The Hollow Man

Soul Dad got Bremen out.

The police had a description of the Sixteenth Street Mall assailant and were combing the shack cities under the Platte River overpasses. Word was out that the assailant’s victim had not been hurt seriously, but the Sixteenth Street merchants had been complaining for months about the proliferation of panhandlers and the homeless on the mall during business hours. This attack had been the final straw and metro cops were tearing apart … literally tearing apart … all the temporary shacks and lean-tos from Market Street downtown all the way west to the barrio around Stonecutters Row on the hill above I-25, hunting for the young wino with blond hair, scraggly beard, and glasses.

Soul Dad got him out. Bremen had run back to his shack near the Platte and crawled into his tarp tent, pawing through the rags in the corner for his bottle of screw-top Night Train. He found it and drank deeply, trying to settle back into the fuzzy-edged murk of indifference and neurobabble that had been his life. But the adrenaline continued to pump through his system, acting like a strong wind blowing away months of fog.

I attacked that man! was his first coherent thought. And then, What the hell am I doing here? Suddenly Bremen wanted to quit playacting whatever farce he had found himself in, call Gail to come pick him up, and go home for dinner. He could see the long lane opening off the county road with the white frame farmhouse at the end, the peach trees he had planted along each side, some still held up by stakes and wires, the long line of shadows from the trees along the stream creeping toward the house as summer evening fell, the smell of new-mown grass through the open windows of the Volvo …

Bremen moaned, drank more of the filthy wine, cursed, and flung the bottle out through the opening of his crude tent. It smashed on concrete and someone farther out under the overpass shouted something unintelligible.

Gail! Oh, Christ, Gail! Bremen’s longing at that moment was a physical ache that hit him like some tsunami that had come curling over the edge of the world without warning. He felt himself battered, lifted, dropped, and tossed around by tidal forces far beyond his control. Ah, Gail … God, I need you, kiddo.

For the first time since his wife had died Jeremy Bremen lowered his forehead to his clenched fists and wept. He sobbed, surrendering to the terrible constrictions of grief that now rose in him like great and painful shards of glass that had been swallowed long ago. Oblivious to the terrible heat under the makeshift tent of plastic and canvas, oblivious to the sounds of traffic on the highway above and to the wail of sirens in the streets up the hill, oblivious to everything but his loss and grief, Bremen wept.

“You got to move your ass or lose it, boy,” came Soul Dad’s slow, mellifluous voice through the thickened air.

Bremen waved him away and curled into his rags, face to the shade-cooled concrete. He continued to weep.

“No time for that now,” Soul Dad said. “Be plenty of time later.” He grasped Bremen under the arm and lifted. Bremen struggled to free himself, to stay in his tent, but the old man was surprisingly strong, his grip irresistible, and Bremen found himself out in the sunlight, blinking away tears and shouting something loud and obscene, while Soul Dad moved him along into the deeper shadows under the viaduct as easily as a parent moves a surly child.

There was a car idling there, a ’78 or ’79 Pontiac with a scabrous vinyl roof. “I don’t know how to hotwire the newer ones,” said Soul Dad, setting Bremen behind the wheel and closing the door. The old man leaned low, his forearm on the lowered driver’s-side window and his Old Testament prophet’s beard brushing against Bremen’s shoulder. He reached in and pressed a wad of paper into Bremen’s shirt pocket. “Anyway, this one will do you for the immediate future … such as it is. You drive it out of town now, hear? Find some place to stay where crazy white boys who cry in their sleep are welcomed. At least find some place to stay until they get tired of looking for you here. Understand?”

Bremen nodded, rubbing harshly at his eyes. The interior of the car smelled like heat-baked beer and cigarette ashes. The torn upholstery smelled of urine. But the engine idled well, as if all the owner’s efforts and attention had gone under the hood. This is a stolen car! Bremen thought. And then. So what?

He turned to thank Soul Dad, to say good-bye, but the old man had already moved back into the shadows and Bremen caught only a glimpse of a raincoat moving back toward the shacks. Sirens growled somewhere close above the weedy ditch where the Platte trickled past, shallow and brown.

Bremen set his grime-caked fingers on the steering wheel. It was hot from the sun and he jerked his hands away, flexing fingers as if burned. What if I don’t remember how to drive? An instant later the answer. It doesn’t matter.

Bremen slammed the thing into gear and almost floored the accelerator, throwing gravel far out over the Platte River and having to spin the wheel lock to lock twice before gaining control and bouncing across a dirt access road and a grassy median to find the access ramp to I-25.

At the top of the on-ramp he swept into traffic and glanced right at the tops of factory buildings, warehouses, the distant gray of the train station, and even the modest skyline of steel and glass that was Denver. There were police cars down among the tent city, police cars along the tracks and river walks, and police cars along the east- west streets running back toward the bus terminus, but no cop cars up here on the Interstate. Bremen looked at the waggling red speedometer needle, realized that he was doing almost eighty in the light midday traffic, and eased up on the accelerator pedal, dropping to a legal fifty and settling in behind an Allied moving van. He realized with a start that he was approaching an intersection with I-70. The signs gave him his choice: I-70 EAST—LIMON, I-70 WEST—GRAND JUNCTION.

He had come from the east. Bremen followed the cloverleaf up and around, settling back into traffic on the busy I-70 West. Brown foothills loomed ahead, and beyond them—the glimpse of snow-covered mountains.

Bremen did not know where he was going. He glanced at the gas gauge and noticed that there was three- quarters of a tank left. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the paper Soul Dad had stuffed there: a twenty-dollar bill. He had no other money—not a cent. The three-quarters of a tank and the twenty dollars would have to get him wherever in the world he was going to go by car.

Bremen shrugged. The hot air roiling in through the open window and dusty vents cooled him as much as anything had in the past month or so. He did not know where he was headed or what he would do. But he was moving. At long last he was moving.

In This Valley of Dying Stars

Bremen was walking along the edge of the desert when the police car pulled up alongside him on the county road. There was no other traffic, so the brown-and-white vehicle moved at his walking pace for a moment. Bremen glanced once at the lone officer in the car—a square, sun-leathered face, oversized mirrored sunglasses—and then he looked back at his feet, careful not to step on any of the yucca plants or small cacti on the desert floor.

The police car pulled ahead fifty feet, turned onto the shoulder of the asphalt road with a small cloud of dust, and braked to a stop. The officer stepped out, unbuckled a strap over his revolver, and stood by the driver’s side of the car, his mirrored glasses reflecting Bremen’s slow approach. Bremen decided that the man was not a state highway patrolman, but some sort of county mountie.

“Come here,” ordered the officer.

Bremen stopped, still six feet out into the desert. “Why?”

“Get your ass over here,” said the cop, his voice still flat and low. His hand was on the grip of the revolver now.

Bremen held his own hands out, palms visible in a gesture of both acquiescence and conciliation. Also, he wanted the cop to see that his hands were empty. Bremen’s oversized Salvation Army sneakers made small sounds on the soft asphalt as he came around the rear of the patrol car. A mile ahead on the empty road, heat waves rippled and broiled above a mirage of water on tarmac.

“Assume the position,” said the officer, standing back now and gesturing toward the car’s trunk.