The Losers (13 page)

The man in the overalls smiled stupidly at Raphael, his eyes unfocused. “Hi, buddy,” he said, his voice tiny and squeaking.

“Sit down, Rafe,” Tobe said, and lurched across to a rumpled bed that sat against the wall opposite the table. He collapsed on the bed, picked up the wine bottle sitting on the floor near it, and took a long pull at it. “You want a drink?” he asked, offering the bottle.

“No. Thanks all the same.” Raphael was trying to think of a way to leave without aggravating the little man.

“Hi, buddy,” Sam said again, still smiling.

“Hi, Sam,” Raphael replied.

Tobe fished around in a water glass he used as an ashtray and found a partially burned cigarette. He straightened it out between his knobby fingers and lit it. Then he looked around the room. “Ain’t much of a place,” he half apologized, “but we’re just a couple ol’ bachelors, an’ we live the way we want.” He slapped the bed he half lay on. “We put this here for when we get too drunk to make it up the stairs to go to bed.”

Raphael nodded.

“Hi, buddy,” Sam said.

“Don’t pay no mind t’ ?f Sam there,” Tobe said. “He’s been on a toot fer three weeks. I’m gonna have t’ sober ‘im up pretty quick. He’s been sittin’ right there fer four days now.”

Sam smiled owlishly at Raphael. “I’m drunk, buddy,” he said.

“He can see that, Sam,” Tobe snorted. “Anybody can see that you’re drunk.” He turned back to Raphael. “We do okay. We both got our pensions, an’ we ain’t got no bills.” He took another drink from his bottle. “Soon’s it gets dark, I’ll get my truck, an’ we’ll go on back over to the Safeway so’s you can buy more groceries. They took my license away from me eight years ago, so I gotta be kinda careful when I drive.”

They sat in the stinking room for an hour or more while Tobe talked on endlessly in his raucous voice. Raphael was able to piece together a few facts about them. They were both retired from the military and had worked for the railroad when they’d gotten out. At one time, perhaps, they had been men like other men, with dreams and ambitions—meaningful men—but now they were old and drunk and very dirty. Their days slid by in an endless stream, blurred by cheap wine. The ambition had long since burned out, and they slid at night not into sleep but into that unconsciousness in which there are no dreams. When they spoke, it was of the past rather than of the future, but they had each other. They were not alone, so it was all right.

After it grew dark, Tobe went out to the garage in back and got out his battered truck. Then he erratically drove Raphael to the supermarket. Raphael did his shopping again, and Tobe bought more wine. Then the little man drove slowly back to their street and, with wobbly steps, carried Raphael’s groceries up the stairs.

Raphael thanked him.

“Aw, don’t think nothin’ about it,” Tobe said. “A man ain’t no damn good at all if he don’t help his neighbors. Anytime you wanna use my truck, ?f buddy, you just lemme know. Anytime at all.” Then, stumbling, half falling, he clumped back down the stairs.

Raphael stood on the rooftop, looking over the railing as Tobe weavingly drove his clattering truck around to the alley behind the house across the street to hide it in the garage again.

Alone, with the cool air of the night washing the stench of the two old men from his nostrils, Raphael was suddenly struck with an almost crushing loneliness. The light was on in the upstairs of the house next door, but he did not want to watch Crazy Charlie anymore.

On the street below, alone under the streetlight, Patch, the one-eyed Indian, walked by, his feet making no sound on the sidewalk. Raphael stood on his rooftop and watched him pass, wishing that he might be able to call out to the solitary figure below, but that, of course, was impossible, and so he only watched until the silent Indian was gone.

vi

Sadie the Sitter was an enormously fat woman who lived diagonally across the intersection from Raphael’s apartment house. He had seen her a few times during the winter months, but as the weather turned warmer she emerged from her house to survey her domain.

Sadie was a professional sitter; she also sat by inclination. Her throne was a large porch swing suspended from two heavy chains bolted to the ceiling. Each morning, quite early, she waddled onto the porch and plunked her vast bulk into the creaking swing. And there she sat, her piggish little eyes taking in everything that happened on the street, her beet-red face sullen and discontented.

The young parents who were her customers were polite, even deferential, as they delivered their children into her custody each morning. Sadie’s power was awesome; and like all power it was economic. If offended, she could simply refuse to accept the child, thus quite effectively eliminating the offending mother’s wages for the day. It was a power Sadie used often, sometimes capriciously—just for the sake of using it.

Her hair was a bright, artificial red and quite frizzy, since it was of a texture that accepted neither the dye nor the permanent very well. Her voice was loud and assertive, and could be heard clearly all over the neighborhood. She had, it seemed, no neck, and her head swiveled with difficulty atop her massive shoulders. She ate continually with both hands, stuffing the food into her mouth.

Sadie’s husband was a barber, a thin man with a gray face and a shuffling, painful gait. The feelings that existed between them had long since passed silent loathing and verged now on open hostility. Their arguments were long and savage and were usually conducted at full volume. Their single child, a scrawny girl of about twelve, was severely retarded, physically as well as mentally, and she was kept in a child’s playpen on the porch, where she drooled and twitched and made wounded-animal noises in a bull-like voice.

Sadie’s mother lived several houses up the street from her, and in good weather she waddled each morning about ten down the sidewalk in slapping bedroom slippers and a tentlike housecoat to visit. Sadie’s mother was also a gross woman, and she lived entirely for her grandchildren, a raucous mob of bad-mannered youngsters who gathered in her front yard each afternoon when school let out to engage in interminable games of football or tag or hide-and-seek with no regard for flower beds or hedges while Granny sat on her rocker in bloated contentment like a mother spider, ready to pounce ferociously upon any neighbor with the temerity to protest the rampant destruction of his property.

At first Raphael found the entire group wholly repugnant, then gradually, almost against his will, he began to develop a certain fascination. The greed, the gluttony, and the naked, spiteful envy of Sadie and her mother were so undisguised that they seemed not so much to be human, but were rather vast, primal forces—embodiments of those qualities—allegorical distillations of all that is meanest in others.

“She thinks she’s so much,” Sadie sneered to her mother. “She has all them delivery trucks come to her house like that on purpose—-just to spite her neighbors. I could buy new furniture, too, if I wanted, but I got better things to do with my money.”

“Are you Granny’s little love?” Sadie’s mother cooed at the idiot.

The child drooled and bellowed at her hoarsely.

“Don’t get her started, for God’s sake,” Sadie said irritably. “It takes all day to quiet her down again.” She glanced quickly at her mother with a sly look of malice. “She’s gettin’ too hard to handle. I think it’s time we put her in a home.”

“Oh no,” her mother protested, her face suddenly assuming a helplessly hurt look, “not Granny’s little darling. You couldn’t
really
do that.”

“She’d be better off,” Sadie said smugly, satisfied that she had injured her mother’s most vulnerable spot once again. The threat appeared to be a standard ploy, since it came up nearly every time they visited together.

“How’s
he
doing?” Sadie’s mother asked quickly, changing the subject in the hope of diverting her daughter’s mind from the horrid notion of committing the idiot to custodial care. As always, the “he” referred to Sadie’s husband. They never used his name.

“His veins are breakin’ down,” Sadie replied, gloating. “His feet and hands are cold all the time, and sometimes he has trouble gettin’ his breath.”

“It’s a pity.” Her mother sighed.

Sadie snorted a savage laugh, reaching for another fistful of potato chips. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I keep his insurance premiums all paid up. I’ll be a rich woman one of these days real soon.”

“I imagine it’s a terrible strain on him—standing all the time like that.”

Sadie nodded, contentedly munching. “All his arteries are clogged almost shut,” she said smugly. “His doctor says that it’s just a question of time until one of them blows out or a clot of that gunk breaks loose and stops his heart. He could go at any time.”

“Poor man,” her mother said sadly.

“Soon as it happens, I’m gonna buy
me
a whole buncha new furniture.” Sadie’s tone was dreamy. “An’ I’m gonna have all them delivery trucks pullin’ up in fronta
my
house.
Then
watch them people down the street just wither up an’ blow away. Sometimes I just can’t hardly wait.”

Raphael turned and went back into his little apartment. Walking was not so bad, but simply standing grew tiring after a while, and the phantom ache in the knee and foot that were no longer there began to gnaw at him.

He sat on the couch and turned on the scanner, more to cover the penetrating sound of Sadie’s voice than out of any real interest in morning police calls. A little bit of Sadie went a long way.

It was a problem. As the summer progressed the interior of the apartment was likely to become intolerably hot. He knew that. He would be driven out onto the roof for relief. The standing would simply bring on the pain, and the pain would drive him back into the apartment again. He needed something to sit on, a bench, or a chair or something like Sadie’s swing.

He checked his phone book, made some calls, and then went down to catch a bus.

The Goodwill store was a large building with the usual musty-smelling clothes hanging on pipe racks and the usual battered furniture, stained mattresses, and scarred appliances. It had about it that unmistakable odor of poverty that all such places have.

“You’ve come about the job,” a pale girl with one dwarfed arm said as he crutched across toward the furniture.

“No,” he replied. “Actually, I came to buy a chair.”

“I’m sorry. I just assumed—” She glanced at his crutches and blushed furiously.

“What kind of a job is it?” he asked, more to help her out of her embarrassment than out of any real curiosity.

“Shoe repair. Our regular man is moving away.”

“I wouldn’t be much good at that.”

“You never know until you try.” She smiled shyly at him. Her face seemed somehow radiant when she smiled. “If you’re really looking for something to do, it might not hurt to talk with Mrs. Kiernan.”

“I don’t really need a job. I’ve got insurance and Social Security.” It was easy to talk with her. He hadn’t really talked with one of his own kind since the last time he’d spoken with Quillian.

“Most of us
do
have some kind of coverage,” she said with a certain amount of spirit. “Working here makes us at least semiuseful. It’s a matter of dignity—not money.”

Because he liked her, and because her unspoken criticism stung a little, he let her lead him back to the small office where a harassed-looking woman interviewed him.

“We don’t pay very much,” she apologized, “and we can’t guarantee you any set number of hours a week or anything like that.”

“That’s all right,” Raphael told her. “I just need something to do, that’s all.”

She nodded and had him fill out some forms. “I’ll have to get it cleared,” she said, “but I don’t think there’ll be any problem. Suppose I call you in about a week.”

He thanked her and went back out into the barnlike salesroom. The girl with the dwarfed arm was waiting for him. “Well?” she asked.

“She’s going to call me,” Raphael told her. “Did she have you fill out any forms?” He nodded.

“You’re in then,” she said with a great deal of satisfaction. “Do you suppose I could look at some chairs now?” Raphael asked, smiling.

vii

His world quite suddenly expanded enormously. The advent of the chair enabled him to see the entire neighborhood in a way he had not been able to see it before. Because standing had been awkward and painful, he had not watched before, but the chair made it easier—made it almost simpler to watch than not to watch. It was a most serviceable chair—an old office chair of gray metal mounted on a squat, four-footed pedestal with casters on the bottom. It had sturdy arms and a solid back, and there were heavy springs under the seat that enabled him to rock back to alter his position often enough to remain comfortable. The addition of a pillow provided the padding necessary to protect the still-sensitive remains of his left hip. The great thing about it was that it rolled. With his crutches and his right leg, he could easily propel himself to any spot on the roof and could watch the wonderful world expanding on the streets below.

Always before they had seemed to be quiet streets of somewhat run-down houses only in need of a nail here, a board there, some paint and a general squaring away. Now that winter had passed, however, and the first warm days of spring had come, the people who lived on the two streets that intersected at the corner of the house where he lived opened their doors and began to bring their lives outside where he could watch them.

Winter is a particularly difficult time for the poor. Heat is expensive, but more than that, the bitter cold drives them inside, although their natural habitat is outside. Given the opportunity, the poor will conduct most of the business of their lives out-of-doors, and with the arrival of spring they come out almost with gusto.

“Fuckin’ bastard.” It was an Indian girl who might have been twenty-three but already looked closer to forty. Her face was a ruin, and her arms and shoulders were covered with crudely done tattoos. She cursed loudly but without inflection, without even much interest, as if she already knew what the outcome of the meeting was going to be. There was a kind of resignation about her swearing. She stood swaying drunkenly on the porch of the large house two doors up from Tobe and Sam’s place, speaking to the big, tense-looking man on the sidewalk.