Jonesy

My stomach rumbled as I scarfed down the meat-filled pastry from the Food-tek deli, that I had bought with the $3.35 I had managed to spare-change in the last 2 hours. I probably could have gotten more, but I was feeling too lazy and too stoned to be very active in my pursuit of money. I had a tattered cardboard sign that Jonesy the black vet who sits on the corner with his amputated foot sticking out for good measure, lent me on his way in to the girly show. He always had extra money, he did better than any of us, or all of us combined, but after all he was an old hand and he had the race thing on his side, I mean after all, who was gonna give money to a bunch of white suburban teens that were just hangin’ around instead of being in school. The sign said “Spare change for a Vietnam Vet” and on account of the Desert Storm thing and all those yellow ribbons on the houses, he usually made a killing off their guilt. As for me, the sign got a few snickers out of the people that bothered to actually read it, and I probably didn’t smell so good, so not too many people gave me anything and when they did, they sort of threw it from five feet away. It had been several days since I had been in a warm shower. Five, actually, not since I had gone home with that boy Jaime. He was a good fuck, and he let me have a shower after and he even made me a pot of pasta before I left. But that was last week and he probably wouldn’t be back around. He said he was heading west. I walked by his apartment the other day, but there was no one around. I guess he already left.

So, the really funny thing was that Jonesy didn’t lose his leg in Vietnam, he lost it a few years back because of his diabetes. He said he never could stick to the diets that they gave him at the clinics, and he hated flopping at the shelters because people would always steal his stuff. And anyway what was the point because he wasn’t gonna stop drinkin his malt liquor with his buddy Jack Daniels. He said it was safer on the streets, except for the damn cold. My fingers were freezing even inside the wool gloves from Peru or somewhere that I stole from Imagine last week when I showered. People felt bad for Jonesy on account of his missing leg, and I guess I felt bad for him too, he said it still hurt where his leg should have been, he could feel the freezing burn and itching, but he couldn’t stop the pain because there was no leg to heat up, to put inside a warm blanket.

Sometimes we would do better when we pooled our resources, two or three of us natty headed kids would take turns getting up from the sidewalk and asking for money from the people walkin around buying shit they didn’t need. The best place to get food when we were hungry was over in china town, we would walk the fifteen blocks from South Street and there was always a ton of food that the chinks and gooks would leave outside for us. I don’t think they really felt sorry for us, but it was a way to keep us from pan-handling in front of their restaurants and shops and we didn’t care because we were getting free food and so what if we didn’t know what we were eating. Then we'd hang around outside the Trocadero to see who was playing and sometimes score some hash or coke or 'shrooms or whatever we could get our hands on.

The night before was a bad night though and that’s why I was by myself that day. Elektra, Modeki and me were out in front of Abilene listening to Fugazi when the bouncers decided that they didn’t want no f-ing teenagers with heroin breath ruining their view, and when we didn’t move they started kicking with their steel-toed boots. If we had been shooting up horse it wouldn’t have been so bad, but we were all tripped out on some bunk acid and it was scary-ass trip. There were only three to start but the three turned into fifteen, coming at us from all directions with fists and feet like octopuses. They were as bad as any skin heads, and they’re bad, when they catch a whiff of us hippies they get sadistic. Last time I went home it was because some fuckin neo-nazi kicked my ribs in and when they took me to the hospital, they told me that if I didn’t tell them where I lived, they’d call DCYF and I would have to go into the system, so I told them and that’s how I ended up back at my house for the worst two weeks of my life.

My mom actually made me go back to school after the first week, but when I told the principal to go fuck herself up the ass, I spent the rest of the week in in-school suspension. ISS was actually pretty cool because I scored some good weed and a few tabs to keep me going, and that way I could ignore my little sister looking sad all the time and my step dad… I guess it would have been ok, but one day I got so bored sitting in that tiny room with the bitch who watches us all and doesn’t even let us draw pictures but says that if we don’t have work to do, we can copy words out of the dictionary. Like I need a dictionary to learn any new words. I would've brought something to read but then no one would even give me the time of day and she woulda thought she had won when really it had nothing to do with her. And I started fiending for a nic fix, and even though we all know she goes off school grounds during her lunch break to smoke half a pack 'cause she reeks so bad we could all get off on just the smell, she wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom without watching me walk down the hall to the bathroom, so when the bell rang, after e period I just bolted for the door, and that fat piece of shit couldn’t have caught me if she tried, but I don’t think she did. It woulda been ok, but when I went home thinking that I was gonna eat the leftover tacos from the night before, I opened the door and I heard Susan crying and I ran to the bedroom door and there was my step dad in his underwear with his hairy crack hanging out and I just turned and bolted before he could do that to me again. I kinda felt guilty for my little sister, she’s only 12, but I thought that it was just me he did those things to and I didn’t know he liked girls. Just goes to show you. And my mom is so fucking weak she just stays with him even when he comes home drunk as a skunk and punches holes in the walls because she says that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. I say the devil is the devil anyway you look at him, and I’d kill him if I could but it was just easier to leave again, and I already knew enough people around so I could find a place to crash for a while.

So the bouncers were beating on us and I think that they let Elektra and Mo go, but I didn’t stay to find out, I just ran like hell as soon as I could down to the pier and my lungs were burning from the cold and from so much smoking, and I collapsed by the statue of Christopher Columbus. I remember in third grade, before everyone thought I was stupid, I did a report on him. He was a pretty cool guy, he was from Italy but he lived all over Europe and he had all these different names and he explored new places and I bet he had servants to make food for him and he went to the Queen of Spain and she gave him lots of money just so he could take this really long trip on a boat and explore some more. My mom helped me make a model boat, just like the one he sailed across the Atlantic ocean in… But then she met Stu and that was the end of model ships and book reports. I never did get to go to the Jersey shore. That’s when they moved me to that other classroom with the kids that had learning disabilities, they said because couldn't concentrate and I couldn't sit still. Mostly, I think they wanted attention, and all the boys loved the teacher Miss Roach, she had long red hair and she would rest her hands on our backs when she leaned in to help us with a math problem of something we didn’t understand. I don’t know what the big deal was, she smelled funny to me, sicky sweet perfume and she seemed so sad. But that was then and this is now and I don’t need to be doing any stupid book reports for anyone anyway, what's the point, I mean books are good for company but not much else, and then if its cold they burn pretty hot, but not for very long.

I must have passed out because when I woke up the sun was rising and the smell of piss was all around me and it wasn’t mine. It smelled like alcohol and that’s when Jonesy came over and handed me the brown bag with a forty inside and said drink. I was too tired to argue and it warmed me up a little. Come on kid, he said, let’s go get us some warm pussy. And I didn’t argue even though the idea sounded really disgusting to me, it was nice to have some human company and Jonesy moved really fast for a guy with just one leg. He smiled his toothless grin and said that he liked using crutches better than a wheelchair, even though he could of gotten one on account of being a Vietnam vet and all, because he could use the crutches to defend himself if he needed. We walked back up towards center city on Bainbridge, so we wouldn’t run into those assholes again.

We walked back to where he kept his stuff and he said, look kid I'm gonna tell you a secret. And I didn’t really want to hear his secret in his slurred early morning state but he was gonna tell me anyway so I figured I’d humor the old man and besides he was probably gonna get me something to eat. He said, boy, I’m gonna tell you a secret and you better listen ‘cause its what been keepin’ me alive all these years, like a mangy ole dog… heh heh, he smiled his toothless smile and all of a sudden I was afraid of him like he was the bogeyman, but he said that the secret was he always remembered that Jesus loved him and that I shouldn’t forget that he loved me too. Then I just felt sorry for him. I know if Jesus is really real, he doesn’t give a flying fuck about me or else he would have made Stu not do those things to me, and he would have made my mom love me and my dad not die when I was too little to remember him and my sister Suzy cry all the time and he wouldn’t of made me so stupid. There was no Jesus for me but I didn’t want to make him feel bad, so when we got to his spot in the alley by the rusted out oil drums I asked him if I could borrow his sign and he said sure because he was gonna take the money he made and go get him some.

So I sat on the curb just outside the First Pennsylvania bank and propped up his sign and it didn’t take much effort to look pathetic because I had the crap kicked out of me and I probably looked like death warmed over and my gloves were already falling apart and my jeans were too long and all crusty with dirt from scuffling around, so in just two hours I had enough money to go in and buy some food and sit upstairs on the second floor and look out the big window down at the people who were just starting to move around below me. I watched and I watched and then finally the Greek manager came up and asked me if I was going to order something else, and he knew I wasn’t because I was counting out pennies to pay for the food I bought and he said that if I was finished that I needed to go because they had paying clients that needed to use the space. I don’t know what he was talking about because the place was empty, but I was too tired to argue, so I just went to the bathroom and walked back down, and out the door that jingled a bell as I left.

And I probably would have still been sitting there on the curb waiting for Jonesy to come back for his cardboard sign when I heard the gunshot and then the ambulance come wailing its way around the corner. And then I saw them come back out of the building in front of me with a stretcher and on the stretcher was a black guy that looked an awful lot like Jonesy. And when I walked over, Jonesy was still breathing and he caught my eye and said, boy, I’m going over home. I walked back over to where he had left his stuff and I found $300 stashed in the middle of his stinking clothing and I knew he wanted me to have the money, so here I am and that’s how I got the money for the greyhound and ended up here in San Francisco.