A Vagrant Story (2 page)

Rum simply turned away to pick the burger up from the un-kempt station floor. The old man held it up. “Well I’ve eaten worse than this before.”

“We haven’t,” Alex said. “Bins are cleaner than the ground here.”

“Rum, let it go. You’re such a dope,” Sierra added.

More concerned with a roach clinging to the bun, Henry squelched his face in disgust. “Can you hold that down? It’s making me sick.”

“Stay quiet you damn dud, if you didn’t have us here you’d probably be dead by now. Imagine having no one around to dust off the scary little bugs on your blankets before you go to bed at night,” Rum teased, finishing with a taunting laugh.

“Ignore him, he misses the drink. Don’t ya Rummy?” Alex said.

“What do you mean I miss the drink? Of course I miss it, but I’ll knock your head in for saying it all the same, ya stupid weirdo.”

Alex gave a blank stare at the sobering drunk. “You wouldn’t do that. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.”

A flush of cold wind swept through the station. A shivering Henry pinned his glasses steady.

“Well … it’s getting fairly cold now. Maybe we should head back to the shack.”

“Henry’s right,” Sierra said. “I mean, by now the shelters would have closed up. Pretty soon some no good bum’s gonna be looking for a little shut eye. We don’t want anyone else to nick our shack on us do we?”

Detesting the thought of another foodless night, Rum argued, “Go home to bed? Not with my damn stomach. Don’t sweat it, nobody’s gonna rob it on us. Anyone who’s anyone knows I’d knock their heads in.”

“Well we can’t stay out in this weather. Since you’re so hungry maybe we should look for an open restaurant to hang out in for a while,” Sierra suggested.

“We haven’t the cash. Besides, there ain’t no restaurant open at this time kid.”

“The bars are closing around now,” Alex mumbled in his distant sort of way. “Some places will still be open – with all the drunks out Rum might even blend in.” Turning round to exit by the stairs Sierra came down from, he said back to them, “But you never know till you try. And yeah, I might have a bit of change left on me.”

“Then why didn’t you say so!” Sierra cried.

“I wanted to see Rum do funny things in bins.”

Henry chased after Alex. “I–I’m, going to go with Alex.”

Rum swallowed the last piece of the tainted burger and followed too, grumbling and scowling at Alex. “Yeah, see Rum in bins. Funny. Y’lanky ugly cunt.”

***

As they travelled the cold air turned each movement to an agonising gruelling ache. Ice gradually froze in place of water and frost inched its way up the dustbins. Snow seemed definite to follow.

Through a series of indirect travelling they did come across one dilapidated wreck of a diner bearing a large open view window on the front wall. It was situated on a street corner beside a main road.

Luckily the place was empty. With any luck they might be tolerated here. One man worked the counter, a chubby Asian man in a brown suit. Head deep in file papers he showed little regard for the tramps. Either he couldn’t tell what they were or simply didn’t care – either would suffice. A brief narrowed glare did suggest a thin level of patience.

Upon receiving their orders they planted themselves on some conditionally cosy red leather seats centred round a fitting retro style table. All the while a television screen secured the snug atmosphere, flashing away on a high shelf in the corner. Its presence muted the in-hospitable chatter coming from the homeless bunch.

“Still the police have received no leads on who is responsible for the recent fires throughout the city. From across all spectrums of life in the city blame is being placed squarely on roaming gangs from less tangible areas of the city that are believed to be expanding their territory by intimidating smaller businesses. Despite this, police have ruled out these claims as ‘crackpot theories,’ rather choosing to focus on their hunt for an arsonist acting alone.”

“In other news, police have sent out yet another appeal for information which might aid in catching the serial killer who has evaded them for so long now. It has been three years since the death of his first victim, Annette Lucille, in the Northern suburbs. Since that time five more victims have suffered at the hands of this monster. All six women were found with their clothes ripped off. Autopsies showed signs of sexual abuse while under the influence of a heavy stimulant…”

The report faded to an all but mute status on their inattentive ears. Unless it involved free money and food they didn’t have much to care for in ways of local media.

The bums made sure to sit out of the way, at the rear of the room with their backs to the counter. It came like second nature to speak low and stay down when mingling with the upper echelons of society.

By any standards this place was a dive, a kip of no worth to the common man. And there in lay the beauty. Where the other diners sought to preserve a false image of nobility, places like these would turn a blind eye. In that atmosphere they ate and spoke low, in case the eye decided to see again. Getting some amount of money rarely proved a problem, finding a place to spend it was the tricky part.

They ordered soup and bread, treating it like rations in war time. Rum managed to sponge a litre bottle of cider out of Alex. It showed no match for the man’s battle hardened gut, he drained it by half and the man gained not a swagger to his words. The drink came weak but free, he had no position to complain.

Henry wasn’t big on bread. Often he would mention how when he was younger his mother fed it to him as though they had nothing else. In those days he’d turn it down in a snap. Those days were gone, and so too his options.

Amidst devouring his own slice, Rum caught wind of Henry’s hesitance. “Bread too good for you? Better eat up. We’re outta here soon, might just leave you behind.”

“But Alex isn’t finished either.”

“Course he ain’t finished, stupid weirdo never eats his fill, just sits there playing with it.”

“I eat my fill, I just don’t have your…” he eyed the soup stains on Rum’s coat, “appetite.”

“You’re eating like a duck lately. Snap it up and let’s be through. You know the kind of filth that come out around this time.”

“Us?” Alex replied.

“Funny.”

“I’ll eat what I can as fast as I can. Can’t help it … queasy stomach.”

“Come on Alex, Rum’s got a point,” Sierra said, “the bars are about to close so you know what that means. Nine out of ten some little drunken brat’s gonna start something.”

“Little brat? Look who’s talking.” Rum laughed, straight up guzzling down another swag of cider.

“Of course, to you everyone under twenty is a kid. Whatever, at least I don’t act like those idiots.”

“You got a point, you’re worse. And I don’t think we need worry, last time some little punks tried start something I knocked their little heads in. Word spreads so I think they’ll get the message.”

“You knocked their heads in … with a bat, if I recall.”

“Well yeah, normally I wouldn’t need a weapon but there were about six of them. I didn’t see you three doing much neither … especially Henry.”

Still nibbling on a loaf, Henry hoisted his head. “Well, it’s not like I was avoiding it. The fight was over before I noticed. I was … busy.”

“Busy hiding!”

“Leave it alone, Rum,” Alex said, with a cough at the end.

“Quit mixing up the story y’old fool, as I recall I was the one who dived in on them. They had you down and I saved your ass,” Sierra said.

“I’m not old. I’m only in my forties for Christ’s sake. And of course you’d get in there, you’re a girl. You don’t seriously think they’d put up a real fight against you. Makes sense they’d go easier on you.”

Sierra rolled her eyes. “I doubt the drunken mob saw things from your perspective.” She bit into her bread.” Lucky bastards being able to go out on the piss like that, all that money on a bit of fun. Wish we could get cash like that. Soup and bread has its good points but with their weekend change I’d buy everything on the menu – just for one night.”

Rum eyed her somewhat plump exterior. “You’d think you have already. From the look of you I’d say you’ve got a secret hoard somewhere.”

“And some brand new clothes,” she continued, ignoring Rum. “If I could afford those then I probably wouldn’t be too bothered with all this.”

    “What's the point? A week and they’d be wrecked again,” Rum jested. “Besides, we’re tramps, even with cash the shops would throw us out the moment our stench caught upwind.”

Alex raised hand to chin. “Yet we’re lucky.” The comment attracted everyone’s gaze. “In a poorer country we’d be fairly well off, being a tramp over here is better than being a village chief in Somalia.”

A protruding silence pierced the air. If confusion had a sound it would be the blinking eyes around this table, staring forth awaiting logic behind the comment. It came upon Rum to beg a reason.

“Yeah that’s real nice to hear. Village chief!? What the hell has that to do with anything? Forget it. You’re just a damn weirdo, always coming up with this shit. You’re only twenty-something and you act like some old man with his head half buried in books. The hell did you do before all this anyway? Bet you were crazy with the ladies.”

In part he wasn’t sure if Rum intended to ask that as a real question, or if he was just spouting more random nonsense. Taking the latter option Alex put his head down and drifted back to silence.

Rum snapped, “Hey weirdo, wake up, that was an actual question!”

“What’s to know? I’ve told you before and you never believe me.”

“Because it’s obvious as hell you made that story up.”

“Well that’s the truth. If you don’t believe me then that’s your problem.”

“Yeah sure, that’s all there is. It doesn’t add up.”

Feeling out of the loop, Henry sat forward to say, “No one ever said anything to me about it.”

“Nobody ever tells you anything. Period.”

“Leave it out, Rum. Fine, I’ll go over it again. Maybe you can cross check it with what I’ve already told you before. I imagine you’ve some notebook for this stuff since you’re so interested.”

“Don’t need one, got it all jogged down in my noggin,” Rum said. “Mister silent Al’ here says he was thinking about dropping out of college to work on his writing career-“ 

“You were a writer?” Henry interrupted. “I love stuff like that, back before I was, y’know, not homeless, I always tried thinking up new stories for comic books. I even…”

Rum’s knuckles tightened. His face reddened. “Why have I never hit you? I’m talking here so shut up. Anyway, so he finds this agent offering all these grand promises of fame.”

“He charged me monthly. At that time I was living in a single room flat so it drained my pockets pretty bad. But after everything he promised … how could I not?”

“And when the money ran dry the agent turned on him. Suddenly the masterpiece became second rate toilet paper.”

“That might have been the case from the start. The worst part is I never found out.”

“But the plot thickens … When our good friend Alex went to get his manuscripts back, the agent had cleared out – gone with the stories too.”

“He could have left them for me at least. I don’t know what happened to them, or even why he took them. Maybe he did see something worth taking after all, or maybe he just wanted to give me one last dig in the stomach. It did it for me anyway. He took the money I needed to survive then stripped me of my life’s work. Things fell through from there.”  

Sierra leaned forward with interest. “Makes sense, he got ripped off. It happens.”

“That’s not what he has a problem with,” Alex stated, in an attempt to put Rum’s point to better focus.

“You’re damn right it’s not. Listen, I lost my job and family in an accident at work, Blondie was abandoned, and the Dud-”

“S-stop calling me that,” Henry pleaded.

“-Hit low when his shop or something burned down last year, and most likely he didn’t have anyone to fall back on, being a loser and all.”

Henry murmured on the side, “I had friends. I just … didn’t want to bother them. It’s just … at that stage I was too old to hang onto people. And my parents died … then my brother went to Africa.”

Rum feigned a punch at Henry. “I thought I told you to shut up!” He focused back on Alex. “But you, you never smelt like no outcast and your family ain’t poor. I know that college you went to and it wasn’t no chump school, I know that for sure. Now I accept you’ve been a lazy bum since the day you were born so that means mommy and daddy must have foot the bill. Why not fall back on them?” 

Alex sipped his soup. “Check it out, detective Rum leaps into action. Shame the drink rots his mind. I’ve told you before, I was an orphan most of my life – I didn’t even have foster parents. My college spree was funded by a second chance charity foundation. I don’t know, I guess they thought I was smarter than the average bug.”

“Smart men don’t beat total strangers half to death.”

“That was different. It was one of my first nights on the street … as a bum. I was on my own and the guy started giving me hassle. I lost it.”