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Gangs of Men’s Homes

Brandon Knight

    I was fucked, stuck in that place. That place where you can’t tell if your dream was a dream. East Ames. To not care that I was fucked made my pride shine out of my skin, like rays of light stabbed through the stained sheets of a worn bed at dawn. The black blood was on its way. I’d come to crave it. I slept—or tried to sleep—next to the train tracks. Those trains, those slow blurred slugs that crawled past the foot of my dirt bed. It took no time at all to get used to that roar. You can’t wake a drunk.
    As luck would have it, the spot to fly a sign was right there. It took some gasps and a few tics of the neck to cross the street both ways, there and back. But it was worth it.
    The first hour would take some nerve on my part. I cared too much. I let the stance of the bum with the sign hurt my pride. But, as bums do, I got used to it. The cars were just cars. They can’t see you. What they can do is keep you drunk. At that spot, my sign, scrawled with the shakes in thick black ink read, “ON THE ROAD, OUT OF FOOD.” My dog would trot out on her leash next to me and on a good day, we’d make at least half a bill in an hour. She’d trot right back to the spot by my side.
    “Nice work, Soot.”
    The point where the bridge met by tracks was my home. My place of work was the spot on the street by the light. Once that light turned red, I’d put on a smile and pace up and down the row of cars. Tins of meat, socks, gloves, dog food, these were all trash. I had socks. I had gloves. Dog food was weight. But work was work. At each shift’s end, I’d fold up my sign. I’d slide it through the straps of my pack and make sure that all the non-cash kick downs I received were in my bag. Most of the kick downs in these bags were thrown out. I’d pawn these bags off to the cans in front of the beer store. The store was just a quick left, less than a block off. Trash gone, cash in hand, beer in bag, and back to the spot.

*

     My last men’s home was run by Bill. Bill was like the rest of them. He was proud, dumb, sad. I saw it in his face. He was not a bad man, just weird. And proud and dumb and sad. The kind of man you can’t talk to though he thinks you can. I’d beg to be shot just to get out of Bill’s room, his world.
    “You’ve been in and out of these homes, huh chief?” his shirt failed to hold in his gut, his breath was slow and loud and must have weighed a ton. He made me think of the word “gorge.”
    “Yes sir, I have, but I can’t see why you, or I, should care.”
    “I care for all the men that come through my home. That’s my job.”
    With each word, he gave up an inch. An inch here, he’d have a stroke, his huge frame might seize up, an inch there, and his heart might fail. An inch any which way and he might cry, which I felt would be the worst thing he could do to the both of us. In my mind, each move he made screamed death.
    “But I don’t care, Bill, that’s the thing.”
    “Oh come on chief,” Bill called everyone chief, “if you don’t mean to care then of course you won’t!”
    His shirt slid up his gut a bit, his face turned bright red and took on a look of pride. He was proud of the point he made.
    “Don’t you see though? That’s what I mean, Bill. If I don’t mean to care, and to be clear, I don’t, I do not, at all, mean to care, then of course. You’re right.”
    A dumb grin formed on Bill’s face. That dumb grin told me that Bill thought he had caught me. He thought that he was right, that he had won.
    “So ya just don’t care then do ya chief?” Bill’s smirk just made a dumb man look smug. It made a dumb, smug man look like an ass. It made me want to say the word “gorge” out loud.
    I tried not to laugh, but made a note in my mind to save the sight of that smirk for a time when I might need to laugh.
    “No I don’t. I do not care, Bill.”
    Out of all the things he’d heard in his life, this seemed the most odd. Strange, as I’m sure he heard it all the time. All his life, I’d bet. No one cared for Bill.
    “So that’s it huh? Gone? Just like that?” he asked me, mist in his eyes.
    “Bill, I’ve been here four days, calm dow—“
     Bill’s face was beet red. It leaked out the sweat and tears of all the men he had cared for, all the men that had left his home, all the men that had told him off, in that very room, that very desk.
    “Listen, Bill, it’s not you, you’ve been great, you’re great, the home is great, it’s just not where I need to be right now.”
    Bill wiped his tears. Did he know that I knew he was crying?
    “Well, just give it a few more days, next week we planned get a net to set up out back, have a tourn—“
    “Bill, I can’t, but listen, thank you for—“
    “Nope! Go on! Git!” Bill could not, for the life of him, look me in the eye at this point by. So he chose to hang his head, his eyes fixed on the cheap rug at his feet.
    I felt bad for Bill. He cared. He loved his men, he was proud of his men’s home. Old Bill, God bless that dumb son of a bitch.
    I took one more look at him, I hoped he could find it in him to look back, but no, just one more, “Go on! Git!”
    So I got.
    By now, I had lost count of all the men’s homes. There was not a damned thing in these homes that could meet the need of my id. So I checked out, found a site to camp by the bridge and went at it.

*

    It was all gore. Beer, rum, gin, all the drinks I used to get down my throat now failed to stay in the sore ache that was my gut. Each drink would spout back out as soon as it went in. The hues of bile and booze that spilled out my throat changed with the time of day. At dawn, a damn near black ooze split the dust and tossed it a few feet in the air. At the day’s end, I’d pass out on a deep, dark, red. All the cash I’d make would end up on the ground, spewed forth, my will be damned, from my mouth, dick, or ass. I felt like it was time.
    There was a home for drunks I knew of a few miles west. I thought I could make it, so I tried. Cars sped by and now all I felt was shame. Snow fell. The pride came back. My legs, at last, gave out. I heaved one last time, for the road. “The End” by The Doors was stuck in my head. Strange, as my brain, it’s whole life, was not a fan of The Doors, strange too, that the song choice felt so on-the-nose. Why now? Why was my bad taste saved for this? I fell to my knees and thought about Bill. That gut, that dumb smirk, that warm bed, the roof.
    My face hit the snow, turned blue, then grey. I was done, thank god, and it proved my thoughts on death right—there was no one, since the spark of time, there was no one—it was all a man could want. They’d find me at dawn, old black blood on new white snow. The only thing on me was Bill’s card. They called him first. When he heard the news he hung his head and cried. He thought of all the men he had failed, the men he thought cared for him. I thought of Bill now. All I could do was laugh as I froze to death in the snow on the side of the road. I hoped Bill would be the first one to see my corpse.

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