Man Down

Chapter 18 of Carnival

Carnival

Chapter 18

Man Down

The day was on the wane.

For hours Kevin sleepwalked the city, climbing up and up and up the interminable hills, flowing down down down and climbing again; around corners and across brightly lit traffic-choked streets, drawing off some bottled-up reserve energy that allowed him to run on automatic pilot--effortlessly, endlessly, miraculously unscathed. He never tired. Those pedestrians he actually blundered into tolerated his stupor with mute resignation. And his absurd costume, which in the daytime might have triggered bitter and drastic retaliation, somehow complemented the festive atmosphere of the city’s famous nightlife.

It was a mild, gorgeous evening, the sky crisp and marvelously cool. Tireless window-shoppers were out in droves, laughing and raising hell, noisily killing time. Kevin parted them like a cable car. The current which drove him on and on appeared to be inexhaustible, his private track stuck to the sidewalks, and eventually his bounds narrowed as his center of gravity stabilized. He bobbed along in a fairly straight line and, except for those occasional collisions, went largely unnoticed as the night progressed.

The safety valve that kept him from shattering--by letting energy escape in this walking and walking and walking--was closing by the time he reached the downtown financial district. For a while he followed Pine Street eastward. He turned left at Kearny and, before turning, glimpsed for a second the lights of the Bay Bridge crossing placid inky water, and beyond that water the glow of Oakland. Kearny Street was jewel-lit, blinding, boisterous and confused. And now Kevin’s legs were faltering, his arms dangling at his sides. He was winding down. He stumbled through jabbering Chinatown, where the clamor and bustle turned him on his heel, sending him south back down Kearny all the way to Geary. Here his automatic pilot decreed he perform a right-face and pitch westward to Union Square, where the movements of the crowd milling round the monument commemorating Dewey’s Manila Bay triumph got him orbiting the slender spire in steadily narrowing circles, tightening the loops until his foot at last struck the pedestal. He rested his forehead on the cool stone for the briefest moment, only to abruptly rebound into an orbit running counter to his original, backpedaling until his dizzy brain objected and turned him about.

He staggered west on Post Street, stubbing his clumsy hooves on curbs, becoming increasingly maladroit while drawn the mile and a half to the color and hysteria of Japantown. He was weaving across Van Ness Avenue when there was a click in his skull, and he performed an awkward left-face. He shambled down Van Ness to the maze of Civic Center, circumnavigated City Hall, plowed through the hedges in Fox Plaza and rammed into the flanks of the Civic Auditorium, where the mercilessly jostling crowds sent him off reeling, zigzagging down Grove Street to Market, down Market to Seventh, at last stumbling through the mob outside the Greyhound Bus Depot. Kevin lurched into the great vault of the depot, barking his shins and bashing his elbows, at last collapsing on one of the cushioned benches. Instantly he was back on his feet, wobbling through the crowd. By chance he wandered to the very bench he’d so recently vacated, and when he crumpled down this time he remained crumpled, drained. His face trembled with dry sobs, the remaining junk beads on his eyeglasses clattering along.

And the diaphanous image of a pretty, fickle girl with fine chestnut hair shimmered before his eyes, her lips parting for a silent laugh at his gullibility. Kevin’s jaw dropped and a gut-deep moan of utter despair, of groundless apology, passed from his throat like gas. He granted this apparition exclusive possession of his body and soul; to succor, to trash--to do with as it would. And she laughed again, soundlessly, waxed opaque, offered a slender, ethereal hand. He groped to his feet, lunging for the hand. But she teased him, floating away, her body rippling like a banner in the softest breeze. Forever just beyond his reach, she grew wispy, becoming fainter and fainter as she carefully guided him through the crowd. He followed her back out the depot’s giant main entrance, where she glowed angelically in multicolored streaks of neon, grew dimmer in the night, laughed silently again. And vanished. Kevin cried out and stumbled off the curb, his arms spread wide. There was the harsh blast of a car’s horn, a shriek of rubber on asphalt, and something struck him a terrible blow on the left hip, knocked him a dozen feet to crack his temple against the bumper of a parked car. Searing pain shot up his left side and passed. Absolutely numb, he pawed at the car’s fender as he fought to stand. His left leg refused to respond.

Frantic voices gathered around him. A woman screamed, a man grated “Jesus, Jesus,” over and over. A wild pain blasted his hip when he tried to rise, unlike anything he’d ever imagined. Hands strove to hold him down, but he lashed out and lurched screaming alongside the parked car, the lifeless leg dragging behind. Other voices pursued him, more hands seized his shoulders and arms. He whirled snarling, pitched between two parked cars and across the sidewalk, slammed against a brick wall. To his left rose the urgent howl of a siren. Kevin, using the wall for support, scratched and scraped his way. The siren stopped half a block back and the wall ended abruptly. Kevin hopped down an alley gripping his leg, made a left turn down a smaller alley, burst out into the thinner crowds of Mission Street. The pedestrians moved aside and watched him pass; some frowning, others with laughter. Still gripping the paralyzed leg, he zigzagged the streets again, up Ninth to Market, up Market to Page, up Page to Gough, down Gough to Haight, throwing quick glances over his shoulder.

Haight Street.

He stopped and crumpled against a storefront in anguish, his fist hammering his leg. But the leg might as well have been severed at the hip. A sick pain pulsed at his temple.

Haight Street was darker and less crowded, populated only by shuffling shadows. Kevin fell in shuffling, throbbing along darkly until he reached the great green expanse of Golden Gate Park. The park and surrounding area were inundated with people, and the noise was terrific. Powerful emotions conflicted in his heart when he realized where he was, but the racket drove him away. And besides, the thing in command of his actions didn’t want him to enter the park--not yet. It wanted him to follow Stanyan, to stumble across the brief verdant loveliness of the Panhandle, to limp all the way to Geary, to reel westward on Geary to Twenty-Sixth Avenue. At Twenty-Sixth the autopilot grew flustered at a flurry of sensations originating somewhere behind Kevin’s eyes and racing through his brain, turning out all the lights inside. The autopilot aborted, dumping the boy atop some bags of garbage a few yards into an alley.

The seizure rocked Kevin with varying degrees of violence for five long minutes, and during that span at least a dozen people passed by the alley’s entrance. Each made a valiant effort to not notice him, moving along hastily, observing their wristwatches. The boy lazily swam back to consciousness. His perception became crystal clear. Where he lay his view was quite limited: only the brick wall he was facing, the sudden harsh double glare of passing headlights, a smattering of frosty-looking stars in the black wedge of sky above. Still, things were amazingly well-defined, from the pocks in the mortar between the old bricks, to the spiked green halos ringing the headlights. The sounds of traffic grew oddly muffled, the noise of approaching and retreating motors made him grow drowsy. And the drowsiness burned his eyes, and the burning grew hotter and hotter until at last a large round tear formed under his eyelid and made its slow rolling way over his cheek. In quick, scalding succession the tears tumbled from his eyes, rolling down his face to draw dark stains on the front of his shirt.

How could she be so heartless, so blind to love?

How could she just use him, lead him on so insensitively? How could she trash him? So fickle, so manipulating and selfish. As if drowning, as if going down for that last gasp of water, he saw her face flash by in a flapping portfolio. In what may have been minutes or hours he relived their entire story, from his first impression of her sitting alone by the highway, to the final crushing image of her standing engulfed in the arms of Adam.

At last traffic ceased, and with the ominous silence Kevin’s whole world froze. His only observation was a projection that seemed to be dancing on the wall: the slo-mo film of Adam and Eve was being cruelly replayed over and over for a one-man audience. The boy could even hear the steady hum of the projector, see its light hitting the wall from somewhere to his right.

No, it wasn’t a projector after all.

Kevin’s lolling self-preservation instinct let him know the light came from headlights, and the hum from the idling engine of a vehicle that had apparently been motionless down the alley for a few minutes, its occupants observing. He thought he heard something like dogs whining nervously, but the sound didn’t jibe with the sadistic film on the wall. There came the grinding of a transmission’s gears being changed. The vehicle slowly moved away in reverse as the light grew dimmer and dimmer and the film faded and faded and faded until he lay alone in the blackness of space and limbo.

No getting around it--it’s better to have never had than to have had and have lost.

Or, better still, it’s better to have had and still be indifferent. And yet…what good is having; what good is love if it isn’t of desperate importance? But that means being desperately dependent, desperately vulnerable.

Old child, young child, feel all right

On a warm San Franciscan night

Kevin imagined he heard Sahib’s voice, saying, “The joke’s on us all,” but only a masochist could find humor in this pain.

Silence swallowed him whole. He became insensible to the large and minor sounds, the heartbeat of a great city, and some time passed without his blinking an eye. Then the projector’s light was once more mysteriously playing on the wall, and Kevin again heard the whining of dogs--what sounded like big dogs.

I wasn’t born there. Perhaps I’ll die there--

There’s no place left to go…San Francisco.

A truck door slammed, Another. In the frozen eerie night, just above the background sounds of kennels and movie houses, Kevin numbly made out the voices of approaching intruders.

”Shee-it! What Ah tell ya. Dat hippie ain’t dead. He jes’ shammin’.”

A second voice, closer: “Hey! Homeboy! What ya doin’ in da gahbage?”

“Hee-hee.”

“Git yo’ a*s up when Ah’m talkin’ at ya, foo’. C’mon. Git up!”

Kevin was vaguely aware that his foot had just been kicked. But his whole body was numb, and the kick was no more concrete than a nudge in a dream. He was kicked again, harder, and now there was excited yammering above him.

“Le’s check ’im out. Mebbe he gots some dope.”

“He sho’ look like he be trippin’ on sumpn!”

Hands yanked him roughly to his feet. Kevin found himself looking into the faces of three black toughs.

“Say, boy. You gots any dope? You gots any money?” Kevin stared blankly. A sudden fist to the middle doubled him over. Hands began going through his clothes. At their touch something finally penetrated his stupor, and he began to halfheartedly struggle. Fists and feet tore into him, clubbing his skull and ribs as he fell sprawling on his face.

The toe of a boot found his chin, heels came stomping down on his head, and all he could do was throw his arms over his face and take it. In the glare of the headlights he had a quick, blurry impression of a young black holding back two huge frantic Doberman Pinschers, and then he was kicked hard and deliberately in the teeth. There was a splintering of bone. That one act of brutality was a trumpet call. The fists and feet came down in a psychotic hail.

Kevin was now treated to a strange out-of-body vision--he was watching his doppelganger lying motionless as six eager black hands ran over its broken splayed form.

“Ah gots his wallet. Shee-it! ’most a hunned dollahs!”

Still! Remain absolutely still! Kevin passively examined the hands scurrying over his dead-looking double, tearing open its shirt, yanking down its pants. He very clearly heard the assailants’ lusty breathing.

“Nuthin!”

“Le’s git da f**k outta heah b’fo’ da poe-lice come!”

“Check out dis belt!”

Kevin’s gorgeous snakeskin belt was ripped from his pants. The buckle slashed his face wildly, over and over, until the letters OWN THING in reverse were plainly dug across his temple and cheek. A boot slammed into his nose. Arms of radiant light shot from his eyes and passed. Blood began to pool around his head.

“He gonna git da license numbah!”

“No he ain’t.”

Where his glasses lay six inches from his gushing nose Kevin saw a shoe come stomping down. His glasses disintegrated with a crunching, kaleidoscopic explosion.

“Le’s split!”

The oddly muffled sound of doors slamming shut. The piercing raw-raw-raw of Pinschers. The pickup tearing by, narrowly missing crushing his leg. An elongated screech of brakes, then a howl of tires burning as the truck roared away. The sound of the truck’s engine became a growl, a hum, a whisper, a memory. And the night caved in, claiming one more statistic for The Haight.