Carry Me Home (52 page)

“Eight seventy-six,” Coleman reiterated. “All single family but clustered. Eights, tens, and twelves mostly. It’s a great plan. But great or not, it’s going to ruin The Res. They’re goina take the entire north side half a mile up the upper creek.”

“Hm. Extending Aaron Road ... Fuck up the fishin, huh?”

“Fuck up a lot more than that. You said something about this last year. I ... geez! I really didn’t think it’d happen. And I don’t think they’ve projected out the figures.”

“Who’s doin ... MacMulqueen Corp.”

“Not the developer,” Dan said. “The town. Figure it out. Nine hundred houses, four people per, thirty-six hundred people, eighteen hundred kids, eighteen hundred more cars. We’ll need a new elementary school. They’ll have to add more lights down The Strip, maybe widen it. Probably widen Aaron Road. Maybe need a new fire station. A few more cops. Cry’n out loud, Man. I grew up here! You didn’t know the town ... You know my mother’s house on Third? When I was five I used to walk from there across Miwok. You take your life in your hands now. There used to be fields ... filled, I mean filled, with jack rabbits and snakes. You name it. The creek down here used to have fish, turtles, muskrats. We used to catch the biggest snapping turtles ... Geez! In the spring these old snappers would come out, come all the way up to lay their eggs. Even they’d cross Miwok....”

“You show this to Peter?”

“He knows.”

“What’d he say?”

“What’s he always say? ‘People’ve got to live someplace.’”

“And, ‘And life goes on.’ Right?” Bobby said. Dan clammed up, glanced at Bobby, then away. “Right?” Bobby repeated.

“I grew up here,” Dan muttered. “It’s becoming a goddamn city. That’s the last ... aw, fuck it.” Dan walked out.

Bobby didn’t go after him. Instead he reread the article, noted on his pad the names of the MacMulqueen attorneys and executives. He closed the paper, stared at the front-page headline:

No One Really Foresaw

Pentagon Papers—II

... The Phase I deployment of American troops, which was now (Nov ’65) nearing its 175,000-man goal, had apparently stopped deterioration in the military situation.

But at the same time, the narrative relates, the enemy had unexpectedly built up ... 48,550 Communist combat troops in South Vietnam in July 1965 ... by ... November ... 63,550....

The Pentagon study says that the carefully calculated American strategy, with its plan for the number of American troops required to win, did not take escalatory reactions into account.

One more article to cut and store and read when work wasn’t so pressing and Red wasn’t so ... He didn’t finish the thought but flipped the paper over to fold it and give it back to Dan. On the back was a full-page ad for women’s stockings—a fly-away skirt, one fantastic set of legs, surrounding print. Immediately Stacy Carter flashed to his mind. He folded the sections, folded the paper again, huffed, looked down at the date. Only now did he realize it was his anniversary, two years from the day he returned to Mill Creek Falls, to Miriam, to Stacy’s “I want you to meet my fiancé.”

Wapinski put a hand to his forehead. He did not want to think back to all that shit. He did not want even to think back to last night, back to his breaking down, his caressing Red’s shoulders in bed, her immediate tensing at his touch, her silent rigidness as he rolled away.

All day people came and went. All day he was vague, preoccupied. At six thirty Olivia brought him a young couple who’d been sent to her by a friend of her mother’s. “Mr. and Mrs. Klemenchich ...”
(Olivia
, Bobby thought. He liked the way the word felt in his mouth.), “this is Mr. Wapinski, our office manager.”

“Bob,” Bobby said. “Please call me Bob. And I’m just the assistant manager.”

“I’m Rod and this is my wife, Estelle.” Rod was big, burly with a full beard and thick uncombed hair. Estelle was dressed in a nurse’s uniform, white shoes, stockings, jumper. They exchanged handshakes, pleasantries. Bobby looked to Olivia for an introduction to their housing needs, but none came. Rod wasted no time. “I’ll get right to the point,” he said. He whipped out a five-by-eight-inch green sheet of paper. “Is this worth squat?”

Bobby glanced at the VA Certificate of Eligibility, noted the issue date—Nov. 28, 1970: the Branch of Service—Army: the Entitlement—PL 358. He nodded, thought to ask Rod about his service, tell him he too was a vet, but he let the urge pass. “With a quarter,” Bobby said, “it’ll get ya a cup of coffee.”

“See!” Rod blurted at Estelle.

“Well, at least we tried,” she shot back quietly.

Rod began to rise.

“Wait a minute,” Bobby said. Rod paused halfway up. “You want to buy a house?”

Estelle was firm. “Yes.”

“Down payment?” Bobby said.

“Squat.” Rod collapsed back into the seat, humiliated, angry, looking away from the other three.

“That’s why we thought we could buy through the veterans’ program. My sister and her husband bought a veteran home in Texas last year and I had a patient who said he bought one in San Leandro....”

“They’re more common in the East Bay,” Bobby said. “But they’re pretty hard here. North Bay sellers just aren’t accustomed to paying points and putting up with the delays and restrictions. But there’s other ways.”

“I don’t want to live in a dump.” Rod turned, challenging, looking as if he were about to punch out the fat blond boy in the suit across from him.

Bobby smiled. “I’m not talking a dump. What do you do?”

“Duct work.”

“Heating and air conditioning,” Estelle expanded. “Rod’s a private contractor.”

“Good,” Bobby said.

“I can’t stand bosses,” Rod said simultaneously.

“File taxes?” Bobby asked.

“No,” Rod said angrily. “I’m fuckin Al Capone.”

“Oooofff!” Estelle ground her teeth, twisted in her chair. “Can’t you even once control your mouth!” To Bobby she said, “Yes, he files. I file for him. He had a profit last year, on the Schedule C, of thirteen thousand four hundred something.”

“Four fifty-six,” Rod added. “I’m not a bum. I just sunk it all back into a pickup with a utility body. And into my shop.”

“I make eighty-five hundred—” Estelle began.

“Eighty-six,” Rod corrected.

Bobby took out a form entitled Buyer’s Profile; pushed his pen quickly; asked a few questions about debts, loan payments; scribbled a few notes. “Any kids?”

“No.”

“Expecting any?”

“Fuck you.”

“Rod! Please!! No, we’re not.”

“Present rent?”

“Two hundred seventy-five.”

Bobby mumbled loud enough for Olivia, Estelle, and Rod to hear “... twenty-two divided by three point five ... this is just ballpark—” he flipped to the amortization table, “fifty-seven, fifty-eight thousand dollars ... You could buy one hell of a house.”

“But not VA, huh?”

“We could try, but—” Bobby slapped the desktop, got loud. “Before you clam up, hear me!” That got Rod’s attention. Bobby continued. “The market right now, for sellers, is slow. You won’t believe some of the financing owners are offering. You qualify for a decent size loan. I could put you in a house, very comfortably, let’s say with an eighty percent, forty-thousand-dollar first mortgage—that’s about two eighty a month—get the owner to carry a second for the rest—ten thousand at ten percent, fifteen-year schedule, ah, about one ten monthly. All due and payable in say five years.”

“Three ninety,” Rod stammered. “I’m comfortable with—”

“Wait a minute.” Bobby worked the figures quickly, “... reduce your taxable income by ninety-five ... Do you have, let’s say three thousand for closing and a little cushion?” Bobby asked.

“Gotta be a catch someplace,” Rod snickered.

Estelle’s face fell. “Not really,” she said.

“That’s okay,” Bobby said. “We can work around that, too. Try and put some money away. Borrow some from your folks. Put it in an account in your name. Just something to show the bank loan committee. I know the appraiser. I can get him to up his appraisal enough to cover the closing costs. But you’ve got to make yourselves look good on paper.”

“Is that legal?” Rod asked. Though his eyes betrayed disdain, his manner had softened.

“Borderline,” Bobby said. “I don’t much like bosses either.” Rod chuckled knowingly. “The trick here is to find a house you like with a seller willing and able to carry the second and work with us. But there’s more out there than you might think.”

After the Klemenchichs left, Olivia came back to Bobby, thanked him profusely, then took his hands, tenderly kissed him on the lips, twice. “You look like you needed that,” she said sweetly. She did not smile but turned, walked toward the door, turned back, her eyes meeting his. “See you tomorrow.”

The evening was cool, misty, typical San Francisco July weather—winds gusting in from the Pacific, thrashing Dutch and Murphy windmills, lifting the scent from the Buffalo Paddock, dipping and churning, buffeting the Portals of the Past, becoming a breeze to the lee of Strawberry Hill, aromas mixing with rose essence from the Japanese Tea Garden and music from the Golden Gate Park Band Concourse. He had come to escape The Embarcadero, the dark halls of the residence hotel, the dim lobby, the concierge’s watchful, desiring eye. He had come to ponder, to assess, to plan. The big Victorian fixer-upper at the end of Miwok Road was now in his name. So too the small two-bedroom house in Riverside—that one without covert contracts. But Ty Dorsey was nearly broke. The purchases and unseen fees had taken all his capital. He had barely enough money for the seven-dollar per week rent, or for an occasional peroshki from the Russian kiosk just south of Kezar Stadium and the park. The kiosk was closing, the merchant lowering the shutters, locking them to the narrow grease-splattered counters. Ty’s stomach gurgled. His tongue rolled in his mouth coaxing the heavy flow of saliva back to be swallowed, unused. He walked on, following South Drive to the Baseball Meadows, trying to walk gently so as not to wear out his shoes, trying to think of a new way to make money, big money for more property, thinking of dope, grass, hashish, heroin, thinking it was not enough money and when was Lloyd Dunmore going to send him someone with cash to invest as he had promised.

She had driven up from Palo Alto or Menlo Park or Atherton. The car belonged to her father whom she despised because he worked and earned and was serious and could afford the Oldsmobile which used precious fuels and polluted the air and was a symbol to her of their bourgeois decadence which she despised as much as she despised the car and her father and, she said the words as she searched his face for acceptance, “racial intolerance.”

He was tall, strong, black. She was hefty, of medium height, white. He was impeccably groomed: his shirt, trousers, shoes meticulously worn. She bordered on slovenly, her dungarees worn at the knee, ripped at the ass; her tank top stained, loose, a shoulder strap falling, exposing the plump upper skin of a tanned, braless tit.

She was starry-eyed, yet serious. She wanted to give herself to him, had come to the city to give herself to a black man, on a blanket that she’d brought, under the exotic trees of Strybing Arboretum. Her love was free. Her body was a political statement. The act, in some small way, was repayment for what her father, and all her white forefathers, had done to the Africans, repayment for dislocation, enslavement, carpetbaggers, segregated lunch counters, George Wallace, J. Edgar Hoover, the KKK and the FBI.

He was not starry-eyed but horny. He had not been with a woman in a long time. They cost money. They’d have to wait. But she was free. He didn’t have to buy her a drink, dinner. Indeed, she’d offered, during intercourse, to take him to a restaurant! She was passive, detached as he worked away. He liked her hair, long, straight, spreading like rays, like a halo on the blanket under the trees in Golden Gate Park on an evening in mid-July 1971. Afterward he wanted to wash, talk a little, maybe make a date to do it again. She just wanted to leave—like someone coming into court to pay a parking ticket, “You got my payment, now let me out of here!”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Ty said. He felt bewildered.

She carried the blanket, paced steadily toward her father’s Oldsmobile, barely glanced back.

“Wait a minute,” Ty called louder. He jammed his shirttails into his trousers, jogged toward her. “Hey, I—” She opened the trunk, tossed in the blanket, slammed the lid. Her breasts bobbled. He caught up to her. “Hey, I don’t even know your name.”

“Names are meaningless,” she said. She opened the driver’s door.

“Come on, Lady.” Ty smiled, attempted to be charming even as he rushed to intercept her fleeing. “You know, you’ve got a lovely shaped face. I’d like—” She got in, slammed the door. He placed his hands on top of the half-opened window, clicked his pinky ring against the glass. “Aw, don’t just split.”

“I have to go.”

“My name’s Ty. Ty Dorsey. Let me give you my card. I’m a financial—”

“No.” She said the word sharp, loud. “Don’t tell me. That’s not what this is—”

“Oh, for God’s—”

She started the car. He held the window. She began to roll it up. “Maybe another time, Mr. Black,” she said, or at least he thought he heard her say.

He withdrew his right hand, she shifted into drive, rolled forward.

“Hey! Stop!” He screamed. He ran. His left hand was stuck in the window. He ran trying to extricate his fingers. “STOP!” She gunned the engine. The Oldsmobile’s suspension compressed, the car leaped forward. Ty stumbled, his left arm jerked, his shoulder, elbow stretched straight. Then the car was gone and there was terrible pain in his wrist and the back of his hand and he grasped his left hand with his right. He was on his knees on South Drive in Golden Gate Park, cradling his left hand to his stomach, afraid to look, afraid, finally opening his right, seeing blood, knowing it was staining his trousers, his shirt, seeing fingers, sighing with relief, turning his hand to see the cut, seeing the bone, the last socket, the pinky and ring gone.

The pain in his hand, his entire arm, up through his shoulder to his neck, was incredible. For three days he’d suffered in his room, alone, afraid. He had no insurance, no money, none for doctors, none for emergency rooms, none for someone who might ask who he was, or had been. He smoked a skag-arette, another, another. There was money for that—not a lot, enough to let this one pleasure pay for itself. He smoked, lay on the bed, thrashed back and forth, angry at the pain, the loss of the pinky, the ring. The fat fag upstairs, that’s how he always thought of him, the fat fag, he’d been there the evening Ty had returned, Ty’s hand wrapped in toilet paper and paper towels from a gas station rest room, had seen the blood on Ty’s shirt and trousers and shoes and had helped him upstairs to his sixth-floor apartment, a real apartment with kitchenette and its own bath, where they’d unwrapped the paper towels and toilet paper and Ty babbled uncontrollably, unstoppable, exactly what had happened, right down to the carats of the ring and he bet that the bitch wouldn’t even try to return it to him, but had probably thrown ring and finger out on Nineteenth Avenue and was too dumb to stop. The fat fag had washed the wound then rolled Ty’s good right arm over, tied off, slapped up a vein and shot in a speedball that almost knocked Ty to the floor as it blew the top of his head off, the IV heroin kicking in a hundred times stronger than anything Ty had ever done in his life.