everything under the sun for decades now, and they were always wrong. He'd heard it all a hundred times, but he was one of the good guys.
In the last fifteen years he'd lost his job, his wife, his home, his children, and everything else that had kept him going since his war days. He'd been in police custody more times than he could count. For several years, he'd lived in flophouses and a mission down on the Bowery. After that he'd scrounged around the Port Authority bus station over on the West Side, sleeping intermittently in shelters and on the street. He didn't like the shelters. Too many bad people, too much AIDS, too many rules. After ten years, he'd drifted back down to Alphabet City on the Lower East Side.
In each location, he'd cycled through his days getting drunk, being drunk, sleeping it off, begging, drinking more. From time to time he was disorderly and bellicose. When he was sober and when he was drunk, he saw himself as a helper, the only one who'd pull a knife on a raper or mediate a brawl. He'd been a killer of Cong in ' Nam, knew how to fight. And like then, he was still one of the good guys, misunderstood and a little down on his luck.
In his war days and the early years afterward, Pee Wee had gone through periods where he'd do weed and alcohol, cocaine, and whatever substances were popular on the street. But that was back when he was trying to keep up with life. After he lost his home, he went for the cheapest thing. He'd become a pure old wino, too broke and disorganized for anything else. He'd long since completed his descent.
Now he was thinking about the five in his hands and the twenty on the come. For several hours he wandered around the Disneyland of the new Times Square, looking for haunts that no longer existed. He bought some Thunderbird with the five the cop had given him, drank it, then walked north toward the park. He didn't get very far and lost track of time early on.
By nine at night he was dozing pleasantly among acquaintances on the corner of Ninth and Fifty-seventh Street. There, a wide, three-foot brick garden wall provided good seating and a place to sleep it off. In winter in the wide open space of the almost park someone always made a fire in an old oil drum. In summer, spring, and fall there were farmers' markets. In all seasons there was a gathering of homeless right across the street from the D'Agostino supermarket.
Pee Wee was roused from a comfortable drunk by a fight going on around him. Guys were arguing, yelling. He was lying on the brick wall when one of them wanted his space, or something. One minute he was sleeping and the next he was picked up. He was punched, knocked down, and his head smashed hard into the pavement. It happened in a few seconds, and he went out cold for a while. When he woke up there were cops standing around. One of them was trying to wake him up.
'Hey, fellow, you okay?'
'Course, ah'm okay. Whadya think?' Cops were talking the way cops always talked. Through bleary eyes, Pee Wee saw people standing around. A girl cop stood over him, big as a trailer in her uniform. An even bigger guy was talking to another cop.
'This gentleman here says you hit him,' the woman said.
'Hit a cop, are you crazy?' Pee Wee had no idea what was going on.
'No, no, you and your pals here were fighting.'
'Not me, no.' Pee Wee realized he was flat on his back.
'He says you took his sandwich. He tried to get it back and you slugged him.'
Pee Wee had no memory of any such thing. That was a ridiculous, an outrageous accusation. He sat up and began the struggle to get to his feet.
'Hey, wait a minute. Looks like you got quite a crack on the head there.' The cop tried to restrain him.
'Nahh, thash crazy.' Pee Wee didn't like being restrained. He brushed the hands away and stumbled to his feet. The cops were having a conference, a regular convention there with a crowd around him. Everybody was pretty quiet now. It almost made him laugh.
Yeah, now he remembered. Two guys were fighting, but not him. Yelling. He had nothing to do with it. He took off, dizzy and a little disoriented, a common enough condition for him. The convention was over. Nobody stopped him. He walked north on Ninth, then east on Sixtieth, didn't want to run into Lincoln Center. He felt pretty good, almost high as he headed slowly toward the park. It took him more than two hours to go a mile to the place where he lived between two boulders by the lake. He kept his possessions there, including several quilts, and a tarp that he pulled over his head when it rained or snowed. People were talking to him in his head. Different stories were playing there from different times in his life. Over the years the social workers and church people had encouraged him to have goals. He'd gone to AA at more than one point in his life.
'You have to have goals to maintain sober living,' they all said.
He had goals. Plenty of them. And could maintain sober living anytime he wanted. In fact, he was sober a lot of the time. Almost all the time. His goal was he wanted a dog to help him beg, to protect him, and to keep him warm in winter. That was his first goal. He had others.
He hit the park. He remembered the cops there looking for somebody. He couldn't remember who. Then after a while he remembered. He couldn't remember when the cops had been there. He forgot he was looking for the girl and the kids with the twenties. The park was quiet now. Even the birds had settled down for the night. Inside the park, he stumbled along the path toward his place. He saw a large rat and some guys in an unmarked car who might be cops. Where was the kid with the money? The cops drove by and were gone. Pee Wee stopped behind a leafy shrub to take a piss, still thinking about getting another twenty.
He remembered the guy in the cave. Pee Wee was a responsible member of society. He didn't want the guy to be hungry or uncomfortable. He'd take him some water from the lake, give him a blanket. What the hell. He felt a little dizzy and sat down in the dirt for a moment. He forgot what he was doing, blacked out. Sometime later, he got up and stumbled on, the twenty back in his mind. He knew he had to do something, but he'd forgotten what.
Twenty-eight
With each rumble of the subway a fine dusting of sand loosened from the crumbling rock above Maslow's face and rained down on him. It felt as if the earth itself were alive and trying to entomb him. When Maslow became fully aware of it, the feeling had returned to his hands and arms in stinging tingles. But his legs were still numb.
Dirt was in his eyes and mouth. 'Oh God!' He raised his hand and smacked it on the ceiling only inches from his face. It jumped to the right and hit a wall of gravel. Panic-stricken, he felt around him and discovered another wall to his left. Whimpering, he realized that he was buried alive. The only thing between him and death was a thin pocket of foul air.
'Oh God, save me,' he whispered. He closed his flooding eyes and saw nothing. He was alone in his grave. All he heard was the pounding of his heart and the rasp of his breath, louder than any thunder he'd ever known. He struggled to breathe, and terror became the animal that consumed him.
If he could have moved his legs, he would have thrashed in agony. If he could have yelled, he would have shrieked his protest. But he could not move, could not utter more than soft moans. He was able to raise his wrist to his face but could not see well enough to read the dial of his watch. Nor could he estimate the time that had passed by the condition of his body.
He felt weak. He felt sick. He felt cold, then hot. He'd been hungry earlier, but was not so hungry now. As a doctor, he knew that loss of appetite always occurred after the first day of fasting but returned with a fierce vengeance very soon thereafter. He also knew a healthy person could live in moderate temperatures without food or water for a long time. Earthquake victims trapped in the rubble had been known to live four, five, even six days. But Maslow was no victim of a natural disaster.
His whole situation seemed to come directly from his own childhood dreams. To be paralyzed and unable to escape an enemy. To be trapped in the dark, cold and hungry. To be all alone with his terror. Everything that was happening to him now had been common features of his own private nightmares. Except for one thing, to have a patient capture and kill him. That scenario had never occurred to him.
Maslow felt as if he had been dreaming all his life.
