Ariel Gore - Santa Fe Noir

“Whaddaya...” he said, his voice no more than a croak. “Thirsty?”

“Why, hello there, Feynman,” I answered with great cheer.

I heard the chains rattle against stone. He must have been trying to stand up.

“What gives?” he asked.

“I’m tucking you in for the night, old sport — a nice long rest.”

The chains clanked again, but he said nothing more for a moment.

I loaded up another brick with a slap of mortar from my trowel.

Then, of all things, Feynman began to laugh. Hearty, joyful laughter — I might go so far as to say the man guffawed.

“Oh, you’ve done it, Thurston!” he said, wheezing a bit before he began to chortle again. “You’ve played the best joke of all! Damn it, I thought I was the master, but haven’t you just gone and kicked my sorry ass with superior wit!”

“Now that you mention it, I will indeed have the last laugh, Feynman.”

“Won’t the boys crack up when they hear, back at the mess hall!”

“Funny,” I said, “I don’t think they’ll hear a thing.”

I was about to place the very last brick when he began keening, screaming at the top of his lungs, rattling the chains and wrestling against them with all his might, by the sound of it.

I knew well that no sound carried back to our so-called bit of civilization from this carefully chosen spot, so I began to scream along with him: yelling, baying, howling at full tilt.

And then I took my own turn at laughing, louder and louder, my glee echoing back from every stone, every last brick.

I had never felt such joy, such sheer and utter happiness, in all my days.

I laughed until I could barely breathe, and was about to double over when I heard Feynman’s voice behind me.

“Go fuck yourself, Thurston,” he said calmly.

He cracked me in the back of the skull with my own shovel before I could so much as turn my head in response.

I’d awakened to find myself trussed in chains, lying on my side along the ground, ankles bound to my wrists behind my back.

He’d rebuilt two-thirds of my wall.

“There’s a good fellow, Feynman,” I said. “All in fun, what?”

I tried to laugh but we both knew he wasn’t to be jollied out of putting his own finishing touches on my cherished blueprint of vengeance.

He stopped for only a moment then, leaning over his neat masonry to look me dead in the eye. “Should you ever get to use a padlock again,” he said, “which I must admit I doubt highly, you may want to change the combination from its factory setting.”

“For God’s sake, man...”

“25-10-25,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “What a moron .”

It’s rather dark in here, now that Feynman’s placed the final brick.

Fiat lux.

Cerrillos Road

C amo beer . Camo beer. Falling asleep on the streets was hard. Passing out a helluva lot easier. Five Camos in a pack. Three to knock him out. Two waitin’ for him in the morning, ’cept on mornings when he couldn’t make it back home. Back home was euphemistic. Back home was a ramshackle box trailer in an empty tract near the city dump.

Leo Malley had convinced himself five years ago: He wasn’t a human being no more. He was a bum. Difference was no less than between house cats and alley cats. Human beings lived at known addresses. Human beings relied on street signs, the fire department, or the cops. He learned from his lessons panhandling well enough to appreciate that house cats believed his stripe solely deserved leftovers. He wasn’t terribly impressed with dem goddamn house cats — whether they shared their small morsels of tuna. Okay, he liked the gals that worked at the Wendy’s burger joint. Connie always handed him a free coffee. Finishing it, maybe he could have a shot at reorganizing himself.

He lifted his shaky hand, the skin prematurely flabby and spotted. Leo looked like he hadn’t bathed sometimes, whether or not he showered at the Interfaith Community Shelter. He was a body of shakes.

A cold front had surreptitiously hit Santa Fe the night before. He limped this morning; his socks must have swollen three sizes larger. Lucky he had a couple of Camos. His Camo pain medicines helped him bicycle to town. He couldn’t find a reason to still bike to the park where truckers picked up migrant laborers. He rarely secured money panhandling, surly as he looked holding his Help Me sign. He should head over to the joint where the “good people of Santa Fe” served the homeless.

Got my coffee. Grab me some food.

Five in a pack.

I wanna see what nuclear war looks like.

Freaky. The racing thoughts began drum-drum-drumming in the back of his skull, like timpanis. The crush of confused thoughts began when Connie shouted, “Hey Leo, want another coffee?” And slipped Leo a newspaper alongside it.

His eyes fell on a headline describing United States military tensions with North Korea. “US and Korea Escalate Nuclear Arsenal Conflict.” Thoughts began running amok. Cramming his limited space for 20/20 foresight. Leo’s brain. Like a light switch. On again. Off again. Sometimes his smallest thoughts barely permeated his verbal consciousness, while his frustrated mind ran the gamut of brutal associations. It took that kind of insistent repetition to cut through his psychological welter sometimes.

He thought: Nothing. Nothing to live for no way. I would like to see a nuclear blast. Hope Korea drops the bomb. Be a motherfucker . People with limbs frayed. People with skin falling off, like slabs of meat and flesh in the butcher shop. People goddamn glowing green. Zombies. Radioactive sewer rats. Probably resembled the lives of homeless sewer rats all the world over.

Memories haloed Leo’s skull by then, sometimes sort of happy.

Memory was a disingenuous pastime; sure, sometimes he thought maybe everybody’s memories dematerialized to tears and fears, like a balancing act in the long run. He had seen plenty of both back when he lived in regular houses. Back until his late forties, he had been a truck driver. He had been a cabman. Picked up whores. Picked up druggies. Picked up Muhammad Ali one time. Picked up Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen was a short guy. Whiny. Whined about his motel room, his food, his fans.

Bruce Springsteen. Narcissistic little bastard.

These days, Leo welcomed a catastrophe. He had spent half of his life drinking too heavily, Lord knows, still managing at the edges of the rental world. Since then. The same song. The same pictures played in his dreams, churning alongside his daylight frustrations. Lucky he was a big guy. Kept moving. Kept living. Problem though was when he slept, or lightly dozed, he started twitching. He noticed that about the others. Most times when he saw a bunch of alley cats passed out, or sleeping, they were twitching in their sleep. Like him.

The problem with memory was that he always returned to the worst. He returned to the question of whether the hypothetical holocausts in the newspapers resembled the conflagration he personally witnessed, or erstwhile lived. Trapped in a house fire. Five years ago. So what if he could have died? Forget about that past life. Ya mangy alley cat. Keep living like a zombie. Burned-out.

Tough luck.

Paula shouted, “Hey Leo, want a coffee to go?” He limped to his bicycle. Leo got irony. Maybe he only got irony; sometimes every blah blah blah in his head sounded like sarcasm. And he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he remembered he officially got listed on the homeless statistics a few years back when the half-decent apartment he lived inside burned to the ground. A wayward life. A few drunken decades. A house fire. “Hey, be careful,” he heard as he hit the curb.