It is the Fourth of July. America goes to picnic. Riverside Park looks like a Rwandan refugee camp. Black and brown people sit on blankets around fires, children cry, the sound of explosions fills the air, and a thick layer of smoke hovers above the ground. Homeless people forage in the midst of the crowd, picking up cans that are sometimes still being consumed.
It is not much nicer in the tunnel. The greasy fumes of hotdogs and burnt burgers enter through the grates to mix with gunpowder smoke from heavy firecrackers and other fireworks thrown down by kids. Huge explosions thunder through the tunnel.
Bernard has now been in a terrible mood for a few days straight. He is unapproachable and grumpy, and I start to get tired of him. He whines and nags all the time like an old woman and bombards me with his folksy wisdom, expressions he probably learned from his mother in the Deep South. “A watched pot never boils” is one of his favorites and it drives me crazy. This morning, he said it three times as I lifted the lid of the pot to see if the coffee was ready. “You’ll never make Boy Scouts,” is another annoying Bernardism he tells me when I throw the wrong piece of wood on the fire.
Otherwise, he can only rant and rave and curse and complain about everybody, about Burk, Tony, and the Kool-Aid Kid who still pops up once in a while and empties and dirties all the pans. Bernard is getting to be a repetitive bore, and I even stop taking notes.
A new development is that Margaret, and journalists in general, have started to get on his nerves. Since the book The Mole People has been released in Germany, there has been an invasion of Teutonic journalists brought down by Margaret. This week alone, we’ve already seen three German TV-crews.
Yesterday he yelled at me for giving a copy of the gate key to Marcus. The latter had asked me politely, since Bernard refused to give him one. “Il pense qu’il est le Roi,” Marcus had whispered softly.
If Marcus had only been discreet, as I begged him, there wouldn’t have been any problems. But he opened the gate for everybody who wanted to enter. Bernard had bumped into two Mexicans performing anal sex on the stairs. Marcus had let them in. “Today you got two, tomorrow four and after tomorrow eight. Before you know it there will be a Mexican village down here and gone is the peace,” Bernard had yelled at me. “And by the way, I am the one making the rules down here. I am the one responsible. In the meantime, everybody just does what he wants. I’m getting sick of it.” Bernard had not asked me to return my key, but it was close.
Evening falls, the explosions become less frequent, and I make another pot of coffee. I start a fire, but when I put the rattling kettle on the grill, Bernard angrily comes out of his bunker. “Goddammit,” he screams. “It looks like there is a curse in the tunnel. Just relaxing has become an impossible challenge.”
I have to chuckle on the inside. Bernard’s efforts to smoke crack in peace are sometimes pure slapstick. Once, he sat at a quiet spot in the park looking out over the Hudson. Just at the very moment when he wanted to light his stem, a gay man popped out of the brushes and begged to suck him.
“And are you making another pot of coffee again?” Bernard goes on. “This morning you already finished one goddamn whole pot.” He should not have told me that. Now I am offended. After all, I never nag him about his crack habit. Besides, I always provide plenty of wood, water, and coffee. Sulking, I go up top and decide to stay away a few days.
A few days later, Bernard is walking towards me as I enter the tunnel. The grouchy expression on his face makes me expect the worst. “Bad news, Tut,” he says bluntly. “Bob is back. And you know the deal.”
Bob was staying at the YMCA in Brooklyn, but lost his SSI and Medicaid and is back on the streets. Obviously, he blew it over there. The tunnel is the only place left for him. Bernard promised Bob to always keep his spot open.
“Can’t we fix up another bunker?” I ask carefully. “Forget it,” he says laughing haughtily. “Impossible.”
We sit at the fire and Tony joins us. Bernard starts to rave and rant at the Germans. “Three times they came down the last days. They gave me ten dollars. I am not used to that from Europeans. What a goddamn fucking offense. They ordered me to be at We-Can at seven o’clock in the morning for some extra shooting. I did not show up.” Tony listens and nods approvingly.
“And Margaret, she is also finished. For four years I carried her tripod. Next week her book is going to print and still she yells seven times a week through the grill. She was going to give me a couple of hundred bucks so I could start two-for oneing, now suddenly she doesn’t have any money. And Jennifer Toth, she also is not welcome here anymore. She can’t even spell my name right. And that’s just the smallest error in her book. And Dree Andrea: she has been in town a few times now and has not even bothered to say hi to me. And Terry Williams, he still owes me two hundred dollars if his TV-piece got aired. Never heard from him. And Chris fucking Pape, he shows up every week on my doorstep with another Japanese film crew. Playing big shot artist, but never even bought me a hamburger.”
“Damn it,” concludes Bernard. “From now on, everybody who wants to shoot a doc here will pay me 250 dollars a day. Flat rate! Just the usual stuff at the grill. If they want to film me up top collecting cans, then it’s another hundred extra.”
Bernard has had it. I wonder what I did wrong. Maybe I took his hospitality for granted. Bernard evades the question when I ask, and goes on about journalists in general. “Goddamn, I totally understand that every journalist needs a healthy dose of opportunism, but if they start to exploit us, then they go too far. They all think there is something to gain in this life.”
“Yeah,” grumbles Tony the yes-man.
“But in the end they will meet themselves,” Bernard continues. “Because there is nothing to gain. It is all about purification of the soul and a good conscience. I tell you, Turn, all these folks will wind up with bad karma. Look what happened with Newsday.” Once, Bernard was taking a nap when he woke up to the noise of a heavy generator. He opened the door and was blinded by big floodlights. “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing here?” he had screamed.
“We have permission from Amtrak,” the Newsday crew had answered.
“But not to take photos of my kitchen and my living room,” Bernard had angrily responded, and slammed the door in their faces.
A few days later, Bernard saw himself in Newsday portrayed as Cerberus, the Three-headed Hell Hound guarding the gates of Hades. A few weeks later, Newsday went bankrupt.
“They all think they can fuck with us. They all think they’re so smart with their college education. Us, they consider us a bunch of mentally-ill crackheads.”
“You’re right, B,” Tony adds. “They all think we are crazy. But just wait till my designs are on the market. Then I will have the last laugh.” I go back to Brooklyn. I can finish my story, Bernard promises, but I lost Bob’s bunker.
Kathy and Joe comfort me when I tell them Bernard is acting up and that I lost my space. “Bernard is getting nervous,” explains Joe. “He’s started to realize he is no longer the mayor.”
“He has tunnel fever,” gossips Kathy. “He is not coming out during the day. Only at night, to collect cans.”
I move my activities to the South End, but stop by now and then at Bernard’s camp. Life goes on there as usual. Tony is in the best of moods and enjoys the summer. He has decorated his shopping cart with flags, teddy bears, and all kind of little toys and dolls. When he walks down the street with his bare chest, humming and singing Puerto Rican songs, he leaves a trail of smiling people behind him.