“Bitch hit me in the head! Look at how I’m bleedin’ here!”
He held out a hand with some blood on it. Soupspoon shook his head, embarrassed by the blowhard.
“All right now,” one of the cop-boys said. This one had a deep voice and milky skin. He held a billy stick out in front of his chest with both hands.
“Just spit,” Soupspoon said. “That’s all ya need for them.” Nobody understood him, though.
“Okay, everybody calm down.” The second cop was fat. He had soft womanly eyes with long lashes, but his skin was bad.
“Bastard!” the girl shouted. “You put an old man out ’cause he’s sick! You motherfucker!”
Soupspoon could hear the south in her voice. Trashy south. White man’s south.
“All right, that’s enough now,” the cop with the billy stick said. “Just calm down.”
“Sir?” the fat cop asked Soupspoon. “Are you okay, sir?”
Soupspoon just stared at him. He was thinking about another policeman, a long time ago.
“Sir?”
“Luther’s sick, officer,” the redheaded girl said. “I’ve been in the hospital and I just got out today and when I got here I found these men doing...”
“Naw, naw, officer. That ain’t right,” Nate said. “This here man’s name is Wise, Atwater Wise. He was evicted. Social Services come an’ took him to the shelter on Bowery. An’ when we come here to clean up today he was back there. We got a job, man...”
The policemen both stared at Soupspoon.
“He’s my godfather, officer. From down Hogston,” the redhead said.
Soupspoon looked at her again. Maybe she was crazy. Drunk maybe, or insane.
“Aw, man, com’on,” Nate said. “She don’t even know him.”
“He’s my godfather,” she said flatly. “Now pick up his things and take them upstairs, apartment forty-three.”
The fat cop turned to the Rasta-boy. “Is that right?”
The boy nodded, not looking the cop in the face.
“What’s his name then?”
“I only ever called him Pop, officer. That’s all. But he’s Kiki’s godfather all right. He’s the one who told her about this place.”
“Shit,” the white moving man said.
“Watch your mouth.” That was the deep-voiced, soft-skinned policeman. The fat kid came over and they talked a minute.
Soupspoon watched the two children as they settled his fate. He’d learned a long time ago that if you couldn’t throw the dice yourself, then somebody else would throw them for you.
“You got someplace to take him?” the fat cop asked Tony.
“Somebody supposed t’be here, officer. The city got somebody to get him.”
Soupspoon remembered how they came to talk to him, the Social Services people and the police. Rat-faced Grumbacher was saying how he had lost five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars! After Soupspoon had paid his rent on time for twenty-seven years! The Social Services people promised to bring his things, but they never did. And even the few little things he brought with him were stolen from under his cot. His comb and razor, his ring from right off his finger.
“I don’t see anybody here,” the fat cop said.
“They’re comin’,” Nate said.
“You can’t leave him out in this cold. Do what the girl wants,” the policeman said.
“But, man...”
“Listen,” the baby-faced cop said, trying to be like a reasonable adult. “If you leave him out here and he dies, then we have to come after you for manslaughter. Maybe worse.”
The moving men looked at each other. Both of them sighed.
They left the furniture in the street. The redhead said that the apartment was too small for dressers and sofas and that she had an extra bed for “Luther.” They put all his clothes and small things in the dresser drawers. Tony took the drawers while Nate carried Soupspoon. He came through the apartment door breathing hard and frowning at the smell. He put Soupspoon on a floral-patterned stuffed chair that was set in front of a window.
Pain ground through Soupspoon’s hip from being jostled so much.
Down in the street he could see the filthy white woman going through the couch, looking for lost change between the cushions.
Rats ain’t got me yet.
“Smell’im?” Nate twisted his nose at Soupspoon. “That’s what you got into. His whole place smelled like a toilet and a old dead man.”
“Get out of my house.” She wouldn’t even look at the men. Randy held the door.
“Mr. Grumbacher is gonna hear about this,” Tony said. “This apartment is signed up for one. He’s gonna come back here and kick you out too.”
“I want you out of my house,” was her reply.
After they’d slammed out of the room she slumped onto the couch and put her hand against her side. Then she looked at the hand as if maybe she expected to see something.
“You okay, Kiki?” the boy asked.
“Yeah,” she said, looking at Soupspoon. “I’m fine.”
It was a shabby room. There was a TV with a coat hanger for an antenna on a bench at the foot of a big purple bed. A couch and stove, a bathtub on corroded enameled feet and a sink. A table and two chairs stood in the middle of the studio pretending to be a dining room. There was Soupspoon’s chair at the window and a shelf full of books next to it.
He pulled the blankets tight.
Outside the sun had just set. Soupspoon could still feel the chill in his feet. His eyes closed with the fading light. Even the loud hurt in his leg couldn’t rouse him.
There was a harvested cornfield. The stalks were broken and bare. It was twilight in November. It was cold and spiky and he wanted a pair of shoes so bad that he’d been crying. He was crying on the ground. He did that for a long time, until he forgot why.
He looked up and felt the chill of a cool breeze across the tears on his face. The chill was bracing and he wanted to laugh but didn’t.
Far away through all the broken tilted stalks he saw a rabbit. A big gray bunny with red eyes. They stared at each other until Soupspoon noticed that the sun was up and it was spring. The field had been sown and new corn sprouted all around turn.
“Sir?”
The window was black with night. People moved around in the lighted rooms across the street.
The redhead had on jeans and a T-shirt. He could see her small, masculine nipples against the thin cotton.
“I ain’t no Luther,” he said. “Name’s Soupspoon.”
“What?” She leaned forward, holding the scarlet hair back from a pale, freckled ear.
He pulled the blankets tighter and said, “I ain’t no Luther. Name’s Soupspoon.”
“Soupspoon?” She stared right into his eyes, frowning. “That’s your name, hon?”
He nodded and wondered what was wrong with this girl. She didn’t move away even though he smelled from shit.
“You been sick, darlin’?”
“My th’oat an’ my hip. Cain’t hardly stand up.”
“Here,” she said. She pulled the blankets back and began to unbutton his sweater.
“What you doin’? Stop that.”
“What did you say, honey?” She stopped unbuttoning and leaned her head over again.
“I said, what you doin?”
“I ran a bath. If we can take off your clothes I’ll carry you over, Maybe it will help your hip.”
“I ain’t no baby.”
She went back to undressing him. The smell didn’t seem to bother her. She pulled his sweater and shirt off from the back and got him to put up his feet to get off the pants and soiled underpants. When she took off his socks she said, “You got these sores because you don’t get up and walk around. Now come on.” She turned her back to him and hunkered down. “Get up on my back and I’ll carry you over there.”