a war, and that the language he now heard was spoken with what they had used to call a Texas sluh. Yet the words he heard here now were not so well-rehearsed. Yet, again, he noted the high-heel boots that boosted little men up toward big empty hats (here and there a baseball cap) and noted fine wide leather belts, and it seemed a high proportion of Cadillacs but with giddy assortment of license plates which could not have told him much even had he brought his glasses on this trip, though since when had he worn glasses? Complexions, masculine, ranged he thought familiarly from white to rosy red to sallow outdoor man to citified Indian, raven hair or bleached, with large dark eyes and dark brown teeth. Children were all their own, camouflaged in dirt and noise, free sample packages of wasted energy. In fact the adults too had preserved just enough of that vivacity, that eager communicativeness, to give them slight preference over those other Texans he perhaps recalled. Yet right off he could not make out what the hell they were talking about.

“A memento, pod?”

“Sir?”

The man, in little league baseball cap, had delivered him from a dozen overexcited boys, a muscular girl of four or five, a basket case on roller skates, several uncherished dogs, rained shock troops for who could imagine what reserves? They, the little old leaguer and John (George?) had found sanctuary in the vaulted entrance to a bank now closed and densely barred. John-George himself was seated on the top-most step, the old leaguer erect on the next lower one shielding him as best he could from spies. His blue cap bill pivoted left to right several times monotonously as though following a very slow exchange in the bullpen directly behind his back, his narrow eyes were alive with plays, his little ears lay tight against his skull, his sharp nose was up, but when finally he allowed himself to look at John-George full face his gold-rimmed smile glittered reassurance, solicitation, guilelessness.