The Volunteer
4
GRANNY SAL was in her usual position outside Walgreen’s Drug Store. If she hadn’t been there, people would be concerned. As far as G2 knew, she had been there every morning for years. She sold the local street paper for a dollar and always seemed to have a stack of them beside her little campstool. The publisher sold the papers to Sal for thirty-five cents, so G2 figured she made a pretty good profit and could buy food and wine anytime. She lived in a shelter where she paid $5 a night for a cot, a meal, and hot water. G2 figured she had to sell ten newspapers every day to pay for her sojourn. That was a lot of work for very little benefit, but it had made Granny Sal a fixture at Walgreen’s. Everyone knew her, and she knew a little something about everyone.
When G2 was new to the streets, he thought he would get a job writing for the street papers. Some of them paid fifty cents a column inch for stories, but a column inch was a lot of words, especially when the two-page story he wrote had been cut by an editor to a two-inch blurb. G2 decided right then that he would save all the words he was writing and get his book published someday and then he would be set for the rest of his life and wouldn’t have to panhandle anymore. The longer he wrote, the less he could remember what he was writing about. Things kept distracting him. For example, there was the blue Volvo, license number 123REJ that was always parked at the free clinic. Now 123REJ was a very interesting license number. If G2 was inventing license numbers, that was one he would have invented. 123 REJect. It was easy to remember. “Elegant,” he remembered a college composition professor saying about his writing once. G2 could think of a lot of elegant license plate numbers that started 123. 123GO. 123ABC. 123HIC. People might have trouble with that one, he thought. Who would know that it meant “Here I Come?” He’d have to work on that one. He had jotted it down on a piece of paper and carefully folded it up in his pocket with the little stub of pencil that he had. Sometimes he saw one of his license plate ideas on a car. SPY007. That was his. He must have lost that piece of paper and someone from the license bureau found it and made the plate. Or probably it was those punks.
G2 had been in a rough part of town, looking for a place to sleep for the night that wouldn’t be raided by the police. They were making sweeps through some of the best places to sleep and forcing people to move away. The bridge under which he’d spent nearly a week out of the rain had been cleared the day before. He was walking down a street just after dusk, looking for an out-of-the-way place to lie down and have a sip of wine when he was distracted by a license plate that said “PMPRD.” It was a shiny car and looked out of place on the dirty street. He stopped and fished out his pencil and a slip of paper. While he was concentrating on the license plate, trying to puzzle out what it meant, he had missed the approach of three men until one grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back against a brick wall. “Wha dya thing ya doin. Ya innersted in Big Jim’s wheels?” “You under cover? A cop?” “Just a wino, bro. Dummy.” The words came too rapidly for G2 to sort them out, but when he tried to protect his bag, it earned him a punch in the stomach. The canvas bag was ripped off his shoulder and the contents dumped out on the ground. One of the men grabbed the paper bag with his wine in it. And unscrewed the cap. He poured back a slug of the precious liquid and then spewed it out of his mouth all over G2. “Tha’ shit’s nasty,” he said, and flung the bottle against the wall where it shattered. G2 wept more for the bottle than from the punch. “My bitch tasted like that, I’d make the dog lick her.” “Look at this: A journey alone by G2. Dude’s a goddam writer. Les see what you wrote.” G2 always intended to write the story of being homeless and sell it. Now these punk bastards had it. He screeched as he launched himself toward the punk with his words and was rewarded with a fist to the jaw that sent him back into the wall. He hit his head on the bricks hard enough to stun him and he slumped to the sidewalk. “Nothin’ here but license numbers,” the punk laughed. He didn’t know which one. Papers were being scattered. Ten precious pieces of paper and his pencil. All the work since he’d been homeless. G2 raised a hand just to have it slapped down. “You stay ’way from the Pimp Ride, asshole. We fine you here again, you a dead bum.” Someone kicked him and the three started laughing as they walked away looking at his sheets of paper. “Big Jim’s waitin’,” he heard them say.
Those punks probably went to jail with his license numbers. That’s where they made license plates—in jail. They went there with his numbers and made them into license plates and that’s why now G2 saw license plates that he wrote on cars that were on the street. He was keeping track of which ones were his ideas. It was a long time ago, but G2 remembered.
Granny Sal recognized G2. Granny Sal recognized everyone. She greeted her customers by name, even the ones in suits and shiny shoes. A lady came out of the drug store with a cup of coffee. “Granny, I got you a cup of coffee and a donut. Here’s a dollar for the paper.” Granny Sal smiled her gap-toothed grin and took the money and food, handing the woman her paper. “And how’s that little Josh?” Granny asked. “He over his cold now?” “He’s doing fine now, Granny,” the woman said. “He’ll be back in school Monday.” “That’s good,” Granny Sal said. “I got a little something for that cute little boy.” She dug in her apron pocket and produced a wrapped piece of peppermint candy. “This’ll help his little sore throat. You give it to him and tell him Granny Sal says to get well soon.” “Thank you Granny.” The woman took the newspaper and the peppermint and headed for her big SUV in the parking lot.
Granny Sal sat on her little camp stool with her legs stuck straight out in front of her. Anyone coming up that side of the street had to either step over her, or step off the curb to go around her. But no one seemed to mind. Granny Sal had a little something for everyone and everyone, it seemed had something for Granny. She saw G2 as he approached and struggled up off her stool to stand. She was scarcely taller when she stood up than she was when she was sitting on the little stool.
“G2! You’re back,” she said, holding out her arms to hug the man. G2 quietly came into her arms, waited patiently while she hugged him and watched her sit back down on her camp stool. “You’ve been gone a long time, G2. You just passing through?” He nodded and looked up at the sky. “Yes,” Granny said, “almost time for the weather to change. You’ll be heading south with the birds, I suppose. What’s it like in the South? I imagine it’s all sunny beaches that you vacation on in the winter, isn’t it G2? Pretty girls in bikinis bringing you wine with a little umbrella in it. How I envy you traveling around. I can’t move from my spot, I tell you. Wouldn’t last a day if I had to find a new place to sleep every night. And my customers—what would they do? If I wasn’t here for them, they’d be in an awful fix. I figure this stool is where I live my life and this stool is where I’ll die one day.” G2 liked Granny Sal. She never expected him to say anything. She made up all the stories about him that she told and he believed her. Yes, he would head south for the winter and sit on fine sunny beaches in Florida. Maybe he would just go all the way out the end of Key West and then dive right into the ocean and swim to Cuba. He could get on a cruise ship as a porter and go on down to Rio in South America. All he had to do was listen to Granny Sal.
“I have something for you, G2,” she said. “Been saving it because I knew you’d come back.” She searched pockets that seemed to be hidden all over her clothes. G2 reckoned that if you emptied out all her pockets, she’d be skinnier than his arm. Finally she pulled out a tiny pad of paper and a pencil that was three inches long. It didn’t have an eraser. “Here we are,” she said. “I just found this little notebook. Some of the pages are used, but there’s lots of new paper in there. And this pencil? Would you believe they were giving them away at a street fair? See, it says WXRX on the side of it. A radio station that was playing music so loud it hurt my ears a block away. But they had pencils they said were for golfers. As soon as I saw it, I thought G2 don’t play golf, but he still needs a pencil. This will help G2 write his novel, I said to myself. Maybe he’ll publish some articles in The Roof and my customers, right here on this block, will read what he wrote in this little notebook. You’ll be a great writer someday, G2. And I want an autographed copy of whatever it is you publish. Don’t forget your Granny Sal.”
G2 took the offered pencil and paper. It wasn’t every day that he got new paper, and the pencil he had been using earlier in the day was only as long as the first joint on his thumb. It still had some lead, though. G2 would whittle it down with a piece of broken glass and still get a page or two out of it.
Gerald played golf once in college. He figured that there wasn’t much to it. You swung a club at the ball and then putted it in the hole. That much, at least, was just like playing miniature golf. Easier, since there were no windmills. The recruiter that was interviewing Brian and Gerald in college took them to Lake Geneva and treated them to a weekend at the Playboy Club. This was the high life he was telling them they would enjoy as sales managers. There were half a dozen other recruits, three Regional Sales Managers, and the National Sales Manager. Golfing was a requirement. Gerald and Brian rented clubs and decided to share a single set. The $40 greens fee included a golf cart and the friends were joined by Steve, the National Sales Manager and a recruit from Chicago named Ed. Ed was a serious golfer. Every drive went straight down the fairway. He was shooting just over par at the seventh hole. Steve was a serious golfer, too, but didn’t have any of the skills that Ed had. He replaced several balls that went into the rough or water hazards and it seemed that every stroke was accompanied by a string of curses. After three straight balls went into the water off the sixth tee, Steve turned to the others and in a burst of frustration said, “Well boys, now you know the National Sales Manager really sucks cock.” There was a long pause before he continued in a somewhat lower voice, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell that to the other managers.” Brian and Gerald nodded seriously while Ed guffawed. Apparently it had been a joke. Gerald’s play was also frustrating, though he wasn’t as prone to fits of tantrum like Steve was. It just didn’t seem that he could get the ball in the air. He hit line drives that barely cleared the ground and at one point simply used his putter to hit the ball seven times down the fairway to the green. At the ninth hole, a short one, Ed handed Gerald a driver from his bag and said “Here. Try this and keep your head down and your eye on the ball.” Gerald followed the instructions and swung hard at the ball. He connected. The ball soared high into the air. It overshot the par 3 hole by fifty yards, and they heard it hit pavement near the trees. The private airstrip was just on the other side of those trees and all four men watched as the ball took a long high bounce and came down on one of the single engine planes parked near the runway. They looked in shocked amazement as Ed took the driver from Gerald and put it in his bag. “I say we call that a hole-in-one for everyone on the team,” Steve said. The four men moved quickly to the tenth tee where three bunnies were serving beers.
G2 looked around for something to write in his new notebook while Granny Sal watched. There were cars stopped for the traffic light at the corner. A man pushed a shopping cart out of the drug store and over to his Toyota in the parking lot. G2 couldn’t figure out how a person could buy so much in Walgreen’s. A young couple sat at the bus stop, cuddled together, occasionally turning to kiss each other as they talked quietly. Two crows noisily fought over a MacDonald’s bag in the parking lot and beyond them a cat stalked forward planning a stealth attack. An airplane streaked overhead leaving a contrail, but just too far away to be heard above the din of the city traffic. When G2 opened his eyes wide and really looked at the world around him, there was so much that he was almost overwhelmed. Then he saw it and all his attention narrowed to a single point. The noise and distractions of the city fell away, leaving him with a moment of crystal clarity as he opened his notebook and wrote: CC1492.
G2 awoke in the middle of the night. The effect of the wine was wearing off. The blank in his head was already being replaced by thoughts, but that wasn’t what woke him. There was a tension in the air. G2 knew he wasn’t the only one huddled beneath his thin blanket awake. It could be police, but it was too quiet. Gangs staking out new turf? Or…
G2 gripped his canvas bag in one hand and a corner of his blanket with the other in case it turned nasty and he had to flee. But it might be otherwise. He even dared to hope it was. He saw lights flicker across the camp. One stopped near Big John. G2 could see Big John’s wide open eyes as the flashlight hesitated on them and then moved down. A shadow stepped between G2 and the light and Big John was lost.
“Here’s a nasty looking bum,” a young man’s voice said as a light shone in G2’s eyes. “Doesn’t smell too bad either. You’re lucky.”
“Oh god. Do I have to?” a young woman spoke from behind the light.
“Nope. Don’t have to. I’m just here to protect you and verify the kill. I don’t care whether you do it or not,” the man said.
“Let me see,” she said. The man reached down and flipped the thin blanket off G2. G2 kept his grip on the corner so he wouldn’t risk losing it altogether. The flashlight beam moved down his body.
“Oh my god! He’s got a boner already,” she exclaimed a little too loudly. Her body guard hushed her.
“We don’t make noise; we don’t draw a crowd,” he said. “Now are you in or out?” She giggled.
“Just a handjob, right?”
“That’s all,” he said.
“Let’s do it,” she whispered hoarsely. The man—G2 could tell he was just old enough to be called a man, maybe twenty years old—leaned down and whispered in G2’s face.
“This nasty little slut wants to touch your boner, old man,” the boy said. “You okay with that?” G2 nodded slightly. “The rule is she touches. You don’t. Understand?” G2 nodded again. The boy pointed his flashlight down at G2’s hard-on. “He’s all yours, Lindsey,” he said.
The young woman knelt beside G2’s thigh. She was just close enough that G2 could make out a few details of her face and figure. She was dressed like a hooker in a short skirt and halter top. She had make-up painted on in mad swirls. It would be impossible to recognize her if she washed her face. He glanced up at the boy who had his cell phone out pointing the camera at her. Tentatively she reached out and touched the tent in G2’s trousers. He caught his breath.
Sex wasn’t unknown among the homeless. G2 knew as many lost women as men, but they often stayed apart. It seemed the women sought out the shelters if they weren’t attached to a man. It was safer. But attachments did happen—sometimes for only a night, sometimes for a year or more. G2 had never been able to make it last more than a week or two. There was that one—Susan, that was her name—that stuck close to G2 for nearly a month. They had early morning sex under their blanket half a dozen times. It was comforting. It was always quiet, like a secret shared in the darkness when you didn’t want to attract attention. People got ideas if they saw you copulating. G2 wasn’t strong enough to fight off another man. It started with them sharing a bottle of wine. Most things started that way. They made that bottle last, having just a sip at a time for hours. Susan knew how to make wine last—just little sips and no long gulps. She treasured it as much as G2 and they left a sip in the bottle for morning. It was too late to make it to a shelter, so Susan just lay down next to him and went to sleep. He woke up in the middle of the night with a raging hard-on and couldn’t figure out why. Susan hadn’t seemed to mind that he was poking out at her and had been accommodating. Usually, they slept back to back, sharing a warmth and protection. Sometimes one would roll into the other and if the camp was still dark and quiet, they’d find their way together. One night, Susan didn’t join him at his fire. The weather was getting cold and the next morning G2 hopped a southbound freight train. He always wondered what happened to Susan and if they would meet again. She sometimes laughed and it was good to hear.
But Susan wasn’t a midnight angel like the one stroking his cock now. Gerald didn’t dare move for fear the angel would dissolve into mist. Everyone had a different theory about midnight angels. Some said they were prostitutes doing charity work. Some said it was college girls who had to do it to get into a sorority. Skinny Eric the Twig had a sign that said “Will knock you up for cash.” He’d once been paid to get an anonymous girl pregnant. There were those who held that the midnight angels didn’t exist at all and said men made them up out of their dreams. Bald Sam bragged that they visited him three or four times a week and everyone knew he was a liar. G2 wasn’t sure what to believe, but he wasn’t about to move for fear it would stop.
“I thought you said it would only take a minute,” the girl said. “He’s got the stamina of a horse.”
“He just wants to see your titties, nasty girl,” said the boy. “Probably hasn’t seen titties in ten years. Go ahead and show him what a nasty slut you are.” She reached up with one hand and untied her halter top. G2 watched as the pale white globes came into view. He tried to memorize every detail. How big her breasts were; which direction her nipples pointed; how her neck touched her shoulder. It was all too much to take in. G2 closed his eyes and exhaled.
“O, yuck! Look at it all; it’s all over everything,” she exclaimed quietly. “God, it’s on me.”
“Here’s a towel. Clean up and let’s go,” said the boy. G2 didn’t move—didn’t open his eyes.
“Is he dead?” he heard her say.
“Who knows? Let’s get out of here.” She dropped the towel, damp with his cum, on top of G2. He heard their steps fade away as he rolled over under his blanket and slept.
G2 was sick. Really sick, he knew. It wasn’t just DTs, even though he hadn’t had a drink in three days. He wasn’t even sure he wanted a drink. The thought of wine hurt his stomach. He was hot and his clothes were soaked through with sweat. His head hurt. His skin hurt. His heart was in his throat. And his throat hurt. G2 needed to get to the clinic. They’d give him something at the clinic and he would be okay.
Gerald had been sick when he was eight years old. It was a terrible time. His father had taken him to the YMCA the previous year for swimming lessons and when they found Brian and his father and the father/son combinations of three other nearby families, the dads decided to start a local club of Indian Guides. Once each month the boys and dads would get together at one of their homes and do crafts, listen to stories, and eat treats. Monte’s dad had shown them all how to make a crystal radio. It was almost magical and was the first radio of his own that Gerald had. It had no speakers, but a single tiny ear bud that stuck in one ear. When they finished the project, Monte’s Dad wrote a note attached to each crystal radio: “Ground me, Dad!” Gerald’s father took him to the laundry room in their home and attached the wire with an alligator clip to the valve on the washing machine’s cold water line. Gerald put the ear bud in his ear and carefully turned the tuner until a crisp voice broke through the crackling static. It was a miracle. Gerald could tune in three stations on his crystal radio. He listened to the news, some gospel music—interrupted by Edwin Everest who preached at a big church downtown and gave sermons on the radio every night—and Fred Newman’s Dinner Hour. Fred made random phone calls at 6:00. If your phone rang at 6:00 you had to answer “Dinner Time!” If you said “Hello,” Fred would say “You said Hello and your chance is go.” You knew then that you missed the dinner basket that Fred delivered to the winners. Gerald listened to Fred at 6:00 every night on his crystal radio, sitting cross-legged on top of the dryer in the laundry room, listening with the other ear for his phone to ring.
Then came the Indian Guide campout. For weeks the boys and dads worked at Mark’s house to cut long birch poles to the same length, lash the ends together, and set them up. Then the dads would spread the big brown canvas tarp over the frame and everyone would crawl inside. There was scarcely enough room in the tepee for the ten of them and the dads joked about having to sleep in layers. All summer the boys practiced putting up the tepee and building campfires at Mark’s house, under the careful supervision of their dads. The big campout was to be on Saturday. Their tribe would join all the others sponsored by the local Y at a state park 50 miles away. Dennis’s father had a pickup truck and on Friday they loaded it with the poles and everyone’s packs so they could leave Saturday morning. Everyone went home in a frisson of excitement to sleep in their beds one more time before the campout. Gerald could hardly get to sleep.
At midnight he woke up. He had to go to the bathroom. He was shaking and cold, but his sheets and pajamas were soaked through with sweat. Once he sat on the toilet, he didn’t want to get up and tears started running down his cheeks. His mother was the first to get up to see what was wrong, but his father was beside her as soon as she called. “He’s got a fever,” she said. His dad asked him questions about what hurt and Gerald croaked out “I’m just nervous about the campout.” His voice didn’t sound right. And it hurt. “You’re a little young to have nerves like this,” his father said, smiling at him. “I’m afraid you don’t have to worry about the campout. It looks like you’ll be spending the day in bed.” Gerald was devastated. Nothing was more important than the campout with his friends, the Indian Guides in the State Park fifty miles away from home. The tears wouldn’t stop coming down and every hot drop stung his cheeks. His mother tried to get him to take an aspirin, but he couldn’t swallow it until she crushed one up in a teaspoon of water and he drank the bitter pill. In the morning, Gerald woke with the pain searing his throat and could hear his mother and father talking about a doctor. Gerald saw a kitchen chair sitting next to his bed with a blanket tossed across it. He knew someone had been sitting next to his bed all night long. His father came into the room dressed, still fastening his belt. He reached down and scooped up Gerald, blankets and all and said, “Come on, sport. Doctor Roberts wants to see you. We’ll get you feeling better fast.” Gerald thought they must be going to give him a Speedy Alka Seltzer and he’d be “Feeling better fast.” But Doctor Roberts said it was his tonsils. Gerald went to the hospital while his friends were on the Indian Guide campout. They painted the back of his throat with bad tasting medicine and wouldn’t let him have any food all the next day. On Monday morning, Gerald’s tonsils and adenoids came out. He didn’t remember anything else about the episode except that he got to eat ice cream and Jell-O for dinner and his father brought in his crystal radio. He grounded it by fastening the alligator clip to the light next to Gerald’s bed and Gerald listened to Reverend Everest and Fred Newman. That night, Fred called Gerald’s house and his mother answered the phone “Hello.”
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