William Haggard - The New Black Mask (No 5)

Of course, he may be with one of those social houses. Some loafer on the state payroll or, even worse, one of those goddamn Jesuits in disguise. Brother Marti’s been trying to get me to stop by and partake a free lunch for years. It breaks his heart to see me managing out on the street all by myself. He likes to walk among his herd at meal times, all those street jerks kissing his behind while cramming down his baloney and Wonder Bread sandwiches. He turns into Jesus once he passes out the cellophane-wrapped sweet rolls. Everybody falls to their knees and prays, then he runs them back outside so they can line up again. Pitiful. You see, the Brothers and the welfare people think I'm crazy, and I let them. It enhances my freedom of movement. They're always stopping me here and there to “inquire” about my well being. That's when I sort of roll my eyes around in my head — go all trancelike, I mean — and try to run them over. I'll chase them down the street with my cart while they’re begging me to let them give me a hand. I sure hope Dick’s not one of them. That would destroy all my romantic notions about him.

I’ve come to decide it’s my unique lifestyle that gives them their opinions about me. Ever since I drifted into New Orleans, ten years or more ago, I’ve lived out on the street. Well, a few days during the cold snaps I’ll go into some boardinghouse, but it’s right back out after that. The difference is I'm always clean and neat. I see filth, under most any circumstances, as inexcusable. Twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, I go over to the Y on Lee Circle and pay a buck twenty-five for a hot one. First time I did so, just after hitting town, the clerk grilled me about it. Did I not have access to bathing facilities elsewhere? “Plumbing’s broke,” I told him. “I’m on the landlady now, but she’s old and moves like a caterpillar.” After a while they took me for granted and didn't say a word. Then a few years later, when the old clerk was quitting, he introduced me to the new fellow and explained the situation. “Plumbing’s down at home,” he said. “The landlady’s very old and slow.” “Slow as a caterpillar,” I backed him.

After Saturday’s scrubdown I drop by this washerteria on Prytania and do my laundry. I always maintain three sets of khakis. That gives me a clean one after each bath. Then every other month I’ll have my old felt slouch cleaned and blocked, and I’m ready. The point is it’s not hard to maintain yourself, unless you’re just plain lazy.

Another sore point with those that have is my manner of doing business. I’m into metals recovery, scrap aluminum over to the recycling plant on Tchoupitoulas, and my particular approach just kills Brother Marti. He’s a shuddering, red-eyed mountain of fat every time he swigs down one of his ever-present Coca Colas and tries to hand me the empty bottle, and I refuse. You see, other street jerks go for a dime wherever, garbage cans, gutters, phone booths. I don’t just mean cans and bottles, but also old batteries, rags, newspapers, hubcups, tires, you name it; and none of them, of course, are beneath panhandling or just plain begging for that night’s dew. They all have that wandering, hungry look about them that sets them apart. Animal desperation that Marti loves.

Not me.

“I only do cans,” I tell him, while that pudgy hand’s extended, just praying I go for the wooden nickel. “That’s aluminum — bagged and ready to go.”

Just kills him.

See — getting here, I go around to all these businesses, bars, restaurants, warehouses, even some of the big office boys downtown, and I tell them my story. I’m neat and polite, and it's usually not too hard to get them signed up. Then I always leave a brand-new garbage bag, tie wrap included, and tell them what their pickup date will be. I kind of make them feel wanted — that old hometown milk-route atmosphere — and it works like a charm. People stop me going by now, really wishing they could be on the list too, and I have to turn them down. “Filled up, sorry,” I tell them. Then I’ll take out my note pad and jot down their names “just in case.” I’ve got a whole page of hopefuls.

I push around this old Winn-Dixie “We’re The Beef People!” shopping cart. Now don’t think I stole the damn thing. I found it over near the expressway, all beat up and a wheel missing. A little colored boy sold me an original Dixie caster for fifty cents (he had a whole display case to choose from), and I oiled and cleaned the whole thing up like new. Now it’s kind of famous around town. “Here comes Shopping Cart Howard,” all the old bags holler out the windows of their shotguns. I don’t mind too much. Though it does have a senile sound to it that gets under my skin. Brother Marti tells me I should return it to its rightful owner. “Then you might make yourself a nice wooden one,” he advises. I consider pushing that heavy-ass board tank all over the place and give him my crazy eye-rolling routine, and he drops the subject.

Dick Tracy’s closing in. With Duke and Reese, that makes three hot on my trail. Now the motivation of those two neighborhood brands is as obvious as hogs in a sweet potato patch. They know my operation and want their share, or the whole damn thing. Not so Dick. He's asking questions around, and it’s got me puzzled. I normally take my noon meal at the Lovebug Grill on Rampart Street. I go in, and Leroy Henderson sets down a steaming plate of red beans and rice, two juice-popping sausages, and a cup of chicoried jake alongside that’s one of life’s joys and wonders. Now Leroy tells me some “weird, funny-talkin’ dude” has been around inquiring. It’s Dick, of course, and he’s asking all about me. Wants to know my name and anything about my background. Wants to know about my family, and Leroy, black as bituminous coal, informs him he’s my one and only brother, which sends Dick packing.

“He fuzzy,” Leroy tells me. “But he ain’t off no local peach.”

“Where from?” I ask, shoving in the beans.

“Nawth, maybe,” says Leroy. “He sound all bullshit jive — don’t talk no sent-zes. Just dis n’ dat — like Kojak.”

“Or Dick Tracy,” I add.

“Who dat?” Leroy inquires.

Now I find he’s been asking around elsewhere, talking to my customers along the route. Of course I can’t have that, because it makes some people nervous, and business is just that. Then, I consider my past and the reasons for the way things are my business. I prefer to have people think I’ve been a rustic, bearded old coot forever. It makes things simple, and if there is one thing I’ve sought my last twenty or so years of roaming about, it’s simplicity.

So what I do is I begin to stalk Dick Tracy.

I find him over on the comer of Camp and St Joseph, talking with none other than Duke and Reese. Now this crossroads happens to be one of the great hobo gathering places, not only of New Orleans, but of the entire world. And Dick’s polyester pinstripes stick out more than ever.

I come up behind him and say, "Listen, Dick, I’d like to ask you to stop bothering my customers.”

He turns around, his hawk face all gagging surprised, and nearly swallows the Lucky Strike dangling between those thin, cruel lips. “Nail it, canman,” he says, and walks away with his own personal fifty-mile-an-hour arctic tail wind pushing him along.

“Listen, Shoppin’ Cot,” says Duke, grinning, “whut choo done now?”

'‘Robbed the Poydras Whitney,” I reply and start getting out of there myself.

Reese, a scrawny, pock-faced white, as opposed to Duke’s sprawling jungle blackness, hisses, “Save it, you old geek. What are you doing down at Western Union each month? You send money out don’t you! Don’t you! Listen—”

By now, I’m vamoosed.