He opened eyes—awoke, perhaps?—to find himself still sitting alone, in shadows that had to be those of afternoon, shadows slowly lengthening. No wine in sight as yet. Well, he could be philosophical. In time another bottle would be his, one way or another. Bottles and people, he’d seen them come, he’d seen them go. Usually pretty thoroughly drained. Even if some men had amounted to something in previous lives, now on the Street they were all pretty much the same … pretty well drained…
He was ambushed unawares by delayed sleep, and dozed again, only to wake with a sharp start from some bright unbearable dream of youth and greenery, and hideous, monumental loss. For a moment there he’d been a long way from the goddam Street, but he didn’t think he could survive many more moments like that one.
Oh, God, it had been years since he’d last remembered … in memory he heard the last note of a woman’s laugh, biting now like a knife point.
It didn’t matter, it was all over, over, over, and none of it mattered now a goddam bit. But somewhere deep inside he was shaking.
Propelled into movement by a different feeling, an impulse that it took a little time to recognize as hunger, he tottered to his feet. There would be a bowl of soup or stew available somewhere, a sandwich maybe. He knew a couple of likely places to get a handout. Neither place was very far away, though getting there by shuffle would take some time. Time was one thing he had plenty of, baby. There had been a song about that. A year ago? Feathers knew he tended to lose track of years.
The heat of the day, such as it was, had already passed its peak and was abating. Sun’s heat felt good on bones as old as his.
Sing a hymn—no, you didn’t really have to do that any more—and get a meal. Eventually, he could still hope that it would be today, a wine bottle would appear.
Leaning against a lamppost, he fumbled to open his trousers’ frayed fly, discovered it already open, and drained discomfort from his bladder. If the cops saw him now they’d certainly take him in. There were a lot worse places than a Chicago cell in which to spend the night.
But no such luck today. He was going to have to go to the hymn-singers and get a meal, and then prowl after wine. Somehow, sometime, a bottle would appear.
A pawnshop window half-mirrored the sidewalk’s heat, and his own ragbag figure’s shambling progress. His gray whiskers looked like fur glued on in handfuls decades past and unattended since. Behind the window’s armored grillwork were old musical instruments, radios, a tiny television with a dead dusty face. At the bottom of a short literary stack there was one thick, serious-looking volume, and something about that bottom book stirred vibrations deep in memory, roiled more sorely things already stirred by that last dream.
There had been books, yes, once there had been many books. Books revealing marvels ancient beyond guessing, and ancient marvels in themselves. And summer greenery as in the dream, and a young woman’s laughter…
…NO…
It didn’t matter. He had to cling to that. If he let himself panic now, over nothing, over what was dead and buried, it could finish him off. Really it didn’t matter now. Whatever his life had once contained of beauty, and of power, was all forgotten now. More than forgotten, buried and dead. He no longer wanted change, improvement, success. He no longer remembered what those things were. Now he wanted nothing at all beyond another bottle, or at least a share in one, and then to be left alone. The wine, the power, the sacrament. The Word of the Lord urged softly, in eternal pigheaded hope. The Lighthouse, the Salvation Army kitchen. And by now he was near enough to smell the soup.
At one time—it was so easy to lose track of the years, no, so difficult actually, but he’d managed it—at one time it really had been necessary to sing a hymn for them before they’d give you a handout. It was all handled differently now, more scientific and more merciful at the same time. Institutionalized love. The Work and the Word of the Lord going hand in hand … oh Lord, oh God, why is it still needful that I still be cursed with a functioning mind, or anyway one that sometimes functions? How many million bottles of wine are needed to, work the miracle of deep forgetting?
For a moment he stood swaying on the streetcorner, arms raised, fingers spread as if to grasp and tear the sun.
… world without end, amen. The Street was a world truly without end within the world, going on infinitely echoing itself. As an empire it had outlasted many others. And he had seen a lot of the Street. A goddamned lot.
When he came out of the soup kitchen, having eaten, and having skillfully put off the clever overtures of the social worker, it was dark again. The sun was certainly down, the shadows cast by streetlights had grown out in their fixed places on pavements and the fronts of buildings. The sky was a starless blur above all lights. He was leaving a fresh young woman behind him disappointed, not the first time he’d done that, ha hahh.
The soup had evidently given him some kind of strength.
… now was that real laughter, somewhere?
Hardly. Only some of the usual noise made by the usual two-legged pigs of the Street. Though at the end there had sounded one true, wild note…
Get a meal, sing a hymn, get a bottle sometimes. Get busted, sleep in a cell, get out. Oh yeah, and fear the eventual return of winter. In
