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  If Willy hadn’t spent all his money on rock, he could’ve marched right in there and ordered ‘One whole bean pie to go, please.’ They might have unbent when they saw his money, which would have been the right color at least.

  But coulda woulda shoulda didn’t cut it. He was broke and besides, his stomach was so shrunken he couldn’t’ve handled a single slice of pie. The food smelling warmth of the Bakery only made him feel funny inside, as did all the fast food billboards he passed on his nightly perambulations.

  Willy continued home, turned the corner past Saint Paul Primitive Baptist Church at 63rd Street and headed down the residential block his house was on. The houses to both sides of his squat were uninhabited – one posted as condemned and boarded up, the other an ex-crack-house still riddled with the bullet holes of multiple drive-bys from before it had finally been abandoned.

  Little Willy’s house lurked in the middle, its ground floor charred from a firebombing. A gaping flame-blackened hole in the roof exposed the entire ground floor interior to the sky, but the basement was just fine to crash in as it was snug and dry.

  Willy ducked into the backyard and went down the short flight of basement steps which descended below ground level. He pushed open the piece of plywood serving as a door and slipped into the waiting darkness. He immediately put the plywood back in place by feel, bracing it with a couple of two-by-fours without having to see to do it.

  Little Willy always waited a minute after closing the door, to let the rats get used to him coming home. He didn’t want them getting excited, feeling threatened enough to bite him, or maybe even provoke them to come after him whilst he was asleep.

  Again by feel, he pulled out his matches and lit one. The rippling sulfurous light of the match revealed his abode, which occupied an area roughly the size of the first floor of the house overhead.

  His one little match didn’t quite expose the furthest corners of the basement, and the shadows boiled back there at floor level as he heard the rats scurrying away in their practiced time-share exchange. The amount of rustling as they departed indicated a much greater rodentine multitude than usual.

  There was something in the middle of the floor but the match went out before it fully registered. Willy turned to the workbench on his right and lit a candle from the pile. He held the candle up as he squinted at the center of the room, hoping he hadn’t seen what he thought he did.

  Willy had another room-mate beside the rats: A young opossum lived in the basement with him. More than once the possum had waddled out of the shadows toward him while he was sitting still reading in his barstool, looking to scavenge dropped crumbs or raid Willy’s meager garbage. Aware that possums had horrible eyesight Little Willy would always stomp his feet, make noise to let the possum know where he was so that it could beat a dignified retreat. The last thing Willy wanted was for the possum to get close before realizing he was there, maybe nut up and buzz-saw on his leg.

  What was left of the opossum lay in the middle of the basement floor now, guest of honor at a rat banquet, surrounded by a multitude of tiny rat prints tracked in possum blood. All that remained of Willy’s little possum was its (miraculously intact) head and one front leg, ending in a bloody tatter of stiff matted fur. All the rest of it was gone, eaten – even the gristly prehensile tale.

  Even in death the juvenile possum appeared somehow feral and primeval. The mouth grinned as if at some amusing secret, revealing the rows of sharp uncompromising teeth filling its pointed conical snout. The glazed beady eyes looked past Willy and beyond him at the basement ceiling – those dimmed orbs were twin faded red jewels the color of wounds, rancid with some truth only they could see.

  Too late Little Willy remembered that rats and possums were mortal enemies. Whichever one had the numbers would always exterminate the other. And this possum child had been all alone in the world.

  Willy wiggled the candle into the large puddle of wax left on the bench from all the candles he’d burned there before. He picked the possum up by its one remaining paw, its head dangling like the remnants of a broken doll as he carried it to the bucket he used for a toilet.

  Being a neat person he emptied his toilet bucket at least once a day, but this time there was a pungent little remnant left from his weekly dump, which he’d taken before he’d gone out to work tonight. The possum’s carcass went ‘plop’ as it hit the shit on the bottom. Willy figured he’d empty the whole mess in the gutter out front of the house at the earliest opportunity.

  He looked around, using the candle light to examine the place he called home, and what few possessions he had left. Like any drowning man, Little Willy was clasping tight to whatever flotsam promised to keep him from sinking beneath the surface forever.

  He sure didn’t have much keeping him afloat here: The exposed un-sheet-rocked interior walls, two-by-four pine framing backed by peeling tarpaper. The workbench next to the door that was the only level surface suitable for using as a table or desk, and the barstool that was his only chair. The plywood coffin-sized inset niche built into the interior wall that Willy slept in, on a greasy sleeping bag atop a leaky air mattress: an air mattress so leaky he had to wake and re-inflate the air mattress several times whenever he slept on it.

  The cement floor and the snowdrifts of dirty clothes carpeting it, with slugs exploring the pockets of the clothing for lint and dried sweat; he had to be careful about removing the slugs when he put the clothes on, otherwise they squooshed between his fingers. All the articles of clothing with any value were gone from the pile of course, sold long ago to a used clothes store up on Shattuck – a bit of a hump from where Willy’s house was on 63rd, especially when you were lugging a double armload of clothing.

  And the (almost empty) burlap sack of food hanging from the rafter so the vermin that rustled through the garage whenever the candles were out couldn’t steal Willy’s almost non-existent sustenance. Little Willy took pride in having cut his food intake down to about two cans of beans a week. The hunger button wasn’t quite working right for him anymore but every few days, like clockwork, he’d open a can of whatever was in the sack and eat it cold. He didn’t mind it unheated, but it wouldn’t’ve mattered if he did – the garage had no power, no cooking facilities and no running water.

  He stepped to the workbench and sat on the barstool. He pulled out his three immense rocks and lined them up ruler-straight on the table, staring at them in fascination.

  What gave the rock so much power? Willy had snorted speed and powder coke back in the day, without any problem. Then – only yesterday it seemed – some asshole figured out how to cook the powder coke up into slabs of hubba in the radar range. How long had it taken Willy to get hooked? – Oh, maybe two seconds after he first hit the bat. It had all been downhill from there.

  Little Willy pulled his .45 from the small of his back to lay it amidst the rest of his stash. Speedy’s old .45, actually – the last ‘souvenir’ of family Willy had left.

  Willy aligned his book of matches and his crack pipe in formation with the rocks and the .45, at what he considered an artistic angle. The geometric order of the pattern’s gestalt soothed him; he still had some sort of control over his world. All in all he felt it made an engrossing tableau, worthy of a still life if he had any art equipment left, and if his drug need wasn’t boiling higher and higher with each passing second.

  He reached down and gave his .45 a hard spin. The automatic turned like a top on its side, that murderous barrel doing a full 360. Willy smiled as he realized the pistol was threatening the whole world as it rotated, himself included.

  It felt like he was playing a solitaire game of spin the bottle here. Wasn’t that a bit like masturbation? Willy asked himself, his smile widening as he waited for the .45 to stop rotating.

  When the automatic stopped its rotation, Little Willy was almost disappointed to see that it was pointing away from him – in the general direction of Marla’s and Ghost’s crib, actually. Willy wondered just how many times he�
�d have to spin it until the .45 did point at himself.

  It hit him like a physical weight that this was all he had left: drugs, a gun, and a rat-infested illegal squat of a basement crib in Oakland.

  It bothered him maybe more than it should that his little possum friend had been murdered. But he reasoned that at least he still had a pot to piss in, thinking of the shit bucket behind him.

  He began laughing at that one, hard, the laughter hurting to the point where tears were pouring from his eyes. He laughed for so long that he realized, in some part of himself unreachable by the laughter, that he was scared to stop.

  He had no idea what he was going to do next.

  A while later a voice called softly from the backyard: “Hello, the house. This is Speedy out here. I’m looking for my brother Willy. If you’re him, coolness. Otherwise, no beef and we fade.”

  Little Willy gave a choked cry, wrestled the plywood aside and scrambled out the door. Willy’s gun was in his hand but it dangled forgotten at his side as a now unnecessary accessory.

  “You raised,” Willy said, standing atremble in front of his big brother

  Even by the candlelight spilling out the basement door Speedy could see just how gaunt and emaciated his already thin little brother had become while they were apart. The time Speedy had been inside had chewed Willy up and spit him out as a sunken-eyed pale ghost.

  “You gonna show me your place?” Speedy asked.

  Willy’s gaze dropped and he stepped aside.

  As Speedy entered the basement, something crunched under his feet. It was pieces of broken, blackened glass, scattered so wide that someone had to have thrown it as hard as they could against the cement floor.

  Speedy looked around at Willy’s squat. A totteringly tall stack of books were piled on a wooden work bench to his right; a sleeping bag lay wadded in a heap within a coffin-sized niche built into the far wall; and a sack of something or other dangled from the ceiling beam it was tied to.

  Speedy examined the greasy sleeping bag with no urge to approach as he realized it was liberally sprinkled with rat droppings. His nose wrinkled in disgust at the unwholesome ambience, and he decided he didn’t want to go any further inside than he’d already come. This was a hole, a pit.

  Willy hadn’t volunteered to give him the guided tour, instead staying outside with Bob. Speedy could hear them break off a muttered conversation as he climbed the steps to rejoin them.

  “You ready to leave this dump?” he asked.

  Little Willy nodded.

  Speedy looked back at the shadowy sty his brother had been calling home. “Is that all you own, Willy?”

  Little Willy seemed to have a difficult time looking Speedy in the eye. “Well, I had some more shit, but it’s over in Alameda.”

  Speedy lifted his brows and Willy continued: “I was sharing a house with some people over on the Island, a couple of pot dealers. Then this chick Darla moved in a few months back and just . . . took over, I guess. She told me everybody was tired of my raggedy ass, and that some dealers she knew would give them twice what I was paying for a place to deal from. So she kicked me out. It’s no big, really. It was a while ago”

  Speedy had studied Little Willy’s face while listening to him. “What about your roommates? Did they back her play?”

  Willy nodded, looking at the ground.

  “Why didn’t you tell her to step the fuck off? You know how to hold a gun, why’d you let her punk you like that? Why’d you let them keep all your shit?” Speedy looked silent Fat Bob then back at Willy. Speedy was honestly confused here.

  “Why didn’t you get Fat Bob?” Speedy asked. Bob turned away from the two, presenting his back.

  “I guess – I guess I just didn’t really give a flying fuck anymore,” Little Willy said. “It wasn’t worth the beef.”

  Willy looked Speedy in the eye and flicked one solitary sidelong glance at Fat Bob, who was still looking away.

  “I’m sorry Speedy,” Willy said. “I guess I fucked it all up.”

  Speedy grabbed Little Willy by the back of the head with both hands and pulled Willy’s face close, touched foreheads. “No sweat little brother. It’s all gravy, and it ain’t nothin but a thing. Let’s go get your stuff back now.”

  Chapter 11

  As soon as Little Willy bailed out the exit door, Ghost went down the hall after him. Ghost’s long gangly legs took great strides as he pulled up his hoodie and cinched it tight around his face. He was still unclear in his own cloudy mind exactly what he’d do when he caught up with the little gunslinger – but they were long overdue for a clearing of the air, a meeting of the minds.

  When Ghost exited Marla’s apartment building to the street, Willy was nowhere in sight – the fog wasn’t as thick as it had been earlier, but it still obscured Ghost’s field of vision.

  From the direction of San Pablo Avenue however, Ghost could hear the distant sounds of an invisible bamboo flute. Sherman, moseying along by himself making his Kabuki music to hold back the night. Ghost immediately cinched the hoodie of his sweatshirt even tighter around his face, and started past the tiny Hygenic Dog Food Company building after the unseen crack dealer.

  Ghost was sonar-driven, homing in on the echoing notes of Sherman’s distant flute. Even as tall and lanky as he was Ghost moved without any noise, sweeping down the sidewalk with all the silent majesty of an old time frigate under full sail.

  He could tell he was getting closer as he moved. The notes of Sherman’s flute came ever louder, ever clearer and less distorted from bouncing off the interposing buildings through the sea smelling fog.

  As Ghost listened to Sherman’s playing he realized the man was actually pretty good. The music pouring forth from the flute reached inside Ghost to touch his soul, plucking forth emotions from his past as if Sherman were somehow aware of Ghost creeping up his back trail.

  It felt like Ghost was the instrument Sherman was playing, and the piece of carved bamboo in Sherman’s hand only a prop. Ghost hated the feeling as soon as he’d analyzed it; he was angered by Sherman’s invisible manipulation of him.

  It was dangerous when the Others tried to influence you, to persuade you – they only wanted to show you why you were Wrong. Ghost had learned as a kid that the Others only wanted to control, only wanted to hurt.

  He cringed from any thought of his childhood, preferring to live in the now. Home had been a horror movie acted out by cruel strangers, a movie he’d starred in until he was real enough to steal his freedom and run. Now he existed, now he was here.

  Ghost had heard some of the Others say that broken bone healed stronger than before and they were right about that one at least. He was unbreakable now, inside and out. He wasn’t like them – they were weak. Ghost was strong.

  But Ghost had to conceal his power. He had to pretend to be like the Others even though doing so hurt his head sometimes. He’d had to build his face from scratch to fool the Others into thinking they had him fooled – otherwise he’d be exposed for all to see.

  Sometimes the feelings inside leaked out onto his face anyway – if the Others saw, they stared at him like he was the one who wasn’t right. They always looked at him wrong anyways, the few times he came out in the daytime anymore – if they were smart they crossed the street to avoid him. It was good they were afraid, but Ghost didn’t like them looking at his face thinking they knew him.

  Ghost avoided the Others as much as possible when he wasn’t having his way with them – these days he only came out at night. He was good at hiding, good at using the dark – the night had always been his home, and he enjoyed moving through it alone.

  Alone. Yes – ever since he could remember there’d been an invisible barrier between the world and him; one he couldn’t break through, couldn’t squirm around or under. Everyone and everything was on the other side – but here he stood proudly solitary.

  Ghost liked standing his own ground, all by himself; he’d given up trying to get through into the world of the O
thers long ago. Still, Ghost was starting to get tired of pretending to be like everyone else, trying to fit in.

  How he despised all those happy smiling faces on the other side, giggling at his pain! How he hated all those laughing monsters around him, the ones forcing him to fake it!

  The Others were always acting too, always trying to deceive him. Sometimes Ghost had even wondered whether or not the only part of the world that really existed was the portion of it that he could currently see.

  When he’d been a kid he’d even imagined for a time that the Others hurriedly constructed everything while Ghost wasn’t looking, so that it would be ready to fool him when he got there. He’d actually gone through a phase when he was younger when he’d sometimes double-time to turn the next corner, to see if he could catch them in the act of hammering together movie set buildings that didn’t exist before the Others intended him to see them; when he’d occasionally double back and sprint through the last door he’d used, to see if he could bust them disassembling the stage play façade he’d just exited. He’d finally given that habit up when he decided that the Others were so slick he’d never catch them at it anyway.

  Ghost thought back to when he first ran away from home, when he lived in those ruins in South Philly, in that underground room he fixed up. He’d lived there for many pleasant years before it was time to move on. There’d been a million places to hide, and miles of dark tunnels.

  He’d lived alone there except for the rats. There were lots and lots of rats. The thought of his old playmates made Ghost feel warm inside.

  The first time Ghost saw the ruins a man had brought him there. The man told Ghost he’d give him some money if he went with him and, as Ghost was faint with hunger, he came along. The man did things to Ghost, things that hurt – but Ghost was littler and weaker than him so in the natural order of things Ghost had to wait until the man was almost done.