Save The Cockroaches

Chapter 9 of Carnival

Carnival

PART TWO

WEASELS AND PEACOCKS AND W****S, OH MY!

“It’s just that honesty takes all the fun out of a witch hunt.”

--Lance

“S**t, I seen eunuchs got more balls than you got.”

--Nefertiti

“Before I go, man, before I go, I just gotta get my hands on whatever’s in charge and say, ‘Hey, F****r! I’m hip to sick jokes, okay? And I’ll take the fall as lamely as the next second-billionth banana. But don’t leave me hanging! Man oh man oh man, just what the hell’s the punch line’?”

--Sahib

Chapter 9

Save The Cockroaches

Kevin’s loneliness was brief. He didn’t have far to ride before he came upon merry lights in the gloaming. He had a pastry, a candy bar, and a candied apple for dinner, and spent the night with a troll under a pier. Here’s how it came about.

The pier was a quaint place of gift shops, pinball machines, and stolid fishermen rolling mirthlessly with the sea. Kevin approached it almost unknowing, still mourning the loss of his friends. There was nothing he could do about Eddie, who would get one phone call home and catch hell from his parents. It was Kevin’s contraband, and Eddie would certainly tell his own parents this, and they would of course inform the Mikolajczyks. But in a way, Kevin thought, Eddie might actually come out ahead in the long run. After all, being busted for possession was an honor--it meant gaining the reputation of a rebel and dreamer, sharing your views with other heads and heavies, and becoming a veteran of prison life. Kevin would spend the rest of his days eluding Joe, who would refuse to die before he had caught his son and tromped the life from him, while Eddie, with a few breaks and a lift from a liberal probation system, might end up a hero next semester. Kevin winced and quit this line of thinking immediately. When he owned up to it--that he was directly responsible for the destruction of Eddie’s dream--he almost wished Big Joe would find him and give him the thrashing he deserved.

As far as Mike was concerned, Kevin was at a loss. Even the scrawny boy’s pugnacious company was better than being lost and lonely. He was sure Mike was still in town, a fugitive; stealthily haunting the sewer system or doing the rooftop route. Kevin, with a sense of fatality brought on by soul-fatigue and remorse, was also certain this severance was permanent--that if he went back into town looking for Mike, Mike would simultaneously leave town by a different road to search the coast. So Kevin was very miserable indeed when he parked outside the coffee shop-restaurant-fish market on the little pier. Somehow the passing of strolling window-shoppers and skateboarding pinballers was just what he needed.

The restaurant was constructed as a truncated hemisphere; the upper portion all glass panes cut hexagonally, the lower section paneled laterally with salt-pitted redwood slats. The dome’s flat top was capped by the plaster figure of a smiling sea bass wolfing down a steaming cup of java. All this glass bared the shop’s innards to passersby, making it difficult to miss tier upon tier of hot fresh pastries displayed within. Kevin chose a little table by the entrance, where he could keep a close eye on his bike. There he sat and pouted over his hot coffee and sweet cinnamon roll. He was dining alone when, without a sound, the table’s other chair was abruptly occupied by a repulsive creature wearing a hideous hat of mangled felt, almost identical to Kevin’s own. Kevin became aware of a particularly offensive odor, an absolutely vulgar stench that triggered feelings of anxiety and loathing. His reaction wasn’t just a healthy individual’s natural aversion to a foul-smelling presence; it was something deeper. He was being bombarded by pheromones. The intruder’s age was impossible to gauge, as his face was streaked with grease and grime and other, unrecognizable patches of filth. Under the tiny yellow eyes projected a long crooked nose, a thin slice of mouth, a transparent shock of goatee. He was wearing a torn old coat stained so badly its original color was anybody’s guess, and a pair of obscenely eroded cutoff trousers which must have originally belonged to a child. Kevin saw with pity and with revulsion that the stranger’s skeletal legs were peppered with scabs, and pocked with what looked like the craters of old boil scars. He wore tennis shoes coated with a rank, bile-colored slime, and corroded, collapsed socks of the same nauseating extract. He laid a wormy upturned hand on the table, saying, “You got some change, friend? It’s an emergency. It’s like my car ran out of gas and I lost my wallet in the cab. I can’t apply for a new credit card until the bank opens in the morning…all my bags, man…all of ’em, lost, lost forever…airport snafu, terrible thing.” His fingernails dug into the tabletop. “Terrorists, man. But what you gonna do…free country.” He inhaled until it looked like his head would pop. “Hotels, man, socked in for the holidays. Muggers. Appointments. Cops with attitudes…missing ID.” Scale by scale, the tiny eyes sank back into his skull. “Man, I gotta call my wife, I just gotta let her know that the kids are all okay. Suzie…Mitch…Cupcake…Corndog.” His stomach growled a bottomless decrescendo, finally petering out in a wrenching gastric death rattle. “Long distance,” he gasped.

Kevin nodded with compassion. This guy’s situation made his own troubles seem like a lark. Also he needed company, anybody’s company, badly.

“Sure, man;” he said, “let me get you something to eat.” Kevin rose and studied the menu. Feeling strangely pleased with himself, he ordered steak and lobster, corn on the cob, and a glass of milk. When the meal arrived his beneficiary devoured it without a word of thanks. The tab had come to, surprisingly, over twenty-one dollars.

Once the meal had been consumed with an atrocious lack of manners, Kevin asked, “Feel better?”

“You got a cigarette?”

“Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

“Christ. Now I gotta have a smoke.” The wretch rose on wobbly legs, standing barely five feet tall while stooped at a curious angle. He seized the arm of a customer waiting at the cash register. “Hey man, you got a smoke? It’s like I left all my s**t in the van, man, and I just know this chick ran off with it. Women, man. But what you gonna do?” The customer looked at the filthy claw on his arm and peeled it off with disgust. He was tempted to take the little troublemaker outside and whip the pants off him for being so rude, but it was clear nature had already worked him over.

“Beat it,” he said mildly.

The little guy threw his arms in the air. “Christ!” he said, turning and limping back to the table. “Some people just blow me away! I mean! Here I been working this joint for five years, and he tells me to beat it. Christ!”

“Come on,” Kevin said. “I’ll buy you a pack.”

He stepped up next to the customer and said under his breath, “Sorry about…y’know, him.” The man stared sourly, jangling the change in his pocket.

After paying, Kevin walked outside to join his new companion, who was mouthing obscenities at the passersby. He walked his bike slowly, trying to not wind his limping partner. They came to a little stand which sold newspapers, candied apples, and tepid beer. A very comely teenage girl sat behind the makeshift counter, polishing her nails.

“Gimme packa smokes.”

“Which brand do you want?” she asked, not smiling.

“Christ…gimme Pall Malls.”

She handed him a pack and a book of matches. Kevin paid as the little viper hobbled to a rail overlooking the ocean.

“Friend of yours?” the girl asked, her wholesome face twisting with distaste.

“Just a stray cat,” Kevin said absently. It was a fresh scene for him. For a crazy moment he thought that, contrasted with that guy, he might actually look good. He squared his shoulders and half-turned to display the famous logo on the vest’s rear. “But he’s a heavy dude. We’re like talking about maybe starting a band.”

“Ugh. He gives me the creeps. He’s out here panhandling every day, swearing at people, scaring off business. I wish he’d just fall in the water and never come up.”

Kevin’s shoulders resumed their normal slouch. He bought a candy bar and a candied apple for his own dinner before walking over to rejoin his sorry new sidekick. He would really have to start watching his money.

“You live around here?” he asked.

“Yeah. I sleep under the pier at night and hustle up here during the day. It’s not great, but I do okay. Sometimes, if you’re fast, you can skip into one of the restaurants and swipe the tips off the tables before the waitress can get to ’em. Just last week I rolled some old man for six bucks, and people are always dropping change. Hang on a second.”

He leaned farther over the rail and casually vomited the entire dinner. Kevin’s stomach wrenched at the diarrheic sound of undigested steak and lobster spattering the waves. Twenty-one bucks down the drain.

“Yeah, I do okay,” he continued, snuffling residue up his nose. He lit another cigarette.

Kevin turned away. He was weary with the day, aching and depressed. “Where’s a good place to crash around here?” he asked unwisely.

“Only one place, under the pier. Sleep on the beach in the open and the cops’ll bust you, or the drifters’ll mug you. You can sleep downstairs if you want, I don’t give a f**k; God knows there’s room enough.”

“Thanks,” Kevin said prematurely.

The wretch shrugged.

“My name’s Kevin; what’s yours?”

The little cripple shrugged again, and from then on Kevin thought of him only as the troll. Although trolls traditionally inhabit caves and foothills and the like, Kevin saw no reason one couldn’t master a pier’s underbelly.

After a few minutes of ignored small talk on Kevin’s part and foul muttering by the troll, they walked back off the pier and onto the beach. Kevin had a spooky feeling as he carried his bike over the sand, and this feeling intensified as they ducked under the pier’s sodden timber framework. Underneath it was inky dark, but the surf reflected colored light from above, and this light, playing games with the eyes, seemed to dance around the pillars, sculpting otherworldly Things out of shadow. The only sound was the distinct crash and suck of breaking waves.

“Over here’s a dry place,” the troll whispered. Why did he whisper? The troll lit another cigarette, and in the brief sputtering glare of the match Kevin saw salt-softened beams gently rocking and groaning with the ocean. Trash and foul-smelling seaweed lay heaped on the sand, along with small, indefinably gruesome blotches. Kevin shivered. The troll stopped and perched on a beam, so Kevin carefully wedged his bicycle in a crotch of timbers. He took his sleeping bag off the bike’s rack and used it for a cushion.

“You sure the tide won’t come this high?” he asked in a voice which seemed unnecessarily loud.

“Would I of said it’s a good place if the f*****g tide came this high? Christ, I slept here I don’t know how long, haven’t got wet yet.”

“You--you actually live down here?”

“What of it?”

“Nothing…I just, well--how long?”

The troll looked away. By now Kevin’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he could see that the troll’s expression was bitter.

“Seems long as I can remember. Maybe six, seven years. I use to bum in the parks and railroad stations, but there was way too much competition. Before I come down the coast I use to hang out at Golden Gate Park, and then at Big Sur. Too much f*****g competition.”

Kevin started. “Did you say Golden Gate? That’s where I’m going.” He asked eagerly, “What’s it like up there?”

The troll doubled over with a horrific fit of coughing. Kevin waited impatiently. Recovering, the troll flicked away what was left of his cigarette and lit another. “Too much f*****g competition,” he said at last.

“No, I mean what are the vibes like? How are the people?” He was still eager to compare the descriptions of others, to build an accurate visual. If only Eddie were here now.

“People are fucked,” said the troll. “Too f*****g poor to bum any money off, always spouting crap about love and religion. Christ, I couldn’t live around freaks like that.” He began to idly pick his nose, lazily eyeing the results rolled between forefinger and thumb. Kevin had a disturbing feeling the troll could see well in the dark, having survived so long in this chilly shadow-world. He grunted, figured the subject was a touchy one, and better left closed.

“Well, I’m tired. I’m gonna crash.”

The troll turned and looked at him with frightening speed. His eyes glinted. “You wanna let me use your bag, man? Christ, I been sick lately, real sick. You seen.”

“What about me?” Kevin demanded.

“Oh, it’s not cold here, you’ll see. You don’t need the bag, and the sand’s soft. But man, I been so f*****g sick, you dig? Hey, I’m letting you use my place to crash; you can be cool too.” Again the glint of eyes.

Kevin composed himself. At last he said quietly, “Go ahead then.”

“Hey, that’s truly groovy, man. This’ll all come back to you someday. It all evens out.” The troll snatched and unrolled the sleeping bag. Without even removing his shoes he climbed in and zipped it up.

Kevin watched silently before moving back a few yards to sit against a barnacled pillar. He shivered and half-closed his eyes. Somewhere out of his line of vision a buoy clanged its doomsday bell, and a small boat tooted its horn twice. The piles stood about him like the rib cage of a long-disintegrated dragon, calcifying while tiny things silently scurried and sucked, picking its bones clean. The faintly phosphorescent waves broke stinking, monotonously and mournfully, and ghostly shadow people darted about in the darkness, playing a deadly hide-and-seek, waiting for him to close his eyes completely. He continued to monitor his surroundings, determined to remain alert. The night wore on.

* * *

It was head-to-toe discomfort which at last tugged him from the depths of a peculiarly heavy sleep. He felt drugged and stiff and sore. His back and shoulders ached arthritically.

He had dreamt of grisly many-pincered crustaceans clambering over his legs, and of a horrible thing like a tentacled lamprey with a firm suckerhold on his heart. A subconscious fear of waking to find these horrors a reality had kept him under during the long night. Now it was another hot beautiful morning, but under the pier it was still dreary and foul.

Kevin froze.

Something was crawling on his backside, tugging very gently. Perspiration broke out on the boy’s forehead…he hadn’t been dreaming after all! The instinct to survive caused him to hold his breath while he tried to imagine just what disgusting, smelly, obscene creature was assailing him. Was it a primitive, spiny, fierce-eyed crab? Or maybe a blind, hideously deformed, radioactive rat; one of the hapless few washed up along the coast after escaping the Government’s sadistic experiments in hippie behavior control. Or maybe it was--

“Hey!” Kevin cried. He turned just as the troll was leaning over him. The troll jumped back, trembling.

“You!” Kevin gasped. He shoved his wallet all the way back in. “You were trying to pick my pocket! You--”

“Hey, man,” the troll spluttered, “what’re you talking about, man?” His mouth worked convulsively. Kevin got to his feet. The troll looked around wildly. Kevin was standing between him and a cul-de-sac of crisscrossing timbers. The troll dropped to his knees.

“Would I do that?” he whined. “I mean, would I? After you bought me dinner and everything? Christ, man, gimme a break, willya? I got a family to look after, man; a wife and kids…Seka and Oprah…Rover and Babs. Look, I’m still on probation, man! Christ! How in the f**k does doing time make a better man of anybody? You tell me, pal--yeah, you tell me; it’s not like anyone gives a good long crap about what I have to say anyway. Public defenders, man. But what you gonna do? They gotcha coming and going.”

“Well, how do you explain it then?” Kevin demanded.

“It was…it was falling out of your pocket,” the troll said. “Yeah, that’s it, man; swear to God. I was afraid you might lose it, so I was trying to push it back in before it slid all the way out. You shouldn’t be pissed at me, man. You should be thanking me.”

As Kevin’s mind, still sleep-bedraggled, tried to deal with the troll’s lame explanation, he became increasingly disoriented. Either he’d blinked or the sun had just been swallowed by a black hole and just as suddenly regurgitated.

Kevin tensed. Air. He needed air.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, and stumbled toward the pulsing squares of daylight. He lurched into sunshine. Kevin sat on the clean sand for five minutes, recovering. At last he looked back at the pier, missing his bicycle.

Underneath was all vile, impenetrable darkness. The idea made him shudder, but he had to retrieve his bike and sleeping bag. Then he was clearing out, no doubt about it. He rose, shook himself, and grimly made his way back in.

The troll was asleep in Kevin’s bag. The boy angrily unzipped it and rolled him out. The troll didn’t waken, but coughed feebly and curled into a fetal ball. Kevin rolled and tied the bag, strapped it to his bike’s rack. He was about to leave when his heart took a turn. Nodding, he pulled a five dollar bill from his wallet and stuffed it in the troll’s front pocket. He carried his bike out quietly, shaking his head and aching all over. He would have to make a note to scout out his sleeping spots before dark in the future, and from now on he’d have to think ahead before getting involved with strangers. And he really had to start watching his money.