A Vagrant Story (41 page)

    Sierra sniffed. “Yeah … I guess he was always like that. Since the first time Rum and I met Alex, he always seemed so intent to fight alone.”

***

It was a dark night in Winter. From all the time past it came difficult to remember whether there was a light drizzle of rain or a watery mist hanging in the air. At least there must have been one or the other. Alex could distinctly remember a cold dampness on his skin and clothes as he wandered aimlessly from sidewalk to sidewalk.

Alex was always taller than most people, on this night the way his wet T-shirt clung to that skinny stretched out figure of his seemed to exemplify the point. Back then his height advantage came severely stricken by a lack of muscle to back it up. Indeed, he stood over six feet but often found himself stumbling in a strong wind. People would pick on him for it. Small men and their little girlfriends found it amusing to pick on a man his size. He was an easy target for anyone who wanted trouble, especially now he was alone.

It was one of his first nights on the street. Since the agent’s building burned down he’d spent the next few days moving toward middle park. It was by no means on purpose. In that lifeless state of mind he simply succumbed his direction to whatever way the ground sloped.

He arrived in Middle Park to find himself doing no more than he had been, and in no better shape to do it. None the less he stayed there for a time, staying without talking to anyone, never risking the briefest eye contact for fear of being recognised, or so he told himself. In reality he simply didn’t like the way people looked at him. He’d never liked the way most people would look at him, but now there was something more to look at. He’d always been ugly but now he was ugly and a bum, worse yet a newbie bum. Worse yet a newbie bum who came off as a severe pushover. One wrong glance in the wrong man’s eyes could be enough to rip him from this state of incognito.

That’s what happened. One time, on a normal night on a typical street on the outskirts of Middle Park, Alex passed a man using a bank machine, sipping what appeared to be a cup of hot soup. The man glanced at Alex for the briefest moment with a clear hint of contempt on his lips.

Alex ignored it by averting his eyes, and that caused a problem. Whether Alex bumped into him by some aimless fluke or whether the man purposely bumped into him he couldn’t tell. But they bumped and that cup of soup went flying over both of them.

Alex immediately apologised. When the man seemed unconvinced he apologised more sincerely.

“Look what you did you ugly freak!”

Alex at once quietened in his grovelling. It suddenly dawned on him that this accident wasn’t so much one, as it was an excuse for the man to vent that contempt on Alex.

“I-I said I’m sorry. Besides, I didn’t … I mean, you walked into me,” Alex replied, though unsure of the truth himself.

“Don’t try turn this around on me you overgrown freak. Haven’t you learned to get out of the way for people yet or does your intelligence match that beat up face of yours?”

“I-It was an accident.”

“One you’ll be paying for. You got your wallet handy?”

Alex stared down at his feet, pausing before answering. “No. Not on me. No.”

“Not on you? You even got one? What‘s your work?”

“I’m … a writer.”

“A writer?” The man laughed. “I bet you are! I know what you are, I can see it in your face and smell it on you. You’re a bum aren’t you?”

Alex flinched his upper lip.

The man picked up on it. “Yeah you are. I could tell. You people all look the same - ugly rejects.” He posed in an upright stance, as if impressed with his own words.

And that appeared to be the reason for all this, as Alex suspected from the start. It usually tended to be a reason as good as any, at least for most instigators of the harassment. Odd this time, that the man should be on his own. The whole point of pestering a homeless person tended to be for the sake of getting a rise out of one’s own group of friends. The lack of a need to show off to anyone suggested Alex was dealing with something a little more deadly, a pure grade asshole.

“Look … I did say I’m s-sorry.”

“Like I care how ‘s-sorry’ you are. My clothes are ruined, who’s going to fix that?”

“I can’t do anything else.”

Alex tried walking away right then only to find the man tailing after. He caught up and grabbed his arm with certain aggression, pulling Alex closer till their eyes met almost nose to nose.

“Something’s going to be done about this one way or the other. You expect me to feel sorry for you just because you failed at life?”

“No.”

“You people think you can get away with anything, don’t you?

“No.”

“Well I’m not letting you away with this.”

“But I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re a bum, a dumb ugly retard bum. That‘s good enough.”

“I’m not a bum.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m…”

“Well?”

“I am…”

The man laughed. “You can’t even admit it yet. Your time‘s up fella, you aren’t a boy anymore. You fucked up. You were too fucking stupid so now you’ve wound up here. Look at you … I can treat you like shit and there’s nothing you can do. That’s your prize in life. You know that don‘t you?”

“Get away from me.” Alex broke the man’s hold. “I’ll c-call the police.”

“The police! Good God you are delusional. I could beat your head into this pathway and the cops would throw you in a cell for the night. The police won’t take your word over mine.”

That statement cut it most. Through all the man’s bullshit rambling this was one statement he knew to be true, or one repeated to him so frequently he’d come to recognise it as. In the end it would come down to whoever yelled the loudest to the police, and Alex’s voice had turned coarse and no longer up for the task.

Alex felt his fists tighten till nails pierced skin. He felt his teeth grit against one another till it hurt. He felt his eyes circle in on the man’s throat so that his hands could find a good grip on his larynx. He closed his eyes.

“They’re all the same. Bastards,” Alex spoke through teeth. “It was mine. Give it back. You bastards!”

Alex punched the man across chin sending him to the ground. He followed through as intended, wrapping large hands around small throat and squeezing so the man gasped, arms flailing in all manner of apologetic movements one could be capable of in such a state. Again Alex hit him down, beating him again and again, harder till the man’s face swamped with blood, till his mouth spilled over with it.

“You bastard!” he yelled, face awash in the red splashes he created. “It’s mine!” he cried, voice distant from the scene in front of his eyes. “You’d no right! It was mine! It’s mine! It’s mine, you bastard, it’s mine!”

It was the man’s own fault. Not because of his ill-view of homeless people. No. Half this beating would pay for that in full. It was the man’s eyes that prevented Alex from stopping. His eyes, and the way his face twisted with all the innocence one man could feel, as if wondering, with each blow wondering what he did to deserve such treatment. It wasn’t an act. He really didn’t understand. That would have been the last facial expression he ever made. When the police found him the next morning they’d find the face of an innocent man, perhaps beaten to death in some random attack.

Or they would have, had a pair of hands not grabbed Alex around the waist and pulled him backward. Alex kept swinging fists in the air in effort to escape the hold. Alex continued swinging even as the beaten man crawled away, holding his head as if to stop it from splitting in two.

“Bastard! You bastard!” Alex continued to cry.

“Hey now, I think he’s had enough,” the person who held onto him said, a crude stench of alcohol oozing out with a gritty aged voice.

Alex could feel the hands around his waist loosen so that he could turn and look at his captor … or saviour. There was actually two of them. The man who held him wore a short grizzled beard over an array of wrinkles. His long green trench coat seemed to be in equal condition. A girl stood by his side, smaller than his shoulder height, short but somewhat plump in her physique. Though it might have been the many layers of clothes she wore against this harsh Winter cold. Odd though how her blonde hair seemed to glimmer in this night, even as it barely peaked from under the green ear flap hat she wore over it.

“He isn’t worth it,” the blonde girl said, resting her hand on his shoulder.

“You saw what he did!” Alex replied, hand shaking with the release of adrenaline.

“Yeah, the guy’s a dick, but he’s had enough. It isn’t worth killing him over. I hate to sound cliché and all but … if you keep this up you’ll be no better than he is.”

“Come on guy,” the older, bearded man said. “Come with us. Come back to our place and we’ll fix you with a cup of coffee.”

Alex evaluated each of them and decided a moment after. “You … have coffee? I … like coffee. I haven’t tasted it in a days.”

“Well yeah … it’s sort of like coffee,” the bearded man stated.

“It’s at your house?”

“Well … it’s sort of like a house,” the blonde girl replied. “It’s in the middle of Middle Park. You’ll like it.”

“Middle Park? So … you’re homeless then?”

“Yeah,” the girl answered. “Welcome to the club.”

***

Alex sighed. He had tried to forget about that incident. Though considering the other tragedies in his life this one hardly rippled the surface of the waves. Between arson and murder one harmless assault shouldn’t stand out. Yet it still mattered to him. It mattered because he meant to do it. He never intended to burn down the building, he never meant to shoot the agent that night all those years ago. Up until that particular incident he always allowed himself to be carried along by the tide.

Beating that man, that was the moment he refused to be carried anymore, and for the first time, willingly performed his own dirty work. It never stopped either. Once he tapped his inner strength any reason became a good reason for a fight.

Alex dug deeper under bed sheets and fell into his pillow in an attempt distract his thoughts. He’d hardly been awake an hour and already those negative images came flooding back. They’d started to give him something of a migraine, though it might have been whatever medication the nurse had been feeding him. It did the trick, regardless. His coughing ceased and he didn’t feel so drowsy, it was just his head now, though he’d daren’t say it to the doctor in case they took this private room away. It was a single bed, single cabinet, single window setup but all in all it beat those elongated chicken pens they called infirmary wards. He’d gotten kind of lucky this time. Since this was New Year’s Eve most of the larger wards on the lower floors were likely reserved for drink related incidents while the more legit patients were kept separate on higher floors. He’d thought it would be the other way around since, naturally, the more serious patients would need faster attention. Then again, he found it hard to picture all two nurses on duty carrying one hundred or so drunks up to the top floors. It would be an easier task provided the patients couldn’t move.

Some firm but polite knocks on the door suggested it was time for another jab. A nurse dressed in the regular attire opened the door but kept her trolley outside. She shrugged.

“You have some … visitors.”

“Who?”

She shrugged again and stepped out of the way before Sierra could push her there. Henry followed with Rum shortly after. Rum turned to give the nurse a warding glare but she didn’t stay long enough to catch it.

“Lazy bitch could at least ask who we are,” he said.

“Give her a break, she’s working on New Years,” Alex replied.

“So you can talk now, that’s good.”

“Barely. I only woke up an hour ago. The doc said he’d let me rest a few before he’d let my visitors get me - that‘d be you fine people.”

“We kind of got ahead of ourselves,” Sierra said. “Sorry.”

“No matter. A little conversation won’t kill me.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So what did the doctor say?”

“He said I’m fine.”

“Alex! Stop lying, you are not fine.”

“I said I’m fine, so I’m fine.”

“You’re not going to tell us.”

“Would it matter? The long and short of it is I need to stay out of the cold, get plenty of rest and fill up on vitamins. Maybe you didn’t notice but our lifestyle doesn’t exactly tie in with all that.”

“We could have-”

“Taken me to the hospital - this hospital? I’d be in the same place I am now.”

“I wouldn’t have dragged you across the city if I knew.”

“Forget about it. Even if we failed to do what we set out to do, going all that way was the most worthwhile thing I’ve done in years. Sure, I had hoped stopping John would grant me some redeeming features before I die, but I guess the powers that be have something else in mind.”

Sierra gripped the bed sheets and leaned closer to Alex. “What do you mean before you die?”

“Calm down, I was being poetic.”

“Can the theatrics!“ Rum yelled, stepping to his bedside. He leaned down till that grizzle of his almost touched the tall man’s cheek. Breath most fowl oozed upon the stricken fellow, as Rum intended. “Answer the damn question straight and quit acting like a freak.”