In an alleyway behind an adult bookstore I rummaged through the trash cans and watched the people who came in and out the back entrance, and realized I had become invisible. A girl in a black leather miniskirt led a short, paunchy man out the door, watched with calculating eyes while he counted out the money, tucked it in her bra, and then got down on her knees in front of him and did what she had been paid for. When she finished, she watched him walk nervously down the alley toward the sidewalk, and then turned to me, searching through the garbage less than ten feet away.
“I’ll bet you wish you could have some,” she said with a smirk, and then disappeared inside.
I had just bent down to look inside the next garbage can when, suddenly, I went flying over it, and landed in a heap on the other side, buried under the trash that collapsed on top of me. Twisting around, I pulled my head up, tried to get to my feet, and was shoved back. A hulking wreck of a human being, with stinking breath and a slobbering mouth that looked like it bred corrup-tion, was waving his arm at me and pointing a finger at his chest.
“This is yours?” I asked, as I scrambled sideways to get beyond his reach. “Yours?” I asked, nodding. I kept moving, and kept repeating the same question, letting him know that my trespass was entirely inadvertent. “Sorry,” I said when I was far enough away from him to risk struggling to my feet. I backed down the alley, apologizing, and then, when I was safe, turned around and walked away as quickly as I could.
Late that night I made my way to the Morrison Street Bridge.
I dragged a few rotting pieces of cardboard I found under the bushes, and crawled underneath this makeshift blanket. The ground was hard, cold, jagged with rocks, and each time I turned over there were only a few moments of relief before I started to hurt in a new place. I hardly slept at all that night, and never for very long. Though I could not clearly see more than a few of them when I first arrived, I could sense that there were breathing bodies scattered all around. Years had passed, but the memory I had of the nights spent in the county jail was still vivid in my mind. This was not like that. No one cried out; no one moaned or whimpered or cursed; no one made a noise, nothing, except the heavy rolling sound of people who were sleeping in their own beds, the only ones they knew.
I did not think I had slept at all, but when I opened my eyes the sun was out and the traffic on the bridge overhead was deafening. My mouth felt like glue and my teeth hurt. I climbed out from under the cardboard blanket and looked around. Down at the edge of the river, two men stood side by side, urinating. Off to the side, sitting on his haunches, another man soaked his shirt and then wrung it out with his hands. On the shadows next to the concrete pilings, four men were gathered around a small fire, warming their hands while water boiled in a blue aluminum pot.
No one moved aside to let me in, and I stood a few feet away.
The one who had been doing his laundry in the river came back, carrying his shirt in his hand.
“Let him in,” he said as he sat down in the circle. “Come on,”
he insisted when at first I did not move. They made room, and I joined them. No one said anything, and looking at them, dull-eyed and lethargic, I wondered how many knew how.
“It’s the best coffee in town,” the man said, urging me to drink it. My eye darted to the river behind him. He shook his head.
“The water came from a fountain. I fill my canteen.”
I wondered if, with that careless glance, I had given myself away. With a blank look, as if I had no idea why he thought he had to explain something so obvious, I tried to cover my mistake. My eye still on him, I took a drink, and almost gagged on the rancid taste. He watched me for a moment longer, and then, smiling to himself, lowered his gaze.
No one said anything, not to me, not to anyone. They sat in a circle, drinking that awful brew, made, I discovered later, from the used coffee grinds found in the garbage behind one of my favorite restaurants. Then, a few minutes later, as if by some silent signal that passed my notice, they got to their feet and, without a word, drifted off in different directions.
The one who had given me the cup lingered behind. “You coming back tonight?” he asked.
I let him know with a look that it was none of his business what I did. If he thought my belligerence a threat, he did not show it. He reached inside his overcoat pocket and brought out a half-pint bottle of whiskey and offered it to me.
“Suit yourself,” he said when I refused. Removing the cap, he took a short swig and wiped his mouth with the back of his tattered, greasy sleeve. “Helps keep the coffee down,” he explained as he shoved the bottle back in his pocket.
I started to walk away. “You can come with me, if you want,”
he said. I stopped and looked back. He had already turned and was heading along a path that led under the bridge and came up on the other side. I followed behind and when we reached the top, he moved a bush aside and pulled out a rusty shopping cart heaped with black garbage bags stuffed full. Craning his neck, he squinted up at the glaring white sky. His lips pressed tight together, he moved his mouth back and forth while he made up his mind. Opening the bag on top, he dug out an olive green army camouflage jacket. He took off the overcoat, rolled it into a ball, and shoved it as far down in the basket as it would go and then put on the jacket.
We worked our way through town, stopping at every trash basket. A division of labor soon developed between master and ap-prentice: I pushed the cart, and each time we halted, he did a thorough search, deciding what was useless and what had value.
He always found something, a bottle, a can, something that could be turned into cash. When we reached the park behind the courthouse, I remembered the two men I had seen there late at night, doing what we were doing now, my own life somehow prefigured in that dreamlike apparition from the past.
On the sidewalk outside the courthouse entrance, afraid I might be recognized, I left my newfound friend and partner to rummage through the wire mesh trash baskets alone. I stood off to the side, next to a lamppost at the curb, watching people I knew at least vaguely going in and out the doors. Hunching my shoulders, I pulled the flaps of the cap I was wearing farther down over my ears. I ran my fingers over my beard and felt a little more confident that at least at a distance no one would know it was me.
He finished with the one basket and looked around to see where I was. I was about to catch up with him when someone bumped into me from behind. Instinctively, I turned around, and found myself face-to-face with Cassandra Loescher, the deputy district attorney who was prosecuting the case. She had been talking to someone, not paying attention to where she was going, and when she knocked into me had spilled the paper coffee cup she was carrying in her hand.
“Damn it!” she cried, holding the cup out in front of her. She started to apologize, but as soon as she saw me all she could think about was getting away. I reached out to help, but she dropped the cup on the sidewalk and walked rapidly up the courthouse steps.
Emboldened, I took a position next to the steps, held out my filthy hand, and studied the various ways in which the people I asked for money averted their gaze and tried to avoid making an answer. Two otherwise fair-minded judges treated me with open contempt, one of them complaining loudly to the other that it was bad enough this sort of thing went on in the public park and disgraceful that it was allowed in front of a public building. Defense lawyers sneered and turned away when I asked them if they could help one of the indigent. Harper Bryce, his reporter’s notebook sticking out of his suit coat pocket, ambled past me, on his way to cover yet another trial. He stopped, turned back, reached into his pants pocket, gave me all the change he had, and without once looking at me, disappeared inside. I opened my hand, counted seventy-eight cents, and felt like a wealthy man.