Mean

“Schick’s a mean bastard,” the boy thought when he saw him in the distance, walking in Seattle’s grey snow, down beside the tracks. Under the bridge’s thrumming perpetual shadow, the boy saw him step onto the steep concrete and stone embankment, and begin to climb. The boy melted. But then he scrambled to hide his food and empty his pockets of change. It was too late. Schick had seen him.

Schick announced his arrival by clouting the boy's face with a closed fist. The boy fell and stayed down. He felt the grit of concrete and loose gravel under his face, against his split swelling lip. Schick kicked the boy twice, once in the ass and once in the ribs. His voice was thin and grating, demanding money. The boy turned out his pockets as Schick stood over him. When he was done, two dollars and twenty cents in change lay at Schick’s feet.

Schick was not happy. He said “It’s not enough.” He kicked the boy again, once in the arm where it meets the shoulder, and in the gut, to the left of the navel. The boy curled there, his hands covering his head. Within the boy’s breath-stealing pain, shame vied with fear as he shat his pants. Schick scooped up the change and walked to the boy’s house, wedged between the embankment and the bridge above.  

The cardboard of the boy’s house gave way to Schick’s hands and feet. He lifted a blanket, wadded it and threw it down to the railroad tracks below.  The boy’s prized sleeping bag and scraps of his clothing went into a dank oily puddle in the darkness where great steel girders met concrete. A book of Whitman’s poetry flew from Schick’s hand, landing open to the snow, outside the bridge’s shadow. Schick found the boy's stash, a small metal can. He crushed it, pocketing a few dollars and a half smoked joint.

The boy’s breath mixed with tears. His face flushed and he made a high keening sound when Schick turned from the ruin of cardboard and cloth and said again, “It’s not enough.”

A chaos of kicks and blows left Schick’s boots damp with the boy’s blood. Bones broke. Screams rose in pitch then faded to whimpers. There came a silence deeper than the constancy of rushing machine noise above. The rage, the madness of Schick’s insufficiency was sated. 

Schick was tired. He paused for a moment to light the roach he’d found, taking a deep hit, and then another. As he exhaled the smoke, he pulled down his zipper and pissed over the boy’s still form. Yellow and red mixed, painting the concrete and loose gravel, running downward in thinning fingers.

In the morning they found Schick’s body first, head crushed against the steel track below. His boots were encrusted in black half dried blood, blood that had lubricated his fall. The boy’s body was not found until later in the day, when an observant police woman tried to find the precise place where Schick had fallen. From below the embankment’s edge she looked upward into the gloom and spied the crumpled still form of the boy.

“Father Abraham,” cried out Schick across the abyss. “send me a drop of water, for the fire burns without ending!” To his great surprise, he could see a glint falling from the higher radiance. Closer and faster it fell through the æther. Schick’s mouth agape, he felt a bead of water strike his tongue. Heaven’s dew met the infernal and passed to steam. He cried out, “It’s not enough!”

Above, in a place of seeing and knowing, of warm shade and cool light, a place where enough was enough, the boy smiled as he heard Schick’s cry, and again he pissed.

And the angels of God sang praises for the victory of the lamb.

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[This is a reworked version of a story I first published to this blog in 2008, and is part of a fiction series written out of the experience of being a homeless teen in Seattle.]