I come in late, about 1:00 AM. The new resident, a transgender hooker named Della, about 25 years old, with the roundest face and eyes I have ever seen, is at Bill's door across the hall from my room. She knocks softly, as she does almost every night now. She cradles a bottle of wine in the crook of her arm. She wears pajama-like red silk pants with some kind of Asian flower-art embroidered on them. Bill, who holds advanced degrees in physics, is retired from the Merchant Marine. His hair and beard are all snow white, the longest in a flophouse full of aging hippies and junkies.
There is no answer, so Della walks back up the hall to the community kitchen and tells her secret, forbidden roommate, Julie, that Bill isn't answering and she'll try again in a few minutes. Julie, thumbing through a copy of People Magazine, says she'll just stay in the kitchen until Della comes back. Della tells her not to forget.
I enter my room and change into a bathrobe, ready to head upstairs and take a shower. Before I can leave my room, Della has returned and is knocking on Bill's door again. I wait. Bill finally answers and says Entrez, mademoiselle, entrez. Della tells Bill he is very sexy and sweet with his French. The door closes and I leave my room for the shower, seeing Julie in the kitchen as I walk past.
I take my shower and walk back downstairs. The kitchen is now empty. I close my door and get dressed for bed. Suddenly, Bill is yelling loud for Della to get that tramp Julie out of his room. What is she doing in here anyway? I hear Julie bolt past Bill's door and fly up the hall to Della's room, slamming the door. Bill is on fire, yelling at Della out in the hall. How can you bring that trash into our home? I should call the police for this. You have disgraced our home, Bill yells.
Della calmly tells him she does not want to see the police and that he can have his $25 back even though he already got what he paid for. That will make everything even, she says. Bill says he doesn't care about even, only about her, sweet beautiful her, but if Julie ever tries to come back and steal his money he will hurt her real bad.
Bill goes back into his room and smacks his door closed. Della heads back toward her room. I look out into the hall to see if the smoke has cleared. Suddenly Della's mildly retarded sister, Angie, comes bursting through the front door and tromps down the stairs and yells and screams for Della. Angie's face is bruised and bloody. Oh Angie, Angie, what happened? Della asks.
Angie's pants are a mess, twisted and muddy. She sits on the floor and cries. Della is on her knees cradling her sister's head in her lap. Why do boys do this? Angie yells out. Why? Why do they have to do this? It's okay, Angie, it's okay. I'm here. You'll be okay. Angie says they'll fire her at work for this. No they won't, Angie, no they won't. They like you. You're good. You do a real good job. They'll keep you. Don't worry, Angie, they'll keep you.
Angie's cries and howls are muffled by her sister's arms. Gradually, Angie stops crying and starts to smile at Della. Della runs her fingers on Angie's hurt face. They'll keep me? Really? Of course they'll keep you. They'll keep you forever. Forever and ever. Just like me. You're real good. They're not going to let you go. We'll make something up. It'll be okay. Come on, let's go to the ladies room and get cleaned up. It'll be okay.
19 November 2014
07 November 2014
Unattended Death
I'm pushing shopping carts at the Hadley Walmart, smart guy that I am at almost 60 now, so far ahead in life, and I notice a middle-aged woman behind the wheel of a parked SUV. Sitting upright, head leaning back a little on the headrest, staring at the trailer truck in the next parking area. Back window wet with dew from overnight. A Chevy Tahoe, dry cleaned dresses in their lightly swishing plastic bags hanging from a hook in the back seat, all the windows down, parked a little toward the edge of the lot.
I don't want to tell anybody, don't even really know if she's dead. I been working out here in the parking lot maybe 20 minutes.
I push a line of nested carts away from the outdoor coral and toward the lobby. I look back. No movement. Just sitting there. Nothing. How'd she die. When'd she die. I push the carts into the lobby and go back out thinking about the store's surveillance cameras. the odds.
I collect a few more stray carts, this time wandering a little closer to the vehicle. Still sitting there, no movement. A bald guy, forties, speeds up behind me and slaps on the brakes.
"Is she dead? Hey. Is she dead?"
"I don't know."
"Oh my fucking God she's fucking dead man. Oh shit. Oh fuck." He takes off.
I push more carts back up to the lobby and walk over to my brainless half-asleep teenage supervisor. We have rules to follow about reporting stuff. Chain of command. Can't tell the assistant manager yet.
"Hey. Adam."
He keeps yakking with the hot chick cashier like he never heard me.
"Hey. Adam."
"Yup," he says to me, but keeps grinning at her story about last night's party, leaning on the empty belt where customers place their purchases, shaking his head like he can't believe what she's saying.
I grab his arm and walk him through the automatic doors and tell him I think there's a body in the parking lot. He stops and stares at me, searching my eyes for some sign of mental illness that he's seen described on TV, then follows me to the vehicle.
We get up closer on the driver's side and look at her through the open window like she's a new addition to an aquarium, hands behind our backs. She's wearing little white headphones plugged into her dashboard. She is staring straight ahead. There's a half-smoked cigarette gone out upright between the fingers of her left hand. A dream catcher hangs from the rear view mirror.
Adam calls the assistant manager on the walkie, who comes to the car and starts freaking out, blabbing loud right in our faces about her grandchild that was stillborn a couple of weeks ago. "Oh God, I can't take it," she says. She starts biting on her own finger, crying, and asks someone in the store to call the police.
The local cops fly in. We stand back for a minute, then walk away. A string of store associates, all of them smoking, are lined up a half-dozen parking spaces from the vehicle, jerk-walking back and forth like seagulls at the dump.
I'm handed a voluntary statement form by the fat bruiser no-nonsense cop in black boots. "Fill that out please thank you."
I take the form inside the store to the backroom, to the human resources office, and fill it out on a banquet table. I write down that I noticed a woman who might be dead and told Adam. The store manager, Jenn Ostrowski, an ex-cop herself and friend of Hadley cop Mike Mason, stands behind me. She reads the statement and says good, that's everything they need.
I go back outside, all eyes in the store on me, he's the one who found her. I give the statement to bruiser and walk away to push more carts. Fuck I don't need this shit. Then Massachusetts State Police detectives start arriving in unmarked cars: a woman in a minivan, two or three guys in their Fords, some jacket-and-tie assistant DA from Northampton in a Chevy.
The cop in the minivan with the gold badge around her neck runs the show, takes ten million pictures, is very precise, follows procedure, directs everyone else on the scene. I stay way clear, picking up carts in the other lots. An hour later, a detective walks toward me. He yells hey you, motions me to come to him with his four fingers together like he's directing traffic.
He comes up close to me, shakes my hand. I'm Ricky McMillan, he says. He wears dark sunglasses with lenses that curve out like oily, black bubbles. He removes my statement from a clipboard and starts laughing, scoffing at the statement, and asks if I actually wrote that. Did I really actually write this, he wants to know again. I say yes. He shakes his head and laughs. "Unbelievable," he says, "just unbelievable." He looks out across the lot and says, "Nice job you got here, real success story, pushing shopping carts."
He pivots his head and locks it straight onto mine. "How many times have you been arrested?" he asks.
"You already have that information," I tell him.
He asks again. I tell him again. I tell him I'm not talking to him and walk away. He yells after me that he's not finished with me yet. I say tough, I don't know how she died, so I'm not talking to anyone. He says she might have been murdered.
How many times have you been arrested, he yells. I continue to walk away from him, picking up some carts, saying nothing.
"Did you know Kimberly Williams from Belchertown?" he bellows from a distance.
Detective Ricky walks back to the group, piles into his aging Taurus and flies over to the parking area I'm in. Puts on his blues for effect. Gets out and tells me he has every right to ask me for my driver's license, which I hand to him. He immediately flips it over to make sure I've changed my address on the back, then hands it back.
The store manager, Jenn Ostrowski, comes out and tries to settle things down. Ricky acts like he doesn't know who she is, ignores her. He blurts out, "Yup. Mr. Innocent here. Been arrested before but never guilty. That your problem? Right?" Manager Jenn walks back into the store. Ricky continues to badger me. "You don't want to talk? You want me to go inside and mess with your job?" an apparent threat to get me fired from my low-life job as a cart pusher.
Detective Ricky pushes his sunglasses onto the top of his head, revealing surprisingly sweet, feminine, Hallmark eyes. He jumps back in his Taurus and returns to the huddled group of detectives, but not before he threatens to harass me at home, too.
A Mass Highway truck drives up and hides the SUV behind a set of huge framed tarps. The medical examiner removes the body from the SUV into the back of his pickup truck. All the associates squish their cigarettes and go back inside.
I go back to HR. Carol, the one department manager too tasteful to gather outside complains to the HR woman about how awful it was that all the other associates were gawking at the scene. "Nosy assholes. No sensitivity at all. How'd you like it if you were dead and everyone was staring at you?" She stomps away disgusted.
Late afternoon, I leave work for the day as it gets dark. The cops have been gone for hours. The SUV has been towed away. There is no sign of anything. A man and a woman, holding hands, slowly wander the area where the Tahoe was parked, heads down, scanning the pavement.
I don't want to tell anybody, don't even really know if she's dead. I been working out here in the parking lot maybe 20 minutes.
I push a line of nested carts away from the outdoor coral and toward the lobby. I look back. No movement. Just sitting there. Nothing. How'd she die. When'd she die. I push the carts into the lobby and go back out thinking about the store's surveillance cameras. the odds.
I collect a few more stray carts, this time wandering a little closer to the vehicle. Still sitting there, no movement. A bald guy, forties, speeds up behind me and slaps on the brakes.
"Is she dead? Hey. Is she dead?"
"I don't know."
"Oh my fucking God she's fucking dead man. Oh shit. Oh fuck." He takes off.
I push more carts back up to the lobby and walk over to my brainless half-asleep teenage supervisor. We have rules to follow about reporting stuff. Chain of command. Can't tell the assistant manager yet.
"Hey. Adam."
He keeps yakking with the hot chick cashier like he never heard me.
"Hey. Adam."
"Yup," he says to me, but keeps grinning at her story about last night's party, leaning on the empty belt where customers place their purchases, shaking his head like he can't believe what she's saying.
I grab his arm and walk him through the automatic doors and tell him I think there's a body in the parking lot. He stops and stares at me, searching my eyes for some sign of mental illness that he's seen described on TV, then follows me to the vehicle.
We get up closer on the driver's side and look at her through the open window like she's a new addition to an aquarium, hands behind our backs. She's wearing little white headphones plugged into her dashboard. She is staring straight ahead. There's a half-smoked cigarette gone out upright between the fingers of her left hand. A dream catcher hangs from the rear view mirror.
Adam calls the assistant manager on the walkie, who comes to the car and starts freaking out, blabbing loud right in our faces about her grandchild that was stillborn a couple of weeks ago. "Oh God, I can't take it," she says. She starts biting on her own finger, crying, and asks someone in the store to call the police.
The local cops fly in. We stand back for a minute, then walk away. A string of store associates, all of them smoking, are lined up a half-dozen parking spaces from the vehicle, jerk-walking back and forth like seagulls at the dump.
I'm handed a voluntary statement form by the fat bruiser no-nonsense cop in black boots. "Fill that out please thank you."
I take the form inside the store to the backroom, to the human resources office, and fill it out on a banquet table. I write down that I noticed a woman who might be dead and told Adam. The store manager, Jenn Ostrowski, an ex-cop herself and friend of Hadley cop Mike Mason, stands behind me. She reads the statement and says good, that's everything they need.
I go back outside, all eyes in the store on me, he's the one who found her. I give the statement to bruiser and walk away to push more carts. Fuck I don't need this shit. Then Massachusetts State Police detectives start arriving in unmarked cars: a woman in a minivan, two or three guys in their Fords, some jacket-and-tie assistant DA from Northampton in a Chevy.
The cop in the minivan with the gold badge around her neck runs the show, takes ten million pictures, is very precise, follows procedure, directs everyone else on the scene. I stay way clear, picking up carts in the other lots. An hour later, a detective walks toward me. He yells hey you, motions me to come to him with his four fingers together like he's directing traffic.
He comes up close to me, shakes my hand. I'm Ricky McMillan, he says. He wears dark sunglasses with lenses that curve out like oily, black bubbles. He removes my statement from a clipboard and starts laughing, scoffing at the statement, and asks if I actually wrote that. Did I really actually write this, he wants to know again. I say yes. He shakes his head and laughs. "Unbelievable," he says, "just unbelievable." He looks out across the lot and says, "Nice job you got here, real success story, pushing shopping carts."
He pivots his head and locks it straight onto mine. "How many times have you been arrested?" he asks.
"You already have that information," I tell him.
He asks again. I tell him again. I tell him I'm not talking to him and walk away. He yells after me that he's not finished with me yet. I say tough, I don't know how she died, so I'm not talking to anyone. He says she might have been murdered.
How many times have you been arrested, he yells. I continue to walk away from him, picking up some carts, saying nothing.
"Did you know Kimberly Williams from Belchertown?" he bellows from a distance.
Detective Ricky walks back to the group, piles into his aging Taurus and flies over to the parking area I'm in. Puts on his blues for effect. Gets out and tells me he has every right to ask me for my driver's license, which I hand to him. He immediately flips it over to make sure I've changed my address on the back, then hands it back.
The store manager, Jenn Ostrowski, comes out and tries to settle things down. Ricky acts like he doesn't know who she is, ignores her. He blurts out, "Yup. Mr. Innocent here. Been arrested before but never guilty. That your problem? Right?" Manager Jenn walks back into the store. Ricky continues to badger me. "You don't want to talk? You want me to go inside and mess with your job?" an apparent threat to get me fired from my low-life job as a cart pusher.
Detective Ricky pushes his sunglasses onto the top of his head, revealing surprisingly sweet, feminine, Hallmark eyes. He jumps back in his Taurus and returns to the huddled group of detectives, but not before he threatens to harass me at home, too.
A Mass Highway truck drives up and hides the SUV behind a set of huge framed tarps. The medical examiner removes the body from the SUV into the back of his pickup truck. All the associates squish their cigarettes and go back inside.
I go back to HR. Carol, the one department manager too tasteful to gather outside complains to the HR woman about how awful it was that all the other associates were gawking at the scene. "Nosy assholes. No sensitivity at all. How'd you like it if you were dead and everyone was staring at you?" She stomps away disgusted.
Late afternoon, I leave work for the day as it gets dark. The cops have been gone for hours. The SUV has been towed away. There is no sign of anything. A man and a woman, holding hands, slowly wander the area where the Tahoe was parked, heads down, scanning the pavement.
01 November 2014
Teenage Dare
Eddie, a punk, stands against the pillar just outside the automatic doors to Fall Apart. He jabbers with his less-punk friend, Mike, who are raising money for Teenage Dare, a group that embraces a drug-and-alcohol-free life through faith in Jesus Christ. Between potential donors, they chant some kind of spirit raising hymn, a combination of hip-hop and gospel, spontaneously contrived.
Eddie and Mike continually block the paths of almost everyone who might give them a cash contribution. They have a rickety card table covered with a half-dozen brochures about the sin and black death delivered by intoxicants. They follow evaders into the parking lot pleading for donations. Eddie puts his palms together in supplication, telling people he is clean because of Jesus and the rehab program. Mike does the same, but less aggressively. "Please, anything helps."
After about an hour, I notice that Eddie has a disturbing eye for young girls. He solicits their mothers more often and more persistently than he does any other customer. He gets too near the girls, invades their spaces, caresses their hair and upper arms. He cannot stop staring at little girls.
I walk up to the table and say hello and ask what their program consists of, how it works. Eddie and Mike give a perfectly blended response. They say they get clean at a facility in New Hampshire, although their program is based in Providence. They worship, look deep inside themselves, and gradually, after several months of guidance, spiritual growth, and brutally honest introspection, graduate to soliciting funds from the public. After eighteen months or so, they start to go out on their own. I ask whether they learn some kind of skill while in the program, such as carpentry or do they get a GED. They say this is it, collecting money. Seems like they will have a future in telemarketing or debt collection.
I stare fiercely at Eddie every time I walk in and out the door to retrieve carts. He knows I have noticed his predilection. He is familiar with having been spotted before. He stares back but always blinks. He cuts back on his unwarranted friendliness to young females, but cannot completely stop himself, especially when he thinks I am not nearby. Mike also sees that I have spotted Eddie and maintains a greater distance between the two of them. Mike is uneasy, but Eddie is somewhat confrontational, as if entitled.
After a couple more hours I approach Eddie face to face and ask him what happens to the money. He says it goes to maintaining their program. I ask how it maintains the program. He says he doesn't know or question the details of God's plan for his life, but he knows he wouldn't be saved and would still be on the streets using dope if it wasn't for the program. He says he was lucky the court let him get into the program instead of going to jail on drug charges.
I ask him if all these people giving them money are, in effect, paying them to stay off the streets, to stay out of their lives, to not steal their purses or break into their homes, to not steal their cars and crash into innocent victims. Is that what this donation business is all about, Eddie? Is this another version of extortion? If you get enough money you'll stay in your program and not harm these little girls you're so fond of? Is that about right, Eddie? Are people paying you so you can get driven here in a van and dropped off by a supervisor who leaves you here to stare at little girls but fetches you back at the end of the day? Is this what people are paying you for? So you'll go back to your spiritual center and not molest their children?
Eddie wants to hit me but plunges his hands into his baggy pockets. He walks off with his head down, then suddenly turns and spit-yells that he didn't ask to be made like this, but that's the plan God has for him. How would you like it if God made you like this, he asks. What would you do to redeem yourself? Tears gather in his eyes, run down his red cheeks. All I can do, he says, is believe in God, all I can do is believe, man, just believe. It's all I got. God does the rest.
Eddie heads for the men's room inside. Mike stays with the table and money box, which has a clear plastic window on the front so everyone can see how much cash has been collected, how much safer the world is. A woman opens her purse and takes out a dollar bill, then adds another to it and stuffs it in the box. Mike says thank you, every donation helps.
Eddie and Mike continually block the paths of almost everyone who might give them a cash contribution. They have a rickety card table covered with a half-dozen brochures about the sin and black death delivered by intoxicants. They follow evaders into the parking lot pleading for donations. Eddie puts his palms together in supplication, telling people he is clean because of Jesus and the rehab program. Mike does the same, but less aggressively. "Please, anything helps."
After about an hour, I notice that Eddie has a disturbing eye for young girls. He solicits their mothers more often and more persistently than he does any other customer. He gets too near the girls, invades their spaces, caresses their hair and upper arms. He cannot stop staring at little girls.
I walk up to the table and say hello and ask what their program consists of, how it works. Eddie and Mike give a perfectly blended response. They say they get clean at a facility in New Hampshire, although their program is based in Providence. They worship, look deep inside themselves, and gradually, after several months of guidance, spiritual growth, and brutally honest introspection, graduate to soliciting funds from the public. After eighteen months or so, they start to go out on their own. I ask whether they learn some kind of skill while in the program, such as carpentry or do they get a GED. They say this is it, collecting money. Seems like they will have a future in telemarketing or debt collection.
I stare fiercely at Eddie every time I walk in and out the door to retrieve carts. He knows I have noticed his predilection. He is familiar with having been spotted before. He stares back but always blinks. He cuts back on his unwarranted friendliness to young females, but cannot completely stop himself, especially when he thinks I am not nearby. Mike also sees that I have spotted Eddie and maintains a greater distance between the two of them. Mike is uneasy, but Eddie is somewhat confrontational, as if entitled.
After a couple more hours I approach Eddie face to face and ask him what happens to the money. He says it goes to maintaining their program. I ask how it maintains the program. He says he doesn't know or question the details of God's plan for his life, but he knows he wouldn't be saved and would still be on the streets using dope if it wasn't for the program. He says he was lucky the court let him get into the program instead of going to jail on drug charges.
I ask him if all these people giving them money are, in effect, paying them to stay off the streets, to stay out of their lives, to not steal their purses or break into their homes, to not steal their cars and crash into innocent victims. Is that what this donation business is all about, Eddie? Is this another version of extortion? If you get enough money you'll stay in your program and not harm these little girls you're so fond of? Is that about right, Eddie? Are people paying you so you can get driven here in a van and dropped off by a supervisor who leaves you here to stare at little girls but fetches you back at the end of the day? Is this what people are paying you for? So you'll go back to your spiritual center and not molest their children?
Eddie wants to hit me but plunges his hands into his baggy pockets. He walks off with his head down, then suddenly turns and spit-yells that he didn't ask to be made like this, but that's the plan God has for him. How would you like it if God made you like this, he asks. What would you do to redeem yourself? Tears gather in his eyes, run down his red cheeks. All I can do, he says, is believe in God, all I can do is believe, man, just believe. It's all I got. God does the rest.
Eddie heads for the men's room inside. Mike stays with the table and money box, which has a clear plastic window on the front so everyone can see how much cash has been collected, how much safer the world is. A woman opens her purse and takes out a dollar bill, then adds another to it and stuffs it in the box. Mike says thank you, every donation helps.
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