A Vagrant Story (26 page)

“In shambles.”

“Okay, okay. But I would have liked to keep it … for safe keeping.”

“We’ll buy you a new one when you start job hunting.”

“Knock it off.”

Sierra giggled slightly, Rum did too in his crotchety own way. If not for a sudden passer-by emerging from the fog they’d have continued laughing, but they silenced to preserve the moment for themselves.

The passer-by, head shielded under thick winter hood, nodded partly in greeting. Sierra and Rum nodded back, then he disappeared as he had emerged.

A bum would rarely be fit for such a greeting. Normally Sierra and Rum wouldn’t be either. It was however a peculiar thing, as they sat there on sidewalk bench, coated in winter fog and drifting snow, they would have seen to any passer bye, a father and daughter sharing a moment.

Rum poked his hand through his pocket, taking out a stubbed cigarette. Lighting it with a spare match he fell back lazily into the bench. He took a drag, and released.

“This is good, isn’t it?”

“You smoke now too?”

Chapter 18

Alex went to call an ambulance from the nearest phone. He’d been gone a while and by then the old haphazard bum began stirring from his daze. Left waiting for Alex to return, Henry stirred awkwardly over the old man in hesitant expectation. He couldn’t handle this on his own. He would need Alex to do the talking when the man eventually came to. Most importantly, he needed Alex should this creature prove not so thankful and a little more hostile. He would have reason for it, in a sense.

Since Alex and Henry had pulled him from the ditch to the lane pathway, the snow began building around him as to set an outline like a lazy snow angel. Henry would have washed it all away but feared waking the man while his hand lay in the wrong place. Sure it was just some tired old drunken bum without worth to his name, but so was Rum.

Henry’s time to prepare ended when a few breathless words uttered from somewhere beneath that matted beard.

“I … can’t feel my back.”

“You’re on the ground,” Henry replied.

The old man shifted, lifting his arms and with it the snow covering them. He stared through to the whitened scene around, wondering what took place between now and his last memory.

“Seems a while since my drink ran dry,” he said, voice hinting of a slurred Irish accent.

“Are you okay?” Henry asked.

“Strange fellow you are, like you know. I’ve me arse planted dead in snow and you ask if I’m alright?”

“Sorry … My friend is calling an ambulance, they’ll be here soon.”

“No apologies. You did stop to help me. I saw five people looking at me and none said nothing of me. Every time another passed I went a little deeper in, like, you know.”

“Shouldn’t be too long now.”

“Sorry son, could you lean down a little? Me eyes are near shot on a sober day. I’d like to get a good look at you, the one person who stopped.”

Henry did so with an awkward smirk, not at all hesitant in his retreat away from that pungent breath.

“I see,” the old man continued. “So it’s yourself again.”

“Again? Can’t imagine we’ve met.”

Only on the end of his words did it click. Henry had seen this haggard old face before. He recognised the grey trench-coat he wore, those bobbling eyes, the accent, and those aged burn marks near hidden under that matted beard. This man was the wino they ran into on the train over here, the one who in his own disconcerting enthusiasm drove them to flee into another carriage.

Henry let his shoulder’s drop. “Yeah … it’s me again. You know, you’ve got a good memory, must come in handy.”

“Back in my youth it did. Back when I was a no-good smarmy swindler. It had its uses, believe me it did. These days it’s more of a pain, remembering faces of people who don’t want to know you. Now I just ride around on public transport, hassling the faces I remember and pulling in some new ones. Faces … Used to be good at reading them too … until I read this one guy wrong. Let’s just say I nearly died and leave it at that.” He sighed. “Have you got a smoke, son?”

“I think you need a break from stuff like that.”

“Stuff like that’s all I got left. They say it’s all bad these days, only selfish people smoke and drink. But I’ve no one left to call me selfish for doing it, so I suppose selfish is all I can be anymore. I suppose … someone like you could never understand.”

“Someone like me?”

The old fella grinned. “This is just one moment in my long life, understand? You might have stopped to help me but when that ambulance gets here you’ll go back to wherever you were going. You’re listening to me now because you feel sorry for me, but really what’s happening here … it’s no different than when I caused you trouble on the train – ill or not I’m still spilling stories from the past. This time I’m on my back, that’s the only difference. You’ll never really know what it’s like to live like this, living in the gutter.”

“Not exactly.”

“You … you homeless too? Wouldn’t strike me as one. I’ve never seen a homeless man wearing glasses. And you look too well dressed.”

Henry eyed his own shabby clothes, his torn tracksuit bottoms and stained hoody top fished from a hospital laundry bin. He passed the compliment off as a relative observation.

“You’re too young, lad, so let me tell you this … get out while you can, or it’ll suck you down. Get out before concrete starts feeling good on the ol’ back.”

“It’ll never come to that. I’ve no intention of staying on the streets forever. I can get a job any time I want.”

The old man laughed mournfully to himself. “How long will you want to? One day it’s easy to say these things, the next you’re too drunk to think about it. Next thing you know you’re riding on trains just to fill the time, and you talk to random passengers until they get annoyed and leave.” The man closed his eyes as if to see back into a corner of his past. “Now look at me. Stop talking lad, stop saying ‘I will’, first thing you need do is act, act and get out while you’re young.” His eyes didn’t open, and his head laxed, falling to the side.

“H-hey, are you okay?” Henry asked, checking for life. He sighed relief when he found his pulse still beating.

Alex returned shortly after to find the old man in much the same condition as when he left. The paramedics would be coming soon, he assured Henry. So they waited.

In time red and blue flashing light flickered into the laneway. The paramedics set the old man on a gurney, placed him into an ambulance then drove away.

Alex and Henry watched those flashing lights flicker into distance. Commotion over, they began making way back to the station.

“Poor bastard, he’d be better off in the ditch.”

Henry eyed Alex curiously.

“You see the sign on the ambulance? They’re taking him to the same hospital we were at. He’ll be tossed into the nearest room and forgotten until they need the bed again. I’d rather stay sick on the street than stuck in that place.”

“They weren’t all bad. I guess I might have been lucky to have a nice doctor.”

“Nice? Smiles won’t go very far when they’re all out of insulin.”

“He helped me a lot. Actually, he was the one who replaced my clothes when they were damaged in the fire. He pulled my new ones from the laundry bin.”

“So he gave you some dead guy’s clothes. Can’t imagine the hospital would have much use for them.”

“That’s not all! He even helped me escape when the cops…” Henry faded into sketchy mutterings.

Alex stopped to eye Henry curiously. “Did I just hear you say the words ‘escape’ and ‘cops’ in the one sentence?”

“They were going to arrest me.”

“Arrest you? For what? You haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t think you’ve ever done anything wrong in your life.”

“When I woke up in hospital the police were keeping watch outside my door. They were going to blame the fires on me, so they could wrap up the case for the media.”

“That’s ridiculous! Did they say anything to you?”

“Not as such. I overheard some of the other patients talking. I heard them call me a criminal. Shortly after the doctor on duty told me what was going on. He told me the police came to arrest me.”

“You didn’t start the fire. They wouldn’t have arrested you. They would have no evidence and no reason to think that.”

    “Evidence doesn’t matter to them half the time, especially when the media’s bugging them! Everyone knows what the police in this city are like. They’d sooner frame a bum than look bad in front of the press. It’s a big case, Alex, and big cases have jobs on the line!”

“The incidents of arson are hardly ‘big news’, and no cop in this town will lose sleep over them, let alone their jobs. If they’re focusing on anything right now it’s that serial killer case. Look at it this way, if they wanted to arrest you they’d have spoken to me too. They pulled us both from the fire, remember?”

“They only need to frame one person. They probably took one look at me and said I was easiest. It’d be nothing new. In my old life people blamed me for all sorts just because it was easy. People could always see it in me. If I had gone with the police, I’d wear this big trusting smile the whole way to the station. Then the moment they get me in a closed room they’ll demand a confession. I’d break and give it to them too. I know I’d break.”

”At this rate that’s exactly what they’ll do if they find you now, and it’ll all be that doctor’s fault.”

“No! He’s a good person. Everyone in that room was eying me, snickering at me. The doctor looked after me. He told me what was going on. I trusted him. He told me he knew that I went into that fire to save someone’s life. He told me I was a good person, so he didn’t want to see a good person hung out to dry. He gave me a second chance, Alex.”

“And helped you escape. How did he bypass the guards?”

“It was tricky. He gave me some … pills.”

“He drugged you.”

“Don’t say it like that. The pills put me asleep so I wouldn’t draw attention while he wheeled me out in a gurney. He took me to the basement level where I used a fire exit to escape. Have to admit I was still a bit nauseous for a while after.”

“I see now. That explains where you got those weird pills from. The way they went to work on that pregnant woman who crashed her car … I knew there was something different about them.”

“I still have one left if you want to check it.”

“I wouldn’t know anyway. Hold onto it in case someone else does.”

“Then what about the police?

“The doctor made a mistake. He probably overheard some people talking and jumped to conclusions. You were trapped in a fire, so naturally the police might want to talk to you. He obviously overreacted.”

“But he seemed so genuine.”

“He could have been, for all he thought. Next time someone accuses you of a crime be a little more inquisitive before swallowing their pills.”

“When you say it like that … I don’t know … He was a doctor … I was scared. I needed a way out. I didn’t care how it happened.”

“Henry, in future try not to be so trusting of strangers. It’s not the way you look that attracts swindlers, it’s the amount of trust you allow yourself to place in them.”

Alex sighed, starting them back off again.

“In any case there’s not much we can do now. It’s getting late, time we met up with those two gits.”

Chapter 19

So it seemed their karma rebound would have to wait a while. Alex and Henry hurried back to the station, but Rum and Sierra were already sitting on the top steps waiting. Sierra sat stammering her feet for a good plan foiled.

Alex apologised to both with Henry mimicking at side. They attempted to explain what happened but Sierra gave no ear. She stammered away in something of a huff as if she and Rum had actually intended to arrive early. In truth she did attempt to dilly-dally so that Alex and Henry would arrive late, so that she might return the favour for their earlier abandonment.

Rum stood to his feet like a possessed pile of rags. “I gather you’re late then.”