“It’s simple,” says Frankie. “We’re all living in the same shit. Might as well be nice to each other. When me and Ment were doing some construction work on the house last week, we first waited a few days till Joe and Kathy were all right again. They also had the flu and kept a few days in bed.”
“That’s right,” confirms Kathy. “We all try to be nice.” Frankie goes on cooking chicken and tells another story to illustrate Buddy’s unacceptable behavior. The two of them had managed to get tickets for Ricki Lake who had a special talk show on youth and crime. Frankie especially was looking forward to it, and all the smart things he was going to say from his firsthand experience. But Buddy was drunk and started a fight with one of the doormen. “It’s sad,” Frankie says. “I’m the kinda guy like You sing together, you dance together. Even before the show started, we were kicked out.”
Yesterday, Frankie was also approached by an outreach worker. He holds the same kind of grudge as Bernard towards the do-gooders that try to intervene in his life. This time it was a friendly man who gave him a baloney sandwich and offered him a place to stay, that is to say, a city-operated shelter. Of course, Frankie was deeply offended.
“What the fuck do they think they’re talking about?” Frankie says angrily. “A shelter and a lousy sandwich! I told the guy, ‘Come to my place, I’ll make coffee and cook burgers and we gonna watch the ballgame on TV.’ But this asshole, he didn’t dare to come down.” It sounds like it was Do-Gooder Galindez again. “Something wrong with the system,” Frankie ponders, “when you got those guys making thirty grand a year driving fancy cars and handing out baloney sandwiches.”
When Frankie first arrived, homeless, in New York, he spent a few nights in the shelter. “You lie in this dormitory trying to sleep and the guy next to you on the left and another guy on the right, both of them are sucking on their crack pipes. At night, you’d better have kept on your shoes, else they were gone when you woke up.”
“As a matter of fact,” Frankie continues, “I just went to this shelter ‘cause word was on the street that after three days they’d give you new sneakers.” So Frankie waited for three days and finally got them. “It was a pair of real cool Converse All Stars. I tell you, brand new, straight outta the box. I tried them on and they fitted me perfectly. I said ‘Thank you guys, but gotta go right now.’ And right in front of their eyes I ripped up my shelter ID. And I was gone.”
“It was just like jail,” Frankie remembers. “You had to be in by 11 PM, and at 7 in the morning they kicked you out. When you entered, they body searched you for guns and drugs. And then there was this soda machine that didn’t give cans, but plastic cups, you know, the same model they have in the prisons. The food was no good. Small portions, like a kindergarten lunch. In the morning just a small-ass box of cereal. No food for a grown up.”
In another shelter a man tried to break into Frankie’s locker. “Those were all my possessions I had left and this guy was going to steal it,” Frankie says. “I got so mad at him, I smashed his face against the locker.” After the man was rushed to the hospital with serious head injuries, Frankie was kicked out of the shelter. It was his last experience with the shelter system.
Kathy shares the same distrust of homeless agencies. “Us, they don’t wanna help,” she says bitterly, “because we are white and we don’t do no drugs. If you’re a black crackhead they give you everything for free. Honest people like us, they’re left outside in the cold.”
“Damn right you are, Kathy,” Frankie interrupts. “When I just got homeless, I tried to apply for public assistance. They kicked me out of the welfare office. ‘You’re white, young, and healthy. Go out and get yourself a job.’ That’s what they told me. And every black or Puerto Rican who came in, they all left smiling and waving with a big check.”
“But, I may sound like one,” Frankie says moderating his earlier remarks, “but I’m not really a racist.”
In a way it’s true. Frankie and Ment might look like extremist skinheads, but most of their buddies hanging out with them in the tunnel are black or Latino. They all address each other as yo, my nigger. Taking into account also the rap music they love to listen to, the style of clothes they wear, the ghetto slang they talk, the trouble with the law they run into and all the graffiti pieces they do, Frankie and Ment have a lot more in common with kids from the black urban culture.
Frankie continues. “I tell you again, I’m not a real racist, but there’s just one race I despise. And every time I cross ‘em on the streets I still spit in their face. And that’s the goddamn gooks. ‘Cause of what they did to my father and what they did to Joe.”
The Vietnam War is still not over in the tunnel. Frankie explains what happened to his father. “He was caught and kept POW. Fucking gooks tortured him for eighteen months before he saw a chance to escape. He never got over it again.” Frankie bites his upper lip and stares at the floor.
“Joe did four tours of duty. He can survive a whole week just on a piece of bread and a pot of coffee,” Kathy says proudly. But sometimes, Joe is plagued by flashbacks. “I’m afraid of him when he has drunk too much,” Kathy admits. “Then he starts to scream strange things in his sleep.” One of those nights, Joe went crazy and chased Frankie with a big jungle knife. Frankie had to lock himself up in his own place and wait till Joe calmed down.
“Can happen,” Frankie shrugs his shoulders “We didn’t make a big deal out of it. Next morning Joe came to apologize. He had had those dreams again.”
“The Mayor thinks he has been here the longest, but I came twelve years earlier,” says Joe. Kathy and Joe sarcastically call Bernard “The Mayor.” “Not that anybody ever chose him,” Kathy normally adds, full of venom. It is another few days before I finally get Joe ready to talk to me. This time he keeps his promise, so I am not knocking for nothing holding a six-pack of beers and a box of cat food like countless times before.
“I had to get away from my flashbacks,” says Joe, “That’s why I came to the tunnels. Here nobody is bothering me.” A curious cat is sticking its head out of the door of Joe’s bunker. Joe strokes the animal’s neck. A few other cats come out and soon Joe is surrounded by a dozen meowing animals.
When Joe came to the tunnel twenty years ago, the premises were still being used as a terminal for trucks and freight trains. At first, he lived under a weight bridge at the entrance to the tunnel. “For years I was there without anybody even knowing,” Joe says. “They thought I just was a railway worker. Later Jimmy the Juice came here. And Black Mike, a big negro. Good guy. We fought together in Nam.” Jimmy and Mike left years ago. “Jimmy couldn’t stop coughing, and Mike started to see weird things.” Joe doesn’t know where they went. “And Kovacs, he was also from that time,” Joe continues. Kovacs was promised a movie deal after the New York Times article about him, but instead he just wound up with a nice wife.
In 1957, Joe joined the army. He never expected that seven years later he would be in a C-130 on his way to Vietnam, where he spent a total of four years. “We had three hundred kids in our division. Fifty is all that’s left. Many died after they got home. Too much exposure to Agent Orange.” Joe is eligible for veteran’s benefits, but he’s refused it. “I tried once. They wanted to give me only 10 percent of what I’m actually entitled to. Told ‘em to go to hell. Never tried again. Don’t feel like waiting in line.”