Last Ditch (4 page)

I've
come to
see that the problem is not one of caring or kindness, but rather of
self-preservation. We can't help ourselves. We keep our distance. We
quicken
our steps, square our shoulders and put on that thousand-yard stare.
Forced
close to them, we hold our collective breaths as if it were possible
for the
filament vapors of fear and failure to crawl down our throats and come
to rest
in our lungs like tumors. We don't mean it. We're not unkind or
uncaring. It's
just that terrible, lingering doubt that forces us to live our lives in
constant fear, as if to consider the hopelessness of their plight for
even an
instant would surely weaken us, leaving us forever more susceptible to
fortune,
to disease, to folly. My timing was perfect. I rolled the Fiat into the
Vine

Street
parking
lot just as the sun winked for the last time and then disappeared
behind the
Olympics. The distant mountains stood like jagged jack-o'-lantern
teeth,
fearsome and uneven in the orange mouth of the sunset Thin needles of
airborne
foam prickled my cheeks as I locked the car and started across the
parking lot.
Ahead in the distance, the white concrete silos of the Pier Eight-six
Grain
Terminal surrendered to the dark northern sky. On my left, an insistent
wind
ruffled the surface of Elliott
Bay, sliding on the
muscular blue water, horizon to horizon, steadily toward the black
boulders of
shore. I turned up my collar and was about to duck my head into the
wind when I
saw them.

George,
Harold,
Ralph and Nearly Normal Norman lounged about the leeward side of a
mossy
hillock at the near end of the park, passing a trio of bag-shrouded
hims among
them. Ralph's shopping cart rested atop the crest like a modern-art
monument to
dubious acquisition.

George
was the
only one facing my way, but he was either too involved or too shitfaced
to
notice my approach. Probably both. He'd been a banker once and a
serious mover
and shaker in the Downtown Businessmen's Association. He'd been on the
street
for the better part of twenty-five years but remarkably, didn't look
much worse
for the wear. His sharp features and slicked-back white hair gave him
the look
of a defrocked boxing announcer. He pulled a bagged him from Ralph's
hand and
raised it to his lips.

Ralph
Batista
had once been a high-ranking official with the Port
of Seattle
and had mustered the longshoreman vote for my old man. Like the others,
his
unquenchable taste for the grape had eventually drowned whatever life
he'd had,
leaving him adrift among the flotsam and jetsam of the streets with an
ever-present smile and paucity of functioning brain cells. Ralph had
attained
nirvana through numbness.

The
wind
carried his voice to me.

"If
Bo
Derek married Don Ho, she'd be Bo Ho."

Harold
Green
choked a couple of ounces of whatever he was drinking out through his
nose and
then wiped his face with his sleeve

"Bo
Ho," he sputtered. "That's good. Bo Ho."

Harold
had sold
men's shoes at the Bon Marche and had been a minor functionary in the
Retailers
Union. He used to be taller. Each passing year carved another couple of
pounds
from his gaunt frame, further emphasizing his baseball-sized Adam's
apple and
cab-door ears. He was beginning to look like Mr. Potato Head.

As
I started
across the grass toward them, Norman
piped in.

"If
Snoop
Doggy Dogg married Winnie the Pooh, he'd be Snoop Doggy Dogg Pooh.'"

"Snoop
what? Who the fuck is that?" George demanded.

"The
rapper, man. You know. 'Gin and Juice.' "

George
shook
his head. "Rap is crap," he declared.

Norman
rose from the ground,
steadied himself
for a moment and then began to shuffle from side to side. At six foot
seven and
drunk as a skunk, he moved with all the grace of a giraffe on
Rollerblades. He
sang. If that's what you called it.

Little
or
nothing was known of Nearly Normal Norman's background. When he first
blew into
town about five years ago, I'd inquired as to his family's state of
origin and
had, on successive attempts, been met with answers of Rhode Island, Indiana
and Sri Lanka.
In kinder, gentler times, Norman
would have been wearing paper slippers and crocheting pot holders in a
nice
warm sanitarium somewhere. The miracles of Reaganomics had put him on
the
street.

Other
than a
nuclear thirst, what kept this particular group of guys together was
their
similar financial status. Normal
had some sort of small trust fund that paid out by the month. The other
three
had managed to work long enough to have earned meager monthly stipends
from
their respective employers. Not a full pension, not enough to make it
alone,
but enough, when you added in the money I paid them, to collectively
keep them
in liquor and mostly out of the rain.

Norman
waved his massive arms and
continued
gyrating wildly.

George
blinked
twice and pointed my way.

"Well,
look what we got here," he slurred.

Ralph
swiveled
his head and then waited for his eyes to catch up.

"Leo,"
he shouted.

"Howdy,
fellas," I said.

"Pull
up
some grass," said Harold.

George
waved
him off. "Gotta be careful with that kind of talk, Harry," he said.
"Remember, Leo here used to smoke that wacky weed. Doan want him to
relapse or nothin'."

Harold
grinned.
"I remember. Wasn't a Hostess Cupcake or a Ding Dong safe around the
kid."

Norman
had stopped dancing and
was now patting
his pockets.

"You
wanna
burn a bowl, Leo? I think I got some real good bud somewhere here on
me."

I
held up my
hand. "No thanks, Normal.
I've only got a second."

"Oh,
yeah,"
George groused. "Mr. On Television got no time for the likes of us
riffraff."

I
sat down on
the damp grass next to George and threw

an
arm around
his bony shoulders. "On the contrary, my

good
man,
spending some time with you riffraff is just

what
I had in
mind."
   
.
  
"

"We
seen
you today ... on the TV down at Steve's Broiler," Ralph said. "Ya
really stuck it to the old judgy wudgy."

"They're
gonna fry him," Harold offered.

"Not
in
our lifetimes," I said. "He'll die of old age before he exhausts his
appeals. Either that or some guy he sentenced will punch his ticket for
him and
save the state the trouble."

"Your
old
man never liked him,'' George said suddenly. He took a short pull and
then
continued. "Always said Dougie was a prisoner of his dick. Wild Bill
never
had any respect for a guy couldn't control himself that way. Figured if
a guy
could be led around by his fly, he wasn't good for nothin' else." He
took
another pull, longer this time, and then thrust his him in my direction.

I
took it. With
these guys, the act of swillage had attained full-scale religious
significance.
To refuse was the worst sort of heresy. I knew the drill. As far as
they were
concerned, only teetotalers ranked lower on the evolutionary scale than
sippers. I sniffed. Peach schnapps. It could be worse. I brought the
him to my
lips and took a full swallow. I let the thick liquid slide down my
throat and
then passed the him on to Ralph.

While
we sat
there on the grass playing musical hims and shooting the breeze about
old
times, Normal
stood on the side of the hill batting at himself like he was on fire.
Having
determined that his weed was not in any of his outer garments, he was
now
working his way down through the six or seven layers beneath. Clothes
were
beginning to pile up around his ankles like molted skin. The wind
carried the
smell of mothballs and body odor to my nostrils.

"Could
you
guys use a day's work?" I asked. Normal
stopped patting himself. Ralph set the botde in his lap.

"You
got
work for us?" he asked.

"No,
he's
taking a friggin' survey," George said.

I
ignored him.
"Yup. Fifty a day each. Free lunch. Free beer. Maybe even a little
schnapps when the job is done."

When
the
cheering subsided, I saw that Normal
had found what he was looking for and was now using his thumb to tamp a
small
green bud down into the bowl of a wooden pipe. Out over his shoulder
the
lighted green globe atop the Seattle Post-Intelligencer building spun
slowly.
Big red letters, IT’S IN THE PI. IT’S IN THE PI.

I
got to my
feet Already, I could feel the schnapps in my head. It was escape now
or show
up at home walking on my knees, smelling like reefer. I no longer kid
myself
about just having a few. I've never wanted a few of anything in my
life. With
me, it's like the old song says: all or nothing at all. Time to get the
hell
out of here.

"Pick
you
guys up right here at ten tomorrow morning," I said over my shoulder.
Norman began rapping
again.

"Rollin' down the street, smokin' endo,
sippin' on gin and juice. 'G's up, hoes down.' "

Whoever
Said
thai at either end of the socioeconomic spectrum there exists a leisure
class
was absolutely correct. It was ten twenty-five when I pulled Rebecca's
blue
Explorer into the driveway and turned off the ignition. The bitching
started
immediately.

"What
are
we doin' here?" George demanded. "You forget somethin' or what?"

"This
is
where we're working," I said.

In
the rearview
mirror, Harold looked confused. "What are we gonna do here, Leo? We
gonna
guard the joint?"

"Yard
work."

Big-time
silence. Then George spoke. "Yard work. Wadda ya mean we're gonna do
yard
work?"

"The
pay's
the same either way," I said.

"I
thought
we was doing detective work," said Ralph.

"Nope,"
I said, stepping out onto the asphalt. "Rebecca and I figured this was
a
chance to do a few of the things we've been talking about doing ever
since we
moved in. Come on."

Nobody
moved.
Instead, they all looked to George. He sat in the passenger seat with
his arms
folded across his chest, slowly shaking his head. "Yard work," he
said incredulously. "Are you shittin' me?"

I
walked around
to his side and pulled open the door.

"Come
on,
man. Nothing too heavy. Just going to clean things up a bit and burn
some
trash." I spread my arms, palms upward. "Not a bad day. Not too hot,
not too cold, not raining. Come on," I wheedled. "It'll be tons of
fun."

George
folded his
arms higher and tighter and then turned his face away. "Just because
we're
bums don't mean we'll do yard work, for Chrissakes," he muttered. "We
got standards, ya know."

"What
if
somebody found out?" Harold whined.

Before
I could
respond, Normal
kicked open the rear door and stepped out He left the door open as he
bent
over, took me by the shoulder and whispered in my ear.

"You
say
we could bum stuff?"

I
didn't like
the gleam in his eye. Not one bit. It reminded me of that Applewhite
character.
You remember, old Onion Head. The one who cut off his own balls and
then talked
his followers into offing themselves so's they could rendezvous with
the big
spaceship in the sky. That one. The look in that man's eyes is going to
the
grave with me. These days, anytime I find myself harboring
retro-romantic
notions regarding the intelligence of my fellow creatures, I just
conjure up
the image of his face and that faraway lunar look in his eyes, and then
I
immediately go out shopping for newer and better weapons.

"A
small
to medium fire," I amended.

He
pulled me
closer, crushing me in his vicelike grip.

"I
get to
tend it"

"Okay,"
I said tentatively, taking a mental inventory of all available smoke
detectors,
fire extinguishers and garden hoses. "We'll do it way in the back of
the
yard by the cliff."

The
house where
my parents had lived from the time I was seven was the only part of my
trust
fund which I was legally able to use prior to my forty-fifth"'
birthday.
Since my father's death in seventy-four, I'd always chosen to rent the
place
out rather than live in it rent-free. Call me sentimental, but a couple
of
grand a month for doing nothing had always seemed preferable to
rattling around
in a twelve-room house with a couple of ghosts who weren't talking to
one
another.

Earlier
this
year, however, circumstances had conspired to force me to either putt
or get
off the green regarding my relationship with Rebecca. And after a mere
nineteen
years of dating, too. What's the world coming to? Everybody's in such a
hurry.
Anyway, Rebecca and I talked it over and reached an adult,
collaborative
decision that the most sensible course of action would be to move into
the
newly renovated family manse. Something about the twelve rooms with a
view,
rent-free, attracted her.