In the City of Shy Hunters (54 page)

Stick 'em! somebody under the juniper yelled. He's going to stick 'em!

Dave stepped out next to me, pushing his tortoiseshell glasses back onto his nose, holding his leather wallet out.

Here, take our money!

Ruby's smile, Ruby's gone eyes. Knife blade, the light, hand to hand, back and forth, up and down.

Fuck you, pharisee! Ruby said, And your fucking money!

Ruby fell to one side, grabbed onto a tree limb, shook his head, talked for a while so you couldn't hear.

Then: Who's the singer? Ruby said.

Knife flash at Harry.

Who's the leather chick? Ruby said.

Knife flash past my arm.

You fuckers! Ruby said. Think you can come here in your yuppie sex leathers and sing and dance?

Harry held his hands out to Ruby, palms up. Hey, I'm sorry, man, Harry said, I was just—

Ruby stomped his foot down on the sidewalk, strands of red-blond hair in his face.

This is my fucking home! Ruby yelled. Dark veins in his forehead and his neck. Don't you understand? This is where I live, man! Ruby yelled. You're in my fucking living room! You're standing on my fucking
couch!

Harry moved his head, looked down slow.

Drops of sweat on Ruby's couch around Harry's feet.

Dave stopped holding out his wallet.

Ruby, I said.

Ruby was so close.

A siren. Shouts. Somebody screamed. Stick 'em! He's gonna stick 'em!

Ruby, I said.

Under Ruby's smile, the shine of the knife blade hand to hand, back and forth, back and forth.

Just what the fuck is so fucking funny? Ruby said.

Ruby, I said.

Fiona grabbed my shoulder, pulled my shoulder back.

Shut up, Will! Fiona said.

Fiona was standing next to me, moving between Ruby and me.

We meant no harm! Fiona said.

Ruby's smile up Fiona's body, up to her face. His face leaning closer in to her face.

What are you? Slumming? Ruby said. His spray of spit in the light. Want to see how the other half lives? Ruby said.

Shouts and screams and people were running. Stick 'em! He's gonna stick 'em!

Then there were horses. All around us, I could hear horses running.

Ruby! I said. Life Café, man! I said. Travel mode's the key!

Ruby stopped his smile, stopped with the knife, squinted hard in my direction.

Quiet only New York can get that fast.

Hey! I said, my arms open wide. Hey, dude! I said. Ruby Prestigiacomo! I said. Where's True Shot tonight?

Will? Ruby said.

Then: William of Heaven! Fuckin-A, man! Is that you?

All around us, sirens, shouts from inside the park. A woman screamed, more screams. Horses running.

Ruby put the blade back into the knife against his leg, slid the knife into his front pocket, stepped toward me.

I caught Ruby in my arms.

Ruby bones.

Lips at my ear: Hey, I'm fucking sorry man, Ruby said. No offense, huh?

His chin sharp against my upper arm.

Ruby's ribs, I could feel every rib. His clavicle. Ruby's shoulder bones hard in the palms of my hands. His breath against my neck. Puke smell stronger than horse piss.

Ruby put his hands onto my chest, the bones in his hands. Ruby pushed himself back.

Ruby's smile.

William of Heaven, Ruby said, What the fuck are you doing with these people? These people are pharisees, Will.

Then: When're you going to call me back, motherfucker? Is red OK? True Shot said I should buy the
red
answering machine. Said he had a vision, man, that red was the color for you.

Ruby put his open palm on the back of my neck, steadied himself with me, put his forehead onto my black T-shirt, onto my pearls, for a moment. The part in Ruby's hair, a tiny road to nowhere.

Now here.

William of Heaven, man! Ruby said. You got to understand. There's so much you don't know about Wolf Swamp, man! This place'll eat you up! You don't know it but you need me! I was just like you when I got here! I know a lot. I could save you from going through this shit! We need to talk, man!

Both Ruby's hands on the back of my neck. He was shaking me.

There's only two kinds of people in Wolf Swamp, Ruby said, Fools and pharisees, Will. You should call me back on that red fucking phone
of yours. Did you get my messages? You should have called me back, Will. Pharisees are why the fools are homeless, man. Why the fuck haven't you called me back?

A woman holding a child in her arms ran past us. Two old men running. Dogs barking. Breaking glass. Shouts. Screams. The red-and-white flash of cop cars.

Then Ruby, still hanging on me, forehead up and down on my black T-shirt, turned his face to Margo and Dave and Hunter and Gus, to Fiona and Harry.

You all, Ruby said, Had better get your bourgeois butts out of this park! Hear that? Ruby said. The Riders are here for their routine head bang. And Riders don't give a fuck if you're Gucci or not. You better get out of here or you'll never look so pretty.

All the Macllvanes, and Fiona, and Harry, looked at me.

This is Ruby, I said. This is my friend Ruby.

My face was smiling.

Tennis anyone? Ruby said.

Will? Fiona said.

He's OK, he's OK! Ruby yelled at Fiona. William of Heaven's in good hands! Ruby yelled. Now get your posh fucking asses out of here! Run along and play croquet or you're roadkill!

THE WHITE STALLION
and the cop on the white stallion jumped out of nowhere through the bushes, and the people under the juniper were yelling and running every which way. Fiona and Margo and Dave and Harry and Hunter and Gus were running too, through the English elms onto Avenue B, across Avenue B.

Margo Macllvane stopped on the avenue. She was looking up and down the street, waving her big hands in the air for a cab. Fiona yelled, Jesus, Mother! and grabbed her mother and they ran into Life Café.

There were more horses, cops on the horses, cops with clubs beating the bushes. In all the world, so many people yelling and screaming.

Ruby grabbed me by the arm and we were running running through the dark, with other people and dogs, running past trees and bushes and benches, jumping over people lying on the ground, speeding darkness, speeding light.

Between a cement thing and bush, at the base of a big tree, Ruby jumped into a bush and I jumped in after him, landed on top of him, rolled over.

The sweet smell of evergreen, the smell of dirt. Ruby and I breathing breathing.

Secret place, Ruby whispered. Riders don't know about yet. Keep your ass down.

My breath going in and out of me.

Ruby put his hand on my shoulder.

You got your mother's nerves, Ruby said. It's OK. We're safe here.

I could smell dog shit and wondered if I was lying in it. But it was Ruby. I wormed myself around, put my head on my elbows, and looked around. The bush was an arborvitae, the branches draping over us to the ground. There was just room enough to sit up. There were plastic cups and Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes lying around. A cushion from a chair.

Home Sweet Home, Ruby said.

Screams. More gunshots.

A horse ran by so close you could hear horse flanks.

William of Heaven, Ruby said, What am I going to do with you?

Ruby covered his mouth. He was coughing. He jumped toward the chair cushion and held the cushion while he threw up.

My nose went right into my armpit.

Ruby's body was all bones under his khaki pants and Hawaiian shirt and there were dark-brown bumps up and down his foreams, the backs of his arms, on his neck.

Ruby Prestigiacomo, I said, What am I going to do with
you
?

Ruby's smile. Skeleton poking through.

Then: Shh! Ruby whispered, wiped his mouth.

I took a breath and Ruby took a breath.

Ruby pointed his long bony index. Through a hole in the arborvitae branches, in the streetlamp light, next to an English elm, was a cop on a white stallion.

Sergeant Richard White.

You see that fucker there, Ruby whispered, On the white horse? Kind of looks like Porky Pig? Around here, they call him Sergeant White Supremacy. And talk about
short
. His dick is
ugly
! Tiny little pink thing, no bigger than your thumb. Likes to get drunk and come down here. Likes black men with big ones. Gives the brothers a vial or pays 'em—five, four, sometimes only three dollars—to fuck them. I hate the motherfucker. Fucked me one night. I've got one big Mussolini myself so he liked me. Gave me some cocaine, but it was cut with something awful—made me fucking sick. I was throwing up my deepest guts, man, while that fucker White was pounding my ass.

In all the world, Lone Ranger Hiyo Silver Sergeant White sat there on the horse in the park under a tree like a statue of a cop on a horse in a park under a tree.

Ruby brought his body up along mine, shivering. That's all this shit is about, Will, Ruby whispered. Power, Pentagon, politics, governments, money—what it comes down to in Wolf Swamp is one very simple thing: a man and his cock, how a man is with his cock, the stuff of great literature, great art, man, me and it, tragedy or comedy hanging down there between your legs. That's all it comes down to.

Ruby coughed, his whole body coughed. He hacked and spit.

Lips at my ear: Some day soon, Ruby whispered, Mark my words, some day I'm going to kill that cop!

When I looked again through the hole between the arborvitae branches, in the streetlamp light, Sergeant White Supremacy and his white horse were gone.

SUN WAS COMING
through the arborvitae branches when I woke up. Tree shadows and sun on Ruby's body. Ruby's head was still on my chest and his open palm was on my cock. I stayed that way, awake, for a while. My leg was asleep and I didn't know if I could move my leg.

I managed to move Ruby off, got the blood back into my leg, zipped up my pants, and moved the cushion and put the cleanest part of the cushion under Ruby's head. For a moment, I thought Ruby was dead he was so stiff and gray-looking, but then he pulled his legs up and put his hands between his legs, and I was glad to know it was only sleep. I brushed myself off, trying to look presentable, then laughed because I was in Dog Shit Park.

Touched him, Ruby, a little on the shoulder before I left to get coffee. His pant legs were up around his knees and his legs were brown and purple sticks into his boots. His ball cap was off. Two moons tattooed on his forehead. Ruby was smiling a little. Even in sleep, Ruby had a smile.

THAT MORNING, WHEN
I ducked out from under the branches of the arborvitae, I had no idea it was the morning that after everything was different.

America—the land of the free and the home of the brave, O beautiful for spacious skies—was never the same again.

The fog settled. Outside was inside.

I was at the center of things, face-to-face with the monster in the labyrinth.

This is where I started to notice.

ALL AROUND ME
, far as I could see, people were lying on the ground. Looked like the whole world was lying on the ground. Piles of people like in movies of concentration camps or a battlefield after war.

In the night, while Ruby and I were sleeping, the riders had come again and slaughtered the people. Or a bomb was dropped or poisonous gas or
The Andromeda Strain
or
Planet of the Apes
—something science fiction, On
the Beach
—and only Ruby and I, in all the world, left alive.

But it's not the truth.

I walked, and with each step I wondered if the step would reach the ground, or with each step maybe I'd start floating up, over buildings, Manhattan below a grid, just a street map, the street map a state map, the state map a map of North America, North America the world, the round globe hanging in the blue firmament, the globe a postage stamp on a letter, a stone on a gold ring, a flake of bright dust.

I stepped on somebody's hand and the guy called me a stupid son of a bitch, so after that, I walked policing my body, new-shoe stiff, through the bodies, careful where I stepped.

A little girl under a gunnysack waved a fly away from her nose. A man in a dirty yellow sleeping bag scratched his gray beard. A skinny brown dog wagged his tail. A woman lay on top of a man under a green blanket, kissing. A young woman with dirty-blond hair wearing a purple muumuu sat on a bench, her baby sucking at her breast—the woman smiled at me. Her smile was old. A man snored by the boarded-up rest rooms.

No Charlie 2Moons.

I looked again, squinted my eyes over the bodies as far as I could see, and the bodies weren't dead, the bodies were moving with breath.

Kiev was the closest restaurant open, and I bought two cups of coffee and some chocolate doughnuts. Everybody was staring at me in Kiev, and I got to thinking maybe I smelled like dog shit, and then I thought, Who cares what a bunch of assholes think?

The sun was shining full and bright and in Dog Shit Park steam was rolling off of things. People were standing up and stretching, taking their morning pees. A radio played “Born on the Bayou.” Farts and groans. I policed my body back through the crowd, postured disregard, savoir faire, acting as if I knew things and belonged there.

Under the arborvitae, where I left Ruby, Ruby was gone.

I sat under the arborvitae, where we'd spent the night, waited for Ruby, drank both coffees, and ate the doughnuts waiting for him, but he didn't show.

I started thinking about Charlie lying out somewhere, just another body on the ground.

Only sleeping. Charlie 2Moons on the ground, not dead, only sleeping.

Things started getting hot and my skin felt greazy. All around me people were talking and moving around, and then two teenage girls sat down on the cement thing and started in with the needle. I had to get out of there. Left a ten-dollar bill under the cushion Ruby had vomited over, crawled under the arborvitae branches, and got out of Dog Shit Park quick, through the bodies, over the bodies, through the gate, over the curb of running shit.