The Scummers

Twelve

60 Twelve Flophouse San Francisco May 1960 There was silence. I didn’t know how long there had been silence. It bothered me. Where were the snoring sounds of the others? I lay there in the bunk, trying not to breathe the stink, but too full of hurt to get up. I was motionless, almost asleep, trying to let my body purge itself . Confused images floated in my mind, twisted fragments of rainstorms and slick city streets, of cars and fire and doorways. I heard the Indian twitch on his bunk and I rolled slightly to the side, trying to see him. My shirt was gone and as I rolled I could feel my naked skin sticking to the dirty mattress. Wendell Klah was lying on his bunk, flat on his back, his eyes closed. Just from the look of him I knew his mind was not here, in this room. It was probably back in New Mexico, lost in his being, floating on the winds and soft lights of the mesa. He was not here, not in this room with its stench and its dirty bodies. Wendell did not hear the soft, fat, shuffling bare feet as they came to the side of his bunk, did not really feel the eyes on him, did not smell the stink that grew more acrid as it flowed down from the huge body and across Wendell’s face. But I heard the feet and I smelled the stink and I gaped at the size of the hulk that loomed over Wendell’s bunk. It’s just that my muddled mind would not accept what I saw. Wendell did not see him, the hulk, but I knew he felt the hand. He felt it when it clamped his throat, felt it as it expertly cut off 61 his breathing, felt the fingers tighten around his neck. And then an arm, an arm the size of a leg, rammed under Wendell’s back and he was lifted as easily as a doll. And I thought Wendell Klah was going to die. I raised myself on my elbow, trying not to attract anyone’s attention . I could see Wendell more clearly now, but I could not see him breathing. The Indian’s back rose slightly from the mattress, lifted, bowing upward, leaving his feet and the back of his head on the bunk. It was as if his middle body had decided to rise, to leave, without taking the other parts with it. In the gloom beside Wendell a mountain of flesh moved slightly, a log-like arm under Wendell’s back, lifting. I could see a hand the size of a prime ham sticking out from beneath his back. The mountain of flesh, the hulk, was a giant, a towering mass of blubber. The giant leaned over the Indian, gripping him, turning him like a sack of laundry, one huge leg lifted to the edge of Wendell’s bunk. Except for a filthy, sagging sweatshirt, the arms cut off at the shoulders, the giant was naked and his trunk-like leg toyed with the edge of the bunk, tilting it. Behind the giant, outlined against the light, a tall, thin man stood, dancing from foot to foot on pole-like legs, elbows flapping, his hands held up in front of him like a fighter, fingers curled, except , oddly, his palms turned forward. A stickman. I wondered why Wendell wasn’t doing anything. Why was he just lying there? What the hell was this? Wendell was an Indian—maybe this was one of his angry gods? Okay, god, whichever one you are, we won’t ever drink that much again. I promise. Or do any more of that Ute shit. But, god or no god, I’m not making any promises about fucking. Wendell brought his hands up to his throat, trying to pull the 62 other huge hand away. Both Wendell’s hands did not fit around the hand that was there, choking him, a hand that seemed to fit around Wendell’s neck like my hand would fit around a broomstick. I could hear him making tiny strangling sounds. My mind was clearing. Wait, Wendell, I thought. Wait for me. “Stop making noise, Little Beaver, and you won’t git hurt,” a voice said from somewhere above the hand. I had never heard a god talk. Must be some sort of...