The Losers (10 page)

search on the north side, beyond the churning turbulence of the river, as if that barrier might somehow hold off the predators who roamed the downtown streets.

It was luck, really, when he found it. The apartment was not listed in the paper, but there was a discreet sign in a downstairs window. The bus he customarily rode had passed it a half-dozen times before he realized that the sign was there. He got off at the next stop and went back, his paces long and measured, and his crutches creaking with each stride.

The building had been a store at one time, wooden-framed, and with living quarters for the owner upstairs. There was a large screened porch across the front of the second floor and five mailboxes beside the bayed-in downstairs door that had at one time been the entrance to the business. The entire structure was somewhat bigger than a large house, and it sat on a corner facing two quiet streets with older houses and bare trees poking up stiffly at the gray winter sky. The roof was flat, and there was a small building up there, windowed on three sides.

“I saw your sign,” Raphael said to the T-shirted man who came in answer to his ring. “Do you suppose I could look at the apartment?”

The man scratched his chin doubtfully, looking at the crutches and the single leg. “I don’t know, buddy. It’s that place up on the roof. Those stairs might give you a problem.”

“One way to find out,” Raphael said to him.

“You working?” the man asked, and then went on quickly: “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to be a shithead, but if you got behind in your rent, I’d look like a real son of a bitch if I tried to kick you out. I had a woman on welfare in here last year who stopped paying her rent. Took me six months to get her out. I had social workers all over me like a rug—called me every dirty name in the book.”

“I’ve got an income,” Raphael replied patiently. “Social Security and disability from an insurance policy. They bring in enough

to get me by. Could I look at it?” He had decided not to mention the railroad settlement to strängen.

The man shrugged. “I’ll get the key. The stairway’s around on the side.”

The stairway was covered, a kind of long, slanting hallway attached to the side of the house. There was a solid handrail, and Raphael went up easily.

“You get around pretty good,” the man in the T-shirt commented as he came up and unlocked the door at the top of the stairs.

“Practice.” Raphael shrugged.

“It’s not much of an apartment,” the man apologized, leading the way across the roof to a structure that looked much like a small, square cottage. “There sure as hell ain’t room in there for more than one guy.”

“That much less to take care of.”

It was small and musty, and the dust lay thick everywhere. There was a moderate-sized living-room/dining-room combination and a Pullman kitchen in the back with a sink, small stove, and tiny refrigerator. Beside the door sat a table with two chairs. A long sofa sat against the front wall, and an armchair angled back against one of the side walls. There were the usual end table and lamps, and solid-looking but somewhat rough bookcases under the windows.

“The bedroom and bath are through there,” the man in the T-shirt said, pointing at a door beside the kitchen.

Raphael crutched to the door and looked in. There was a three-quarter-size bed, a chair, and a freestanding wardrobe in the bedroom. The bathroom was small but
fairly
clean.

“Hotter’n a bitch up here in the summer,” the man warned him.

“Do all these windows open?” Raphael asked.

“You might have to take a screwdriver to some of them, but they’re all supposed to open. It’s got baseboard electric heat—you pay your own utilities.” He quoted a number that was actually twenty-five dollars a month less than what Raphael had been paying at the Barton. “You’ll roast your ass off up here in July, though.”

Raphael, however, was looking out the window at the top of the stairs. The slanting enclosure that protected the stairs had a solid-looking door at the top. “Is there a key to that door?” he asked.

“Sure.” The man seemed to have some second thoughts. “This won’t work for you,” he declared. “You got those stairs, and what the hell are you gonna do when it snows and you gotta wade your way to the top of the stairway?”

“I’ll manage,” Raphael said, looking around at the dusty furniture and the dirty curtains over the windows. “This is what I’ve been looking for. It’ll do just fine. I’ll write you a check.”

ii

The landlord’s name was Ferguson, and Raphael made arrangements with him to have someone come in and clean the apartment and wash the dusty windows. He also asked Ferguson to get in touch with the phone company for him. Telephones are absolute necessities for the disabled. Back at his hotel he sat down and drew up a careful list of the things he would need—sheets, blankets, towels, dishes, silverware. He estimated the cost and checked the balance in his checkbook. There was enough to carry him through until the first of the month when his checks would begin to arrive from home. Then he went to the pay phone down the hall, called his uncle in Port Angeles to ask him to ship his things to his new address.

“You doing all right, Rafe?” Harry Taylor asked him.

“Fine,” Raphael replied, trying to sound convincing. “This downtown area’s a little grubby and depressing, but the new place is in a lot nicer neighborhood. How’s Mom?”

“About the same.”

“Look, Uncle Harry, I’ve got to run. I’ve got a lot of things to take care of before I move. You know how that goes.”

“Lord yes.” Harry Taylor laughed. “I’d rather take a beating than move. Take care of yourself, Rafe.” “You too, Uncle Harry.”

The last few nights in the hotel were not so bad. At least he was getting away. The scanner did not seem as menacing now. There was a kind of excitement about it all, and he felt a sense of genuine anticipation for the first time in months.

He moved on a Friday and stopped only briefly at the apartment to have the cabdriver carry up his bags and turn on the heat. Then he had the cab take him to the shopping center at Shadle Park, where there were a number of stores, a branch of his bank, and a supermarket.

The shopping was tiring, but he went at it methodically, leaving packages with his name on them at each store. His last stop was at the supermarket, where he bought such food as he thought he would need to last him out the month. The prices shocked him a bit, but he reasoned that in the long run it would be cheaper than eating in restaurants.

At last, when the afternoon was graying over into evening, he called another cab and waited impatiently in the backseat as the driver picked up each of his purchases.

After the patient cabdriver had carried up the last of the packages and come back down, Raphael climbed to the top of the stairs, stepped out onto the roof, and locked the door behind him with an immense feeling of relief.

“There, you little bastards,” he said softly to the city in general, “try to get me now.” And then, because the night air was chilly, he hurried inside to the warm brightness that was home. He locked the apartment door and closed all the drapes.

He put a few things away and made the bed. He fixed himself some supper and was pleased to discover that he wasn’t that bad a cook, although working in the tiny kitchen was awkward with the crutches. After dinner he unpacked his suitcases and hung his clothes carefully in the wardrobe. It was important to get that done right away. It was all right to live out of a suitcase in a hotel, but this was his home now. Then he bathed and sat finally at his ease in his small living room, secure and warm and very pleased with himself, listening to the scanner murmuring endlessly about the terrón from which he was now safe.

For the first few days there was an enormous satisfaction with being truly independent for the first time in his life. At home and at college there had always been someone else in charge, someone to prepare his meals and to look after him. The hospital, and to a lesser degree the hotels where he had stayed, had been staffed. Now he was alone for the first time and able to make his own decisions and to care for himself.

He puttered a great deal, setting things first here, then there, arranging and rearranging his cupboards and his refrigerator. When his belongings finally arrived from Port Angeles, he dived into them with enthusiasm. He hung up the rest of his clothes and spent hours meticulously sorting and placing his books and the cassettes for his small but quite good tape player in the low bookcases. He rather lovingly ran his fingers over his cassettes—the usual Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms and the later Romantics, as well as a few twentieth-century compositions. He worked to music after that. He kept very busy, and the days seemed hardly long enough for everything he wanted to accomplish. The apartment was small enough so that he could move around quite easily in it, and he felt very comfortable knowing that the door at the top of the stairs was locked and that he had the only key.

And then, after a week, it was done. Everything was arranged to his satisfaction, and he was quite content.

He stood in the center of the room and looked around. “Okay, baby,” he said quietly to himself, “what now?” His independence was all very fine, but he finally realized that he didn’t have the faintest idea what he was going to do with it. His life suddenly loomed ahead of him in arid and unending emptiness.

To be doing something—anything—he crutched outside ontothe roof, although the air was biting and the leaden skies were threatening. It was only midafternoon, but the day seemed already to be fading into a gloom that matched his mood.

A light in the upstairs of the house next door caught his eye, and he glanced at the window. The man in the room was talking animatedly, gesturing with his hands. Several cats sat about the room watching him. He did not appear to be talking to the cats. Something about the man’s face seemed strange. Curious, Raphael watched him.

The man turned toward the window, and Raphael looked away quickly, not wanting to be caught watching. He feigned interest in something down over the railing that encircled the roof. The man in the lighted window turned back to the room and continued to talk. Raphael watched him.

After several minutes the iron-cold air began to make him shiver and he went back inside. When he had been about nine, he had developed an interest in birds, and his mother had bought him a pair of binoculars. The interest had waned after a summer, and the seldom-used binoculars had become merely an adjunct, a possession to be moved from place to place. He went into the bedroom and took them down from the top shelf of the wardrobe. He turned out the lights so that he would not be obvious, sat by the window, and focused the glasses on the face of the man next door.

It was a curious face. The mouth was a ruin of missing teeth, and the nose and chin jutted forward as if protecting that puckered vacancy. The eyes were wary, fearful, and moved constantly. It was the hair, however, that began to provide some clue. The man was not bald, at least not entirely. Rather his head was shaved, but not neatly. There were razor nicks here and there among the short bristles. Two unevenly placed patches of sparse, pale whiskers covered his cheeks. They were not sideburns or any recognizable beard style, but were simply unshaven places.

The strange man suddenly froze, his eyes cast upward, listening. He nodded several times and tried once to speak, but the voice that only he could hear seemed to override him. He nodded again, reached up with both hands, and ran searching fingers over his scalp and face.

“Crazy,” Raphael said with almost startled realization. “This whole goddamn town is filled with crazies.”

The man in the house next door got out a shaving mug and brush and began stirring up a lather, his face intent. Then he started to slap the lather on his head and face, stopping now and then to listen raptly to instructions or urgings from that private voice. Then he picked up a razor and began to scrape at his head and face. He did not use a mirror, nor did he rinse his razor. He simply shook the scraped-off lather and stubble onto the floor and walls. The cats avoided those flying white globs with expressions of distaste. Lather ran down the man’s neck to soak his shirt collar, but he ignored that and kept on scraping. Little rivulets of blood ran from cuts on his scalp and face, but he smiled beatifically and continued.

Raphael watched until his eyes began to burn from the strain of the binoculars. The name “Crazy Charlie” leaped unbidden into his mind, and he watched each new antic with delight. He sat in the dark with the scanner twinkling at him and watched the strange, involved rituals by which Crazy Charlie ordered his life.

Later that night when Charlie had gone to his bed, leaving the lights on, Raphael sat in the dark on his couch listening to the scanner and musing, trying to probe out the reason for each of those ritual acts he had just witnessed. The despair that had
fallen
over him that afternoon had vanished, and he felt good—even buoyant—though he could not have explained exactly why.

iii

And then there were two weeks of snow again, and Raphael was housebound once more. He listened to the scanner, played his music, and read. As Quillian had told him he would, he had reached a certain competence with his crutches and then had leveled off. He could get around, but he was still awkward. Fixing a meal was a major effort, and cleaning his tiny apartment was a two-day project.

“That’s when you need to get your ass back to a therapist,” Quillian had said. “If you don’t, you’ll stay right at that point. You’ll be a cripple all your life, instead of a guy who happens to have only one leg.”

“There’s a difference?” Raphael had asked.

“You bet your sweet ass there is, Taylor.”

He considered it now. He could put it into the future since there was no way he could go out and wade around in knee-deep snow. It seemed that it would be a great deal of trouble, and he got around well enough to get by. But in his mind he could hear Quillian’s contemptuous verdict, “Cripple,” and he set his jaw. He was damned if he’d accept that. He decided that he would look up a therapist and start work again—as soon as the snow was gone.