Radiant Days (9 page)

By the time I finally reached the other side of Michigan, the bus, and the boys, and my bag, were gone.

“Bring it back!” I screamed.

Everything was in there—everything that Clea hadn’t taken, anyway. Sketches, a book filled with drawings, wads of paper where I’d drawn bleary-eyed passengers on the Metro, homeless people on park benches, rough sketches for new tags.

But no wallet, no money, no credit cards or checkbook or ID: nothing that would have made the old canvas bag valuable to anyone but me.

I swore and began to cry, but there was no point. The bus was long out of sight. My only hope was that the boys might leave it on the seat or dump it wherever they got off. I wiped my eyes and ran back across the street, up the steps of the house, and on up to my room.

The place looked ransacked, but it had looked that way forever. As far as I could tell, nothing had been taken except my bag, not that there was anything to take. Some T-shirts and flannel shirts, dirty sheets and pillows, a mattress on the floor, cans of spray paint. I picked among these, shaking each can until I found one that was mostly full. I set it aside and kicked at the pile of clothes until I found a pair of painter’s pants, a long-sleeved T-shirt, the old leather bomber jacket I’d bought at a thrift shop months ago but never worn.

I pushed a broken chair against the door and changed. Then I crossed to the windowsill and gingerly felt around inside the fist-sized hole in the wall beneath it, until my fingers closed around the plastic change purse wedged inside. I removed it, dumped the coins on the floor, and counted them: thirteen dollars and twenty-seven cents. I put the money back into the change purse and shoved it into a pocket, went to the ancient tackle box that held my art supplies, sat cross-legged on the floor, and pored over them.

I finally chose a few oil pencils: jade green and viridian and Moorish red; a cobalt that, when mixed with Moorish red, turned a startling violet; Alizarin crimson; coal black and narcissus yellow. I took some charcoal pencils and an orange marker; some expensive brushes I’d stolen. A sketchbook the size of my hand, its first few pages covered with rough drawings of eyes but otherwise blank. I tore a piece of flannel from a gray plaid shirt and rolled the oil and charcoal pencils inside it; tore the sleeve from the shirt and slid everything else into it, tied off the ends, and stuffed it into the deep pocket of my pants. The sketchbook went
into another pocket, along with the nearly full can of yellow spray paint.

I stood and surveyed the room. Light sifted through the windows, amber deepening to russet in the corners. Across the walls and ceiling, Clea’s painted image slept and laughed and danced, her long eyes fixed on mine, her mouth parted to murmur a secret no one would ever hear. Like the leaping forms of ibex and bison and mammoths, flowing across the walls of an undiscovered cavern: a lost world that no one but me would ever know had once been real. I pressed my hand against the wall, for an instant let my cheek rest upon Clea’s profile, those lovely, empty eyes that stared into the darkening room.

Then I split. I took the stairs two at a time, and left all the doors open behind me. When I reached the sidewalk I stopped and turned, with all my strength hurled the key at the vacant house, and raced across the street to catch the 80 Metrobus, the same one the boys had taken.

I grabbed a window seat near the door and pressed my face against the glass, scanning streets and sidewalk. I didn’t see anything that resembled my bag, or anyone who looked like Errol. The bus rumbled down North Capitol Street, past the old post office and the sandblasted hulk of Union Station, cut alongside the Mall, and headed toward Northwest. The seats and aisles grew crowded with people, carrying briefcases, Sunday newspapers, shopping bags from Hecht’s and Woody’s. A skinny guy with a Mohawk shambled on board, pushed his way to the back of the bus, asking for change.

“Get a job,” I said.

He looked at me and laughed. “Sure. You hiring?”

He jumped out at the next stop. I watched him go and thought,
My bag is gone, and I’m never getting it back again
.

At the next stop, an old woman pushing one of those little foldable grocery carts struggled to get into the aisle. I stood quickly.

“You can have my seat. I’m getting off here.”

I didn’t look to see what stop it was; just hopped out, elbowing past a line of people waiting to get on. I walked with my head down, paused at the corner while the light changed, and hurried across. When I got to the other side, I glanced at a street sign.

I was in Foggy Bottom. I stomped through a flurry of pigeons picking at a hamburger roll and climbed onto an empty park bench. My heart jounced as a woman who looked like Clea walked toward me, face down so I could see only her corkscrew hair; she lifted her head to gaze at me with incurious blue eyes in a bland freckled face. I turned away.

Crowds straggled onto the sidewalk, people emerging from fast food joints and the hushed restaurants where politicians and lobbyists met to shake one another down for favors. Traffic clogged the streets, Yellow Cabs and buses and cars that inched toward the suburbs, spilling snatches of music: “Bootzilla,” “Le Freak.” A blue Impala stopped in front of the bench, windows open so I could see a red-haired girl behind the wheel, singing along with a tune blasting from WGTB.

“. . . fallen in love with someone, fallen in love with someone, ever fallen in love with someone…”

Traffic surged forward, and she was gone.

I stepped down from the bench, staring into a sea of taillights. On the near horizon, I could just make out the yellowing tops of trees beyond the K Street corridor. The wind shifted, and for an instant the stink of exhaust and grease mingled with a green cool smell, the scent of damp stone and moss: the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Clea and I went there sometimes to walk. Once we’d come across an overgrown culvert, on the far side of Georgetown, near Key Bridge and shaded by maple trees and sumac.

“Check that out,” I’d said, and peered inside. It was bricked up about ten feet from the entrance. There was no sign of anyone living in it, which struck me as strange, considering all the homeless people in D.C. But then, some Vietnamese guy came here after the war and lived for years in Rock Creek Park near the zoo without anyone knowing.

It was a long shot that the culvert would be unoccupied. Still, if it was, it would be a good place to crash. The traffic stalled again, and I threaded my way through buses and cars, heading toward the C&O. The canal begins in Georgetown and goes on to Harpers Ferry and Cumberland, miles away. In the District, it runs parallel to the Potomac River, with a towpath behind shops and restaurants and old warehouses. You see a lot of joggers there, and sometimes old men fishing. The canal is full of carp—gigantic goldfish, actually; for some reason, people like to toss goldfish into the canal. They get fed along with the ducks and pigeons, and the carp just keep growing. Once I saw one as big as a cat.

I walked to where M Street narrows. Not as narrow as the cobblestone alleys in upper Georgetown, where you can imagine what the city looked like a hundred years ago; but it still always feels like you’re entering a different place, a city inside the city. Part of this is because there’s no Metro station in Georgetown—the rich residents never wanted anyone from the rest of the city having easy access to their little golden world. I despised those people, which made Georgetown a prime place for me to leave my tag—the
Voice
article interviewed a bunch of folks who were totally apeshit over the fact that someone was leaving graffiti on their nice brick walls.

On my left, side streets sloped toward the Potomac, on the other side of K Street where it runs beneath the elevated Whitehurst Freeway. Its green river smell wafted up to me: even now, in the fall, it smelled a bit like spring. I turned and headed for the river.

Steel girders arched overhead, echoing with the steady roar of the freeway, and traffic flowed smoothly along K Street. It was dim, with a crumbling sidewalk and an old warehouse that took up most of a block, its brick face broken by garage bays and delivery entrances.

That wall was a blank canvas waiting to be bombed with an aerosol can. Behind me, K Street traffic continued to move quickly. No one would have more than a few seconds to catch a glimpse of me throwing up my tag. I chose a spot near the corner, so I could make a dash if I had to; grabbed the spray can from my pocket, shaking it and removing the cap in one swift motion;
pointed the nozzle at the wall; and in a few deft motions drew Day-Glo yellow waves, a fiery eye rising from a golden sea.

I capped the spray can, shoved it into my pocket, and danced back a step to get a better look. My sun blazed from the brick like a neon sign. I covered the image with my palm, fingers splayed to fit inside the sun’s rays.

Directly behind me someone honked. I whipped around and saw an old Imperial cruising past, its driver craning his neck to observe my work. He gave me a thumbs-up, then gestured to a police cruiser a few cars back, shouting, “Better move your butt!”

The Imperial stopped, leaving enough space for me to dart in front and weave through traffic. Horns blared as I jumped onto the curb. I glanced over my shoulder to see the Imperial already out of sight and the cruiser’s cherry top flashing.

I turned and fled, head down, praying the cop had lost sight of me. I’d never been so brazen before—tagging a wall in Georgetown in broad daylight was heady stuff, and the rush of adrenaline spiked into exhilaration that I’d gotten away with it.

I saw no more sign of the cop, and after a few minutes I slowed and tried to catch my breath. In front of me was the Potomac, its oak-brown water flecked with sunset confetti, crimson and glittering gold. A narrow strip of scrubby park ran alongside the water, a tangle of sweetgum and ash trees, sumac and goldenrod
still heavy with dusty yellow blossoms. Knotweed and spiky grass grew to the river’s edge.

Clea had told me the city wanted to sell this land to developers and put up buildings or a parking lot, but they never did. Overgrown and neglected as it was, the place had a strange, expectant feeling to it—an islet unmoored from some far-off place that floated downstream until it fetched up here. There was a single bench, and an old sign telling you not to swim. It seemed as desolate a spot as I could imagine without returning to Greene County.

But I wasn’t alone.

At the water’s edge, about fifteen feet from where I stood, a solitary figure sat on a large, upside-down bucket, a cigarette in one hand and a fishing rod in the other. A brown paper bag leaned against his leg, a small plastic container beside it, along with a plaid flannel shirt and a second bucket. Even with his back to me, I recognized Ted Kampfert.

I’d never heard of Ted until I started at the Corcoran, where my friend David Fletcher used to bring his boom box to life-drawing class, before he dropped out to become an actor.

“Who the hell is that?” I demanded one morning, as a gravelly voice intoned the same song for the fourth time.

Several people looked up as David said, “That’s Ted Kampfert.”

“Who the hell is he?”

According to David, he was the biggest, most brilliant burnout who’d ever staggered along the streets of D.C., or anywhere. Years before, he’d been in a legendary band called the Deadly
Rays. At least David said they were famous, though mostly they seemed to be famous for
not
being famous.

“Yeah,” broke in Tiny. “Everyone loved the Raisins.”

“The Raisins?”

“It’s a joke,” explained David. “The Rays were supposed to do a gig once, but whoever made the flyers got their name wrong and printed it as the Deadly Raisins. So, like, their really tight fans call them the Raisins. Ted was so incredibly brilliant, you wouldn’t believe it. I saw them once and I’m not kidding, he was better than Hendrix.”

“Like
you
saw Hendrix,” said Tiny.

“I saw that Woodstock movie. Believe me, Ted was better.”

Everything I ever heard about Ted was pretty much the same story—that the Rays were a great band but they never made it, mostly because they were a bunch of drunks who would screw up anytime they played, usually on purpose. The band was Ted and his brother and two of their friends from a Catholic high school out in PG County; they’d wear dresses onstage, or perform naked, or dress up as priests. Sometimes Ted would play guitar with a pork chop taped to his leg. David said that after they recorded their most famous album, they got royally pissed at somebody, stole the master tapes, and threw them into the Potomac at Great Falls. The album was never released.

I pointed at David’s boom box. “So how come you’ve got all those tapes?”

“Because Ted recorded all the songs on a little bitty tape player and sold the tape to Marginal Records, and they released it. The
rest of the band completely freaked. That’s when they threw him out. Some of them still live around here, but they won’t even talk to him. Poor Ted.”

“So were they, like, punk?” I asked.

David shook his head sadly. “They were everything.”

I’d seen Ted a few times since then, always in Georgetown, where he’d shamble along M Street bumming smokes. I’d heard he liked to fish, also that he’d sometimes play his guitar on the street for spare change, but I’d never heard him play.

Now I stood and watched him, wondering if he’d get pissed off if I tried to sketch him. Probably. After a while he took a long drag from his cigarette, leaned forward to toss it into the river, reeled his line back in, and reached for the paper bag. He pulled out a bottle and turned to look at me.

“Huh.” He grunted and spit on the ground, took a swallow. His eyes were pale amber, clouded like an old beer bottle. “Is it Tuesday?”

“No. It’s Sunday.”

“Good. If it’s Tuesday, it must be Bellevue. Lookit that.”

He tipped his head toward the water. A heron flew past, long legs trailing so they almost touched the surface, like a gigantic mayfly. We watched it disappear in the haze of trees on the far side of the river. Ted took another swig from the bottle and held it out.