The Losers (31 page)

“All right.” “Promise?”

“Before the snow flies,” he said.

They sat quietly then. The streetlights came on, and the crickets began their drowsy drone.

“This is the only part of it all that I’ll miss,” she said finally. “I only wish we’d met each other before—before a lot of things.” She stood up suddenly, her movements abrupt as always. “I have to pack. I’m going to be leaving first thing in the morning.”

“Good luck.”

“We make our own luck, Raphael Taylor.” She said it firmly. “Or somebody else makes it for us—the way you did for me. How did you know exactly what to say to me to keep the street from getting me?”

He shrugged. “Experience,” he suggested. “Intuition maybe. How does divine intervention grab you?”

“God’s not all that interested in me. He’s too busy watching sparrows fall.” She paused. “It’s not really the same because the word usually means something so totally different, but I want you to know that the girl on the roof loves you, Raphael Taylor. I wanted to say that before I left.” And then she came over, kissed him lightly, and was gone.

For a long time after that Raphael sat alone in the darkness. Then about midnight it turned chilly, and he went inside to bed.

iii

Two days later when Raphael came home from work, old Tobe was standing in the middle of the street. He was roaring drunk and a wine bottle hung loosely in his hand.

“Tobe!” Raphael called to him as he parked. “For Christ’s sake get out of the street! You’re going to get yourself killed!”

“Who says so?” Tobe demanded belligerently in his foghorn voice, swaying and squinting at Raphael.

“I
say so.” Raphael got out of his car and pulled his crutches out of the backseat.

“Oh.” Tobe squinted and tottered toward Raphael’s car. “It’s you, ol’ buddy. I didn’t reconnize ya. How’s it goin’?”

“What the hell are you doing out in the middle of the street, Tobe?”

“I was goin’ someplace.” Tobe swayed back and forth. “I forget now just where.”

“The way some of these kids drive around here, that’s a real bad place to stand. If one of them came ripping around that corner, you’d be inlaid right into his grille before he could stop.”

“Maybe it’d be better that way.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Sam’s dyin’. He’s got the lung cancer. Y’know that?” “You told me. Let’s get you off the street, okay?” “I’m goin* someplace.” “Where?”

Tobe thought about it. “I forget.” His face was almost purple, and his eyes were yellowish and puffed nearly shut. The stale wine reek of his breath was so sharp and acrid that it was close to being overpowering.

“Why don’t we go over there and talk?” Raphael suggested, pointing at Tobe’s lawn. “Sure, ?l’ buddy.” They crossed the street.

“They got ?l’ Sam so doped up he don’t even know what he’s sayin’ no more,” Tobe said. “You know, he even tol’ me he didn’t want me comin’ out to see ‘im no more. Can you imagine that?”

“Those drugs can do funny things to you.” A sudden cold, sharp memory of the endless, foggy days in the hospital came back to Raphael as if it had been only yesterday.

“That wasn’t ?l’ Sam talkin’.” Tobe stumbled over the curb.

“That was all that dope he’s got in ‘im. ?l’ Sam, he wouldn’t say nothin’ like that to
me,
would he?” “Of course not.”

“Poor ol’ Sam. Helluva damn thing, him dyin’ on me like this. We been together twenty years now, I ever tell you that?” “Once, I think.”

“I’d rather lose a wife than lose my ol’ buddy like this.”

“I’ve got to run. I’ve got a lot to do this afternoon. You think you can remember to stay out of the street?”

“What the hell difference does it make?”

“If the cops come by and catch you, they’ll call the wagon and haul you out to detox again.”

“Can they do that?” Tobe looked frightened.

“You bet your ass they can.”

“That’s a terrible place out there.” Tobe shuddered.

“Stay out of the street then, okay?”

“Sure, buddy. Hey, if you wanna use my truck anytime, you just lemme know, okay?”

“Sure, Tobe.” Raphael turned.

Across the street Patch moved silently by, his face dark and mournful. At the corner he stopped and looked back at Raphael and Tobe.

“Who is he?” Raphael asked. “Who?”

“That fellow on the corner there.”

Tobe squinted, swaying back and forth. “I don’t see nobody.” Raphael turned back quickly. The Indian was gone.

“Anytime you wanna use my truck, you jus’ lemme know, ol’ buddy,” Tobe said. “Anytime at all. Night or day, don’t make no difference to me. You jus’ lemme know.”

“Okay, Tobe. I’ll do that.” He crutched on across the street.

“Anytime at all,” Tobe called after him.

iv

“Very well, Mr. Taylor,” Frankie said briskly. “This is just a periodic report. We need to know what kind of progress you’re making.” She was very businesslike, even abrupt.

“Getting by,” he replied laconically, leaning his chair back and looking down at the street.

“You know better than that, Raphael. I can’t just put ‘getting by’ in an official report.”

“I’m getting better at repairing shoes, Francesca. It only takes me about fifteen minutes a pair now. Of course they pay me by the hour, so it doesn’t really make any difference. Put down ‘job satisfaction.’ That makes them pee their pants. The defective is so resigned to his lot that he even enjoys it. I see you’re still pissed off at me—about Jane Doe, I mean.”

“You’re a stubborn, inconsiderate asshole, Raphael.” She waved her hands at him. It was a cliché, but Frankie couldn’t talk without waving her hands. “Your poor Jane Doe is going through a pregnancy without any prenatal care. Does that make you happy?”

“You’re wrong, Francesca.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I think I will. I like it. It’s a beautiful name. You’re still wrong, though. Jane Doe went back home. Her family’s taking care of her now—prenatal care, support, love—all the goodies, and no strings attached. I guess that means that I won, Francesca. I beat your system—again. I saved her from you. You’ll never be able to assign her a number, you’ll never be able to control her life, and you’ll never get your hands on her baby. She got away. It’s not much of a victory, but a man in my position has to take what he can get. I’m sort of proud of it, actually.”

She stared at him, her huge soft eyes very wide and her lower lip trembling. Then with a wail she turned and fled.

v

On the first of September Raphael went in to work early again. His mailbox was still vulnerable, and although he had the best of intentions, he forgot each month to request the banks involved to make the transfer of funds automatic.

It was very early. The streets of Spokane were quiet, and the morning sunlight was bright in the clear air. Later, of course, when the exhaust fumes began to collect, it would begin to grow murky.

Denise let him in, speaking only briefly. Since that terrible evening they had, as if by mutual consent, limited their conversations to business or the weather or other totally neutral subjects. Frequently they passed each other in the store without even speaking. The other employees, those who had watched their growing friendship that summer, were convinced that they had had some kind of fight-—a lovers’ quarrel. At first, of course, neither had spoken to the other because of the lacerating embarrassment over the things they’d had to reveal to each other. Then, as time went on and their taciturnity had become habitual, they became embarrassed at the thought of breaking the pattern, of intruding upon each other. And so they were silent, each wishing that the other would speak first, and each afraid to say anything to break the long silence.

Raphael went to his bench, switched on the light, and sat down. He turned on his machine and began to repair shoes. Always before he had rather liked coming to work. Now the job seemed suddenly tedious and boring. After a while of bending over the machine, his hip and back began to ache, and faint flickers of phantom pain began skittering like spiders up and down the thigh and knee of the leg that was no longer there.

He kept at it doggedly. There were not that many shoes in the bin, and he wanted to finish them all before he left. They piled up quickly, since shoes are the kind of thing that everyone throws away, and to leave even one pair would mean that he would start his next day’s work in the hole. He began to take shortcuts, and some of the work was not entirely the sort that he took any pride in, but he managed to finish by nine.

He signed out, nodded briefly to Denise, and left.

As soon as he reached the street the depression that had settled on him and the vague ache that had begun in the missing leg vanished, and he felt good again. It was still early, and he drove to a small restaurant he knew and treated himself to breakfast. He was still puzzled by Frankie’s reaction when he had told her of the escape of the girl on the roof. Irritation or anger or another outburst of lyric Italian swearing he could have understood. Frankie was sometimes a bit volcanic, but
tears?
That was not at all like Frankie. He wondered how the girl on the roof was doing back in Metalline Falls. Then he sighed, got his crutches together, and left the restaurant.

It was almost eleven by the time he got home, and his arrival only moments before the mailman came down the street earned him a savage scowl from a greasy-haired adolescent loitering on the corner.

It was quite warm by the time he reached the roof, and so he sat in his chair on the roof watching the frenzy of Mother’s Day in the streets below. A car pulled up in front of the house where Heck’s Angels lived, and a man got out. He seemed tense, as if he had been working himself up to do something unpleasant. The man seemed familiar, and Raphael tried to remember where he had seen him before. Flood was sitting on the front porch with Marvin and Little Hider as the man came up the walk. “I’d like to speak with Mrs. Collins.”

“She ain’t here,” Marvin said flatly. “When do you expect her back?” “Beats me.”

“Look, friend,” the tense man said, “I don’t have time for the kind of games you people like to play. I told her last week that today was the deadline. Now, either she comes up with the back rent by midnight tonight, or you’re going to have to move out—all of you.”

Little Hitler stood up and swaggered down the steps. “And what if we don’t?” he demanded.

“Then I’ll put you out.” The tense man’s voice tightened even more.

“Now
that
I’d like to see,” Little Hider said. “Hey, Marv, did you hear that? This shithead says he’s gonna put us out. You, me, Jimmy, Heintz, Jake—all of us. All by himself he’s gonna fuckin’
put
us out.”

“Maybe he’d like to start right now,” Marvin said, also coming down the stain. “Maybe he’d like to try to put you and me out.”

“I won’t be the one who’ll be moving you out,” the man on the walk told them. “That’s what the sheriff gets paid for.”

“Too chickenshit to do it yourself, huh?” Little Hider sneered. “Gotta run to the fuckin’ pigs.”

“Friend, I’m too busy to be bothered with all this happy horse-shit. You tell Mrs. Collins to get that money to me by tonight, or I’ll go to the sheriff tomorrow. That’s it.”

Flood ambled to the front of the porch and stood leaning against one of the pillars. “I don’t think you can do that without due process, sport,” he said pleasantly.

“Watch me, sport. I’ve been in this business for fifteen years, and I’ve bounced a hundred of you welfare bums out of one house or another. Believe me, I know exactly how it’s done—who to see and which papers to have signed. If I say you’re going to move, you might as well start packing, because you
are
going to move.”

“Who you callin’ a bum,” Little Hider demanded hotly.

The man on the walk looked him up and down. “Are you working, boy?”

“None of your fuckin’ business.”

“That’s what I figured. I won’t apologize then. You just tell Mrs. Collins what I said.” “And what if we don’t?”

“You’re making me tired, boy. You can tell her or not—it doesn’t make diddly-squat to me—but if I don’t get that money by tonight, I go to the sheriff tomorrow, and you’ll be in the street by the end of the week.” He turned and went back to his car.

“Chickenshit bastard,” Little Hider called after him.

The man at the car looked at him for a moment, then got in and drove off.

“Why didn’t you take ‘im?” Marvin asked Little Hitler. “Shit!” Little Hider stomped back up onto the porch. “The tucker had a piece.”

“Oh?” Flood said. “I didn’t see it.”

“You can take my word for it. All them fuckers carry a piece when they come down here. You seen ‘im, didn’t you, Jake? I mean, he stood right up to us. There was three of us, an’ he didn’t back down an inch. Take my word for it, the fucker had a piece.”

Big Heintz roared up, his motorcycle popping and sputtering. “Where’s the girls?” he demanded. “I need some bread. This hog’s gotta go into the shop.”

“They’re out buyin’ groceries,” Marvin replied, “an’ we got a problem. Powell was just here, an’ he says we gotta pay ‘im the back rent or he’s gonna call the sheriff—have us evicted.”

“Fuck ‘im. My bike’s gotta go in the shop.”

“He means it,” Little Hider warned. “We ain’t gonna be able to put ‘im off no more.”

“Fuck ‘im. There was three of you. Why didn’t you take ‘im?”

“The fucker had a piece,” Little Hider said without much conviction. “You can take my word for it, the fucker had a piece.”

Heintz grunted. “How much does he want?” He went up onto the porch.

“All of it, man,” Marvin replied. “Every fuckin’ nickel.”

“Bullshit! That’d flat wipe us out for the whole month, an’ my bike’s gotta go in the shop. The bastard’s gonna have to wait. We’ll give ‘im a few bucks and put ‘im off till next month.”

Flood looked at the big man. “I don’t think it’ll work, Heintzie. I think the man’s made up his mind. If you don’t settle up with him, he’ll call in the pigs and you’ll be picking deputy sheriffs out of your hair for a solid week.”

“Fuck ‘im,” Heintz bunt out with a worried frown on his face. “My bike’s
gotta
go in the shop.”