REG TEETERED ACROSS Main Street and up the alley behind American Biomedical. The single, oversized shoe had fallen from his swollen right foot as he ran to avoid being hit by a semi, whose hurried driver had borne down on the horn instead of the brakes. His tattered pants were held up by a flimsy rope fastened around his computer-chair stomach. The shade of the alley offered relief to his bare, blistering feet. Completely drained, he slumped on the ground against the building.
His perception of Wyatt, the young man from the restroom, was now far different from before. The 17-year-old “freak” had recently inherited a five-thousand-dollar death benefit from a grandfather who’d died from Alzheimer’s. Wyatt had served as his main care-giver until Medicare finally agreed to place the old man in a rest home. He had known of the money since before his grandfather was too sick to think, and dreamed of running away to Vegas to gamble it into a fortune, after which his plan called for him to move far from home–far away from his abusive father.
The young man’s great Las Vegas adventure, however, had turned sour. Chased from one casino to another after he had sneaked in and dropped his money into their slots, now all but a few bucks were gone; he’d saved only enough for the bus ride back to Seattle.
Perhaps, though, Wyatt’s being there was predestined. Indeed, for Greg, he’d been an angel in disguise, leading him into an empty stall where, standing naked on the cold tile, the boy washed his dirty shirt, pants and underwear. Some minutes passed before Wyatt handed a wad of moist paper towels over the stall door so Greg could wash himself off. Then came the clothes, having been dried under the restroom’s hand dryer.
As Greg had struggled to dress, the questions Wyatt had asked were far-reaching. Greg had croaked back his answers the best he could. “You ever hit your kids?”
“No,” Greg had answered curtly.
“You ever beat your wife until she couldn’t stand up no more, while
your kids watched?”
“No.”
“You ever come home at night, drag your son from bed and slam
him against the wall ‘cause he forgot to take out the garbage? . . . How about stealing your wife’s paycheck to buy booze? . . . You ever let your kids go hungry for the week?”
“No. . . . No . . .”
“Well, if you had, I’d’ve told you you’d be better off dead,” the young man had said, tears welling up in his eyes as Greg emerged from the bathroom stall.
Now, out on the street, Greg pondered both Wyatt’s dismal state and his own catastrophic actions of the day and night before. It already seemed like a lifetime ago. A fever quickly gave way to a bout of shivers caused by the sunburn. These were accompanied by a terrible hangover. He hunched over, favoring his left side in order to escape the pain of the blistering flesh rubbing against his course jeans. Down the alleyway, an old lady pushing a wobbly shopping cart pressed toward him from behind a dumpster. She stopped a half dozen feet away and took a worn-out broom from her cart. “What you doin’ here?” she shouted, her toothless jaw flapping on stringy muscles, her rubbery arms shaking the butt of the broom in Greg’s face. “Get outta here–this’s our alley!”
Greg didn’t move. Fever and dehydration barely permitted him to remain conscious. “Please leave me alone,” he whispered.
Seeing the pitiful figure slouched before her was no threat, the old woman bent closer. “What’d you say?”
Greg closed his eyes in resignation. “Leave me alone.”
The woman bent still closer to see who it was she was threatening. Greg lifted his eyelids. A pair of cataract-covered pupils were pressed inches from his face. The tramp was chomping on her gums, smacking her lips together, breathing heavily through her crooked nose. “No, he ain’t going to hurt us–he can hardly sit up,” she grunted, peering to one side as if speaking to someone. “Looks pretty bad, don’t ya’ see?”
Greg gazed in the direction of her presumed companion; no one was there. He began to shiver and shake, then sagged to the ground and pulled his knees up to his trembling torso.
“I think he needs our help. Now shut up an’ gimme a hand; I’ve had ‘nough of your naggin’ today.” The old woman tugged at Greg’s sweatstained shirt until he sat up. “Don’t just stand there–help me. This man’s fatter ‘an the last one.”
With the old woman’s assistance, Greg staggered to his feet. Leaning him over the cart, the woman wove it down the alley to the back of the parking garage, four buildings away. Shifting her gaunt frame, she yanked at the heavy cart, slowly guiding her awkward load behind a green metal power box and into a narrow space hidden under the parking ramp.
“He ain’t gonna hurt us. . . . See, he’s married.” The woman drew Greg’s hand close to her face and examined his grotesquely swollen finger, evidence of an aborted attempt to remove his ring. “If’n he were one ‘a us he wouldn’t still need it, now would he? Look at the skin that ain’t burnt–lily white, fresh from the office, fed plenty well. . . . By the look of his beard, he’s only been out a few days. Gonna take a while for ‘im to toughen up–get street-smart.”
A smelly but warm blanket was gently pulled over Greg’s shivering body and a fuzzy brown pillow tucked under his head before he drifted into a deep sleep. “Now you get some rest, young fella; Nurse here’ll go find somethin’ fer that burn.”