Bernard tells about the day Bob’s heart broke and he left home to wander the wide world. An afterthought in a family where his two brothers were seventeen and twenty-one years older, Bob once heard a fierce argument between his parents in which they both blamed each other for Bob’s birth. A terrible mistake, Bob overheard his parents calling him. The next day, he ran away from home. “It’s sad. His philosophy of life is ‘Fuck them before they fuck you.’ Behind everything he does, there is some hidden agenda. He’s a pathetic liar.”
Bernard tells me more of Bob’s tricks. “For an entire year, he had been working honestly at WeCan. Everybody trusted him. One time, Guy Polhemus, the boss, asked him to cash a check for a few hundred bucks. A few other homeless also gave him their checks for canning. Bob jumped in a cab and never came back. Went on a six-day speed binge. Another day, I would do a paint job for a super. Bob comes later, and offers him a sharper price. The super gives Bob an advance to get paint and brushes. And gone is Bob. One time he had learnt a song. ‘Have you got an eeny-weeny eetsy-peetsy tiny-winy little piece of crack.’ With dance steps,” Bernard sighs. “I was just smoking when he danced inside my space. ‘Bob,’ I said. ‘Asshole. Fuck off. How long have you been studying on that one?’”
Bernard sighs. “Unbelievable. Bob thinks he is such a genius. But people give him some bucks just to get him out of their face. At the end, Terry Williams would just give him a ten so he would be gone. One time Bob came complaining to me. ‘Nobody likes me,’ he mourned. I told him: ‘Think deeply, Bob! Did you ever give someone a reason to like you?’”
Bernard throws spaghetti in a pan and opens a can of Bolognese sauce. From his bunker, he gets a big bag of pistachio nuts. “Saved out of the hands of Tony,” he says, presenting me a small dish as a starter. “He had found them on the street and wanted to feed them to the squirrels in the park ‘Gimme the nuts, you moron,’ I could just say in time. These dirty animals are better fed than most people in New York,” Bernard has to laugh about the incident. “Yes, Dune, that’s the way things go down here.”
From the trash around the garbage pile he pulls out a camping table and sets it up on the little paths next to the tracks. I get a good bottle of wine out of my bunker, somehow left untouched by Bob. “A Californian Cabernet Sauvignon,” Bernard reads the label. “A bit dry,” he remarks and gets a bottle of sweet missionary wine out of his bunker. I can hardly hide my horror when he mixes the two wines. “Ah, you see Dune, a real smooth-drinking wine,” he says when he leans happily backward and sips from the awful mix.
Above all, Bernard is a typical American. Everything needs to be smooth, creamy, full, and flavored. He never drinks a normal ice tea, no, it has to be strawberry-flavored ice tea, just as he prefers his coffee with hazelnut or swiss-almond flavor. It is a disturbing trend in America: Cherry Flavored Coke and Pineapple Flavored Chocolate Milk. I would venture that when we have come full circle, and coffee tastes like chocolate and vice versa, they will introduce original coffee flavored coffee on the market.
Bernard serves dinner. “Yeah, Wild Bob. One time, he made a brilliant remark. ‘Modern man is not complete without chaos.’ If only he could apply it to himself,” Bernard laughs out loud. Then he turns quiet and thinks for a while, sucking up strings of spaghetti. He has a weak spot for his old friend and is genuinely concerned about him. But sometimes he gives up all hope.
“I told Bob, ‘Cut the crap. One day you’ll really need money. If you want to go back to Chicago, to your brothers, who can you turn to? Who still wants to give you any money?’ But Bob doesn’t give a shit. His dream is to die with a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his shirt, a thermos of fresh coffee on the table, and a pipe of crack in his mouth.”
A few cats crouch around the table. One even jumps on it and starts to lick Bernard’s plate. He kicks the animals away. “Go back to work, you dirty cats. Better sharpen your claws and move your asses. Everything that crawls around between the Northern Gate and the South End, grab it by its neck. It’s no goddamn amusement park here.” With cries of terror, the cats disappear in the darkness. Bernard takes another sip of his wine cocktail. “Yeah, Bob. Death is creeping up on him. Time is running out. And he knows it. If it’s not a heart attack, it will be AIDS. Or he will be gunned down by someone he once deceived. And me, they will kill me as well, as a witness.”
According to Bernard, he knows Bob is HIV-positive because he once found a flier for organizations that cater to homeless people with AIDS. And Larry, a temporary roommate of Bob, once found three “big-ass dongs” while cleaning up the bunkers. As big as cucumbers, Bernard describes them graphically. Once, Bob had something vague going on with Jeff. That’s why Tony and Bob never got along. “Bunch of idiots,” Bernard mumbles. “All of us could have been rich down here if we had worked together. We could have done two-for-oneing, stashed the cans for Pier John, we could have started a complete business. But they never trusted me. Cheap bastards and petty crooks, that’s what they are.”
Bernard sighs in exasperation. “Bob told me that the director of Pete’s Place cried when he left for the YMCA. ‘You see, they’ll miss me.’ I told him, ‘Bob, they cry because they will miss your money. That SSI check now goes straight to the Y.’ Bob gets off when people care about him. What the fuck. It’s human nature to care. It’s an instinct, nothing else. Why pat someone on the back for being natural?”
“Bob is one of the most honest people on this planet,” extols the Reverend William ‘Bill’ Robinson, Bob’s spiritual counselor. “He is an extremely sensitive, smart man. Never was he ashamed of his addiction. And if we look deep into our souls, we are all addicted to something. Money, Fame, Power. But we refuse to acknowledge that.”
Father Bill worked in Pete’s Place when Bob arose from the tunnel and washed up there.
“His life is a saga. Out of the darkness, into the full light,” declared Father Bill to the New York Times. The paper thought the resurrection of Bob intriguing enough to devote a main article to it. Now the amicable pastor is affiliated with Saint George’s Church in Brooklyn. Over there, we discuss Bob’s journey from the tunnel to Pete’s Place, to the room he got at the YMCA, his descent into the tunnels and now again, his second voyage upwards to Pete’s Place.
“The most beautiful thing Bob ever accomplished was leaving the security of the tunnels. It was dark and cold over there, but at least, everything was safe and secure,” Father Bill proclaims with a solemn voice. “A home is not a place where you just spend the night, it is the place where people know you and value you. Bob needs the positive signals of other people. That is why it did not work out at the YMCA. Bob had there a cold, impersonal room, a cell where you could not even write on the walls.”
The juxtaposition of light versus darkness is Father Bill’s favorite metaphor. “When you live in the darkness, things can be fuzzy. You cannot discern beautiful things. Only in the light can you see beauty with clarity. Seeing is a gift. But it’s a two edged sword. In the light, you also see all the cracks. How much of the truth can you bear? Bob saw, but sight has a burden.”