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