RL's Dream

Two

Soupspoon Wise sat out on the sidewalk in a dilapidated chair, a blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. He was staring up at the facade of the Beldin Arms. The bronze letters had been pried off and stolen years before. You could barely make out the words in the cracked, discolored granite arch.

The arch protected an oak door that had been painted green in ’64, and again in ’78. The panels on either side of the door were beveled glass when Soupspoon first moved in. The fancy glass had been busted out and replaced with plain glass. The plain glass had been busted out and replaced with pine plank. The graffiti boys put down every curse word they learned in school on those planks.

A large colored man came out of the doorway carrying Soupspoon’s folding chairs and a drawer from his rosewood dresser. He dropped them on the curb, then turned to go back into the building. Another man came out, a white man, carrying the rest of the drawers from the dresser that Soupspoon got when he and Mavis broke up. The white man threw the drawers down, spilling old clothes and bone dominoes out into the greasy, gritty street.

In one of the drawers Soupspoon saw his mouth harp. There was a box of pencils and a bunch of monogrammed handkerchiefs he’d had made when he was a regular on Thursday nights at the Savoy in Chicago. He had sixteen pairs of shoes back then. Each pair a different color to match the suits and sport jackets he wore. They weren’t good shoes. If he wore any one pair for over three weeks running, the soft soles would wear through. But nothing lasted long in the gaudy-colored nightlife of the blues. You looked good and died young, that was the way to play it, because an old bluesman was no better than an old dog.

He wanted to play on that harp, but he couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t even think of standing after being dragged out to the curb like some old broken-down piece of furniture. And anyway, he didn’t have the lip to play a harp anymore; couldn’t even bend his fingers on a cold day in late March when they put old men out to die.

“How much for the guitar?” The white man stood there with an open guitar case in his arms. Soupspoon’s red-enameled twelve-string Gibson lay in the black cardboard case like a king laid out in a poor man’s coffin.

“Fuck you!” Soupspoon shouted, but he sounded like a dog who’d had his voice box cut out.

“What?”

“Goddamn fuck,” Soupspoon wheezed. He pushed himself up by the tattered gold arms of the chair. “I could whip yo’ ass. Now put my guitar down!”

When Soupspoon got to his feet the pain exploded in his hip. He fell to the sidewalk, emitting a hoarse cry that put fear on the white man’s face.

“What’s happenin’ out here, Tony?” The colored man had an armful of Soupspoon’s old suits. The clothes he played music in. The suit he was married in.

“Please, no,” Soupspoon rasped.

“He just fell, Nate. I didn’t do it, I swear I didn’t.”

“Here you go.” Nate dropped the suits and lifted Soupspoon as if he weighed no more than the pile of old clothes.

Nate put the old man back in his chair. He pulled the blankets around his shoulders to cover the smell.

“People from Social Services comin’ to get you, Mr. Wise. Don’t worry, they’ll be here soon.”

“My things,” Soupspoon said as clearly as he could.

“I don’t know,” Nate said. “Mr. Grumbacher said we gotta empty the place. You had notice. You had three months. They’ll be here.”

“My things,” Soupspoon said again. He felt sorry for his poor guitar and for this colored man who didn’t even know how to act with his elders.

“Com’on, Nate.” Tony put his hand on the big black man’s shoulder, and Nate turned away.

When the men were gone, Soupspoon pulled the blanket close. A few people looked down from the hollow windows above. Mrs. Manetti had argued with the men when they moved him outside. But he knew she wouldn’t help him. He thought about all the poor folks huddled up in the apartments; about how scared they were. They were scared to open their doors.

Them two men could go from ’partment to ’partment an’ th’ow out ev’ry one. An’ ain’t not nobody gonna lift a hand t’stop’em. We was poor in the Delta, but we wasn’t never that poor.

The slow creaking of metal wheels sounded down the street. It was the old woman again. She wore a dark green trash bag, cut like a poncho, over many sweaters and blankets, and pushed a shopping cart piled high with junk. As she went by the growing pile of Soupspoon’s belongings, she slowed. Her face was black and streaked, but she was a white woman.

“Get away from here! Go on! Git off!”

The woman took a step closer, and Soupspoon pushed himself up again; the pain made him see glitter in the darkening sky. But that scared her for a minute. She backed off across the street and stayed there — waiting.

Like a big greasy rat waitin’ for Death to come on. Come on, Death. Come on.

Nate and Tony came out of the front door carrying the sofa; the woman moved a little further down the street. They dropped the old couch down and stood a moment to catch their breath.

“Please don’t do this to me,” Soupspoon begged. “It ain’t right.”

“What’s he sayin’, Nate?” Tony asked.

“He just mumblin’, man. Must be hard bein’ put out like that.”

“What in the hell is this?” a redheaded girl cried. She seemed to pop right out from nowhere, pushing her chest forward as she stalked up to the men.

“What the fuck you think you’re doin’?” She went right up to Nate, her pale face no higher than his chest.

“Who are you?” Soupspoon could hear the big Negro’s fear. Big old coward when it came to white folks; even a scrawny little white girl scared him.

“Are you okay, sir?” Kiki asked Soupspoon.

He recognized her. The skinny redheaded girl from upstairs somewhere. She left every morning with matching shoes and dress, and went out every night in jeans and no bra. She used to say hi if he was sitting on his old box out in front of the doors. She was from Arkansas. Something like that.

“My things,” he whispered. She frowned at him and shook her head as if she hadn’t understood his words.

“Mr. Grumbacher called Social Services,” Tony said. “They’re coming to get him.”

“The goddamn sun’s going down!” Kiki yelled. “You can’t leave him out here at night! This is an old man! An old man!”

“Kiki.” A skinny boy was behind her, his hand on her shoulder.

“Get away from me, Randy.”

“But, honey, remember your side.”

“Listen,” the big black coward said. “We got a job to do. He ain’t paid a thing in eighteen months and the eviction has gone through...”

The redheaded girl swung a blue cloth bag suddenly. There was a dull thud and Nate went down in a crouch holding his head and cursing. Soupspoon hadn’t seen anything like it since he saw Bonita Smith knock a St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, sheriff into the street for calling her son a pickaninny.

“Fuck you!” The redhead swung her bag at the white man and the black one in turns. Both men and the Rasta-boy tried to get away from her wild attack.

Soupspoon watched the white girl, really she was a woman past thirty, swinging her bag with one hand and holding her side with the other. Everything seemed slow to him though. The world was winding down like a child’s mechanical toy.

“What the hell?” Tony yelled. He grabbed Randy and balled up his fist. He threw a punch too, but it got tangled up in the gangly boy’s arms.

“What’s the problem over there?” a loudspeaker barked.

The police were already out of their car when Soupspoon turned around to see them.

White boys, neither one of them over twenty-five.

Nate jumped up and ran at the redhead, but the cops were on him before he could get to her.

“Bitch hit me in the head! Look at how I’m bleedin’ here!”

He held out a hand with some blood on it. Soupspoon shook his head, embarrassed by the blowhard.

“All right now,” one of the cop-boys said. This one had a deep voice and milky skin. He held a billy stick out in front of his chest with both hands.

“Just spit,” Soupspoon said. “That’s all ya need for them.” Nobody understood him, though.

“Okay, everybody calm down.” The second cop was fat. He had soft womanly eyes with long lashes, but his skin was bad.

“Bastard!” the girl shouted. “You put an old man out ’cause he’s sick! You motherfucker!”

Soupspoon could hear the south in her voice. Trashy south. White man’s south.

“All right, that’s enough now,” the cop with the billy stick said. “Just calm down.”

“Sir?” the fat cop asked Soupspoon. “Are you okay, sir?”

Soupspoon just stared at him. He was thinking about another policeman, a long time ago.

“Sir?”

“Luther’s sick, officer,” the redheaded girl said. “I’ve been in the hospital and I just got out today and when I got here I found these men doing...”

“Naw, naw, officer. That ain’t right,” Nate said. “This here man’s name is Wise, Atwater Wise. He was evicted. Social Services come an’ took him to the shelter on Bowery. An’ when we come here to clean up today he was back there. We got a job, man...”

The policemen both stared at Soupspoon.

“He’s my godfather, officer. From down Hogston,” the redhead said.

Soupspoon looked at her again. Maybe she was crazy. Drunk maybe, or insane.

“Aw, man, com’on,” Nate said. “She don’t even know him.”

“He’s my godfather,” she said flatly. “Now pick up his things and take them upstairs, apartment forty-three.”

The fat cop turned to the Rasta-boy. “Is that right?”

The boy nodded, not looking the cop in the face.

“What’s his name then?”

“I only ever called him Pop, officer. That’s all. But he’s Kiki’s godfather all right. He’s the one who told her about this place.”

“Shit,” the white moving man said.

“Watch your mouth.” That was the deep-voiced, soft-skinned policeman. The fat kid came over and they talked a minute.

Soupspoon watched the two children as they settled his fate. He’d learned a long time ago that if you couldn’t throw the dice yourself, then somebody else would throw them for you.

“You got someplace to take him?” the fat cop asked Tony.

“Somebody supposed t’be here, officer. The city got somebody to get him.”

Soupspoon remembered how they came to talk to him, the Social Services people and the police. Rat-faced Grumbacher was saying how he had lost five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars! After Soupspoon had paid his rent on time for twenty-seven years! The Social Services people promised to bring his things, but they never did. And even the few little things he brought with him were stolen from under his cot. His comb and razor, his ring from right off his finger.

“I don’t see anybody here,” the fat cop said.

“They’re comin’,” Nate said.

“You can’t leave him out in this cold. Do what the girl wants,” the policeman said.

“But, man...”

“Listen,” the baby-faced cop said, trying to be like a reasonable adult. “If you leave him out here and he dies, then we have to come after you for manslaughter. Maybe worse.”

The moving men looked at each other. Both of them sighed.

They left the furniture in the street. The redhead said that the apartment was too small for dressers and sofas and that she had an extra bed for “Luther.” They put all his clothes and small things in the dresser drawers. Tony took the drawers while Nate carried Soupspoon. He came through the apartment door breathing hard and frowning at the smell. He put Soupspoon on a floral-patterned stuffed chair that was set in front of a window.

Pain ground through Soupspoon’s hip from being jostled so much.

Down in the street he could see the filthy white woman going through the couch, looking for lost change between the cushions.

Rats ain’t got me yet.

“Smell’im?” Nate twisted his nose at Soupspoon. “That’s what you got into. His whole place smelled like a toilet and a old dead man.”

“Get out of my house.” She wouldn’t even look at the men. Randy held the door.

“Mr. Grumbacher is gonna hear about this,” Tony said. “This apartment is signed up for one. He’s gonna come back here and kick you out too.”

“I want you out of my house,” was her reply.

After they’d slammed out of the room she slumped onto the couch and put her hand against her side. Then she looked at the hand as if maybe she expected to see something.

“You okay, Kiki?” the boy asked.

“Yeah,” she said, looking at Soupspoon. “I’m fine.”

It was a shabby room. There was a TV with a coat hanger for an antenna on a bench at the foot of a big purple bed. A couch and stove, a bathtub on corroded enameled feet and a sink. A table and two chairs stood in the middle of the studio pretending to be a dining room. There was Soupspoon’s chair at the window and a shelf full of books next to it.

He pulled the blankets tight.

Outside the sun had just set. Soupspoon could still feel the chill in his feet. His eyes closed with the fading light. Even the loud hurt in his leg couldn’t rouse him.

There was a harvested cornfield. The stalks were broken and bare. It was twilight in November. It was cold and spiky and he wanted a pair of shoes so bad that he’d been crying. He was crying on the ground. He did that for a long time, until he forgot why.

He looked up and felt the chill of a cool breeze across the tears on his face. The chill was bracing and he wanted to laugh but didn’t.

Far away through all the broken tilted stalks he saw a rabbit. A big gray bunny with red eyes. They stared at each other until Soupspoon noticed that the sun was up and it was spring. The field had been sown and new corn sprouted all around turn.

“Sir?”

The window was black with night. People moved around in the lighted rooms across the street.

The redhead had on jeans and a T-shirt. He could see her small, masculine nipples against the thin cotton.

“I ain’t no Luther,” he said. “Name’s Soupspoon.”

“What?” She leaned forward, holding the scarlet hair back from a pale, freckled ear.

He pulled the blankets tighter and said, “I ain’t no Luther. Name’s Soupspoon.”

“Soupspoon?” She stared right into his eyes, frowning. “That’s your name, hon?”

He nodded and wondered what was wrong with this girl. She didn’t move away even though he smelled from shit.

“You been sick, darlin’?”

“My th’oat an’ my hip. Cain’t hardly stand up.”

“Here,” she said. She pulled the blankets back and began to unbutton his sweater.

“What you doin’? Stop that.”

“What did you say, honey?” She stopped unbuttoning and leaned her head over again.

“I said, what you doin?”

“I ran a bath. If we can take off your clothes I’ll carry you over, Maybe it will help your hip.”

“I ain’t no baby.”

She went back to undressing him. The smell didn’t seem to bother her. She pulled his sweater and shirt off from the back and got him to put up his feet to get off the pants and soiled underpants. When she took off his socks she said, “You got these sores because you don’t get up and walk around. Now come on.” She turned her back to him and hunkered down. “Get up on my back and I’ll carry you over there.”

The failing man rode her horseback across the room. He wrapped his skinny arms around her neck and gritted his teeth. He was panting by the time she lowered him into the water. When she turned around he saw that there were tears in her eyes. She went down on her knees and moaned as if something had broken inside her body.

“You hurtin’, sugah?” he asked, reaching out to touch the pale cheek.

“Lie back now, Soupspoon,” she said. She breathed deeply and stood up.

Soupspoon nodded in the hot tub while Kiki took his pants and underwear and poured ammonia over them in the sink. Then she took a sponge from a high hook and squatted down next to the tub.

She was gentle where the skin of his buttocks had chafed. She washed his chest and arms and down between his legs. All the time she hummed a sad sweet tune. Soupspoon didn’t know the song, but he heard the long-drawn country notes in it.

“Where’s that boy?” he asked.

Kiki brought her ear to his lips, and he repeated the question.

“Randy’s gone, Soup. He has a store down on St. Mark’s.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Kiki.”

“Why you take me in here, Kiki?”

She moved her head back and looked him in the eye for a moment. Her eyes were the kind of green that you saw sometimes in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“Don’t you remember?” she asked.

Soupspoon stared at the woman, too tired and sick to try.

“It was on that real nice day after Christmas. We were coming home and you were sitting next to the door on that old box,” she said, prompting him.

Soupspoon shook his head slowly.

“I was really sad. Something... something happened to my friend where we worked and she was staying with me. I guess we both looked pretty sad, because you called out and said, ‘Don’t worry, ladies, you’re young — you’ll be okay.’

“You didn’t even know us, but that made us both happy. We went upstairs and laughed and now Abby’s just fine in Boston — just like you said.”

When Soupspoon started to talk again, Kiki moved close to hear him.

“You go through all’a that downstairs just ’cause of a few words? You crazy, girl?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess you could say that. So crazy that I don’t think somebody should just stand by if something is happening and they know it’s wrong.”

She stopped a moment, the last word half-gagged in her throat. Soupspoon watched her eyes as they shifted from friendly to hard and clear.

“I just got back from the hospital. A boy stabbed me. Little bastard tried to kill me, but he couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t die. All this time I been afraid and now I see that I don’t have to be. You don’t have to be scared, because you’re going to die when you’re meant to — not when somebody else thinks so.

“When I saw you out there in the street I knew that they couldn’t hurt you — because they couldn’t hurt me. It was like I was meant to be there. Like I was meant to save you.”

Her breath trembled behind a rage.

She pulled a straight-back oak chair up next to the tub, sat, and rubbed his chest again. She washed his body while Soupspoon looked at her face. He never thought that he’d be this comfortable again.

After the bath she helped him into the chair and dried him off. Then she put a terry-cloth robe around his shoulders and helped him to a chair at the table in the center of the room.

“I’ll make you some tea for your throat,” she said.

Kiki took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s sour mash from the cabinet for her tea.

They drank and she ate pork and beans. Soupspoon couldn’t talk for his sore throat. Kiki didn’t talk either. She just sat looking at him, taking him in in a way that almost scared the bluesman.

“You should eat your food, Mr. Wise.”

Soupspoon put his hand to his stomach and shook his head, no.

“When did you eat last? Yesterday?” No.

“The day before?”

Soupspoon hunched his shoulders.

After a while a knock came at the door. The two looked up at each other. The knock came again.