In the City of Shy Hunters (58 page)

Beaded Eagle threw his hair back, lifted his arms, and looped his hair in a knot. He put his camouflage hat back on, pulled down the brim.

We've come for the pipe, Beaded Eagle said. We've been looking for this one for a long time.

Fire in his aviator sunglasses, Beaded Eagle took his sunglasses off, hunkered down, sat the way I never could for long. His Levi's knees were pointed at me, his boots. His whole body was pointed at me.

From over the fire, he reached out his hand, his palm the color of cut cedar, his hand moving out from him like a bird flying. His index went straight for my heart but touched the carved buffalo on the pipe bowl instead.

I looked down. His index wrapped around the pipe stem.

This is Charlie 2Moons's pipe, I said.

Give me the pipe, Beaded Eagle said. We're here to return the pipe to its home.

Then his finger reached up and he touched me on my hair, my forehead.

His eyes were open, clear, like a child's with nothing in between.

I'll tell you something, Beaded Eagle said. So you'll know.

Beaded Eagle's hands, palms up, were open to me.

The fire on his skin, his shiny black hair, he looked so much like Charlie.

It took everything I had. Palms open, I sent my hands across the fire into the night, placing the ocelot skin and the pipe into Beaded Eagle's hands.

Beaded Eagle tapped out the pipe, dumped out the earth and sand from the earthen bowl, folded the ocelot skin over the pipe, placed the pipe in the suitcase that was covered in buckskin. Then, one by one, Beaded Eagle took the square piece of polished wood with the circle of brass tacks, the Saint George candle, the earthen bowl, the white bowl, the eagle feather with a piece of red flannel tied to it, and placed them in the suitcase. He closed the suitcase, pulled each beaded lock down, snapped the suitcase closed.

Beaded Eagle's cowboy boot stepped on the white piece of smoldering charcoal, crushed it.

Beaded Eagle put his aviators back on. Smiled real big.

When I opened my eyes, the horizon was back to the tops of buildings and Lower East Side water towers.

Beaded Eagle and the others had shape-shifted into Wolf Swamp and the night.

TRUE SHOT STILL
sat like Buddha—Buddha in a clean red shirt—his Saint-Vitus'-dance eyes moving like the fire. Then he stood up, not
stooped like usual. His shoulders were back and his chest was out. He dusted his pants off and looked around him on the ground.

He pulled the Armani glasses case from his shirt pocket, opened the case, unfolded the mirrors, and put the mirrors over his eyes.

Peter Morales, I said, What's the fucking deal?

On the surface of True Shot's mirrors, my face was a solitary illumination.

True Shot stood taller, pulled his shoulders back farther. His red shirt filled up with air.

Where did you get that pipe, I said, Ruby's friend's pipe? Who was Ruby's friend?

Only silence. Just the yellow leaves, the wind, the fire.

Fred, True Shot said. Ruby's friend was Fred.

I went to land a Hollywood punch onto True Shot's hooked nose, but that's when I heard them.

Horses. All at once, all around us, cops on horses.

A white stallion jumped over the fire, hitting True Shot straight on.

I was running through tree limbs, juniper bushes; I was jumping over benches; I was out of there, out of Dog Shit Park, out; I was on First Avenue and Sixth Street; I was far away, running.

Nowhere.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

F
or three days I got True Shot's answering machine.

On my next day off I took the L train to Bedford. On the corner of Wythe and North Third, at number 85, there was no buzzer. I banged on the door, kicked the door, hollered.

Nobody on the street, not one person.
Personne
.

Up the flights of stairs in the building across the street. When I got to the fourth floor, my heart was pounding pounding. Around the corner there it was, plain as day, Door of the Dead van.

I got the key from under the wheel well, unlocked the passenger-side door.

True Shot was not dead in the back of the van.

There was nothing in the back of the van except the bucket I sat on between Ruby and True Shot on the ride from the airport and two empty vodka bottles.

All Dodges sound the same when you start them up.

I drove Door of the Dead van for a week, to all the places True Shot and I had gone to look for Charlie. The World Trade center. The parking lot where you could see the Lady with the Paintbrush out in the harbor. The meat district. Over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Staten Island. Jackson Heights. To the very tip of the island where Manhattan starts. Even drove to Harlem.

Not-looking for True Shot.

For Charlie.

One day about a week later, sitting on the green bench next to Ruby's Home Sweet Home—abracadabra!—just like that there was the
CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS
kid.

This time his T-shirt was gray with nothing on it. Pizza face. Just below his hairline was an arch of dirt and sweat.

He looked even more scared in the daylight.

I bought him a veggie burger at Life Café.

Have you seen Black Plastic Woman? I said. Maybe she'd know.

The Custer kid had such a mouthful of veggie burger he couldn't talk.

After he swallowed, after a drink of water, the Custer kid wiped his mouth.

Morales is on a bender, the kid said. You'll never find him.

Morales. Peter Morales.

The yellow English elms were bare.

But there's got to be some way, I said.

Make him come to you, the kid said.

How do I do that? I said.

Just open up that place in you, the kid said.

YOU
'
RE GOING THIS
way and then shit happens and then you're going that way.

The beep on my red answering machine and Fiona's voice was around and around in my rooms.

Will? Are you there, Will? Please pick up if you're there! Will, are you there? Look, I'm at the hospital, Saint Vincent's, Room Three-ohfive. It's Harry. Harry's lying in the bed all blue breathing on a machine. He doesn't even know I'm here, Will! Please come as soon as you can!

I rewound the tape.

Will? Are you there, Will?

WHEN I CALLED
work, Daniel, the boss's brother, answered the phone.

Daniel? I said. Why are
you
answering?

John is in the hospital, Daniel said.

John the Bartender? I said. Hospital?

Saint Vincent's, Daniel said.

What room's he in?

You can't see him, Daniel said. Quarantined.

What?

They think it's TB.

Tuberculosis?

You're Section Five tonight, Daniel said.

I'm sick, I said.

Shit! Daniel said. What's going on, Spud?

Flu, I said.

You been to a doctor?

I'm all right, I said. Just the flu.

Vitamin C, Daniel said. Take big doses of Vitamin C. Rest. Walter and Joanie are out with it too.

And Harry, Daniel said.

IN THE CORRIDOR
, Saint Vincent's unrelenting light from above. Through the swinging doors, a man in swimming-pool-blue shirt and pants and cap pushed a gurney past me, the IV a snake into the arm of a bald guy. The steel-gray eyes of the bald guy looked up out through his skin and bones at me like I was a vision, Saint Vincent himself, some kind of saint.

Breathing from everywhere you could hear, in and out, in and out, words above my head on the ceiling intercom, somebody coughing. Wax buildup on the floor in the corners and along the walls. Pine Sol, urine, stool samples, blood, recycled air. The flowers I bought for Harry, miniature red and yellow roses. I put them up to my nose.

My eyes on my combat-boot feet. Step. Step. Step. Step.

Policing my body. New-shoe stiff.

My breath in. My breath out.

On my right, on my left, doorway after doorway, under their one dirty window in their room, skinny gray men in beds with tubes and flowers, canned TV laughter,
General Hospital
,
Days of Our Lives
. The Manhattan sky was the gray shine on them, on their boxes of facial tissues, their bent plastic straws in plastic glasses, their fancy get-well cards from Mom, Manhattan sky the gray shine on the shiny green floor.

Harry was another doorway, his body just lumps in the bed, his mouth open, a blue tube in his mouth, blue tubes in his nose. The tubes made a sucking sound like at the dentist. His eyes were closed tight the way a child pretends to sleep. Coming up from deep, on his face,
cauchemar
.

Fiona was sitting in a tan Naugahyde chair covered with a purple velvet shawl with fringe. Fiona all in black. Her black hair in a French twist under a little hat with a veil.

Leonard Cohen in drag.

The room was full of lilacs. Lilacs on the windowsill, on the nightstand; lilacs in a big vase on the floor. Lilacs on the swingaway tray of the bed. A strip of purple velvet, a valence above the window. A purple lava lamp next to an amethyst crystal the size of her big red leather purse. Brian Eno on the boom box.

Fucking Nurse Rat Shit! Fiona said. The fat bitch who runs this floor is one motherfucker! Told me I was not allowed to redecorate the hospital.
Redecorate? I said. Redecorate! Since when is a lava lamp redecoration? Besides, I said, Everybody knows daytime television gives you cancer. And lavender is healing, Fiona said. Lavender is the color of your fifth chakra, and if you could sit in a purple room with amethysts and lilacs and other purple flowers and listen to Brian Eno, you'd be fine, just fine. But Miss Nurse, Miss Grand Chooser 1987, Miss Nancy Fucking Reagan bitch cunt won't have it. She wouldn't know Ruth Draper from a Baby Ruth. So I called my lawyer, right here on this phone right in front of the Nancy bitch, and Father told me I have every right—Harry—has every right in the world to have a purple lava lamp in his room if he wants it.

It's a free fucking country!
I yelled at the nurse, Fiona yelled at me. And the bitch yells back, Not on my floor!

Big fucking deal, Fiona said. So what, who cares? Who cares what a bunch of assholes think?

Fiona stood up. Her long black skirt, her black leotard ankles in her black shiny Doc Martens, Fiona walked around the bed, long strides like her mother, between me and Harry, didn't touch me, didn't touch Harry, looked out the dirty window at the dirty gray sky.

How is he? I said.

Who? Fiona said.

Harry, I said.

His fucking mother and father won't come to see him, Fiona said. I called them and his mother wouldn't talk to me, and his father said, My son died years ago, and then hung up.

Can you imagine, Will? Fiona said, His own fucking father!

Harry's skin is all gray, his eyes closed tight, tubes in his nose. An IV in his arm.

New York's only Irish Catholic homosexual, I said.

Just then, a nurse walked in the room and heard me say
homosexual
. She was young, with that Farrah Fawcett hair. The nurse didn't look at Fiona or me. She went straight to the boom box and pulled the plug. Then over to the bed, looked close at Harry, put her hand to his neck.

Then, when the nurse took her hand away—
ta-da!
abracadabra!—Harry's eyes opened. A big smile on Harry's face. Harry pulled the blue tubes out of his nose and mouth, out of his arm, threw the covers back, said, I say, Terence! Let's have a cocktail!

Fiona said, Cool!

And we walked out the door, laughing at Harry's bare pink butt sticking out of his hospital gown.

But it's not the truth.

Harry's eyes stayed tight.

Fiona stared into Manhattan gray.

The nurse said, Here, let me put the flowers in some water for you. The nurse didn't smile. She took the flowers from me like the flowers were sick too.

In the corridor I asked the nurse, What's wrong with him?

Pneumonia, the nurse said.

Your friend has AIDS, the nurse said.

Lletre ferit
: AIDS.

The nurse brought back the flowers stuck in a clear plastic vase. She moved a vase of lilacs on the bedside table, set the flowers down, left the room.

Fiona plugged in Brian Eno.

One of Harry's hands jumped.

Thank God you didn't buy carnations! Fiona said.

ON THE STREET
, a young man with a shaved head and big sideburns was sitting between two cars, in the gutter, his head lying on his arms. When I first heard him, I thought he was laughing.

The
WALK
/
DON
'
T WALK
on Seventh Avenue flashed to
WALK
, and the heels of Fiona's Doc Martens hit the asphalt crossing Seventh Avenue the way shoes sound on women who know where they are going.

Fiona was another black hole in the gray day. I caught up with her, and we crossed Greenwich Avenue, walked down Seventh past a grocery store, past a place you could buy old books, then a porn shop.

Fiona stopped in front of the Art Family in the window, at the one in the leather head mask, hanging from a chain hooked to a leather harness.

Fiona reached into her red leather purse, pulled out a compact, a lottery ticket, a Seven-Up can, a Trojan, and then the joint. She put the joint in her mouth. I lit it. Fiona sucked in hard, let the smoke come out, French inhaled.

Fiona held the joint to me.

Kiss? Fiona said.

I looked up the avenue, down, took the joint, toked, gave the joint back to her.

My mother called, Fiona said.

Fiona's red lips under the black veil were rubber around the joint.

Mother says, Fiona said, To tell you thanks.

For what? I said.

For getting her ass out of that crack! Fiona said. Dog Shit Park—you know!—the night I turned into a total asshole in front of my very eyes.

Smoke from out of Fiona's red lips, from out of the curl, through the veil.