By Gaslight Chapter 4 Tones

Portland, Oregon, Southeast 52^nd Street,
Friday, October 30, 2020 7:01 pm

 

F

ifteen years a brat and ever since his mother kicked him out, he’d been nine years a knave.

Knave, who the hell says knave?

It must have been those 120 hours of community service he did at the library shelving books.  The other dummies got yelled at doing road work while he was reading.  He’d been homeless, mostly in Seattle, since age fifteen, minus the two years he did in the King County Jail.  There had also been a couple of years hopping freight trains and scamming bus rides.  He supposed Seattle had only had to endure his presence for five years all told.

But that bullshit in downtown Seattle since the “Rising” was actually making shit too hot for him there.  It’s one thing dealing with the cops when you are a non-violent criminal scamming for a meal to eat and a place to sleep.  The cops generally had worse assholes than him to deal with.  But having to live on the streets now that the cops were literally not allowed to deal with violent criminals, meant that those fuckers had free rein to tax bums and they would be bored with nothing to do—at least some not being completely lazy—and be free to roust a guy down on his luck and out on his ass—just like Jack London and Jack Black wrote about a hundred years ago.

Here he was, on the train platform above I-5 and Foster, looking out over the highway towards distant Mount Hood.  He had spent most of his life in the shadow of Rainier and the Olympias.  Now, he thought he’d reboot his road show in the shadow of another unlucky white mountain, volcanoes all of them, one day to blow their tops like that insane nun Helens.

Ouch.  His chest hurt, like a piece of rebar had run clean through him under his sternum.  It felt kind of raised there, warm to the touch under his hoodie.

Shit, I need a place to stay and I haven’t been in Portland in years.

He looked down the stairs from the platform and saw a couple lowlife tweakers there and just decided that he’d avoid the camps as much as possible.  He could see their tents all along the overpass.

Fucking tweakers.

Shit that hurts.  I know I’m big.  But could this really be a heart attack?  I’m only 24, should be graduating from college!  My heart is racing and my—fuck it.

He had been born Frank Radicke, a boy without a dad.  Through his involvement in stealing music equipment he had wrangled some work as a roadie for a few local bands and had gotten the nickname Tones and just felt like it was more true to who he was then Frank.  Poor fucked-over Frank, the kid whom the principal kicked out of his chair and informed that he was going straight from school to prison—and the bastard was right.  Who wanted to be Frank?

Down beneath the platform his chest still hurt and he wasn’t dead yet so he set out looking for houses that were for sale.  Some of these hipster faggots had to be selling houses, what with all the arson and anarchist violence.  The cops were getting their asses kicked downtown, so he’d graze along the way.  Tones was a big man with one change of clothes and some beef jerky he had stolen from the 7-Eleven in his small backpack along with a bottle of water.

After about a half hour walk he hit the bar strip along Foster, all of the hipsters outside eating at tables.  He turned right on Holgate and started zigzagging through the side streets.  Two houses were for sale but occupied.  On the sixth block he finally found one that was unoccupied, walked around back between the garage and the house, located the laundry room door, and looked around to make sure no neighbors had a clear line of sight on his position.  Night was falling and the mist was coming in from the sea.  He did not want to be out in this shit tonight without a tent.  He took his jimmy out of his backpack.  Old Erik had fucked their tent up trying to make a fire inside in the rain.  Erik was a good dude but just did some weird shit.  He guessed he was better off that his pal had not decided to come south with him.

One of the realtors must have forgotten the deadbolt—no way was he defeating the deadbolt without cracking the frame and making his egress obvious at a glance.  The door knob was a cinch, as the wet Portland weather had warped the frame enough that this lock barely locked and he was in within five seconds.

What a nice house, he thought as his chest expanded to breathe in the unfamiliar sent of forced dry air, as the furnace was pumping just then.

Shit, that hurts.

He located a bathroom, found the mirror, took off his jacket, his hoodie and his shirt—awe fuck!

Right under his breast bone, over the diaphragm was either burned, or tattooed or grown a black sphere, a glassy globe of night.  He turned this way and that to see if it was a growth.

Fuck, could this be from smoking too much meth, pot, or from the LSD I got off of Erik last week—Erik?

Erik!

Erik, what the fuck? 

It was not raised like a tumor or something—what the fuck do I know, I never finished high school!

He did notice that the lights around the mirror—some woman obviously lived here—radiated a brightness that grew duller as it neared his malformed diaphragm, like there was no sure way to really illuminate his chest or belly fully, with the shiny mark seemingly absorbing some of the light.

He heard two car doors slam shut out front—shit, three!

He grabbed his clothes and backpack and headed upstairs, found the master bedroom and found a walk-in closet and secreted himself there.  He did not even dare put his clothes on as the realtor and the potential buyers wandered about the house chattering.

They came into the bedroom, examined the large empty space, passed by the closet without a mention and spent a couple minutes critiquing the bathroom.

This is perfect—he thought as they flushed the toilet to demonstrate the water pressure—two dykes and a straight female realtor.  I can shit and shower and sleep all up here in this little corner.  I didn’t see any furniture.  If the fridge is plugged in that will be great!  

The mark on his chest tingled more and ached less, not even a pain anymore but more of an informative sensation—like fucking aliens are about to burst forth from your guts, Hoss!

The front door shut and the cars pulled off.  It was dark now, so he broke out his little flashlight, got dressed, tried not to think about the creepy black hole in his body and explored the house.  The fridge was plugged in.  He needed to heist some beer.  There was a decorative towel in the bathroom off the master bedroom—he was going to be drying his big ass with that!

It was getting late, almost 9 o’clock and he was hungry.  He walked up to Foster, across the park, past the government building, made a left and just saw loads of rubes, feasting on all kinds of great bar food, nothing but little fat teddy bears, skinny jean hipsters and their women.  Guilt was rife, not a black person in sight and Black Lives Matter signage all over the place.

An inspiration hit him and big Tones was among the feasting hipsters—probably the blackest man in Portland despite his pale skin—raising his fist in the air and chanting, “Black Lives Matter!  What matters?  Black Lives Matter!—come on y’all, get up and march, Black Lives Matter!”

That’s all it took for these rubes.  The guys, he could tell, did not want to get up and march around the four little pavilions, with their gas lights heating the silly faggots and turd-brained princesses afraid of this phony fucking disease.  But the women, who all apparently dreamed of being gang raped by the savages he played dominos and spades with in the King County Jail, those stupid bitches could not resist and were soon running the thing: syncopating, dancing, leading chants, dressing lines.

And, to the tune of “Black Lives Matter!” Tones slipped off down the side street behind the trashcans with a plate of nachos, a slice of pizza and three vegan enchiladas!

Well, the nachos were good!  He ate the rest on principle as he sat on the toilet behind the master bedroom that had a frosted window and the decorative towel as a makeshift curtain to hide his presence.

Big Boy Tones sept like a baby, high and dry—well, unfortunately not high.

In the morning—well, in the early afternoon—he woke up with that ache in his chest and went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, hoping he was not going to see some alien shit ripping out through his stomach and then attaching itself to his face.

What he saw, in a way, was worse.  A stern human face looked out at him from within that globe of night as if this son-of-a-bitch were tunneling out through his guts.  The face had piercing dark eyes, a forked mustache, a scar on the cheek and a pointed beard.  This face held all of the vicious arrogance of a cop, the caper-making wits of a crook, and the high and mighty disdain of a judge.

“What a perfect prick this bastard must be.  Shit, I’m talking out loud.  That must have been some bad LSD, Erik.”

“No,” spoke the face from the well of night, “you litigious scoundrel, you, my reviled mutineer, have partaken of the potion of the shaman upon the Hitching Post of the Sun.  I could not rightly kill a white man—no matter how low—without soiling my honor, unless I somehow made use of the fellow in furtherance of illumination.  You, brute though you are, have been honored to be cast into the distant future in search of he who fled my wrath some years ago and laid upon me a curse.  More importantly, Eternity yawns with the possibilities.”

“What, Oh shit—sorry man, my stomach is not right.  You probably want to leave my hallucination—Oh God, those fucking vegan enchiladas!”

The scandalized face of the mesmerist in his fist-sized upper navel of night, scrunched with disgust and Tones barely had time to take a seat before he rocked out the song of the vegans on the porcelain kettle drum.

“Fucking hipsters!”