“That’s a shitty attitude.”
“Does anybody really care about what happens to a drunken bum? Basically, what happened to him was nothing more than a form of street cleaning. If the street cleaner hadn’t got him, cirrhosis of the liver would have in another year or two.”
“He was still a human being.”
“Bullshit. He was garbage.”
“That’s no reason to blow his brains out.”
“It’s as good a reason as any.” Flood stood up. “I’m going to split. Thanks for the coffee.” And without saying anything more, he left.
x
Although the worst of the heat had broken, the girl from downstairs still came up to the rooftop occasionally. They would sit and talk through the long, idle hours of evening, watching the people in the streets below. Often, for no reason other than the simple need to talk, they sat until long after midnight, their conversations drowsy and their voices blurring on the edge of sleep. Perhaps it was chance, perhaps not, but not once during any of her visits did Flood appear. Raphael was apprehensive about that. For some reason it was quite important to keep Flood and the girl apart.
“Have you thought any more about going back home?” he asked her late one evening when the tree frogs and crickets sang monotonously from nearby lawns and the cars had thinned out in the streets.
“Not really. I’m settled in now. I don’t feel like going through the hassle of moving-facing family and friends and all that.”
“And it’s easier to sit?” He probed at her, trying to test her will.
“Bodies at rest tend to remain at rest.” She said it glibly. “As time goes on and I get progressively bigger, I suspect I’ll tend to remain at rest more and more.”
“You hardly even show yet, and that’s all the more reason to do something now-before you get cemented in.”
“I show,” she disagreed wryly. “My clothes are starting to get just a teensy bit snug. Besides, what’s all this to you? Are you secretly working for the Metalline Falls tourist bureau?”
“Have you looked around you lately-at the people on this street?”
“It’s just a street, and they’re just people.”
“Not exactly. This is Welfare City, kid. These people make a career out of what my father used to call `being on the dole.’ That’s a corrosive kind of thing. It eats away at the ambition, the will. After a while it becomes a kind of disease.”
“They’re just down on their luck. It’s only temporary.”
“Eighteen years? That’s your idea of temporary?”
“Eighteen years? Where did you get that number?”
“That’s how long you’re eligible for welfare-Aid to Families with Dependent Children. What the hell do you do when you’re thirty-eight years old and the check stops coming? You don’t have any skills, any trade or profession, and you’ve been a welfairy for eighteen years just sitting. What happens then?”
She frowned.
“Most of the girls down there have come up with a fairly simple answer to the problem,” Raphael went on. “Another baby, and you’re back in business again. With luck you could stretch it out until you’re in your early sixties, but what then? What have you done with your life? You’ve sat for forty or forty-five years collecting a welfare check every month. You’ve lived in these run-down hovels scrounging around at the end of the month for enough pennies or pop bottles you can cash in so you can buy a loaf of bread or a package of cigarettes. And at the end of it all you have nothing, and you are nothing. You’ve existed, and that’s all.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“But it is. Like you say, bodies at rest tend to remain at rest. That’s a physical law, isn’t it?”
“That’s about objects-things, not people.”
“Maybe that’s the point. At what point do people stop being people and start being things-objects.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Are you sure? Are you willing to bet your life on it? You said you didn’t feel like going through the hassle of moving. Are you going to feel any more like it after the baby comes?”
“I’ll think about it.” Her voice was troubled.
“Do that.”
“It’s late.” She stood up. “I guess I’ll go to bed. See you.” Her tone was abrupt, but that was all right. At least he had gotten through to her.
After she was gone and he was alone, Raphael sat for a long time in the silent darkness on the rooftop. Maybe it was time to give some consideration to his situation as well. Flood was probably right. Perhaps it was time to give some serious thought to moving on. It was too easy to sit, and the longer he remained, the more difficult it would be to uproot himself. His own arguments came back to gnaw at him.
“All right,” he promised himself. “Just as soon as I get the girl squared away. Then I’ll think about it.”
The sense of having made a decision was somehow satisfying, and so he went to bed and slept very soundly.
Estuans interius ira vehementi in amaritudine loquor me menti
i
By late August the worst of the summer heat was past, and there was a faint haze in the air in Spokane. The evenings were cooler now, and sometimes Raphael even wore a light jacket when he sat up late.
Flood visited seldom now. His time seemed mostly taken up by his growing attachment to Heck’s Angels. Raphael could not exactly put his finger on what caused the attraction. The Angels were stupid, vicious, and not very clean. None of those qualities would normally attract Flood. Although they blustered a great deal, they were not really very brave. Their idea of a good fight appeared to be when three or preferably four of them could assault one lone opponent. They talked about fighting much of the time, and each of them attempted to exude menace, but with the possible exception of Big Heintz, they were hardly frightening.
Flood’s status among them was also puzzling. At no time did he assume the clothing or the manner of the Angels. He did not wear leather, and he did not swagger. His speech was sprinkled with “man” and “What’s happening?” and other identification words, but it was not larded with the casual obscenity that characterized the everyday conversation of the Angels and their women.
Big Heintz clearly respected Flood’s intelligence and laughed uproariously at his jokes and his parodies of popular songs. But although Flood was not a full-fledged member, neither was he a court jester or simple hanger-on.
One evening they sat on the porch of their big house up the street, drinking beer and talking. Raphael, sitting on his rooftop, could hear them quite clearly.
“They ain’t left town yet,” Big Heintz was saying. “You can fuckin’ take that to the bank.”
“Nobody’s seen any of ’em,” Jimmy ventured.
“The Dragons are still around,” Heintz insisted. “You can fuckin’ take that to the bank. They know fuckin’ well that this ain’t over yet. Me ‘n that fuckin’ Mongol still got somethin’ to settle between us, and he ain’t gonna leave this fuckin’ town till we do.” He belched authoritatively and opened another can of beer.
“Unless you can come up with more attractive odds, I think I’ll pass next time,” Flood said wryly. “I didn’t get too much entertainment out of having two of them hold me down while another one kicked me in the ribs.”
“Shit, man.” Marvin laughed. “At least they was only kickin’ you in the ribs. They was kickin’ me ‘n Jimmy and Heintz in the fuckin’ head, man. I still hear bells ringin’ sometimes.”
“Them was just games.” Heintz dismissed it. “Just playin’-sorta to let us know they was in town. Next time it won’t be no fuckin’ games-it’s gonna be fuckin’ war, man. I mean fuckin’ war!”
They continued to drink and talk about the impending battle, working themselves up gradually until their need for action of some kind sent them into the secret hiding places in the house where they kept their weapons. In half-drunken frenzy each of them in unselfconscious display moved to a separate quarter of the lawn and began to swing his favorite implement of war.
Chains whistled in the air and thudded solidly against the ground, churning up the grass. Spike-studded clubs sang savagely. Knives were brandished and flourished. The air resounded with hoarse grunts and snarls as Heck’s Angels bravely assaulted the phantom Dragons they had conjured up with beer and bravado to meekly accept the mayhem inflicted upon their airy and insubstantial bodies.
“District Four,” the scanner said.
“Four.”
“We have a report of a seventy-six at 1914 West Dalton. Several bikers threatening each other with knives and chains.”
Raphael smiled. A seventy-six was a riot, and the police usually attended such affairs in groups.
“District One,” the scanner said.
“One.”