Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (17 page)

Noah had grandiose plans to save the world. Noah, it should be remembered, was a disreputable man who heard a voice. The villagers, his neighbors, laughed. Noah, a bit of a drunk, was not taken seriously. The voice said,
By what you make you will save the world
. And so, reluctantly at first, Noah began his life’s work, an impossible project, something much larger than himself. But at night Noah was again filled with doubt, and he drank to quiet the voices. The people in his village spoke behind their hands as he passed, touched their caps, smiled. The village was miles from the ocean and Noah was spending his days building a boat—
Made it out of hic-kory barky-barky
.

Noah had three sons—Shem, Ham and Japheth. Ham came upon his father one day, naked and ranting, building his impossible boat in a blackout. God had spoken, God kept speaking, God wouldn’t stop speaking. For witnessing his father naked and drunk, Ham and all his offspring became accursed forever, to the end of time.

My father may not hear voices but he also has an impossible project, he’s also filled with a force larger than himself. In nearly every letter my father has sent me for the last twenty-five years he tells me his writing is going very, very well. His novel, such as it is, if it is at all, written in blackout and prison, is his ark, the thing that will save him, that will save the world. His single-mindedness impresses most, his fathomless belief in his own greatness, in his powers to transform a failed world, to make it whole again by a word, by a story. That if you stick with your vision long enough you will be redeemed. All this in the face of near-constant evidence to the contrary. The actual circumstances of his life—his alcoholism, the crimes he’s committed, his homelessness and decades of poverty—these are mere tests, and what is a faith not tested? Noah needed to gather nails, to sort the animals, to convince his sons. He planed his timber and laid out the ribs. His ark would be bigger than the temple. We all need to create the story that will make sense of our lives, to make sense of the daily tasks. Yet each night the doubts returned, howling through him. Without doubt there can be no faith. At daybreak Noah looked to the darkening sky and vowed to work faster. My father cannot die, he tells me, will not, until his work is completed. But is there a deadline inside him for when he must finish, a day, like Noah, when the rains begin? When the boat, finished or not, begins to rise from the cradle?

Within a week after seeing him wrapped in a bedsheet and ranting, his bare feet in a pool of his own piss, my father has gone down even further, each night coming into the shelter drunker, more abusive, more out of control. He takes a swing at Cookie, calls her a “dyke cunt,” but Cookie gives him another chance, merely puts him out for the night—
He’s your father, for chrissakes
. But by the end of the week, when I arrive at nine for my shift, my co-workers look at me wearily—they’ve had another long night battling him. I’ve chosen to leave him to them, to escape the building, to spend my nights driving the streets. Finally, he is brought up for barring:

Stamped in for “BH20 or Bar,” meaning if he refuses to go to the thirty-day lockup detox at Bridgewater State Correctional Facility he will be barred for at least two months. He’s described as “w/m, 5’7”, white hair, slanted eye, gray stubble, 150 lbs.” I know my father will never voluntarily check himself back into prison. At the change-of-shift meetings his barring is voted on. I am at one of these meetings. The vote goes nine to bar, one against, and one abstention. I would like to say that I abstained from the voting, but I don’t remember if this is true. It is just as likely that I voted to bar my father, in support of my co-workers.

The rains, as we all know, did come. The boat lifted above the drowned world, and the disbelievers perished, and no one was more surprised than Noah. The first right thing he’d done, and it came from obeying a voice only he could hear, which others took as proof of his madness. But what of Ham? It didn’t matter if he told anyone about his drunken father or not, if he chided him or tried to dress him, if he lifted his struggling body back into bed, if he took his hand and told him where to place his feet, none of this changed the fact of what he’d seen. It’s possible he opened a door innocently, followed the sound of Noah’s voice cursing God and the sky, possible he didn’t even look, that he turned away before seeing. And it’s likely that Noah hadn’t noticed the door opening, couldn’t have told you who had come in, which son, wouldn’t remember anyway. Apparently it’s God’s call. Ham saw his father drunken and naked, and for this he was cursed, and all of his offspring, and the races that led from these offspring, accursed forever.

All over the city men are falling—
nosedive
,
header
—crab-walking from benches lower and lower until the ground rises up to catch them, until the earth says
stop
, until the sidewalk tilts and the lights go out. From above, with infrared, you can see them, the outlines of bodies dotting the city, falling to their knees, rolling onto their sides, frozen in a pantomime of sleep. Points on a map, an electrified tourist map, the scenic spots lit up, marked. Scan the corners, the edges, the just-out-of-sight, the places men go to piss, any horizontal will do. One of those lights could be my father, but he keeps moving, through the night, finds a stone mattress, dozes off.

Marie:
I saw your father the other day.

Son:
I didn’t know you knew my father.

Marie:
He didn’t look so good.

Son:
Maybe it wasn’t him.

Marie:
Who else would it’ve been?

Son:
I mean maybe you got him confused.

Marie:
Confused?

Son:
With someone else.

Marie:
Who?

Son:
Another man.

Marie:
Which man?

Son:
Someone else. Someone not my father.

Marie:
Why would I do that?

Son:
I don’t know. I didn’t know you knew him. Do you know him?

Marie:
He’s a hard guy not to know.

Son:
Maybe it’s not him.

Marie:
Who else would it be?

Son:
A lot of guys.

Marie:
He sleeps in the parking garage, right?

Son:
Sometimes. Which garage?

Marie:
Barlow and Ron were giving him a hard time the other day.

Son:
Barlow’s garage?

Marie:
And that kid who got himself burned—

Son:
Kevin?

Marie:
He was good-looking, before they set him on fire. You can tell.

Son:
(
standing
)

Marie:
Would you hang out with someone who even maybe set you on fire?

Son:
You want a donut or something?

Marie:
How can you hang out with someone who set you on fire?

Son:
Eno the Beano?

Marie:
You talk to your old man much? He’s not making much sense these days. Like he’s been out too long.

Son:
You never heard of him?

Marie:
I know an Eno. He sells drugs. Wears that nasty hat.

Son:
This Eno told my father
I
was into drugs.

Marie:
(
beat
) Everyone says that.

Son:
I mean, who is this guy?

Marie:
Well, you are, aren’t you?

Son:
I don’t even know him.

Marie:
(
beat
) It snowed last night.

Son:
You should get inside.

Marie:
You getting more coffee or what?

Son:
(
sits down
) I don’t even know him.

Marie:
He’s got those crazy eyes, like one’s unscrewed or something.

Son:
We can still try to get you in somewhere.

Marie:
(
ignores him
) Last Sunday Barlow and Ron were out of booze.

Son:
I heard.

Marie:
That’s got to be something.

Son:
They—?

Marie:
—They lure
your
old man upstairs.

Son:
They didn’t drop him?

Marie:
Five stories I heard.

Son:
(
beat
)

Marie:
It
snowed
last night. Slush
every
where.

Son:
The Van has coats.

Marie:
Last night Barlow was telling the story.

Son:
(
beat
) I never noticed.

Marie:
He’s a freakin psycho, Barlow.

Son:
How did they get inside?

Marie:
Your old man doesn’t look good. He’s outside all the time.

(1989)
I steer the Van down the Mall dividing the up from the down of Commonwealth Avenue, its walkway littered with statues of the unknown rich—a man in a sailor’s hat looking over a bronze sea; a man with one hand in his coat pocket, fingering his coins forever. Past the benches my father haunts, three a.m., the radar begins to hum. What color was his blanket yesterday? Olive drab? Maroon? Last night it snowed, you could follow his footprints from his bench to the church overhang, until the snow filled them. I drive slowly past a blanket shaped like a man—here is a man, shaped like a blanket, shaped like a box, shaped like a bench. Easy to miss. If this is my father, if I leave a sandwich beside his sleeping body, does this become a family meal? Is this bench now our dinner table? Are we inside again? Is this what it means to be holding it together? Am I coping? How’s my driving?

It’s just Jeff and me tonight, someone didn’t show. Shaved head, weight lifter, ex-Marine—Jeff has been working with the homeless since he quit drinking a year ago. His girlfriend didn’t follow him into the land of sobriety. This causes Jeff a lot of turmoil. His anger, though, can be an asset on the Van. More than once I see him slam a homeless guy against a wall who’d threatened us. A hands-on kind of counselor, a cowboy, a terminator. It’s against policy but there’s something refreshing about it, once in a while. Good to have him on your side. Aside from these infrequent outbursts he possesses the gentle demeanor that sometimes trails the newly sober, that deep acceptance that comes with realizing how badly you’d fucked up your life. Yet he’s still drifting dangerously down his own river of rage.

I hop the Van over the curb into Boston Common, which isn’t legal, but the cops ignore us. On the Common a man’s allowed to graze a flock of sheep, goats, cows, whatever, this is in the articles of incorporation from 1634, this is the original purpose for this public land. But that same man, that shepherd, is not allowed to sleep. If the shepherd falls asleep he can be arrested. The sheep may all be asleep but the man must watch them sleep. Russell walks the periphery. Plaid suitcoat, red shirt, polka-dot tie, white shoes. Hard to miss. He’s become our favorite person lately (Who
is
your favorite bum?). Tonight he sports a captain’s hat. My recent coup was to offer him a stick of gum and have him accept it. This after three years of seeing him sleeping out, three years of him telling us he was just on his way home, only to find him later in a doorway on Newbury.

I stop the Van beside an unidentifiable form asleep on a bench, offer to watch the radio. Jeff knows why I stay behind, but he doesn’t ask about it. I write in the log, 3:05, _____ on a bench, the common by the bandstand. Jeff squats beside the bench, to see if John Doe is breathing, to see if he’s hungry, to see if he’s covered.
Scooping bodies off our filthy streets
. Who is our John Doe? What
does
this feel like?

25°. Snow builds a monochromatic city. The statues stare over the shapes of sleeping men, whitening. Still not cold enough to drive the hard-core guys inside. Bobbie Blue-Eyes. Jimmy the Hat. Black George. Indian Dave. The blankets that cover them are now also white. Jeff comes back.
It’s Paul
, he says,
he just wants another blanket
. I write, “Paul Carney, blanket.” Jeff shakes the blanket out—a red sail in a white sea—dusts off what snow he can, drapes the rough wool over the shape of Paul. Paul’s shape fills the bench, the blanket becomes a fort. His breath fills the fort, heats it. Words come from Paul’s head. A knock on my window—Denis Delaney, his face covered with tar. His knuckle leaves a black kiss on the glass. Always wild, but even for Denis this is another level. I get out, mention the tar. Denis tells me it came from the Lord,
The Lord offered His cup and I drank it, drank its sweetness, to drain the evil out.
The Lord did this because Denis is the devil.

A new map of the city has been created, several maps, actually, transparent layers, they can be laid one on top of the other. One shows only fire hydrants, another only stoplights, another each school. My map would show the places one could sleep if one was or became or planned to be homeless. It would show each bench, each church step, each bridge, each horizontal, each patch of grass. We ask Paul if he wants to go back to the shelter with us but we know he won’t go.
No, no,
he says,
I’m just out here enjoying a little fresh air. I do my best thinking out here.
We got him to talk to a psych doctor once, the doctor asked if he heard things other people don’t.
Sure,
Paul answered,
I hear birds in the morning when everyone’s sleeping, I hear trees rustling when no one’s around
. We convince Denis to come for a ride, I lay a blanket on the seat, give him cigarettes, coffee. I say,
Let’s go talk to someone about the Lord.
He stares at the tip of his cigarette, murmurs into it. Oily light, steam rising from cracks in the asphalt, rivers of heat flowing beneath the streets, the center of the earth boiling, heat factories on the edge of the highway, acid rain. We drive slowly to City, talking calm and low, hoping a psych nurse is on duty, but once we pull in Denis refuses to enter, wanders off between streetlights.

Back downtown we check the alley off Bromfield (
bomb-
field). Best to make a racket walking down Bromfield, sweeping the flashlight in arcs before you to scare away the rats, calling out,
Moses, Moses?
Maybe we have a message for Moses, maybe he’s unbarred, maybe some meds await him in the clinic. At the end is a gate you shoulder open that leads to a staircase behind the Orpheum Theater. If we don’t find Moses on one of the landings we’ll find someone else, huddled in the pissy utter darkness, who either knows Moses or doesn’t, who either knows or doesn’t know where to find him. Changeable and random. Some guys check into detox for the winter, some burrow deeper under blankets.

Later I’ll stand over my father as he sleeps under the church halogen. Impossible light. Jeff stays in the Van, lets me do this alone. Snow dusts his blanket, his eyebrows, the bag tied to his wrist like a tourniquet. Barred now, now nowhere inside for him to go, now every night I could find him. Starlings fill the trees above us—isn’t it late for starlings, don’t they fly south? His chest rises and falls, tiny cracks in the dusting of snow, miniature avalanches, a distant rumble. The halogen’s hum fills the sphere of light I inhabit. I cannot remember a way out of this sphere. He breathes in this hum. I breathe in his hum. If his chest still rises, if his blankets seem adequate, then I won’t enter this building he has built. If I step into the lobby of his chest I will sink up to my knees in nothing. I will lose my feet, like traversing a swamp.
We had gardeners and chauffeurs growing up
, he says.
When this is over I’ll be sleeping inside the Ritz, where I belong
. I stand on the sidewalk searching my pockets for the key, embedded in the asphalt below my feet.
What does it feel like…whose filthy body…how far to the palace…?