Home Body, page 12
The elevator’s hum was louder. Then it stopped.
“Okay,” Tammy said. I opened the door to the stairwell.
“So you’ll eat? Where you going?”
“I’ll bum a ride to Burger King. Hey, I think I’ll take the elevator down. I like elevators. We used to just ride the one at the bank until they kicked us out.”
“No, why don’t you—”
She moved past me to the elevator door. I was standing beside her when the humming stopped and the door slid open.
“Oh, my God,” Tammy squealed. She darted into the elevator and dropped to her knees.
“Mr. McMorrow,” Tippy Danforth said.
“Hi, there,” I said.
“He’s so cute,” Tammy said.
She was kneeling on the floor of the elevator, where Danforth had set down a Havahart trap. Inside the trap was an enormous white cat. The cat yowled. Tammy cooed. The elevator door started to close, but I reached out and blocked it and it rolled open. Tippy, with the trap, stepped out, and Tammy followed, crouching beside her.
“Hey pretty kitty,” Tammy said.
“Miss Danforth,” I said. “This is Tammy. Tammy, this is Miss Danforth.”
Tippy looked down at the expanse of Tammy’s bare back.
“Hello,” she said, neutrally.
“Hi,” Tammy said. “This cat is so beautiful I can’t believe it.”
Tippy almost smiled.
“Yes, she is. She’d been living on Hammond Street. I think she was dumped off by somebody. And she just recently had kittens, but I couldn’t find them, poor dears. She has rather a nasty gash on her hind leg and she was quite cold. Her whole system is weakened, so I didn’t think she should be left in the car. She needs plenty of TLC, that one. You like cats?”
“Oh, I love ’em.”
“Do you have cats at home?” Tippy asked.
“No. I had this cat when I was, like, really little, but my brother killed it. My mom’s like, ‘Get over it. It’s just a cat. We’ll get you another one.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, right. So Dickie can kill that one, too.’ Frig that.”
Tippy blanched. The white cat meowed.
“And where are you from?” Tippy asked her.
“Oh, here and there. I used to live in, like, Rockland area, but I don’t anymore.”
“Tammy’s staying in Bangor now,” I said.
She still was on her knees. Tippy looked at me.
“Tammy knows the boy I was talking to you about. Rocky. She located him for me.”
“Oh. Where is he?”
Tammy looked at me.
“You can say it. Miss Danforth isn’t going to bother him. She’s a good person.”
“Well,” Tammy said, “he’s down by the river. He met up with this kid he ran away—I mean, left with.”
“And what are they doing down there?” Tippy asked. There was no judgment in her voice, just curiosity.
Tammy poked her finger in the cage and the cat licked it.
“Oh, I think she likes me, I’d take her home, except—”
“Except you don’t have one, do you?” Tippy said.
There was an awkward pause. I didn’t fill it. Tammy didn’t answer, but after a moment, her shoulder blades lifted in her trademark shrug.
“Hi, kitty. Hi, honey,” she said, in the high-pitched voice that people use when they talk to animals.
“You’re a stray, too,” Tippy said, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, so put me to sleep,” Tammy said softly, almost to herself. “Hi, little kitty. Hi, little mama kitty. Where’s your babies, huh? Where’s those little babies?”
I looked at Tippy, in her big jacket and boots, her nose pink from the cold. She stared down at Tammy, her vertebrae showing like the bones of a snake, her green-and-red hair like something growing on a tropical reef. Tammy was singing softly to the cat.
“Lost your kittens, you poor little Mittens . . .”
“Do you have a job?” Tippy said. “Stand up, now, so I can talk to you.”
I waited. Would Tammy spit in her face? Tell her where to go? Tell her she’d stand when she was good and ready?
She gave the cat a last finger pat and straightened, her fingers stuck defiantly in her belt loops.
“Do you have a job, young lady?” Tippy asked again.
“Yeah, right. Do you?”
“Miss Danforth owns the newspaper,” I said.
“No shit. The whole thing?”
Tammy moved one hand from her belt loop and brushed at her hair, her eyebrow ring.
“But I also try to find homes for wayward animals.”
“Lost,” I said.
“You like animals?” Tippy said.
“Well, yeah,” Tammy said, her voice warbling on the last syllable to indicate it was a stupid question.
“Do you mind changing litter pans?”
“Well, I ain’t going out of my way to find cat poop, if that’s what you’re saying. But I can do it. Hey, you wouldn’t believe the gross shit you see, living on the street.”
“You want a job helping with the animals?” Tippy asked flatly.
“Hey, I don’t need no charity, no fake people. They tell you they want to save you and then, after two days, it’s like, ‘Okay, that was fun. Let’s play some other do-gooder game now.’ I been down that road.”
“Miss Danforth isn’t fake, Tammy,” I said. “Anything but.”
“I’m not talking about charity,” Tippy said. “I’m talking about work. Twenty-five dollars a day and a place to sleep and eat, if you want it.”
“I don’t know, Tippy,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re—”
“Where’s this?”
“West Broadway,” Tippy said. “The animals are in the carriage house, mostly.”
“Can I smoke?”
“Outside,” Tippy said.
“So what am I supposed to do? Like, pick up poop all day?”
“No, not all day. I do it now myself. It takes a good three hours to clean and water and feed all the animals. And they need human company, to be resocialized. So you need to talk to them, pat them, if they’ll let you.”
The cat yowled. Tammy looked down at it and made a kissing sound with her garish lips.
Then, still looking at the cat, “This isn’t, like, some dyke thing is it? ’Cause I’m sorry, but I’m not like that.”
“It’s a job,” Tippy said. “You do the work, I pay you money. That’s all.”
“Do I have to stay? All the time?”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“Well,” Tammy said, “like, when? Tomorrow?”
“You can help me with them tonight.”
“I’ve gotta get my stuff.”
“Where is it?”
Tammy said it was at an apartment behind City Hall.
“But I don’t like it, I’m gone.”
“And vice versa,” Tippy said. “You can start by carrying that cage for me. I’ve got to get some things upstairs.”
“When do I get paid?”
“When the job’s done.”
“Tonight?”
“If the job’s done.”
“Where do I sleep? Like, on some busted couch in this garage or something?”
“No, there are rooms,” Tippy said.
Rooms galore, I thought.
“Well, okay,” Tammy said.
I looked at Tippy.
“You sure?”
“The quality of mercy and all that, Mr. McMorrow.”
“Is that why you called me upstairs?”
She smiled, eyes only.
“I may owe you an apology,” Tippy said. “Tammy, you carry her.”
Tammy picked up the cage and the cat started a bleating mew of panic.
“It’s okay, honey,” Tammy said.
Tippy hit the button and the door hissed open.
“We have to go up and then down,” she told Tammy. They stepped into the elevator.
“Hey, but where’s Rocky?” I said.
The door started to close and I blocked it and it opened.
“Hobo Hotel,” Tammy said. “You know where that is?”
“No. Never heard of it.”
“Down at the bridges.”
The door started to close again, and, again, I blocked it.
“Right by the river?”
“Yeah,” Tammy said. “Yeah, like you fall off, you land in the water. They’re partying.”
“Rocky?”
“I don’t know. That’s where Crow Man said they were going.”
The door again. I held it and waited and it opened.
“Who’s Crow Man?”
“Just this guy.”
“You weren’t going?”
“Frig that,” Tammy said, as Tippy shook her head in dismay behind her. “I ain’t gonna cook my brains. It’s a guy thing, you know what I’m saying?”
“But Rocky? Would he—”
“Maybe he’d just, like, hang on the fringes. But not too close, I hope, ’cause it’s a long way down. This kid fell last summer. He busted his legs and got all cut ’cause there’s metal and junk under the water.”
“Yeah, well,” I began, then paused.
I wanted to tell Tammy not to screw this up. I wanted to tell Tippy to watch herself. But instead I just looked at them: Tippy in her parka, Tammy in her Technicolor hair, and the cat crouched in the cage.
“So how many cats you got?” Tammy was asking as the door rolled shut.
“At the moment, twenty-two,” Tippy said.
“That’s a lot of poop,” Tammy said, and then the door was shut and the elevator was on its way. Like a lot of things I’d started, this was out of my hands.
26
k
The streets of the old downtown were white, like snow-covered frozen canals, and I rolled the truck quietly down the hill to Washington Street, and turned left toward the river and the Penobscot Bridge, and the railroad bridge just beyond it. It was a little before midnight and the downtown was quiet. The Penobscot Bridge was lighted, but dimly in the falling snow. The railroad bridge was marked by a couple of faint red beacons. All else was blackness.
I rolled the truck to the side of Washington Street and stopped, then pulled into the parking lot of an office building. Lights showed through the snow from across the river, which was otherwise lost to the darkness. I peered out for a moment, then fished a flashlight from the glovebox and swung out of the truck.
The parking lot ended in a retaining wall, followed by a five-foot drop to the rubble and railroad tracks below. I flicked the light down over the wall and saw trash and shopping carts and a refrigerator and unidentifiable pieces of metal, piled up like buffalo driven over a cliff.
I stopped. Listened.
The snow seemed to rustle as it fell, like falling bits of paper. From the direction of the river, I heard glass break. I tried to fix the direction but only heard the snow and a distant car horn. Taking another look down, I turned the light off, climbed to the top of the wall, and, turning around, eased myself down.
I dropped the last couple of feet onto the refrigerator, then half jumped, half stumbled, off the refrigerator, off a tangle of metal and onto the ground.
Froze. Listened.
Heard the murmur of the snow.
Picking myself up, I clicked the flashlight. It worked, and I clicked it off and started toward the river. The tracks were black lines, four sets of them, and I stepped from rail to rail, silently.
But did I want to surprise anyone? Or did I want to announce my presence? I didn’t want to spook them; I just wanted to talk to Rocky.
The railroad bridge was upriver, to my left. The highway bridge was to my right. In the darkness, I could make out boxcars, a crane on a truck, some sort of tugboat heeled over on the bank. I listened again, then walked toward the abutment under the railroad bridge. The light played on the snow, and there were beer cartons, a vodka bottle, and footprints, but they were filled in with fresh snow.
I turned back and walked slowly along the rails, peering at the black shape of the highway bridge. A car passed overhead, and the joints in the bridge rattled and clanged. I played the light over the riverbank, through the fringe of scrubby birches and alders. Tammy had said they might fall in the river, but where would they be? On the ice? Behind the abutments? I walked slowly, making no sound in the snow.
And then I heard voices.
I looked up and saw a flare of orange light, a flicker of flame.
They were on top of the first abutment in the river, in the space between the granite and the metal beams of the bridge. I listened. Heard a soft whoop, laughter. I walked closer, heard someone talking. The light of the flame dimmed, then flared again. I stood on the riverbank and looked out.
There were tracks that led down the bank to a rusty metal pipe, about a foot in diameter. They’d crossed the pipe, six feet above the ice. I peered into the dark, then gave a quick stab with the light.
On the side of the abutment were iron rungs implanted in the granite. The kids had crossed the pipe and climbed the rungs, twenty feet up to the top of the graffiti-spattered abutment. Their den was hidden from view, sheltered from the snow. Hobo Hotel, with its scenic view of the mighty Penobscot River, was a four-season resort.
I stood for a moment. The light of their fire flickered again. I called.
“Hey, Rocky.”
My voice was driven back by the snow. I called again, louder.
“Hey, Rocky. It’s Jack.”
The firelight dimmed. I heard voices from atop the granite. I played the light on the top of the abutment.
“Hey, Rocky. It’s Jack McMorrow. I need to—”
Faces appeared at the edge of the stone shelf, like owls peering from a nest. First two, then two more. Baseball hats. Knit caps. One guy older than the rest. Then a fifth face, pale in the flashlight. Rocky.
“Hey, Rocky,” I called. “Tammy told me where to find you. We need to talk for a minute.”
They squinted at the flashlight, and I started to shine it away, but then noticed something seemed odd about them. I left the light on them and looked closer.
There was silver above their lips, like metallic milk mustaches. I played the light down the row, which looked like a casting call for Tin Woodsmen. All of them had it, except the older guy, who looked like he was in his twenties, and had a real mustache. The kids in the knit caps had the spray-paint version. Rocky, too.
Rocky had been huffing.
“It’s your pepé,” the older guy said.
“It’s a cop. Don’t shoot me,” another kid cackled.
“Faster than a speeding bullet,” another kid, one in a knit hat, said. And then he gave this strange, singsong laugh.
Rocky stared at me and said nothing.
“Rocky, you okay?” I said.
He smiled weakly.
“You his daddy?” the older guy said. “Come to read you a bedtime story, Twig.”
“What’s he been doing?” I said.
“Getting the old chrome mustache,” the older guy said. “These kids are little paint junkies.”
“Is he all right?” I said.
“He’s fine. You a cop or what, ’cause if you ain’t, how ’bout running down the store and getting me a goddamn bottle? I’ll pay you.”
“You don’t got no friggin’ money left,” the kid squatting next to him said.
“This dude’s got cash. I can tell. Oh, yeah, the man can tell who’s got dinero. He’s looking for Twig. What do you think he’s gonna pay Twig for?”
He grinned, and it was a lecherous drunken leer.
“Twig. Earn us some cash, you little whore. I have another drink, I might do you myself, you little girl.”
The others grinned with their painted mouths. Rocky stood suddenly, then staggered, whirling his arms to get his balance.
“Look out,” I shouted, scrambling down the bank.
“He’s gonna fly,” the older guy called out.
Nobody moved to help him, but Rocky regained his balance himself and dropped to his knees, the vacant grin still on his face.
“Hey, Twig, do another bag,” the older guy said. “You ain’t high enough to fly.”
“Leave him alone,” I said.
“Hey, I’ll leave him alone. I’ll go and have another drink and then we’ll sell Twig to the highest bidder. First case of Bud takes him. Make that two cases. And some wood. We need some wood up here. This is Maine. Goddamn place is full of trees and we got no wood? What the hell? I mean, what the hell?”
The last of it was a bellow that echoed metallically under the bridge.
“Crow Man,” one of the kids said. “You’re baked.”
The older guy staggered out of sight, and one by one, the kids followed. Rocky went last.
I stood looking up at the edge of the abutment for a moment. Waited. Looked down again and started across.
27
k
I took one step, started to slip, and backed off. The pipe was bare at the very top, but icy if you wavered from that two-inch line. Below, the ice was white, then pale gray, then, closer to the abutment, greenish and soft, with the current showing through it.
Fall there and you might not come back up, at least not where you went through. And Rocky was supposed to negotiate this with a head full of paint fumes?
I held my arms out for balance, and then, like a tightrope walker, made a feint, with the flashlight beam stabbing in front of me. Paused. Plunged.
One, two, three, four steps. A slip. A crouch. Back on the pipe, and onto the abutment, scrabbling up on my knees, the flashlight in my hand. It went out. I shook it and tried the switch. It came back on. Above me, someone shouted an obscenity.
The rungs were iron, the color of dark chocolate, cold even through my gloves. I looked up once, then clicked the light off and started to climb. Ten careful steps, then my head poked over the edge. I reached out and felt broken glass, a crushed can. Beyond a concrete pillar there were shadowy figures in the light of a fire. The sweet smell of paint hung in the air.
