THE PALE LIGHT OF SUNSET: SCATTERSHOTS AND HALLUCINATIONS IN AN IMAGINED LIFE

Dying in San Francisco - 1966

143 1966 Dying in San Francisco I get drunk in San Francisco and fuck away all my money and then the Mexican burns the police car and we lose him. None of it is very hard to do. We don’t belong in the city. We don’t belong in a lot of places. Truth is, maybe we don’t belong anywhere. But, what the hell, it could be worse. Hell, I could be back in Bean Camp, or Black Hawk Ridge. Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle, I could be back in Crum. Later, in the army, I would come to understand that, yes, it could be worse. It could be much worse. In the alien darkness of nights in the city, the Indian and I walk the steep wet streets and try to find comfort in our own company. We lean together in black doorways and blacker basement stairwells of hard-faced buildings that offer nothing more than the cold touch of brick and stone. The days bring fog and then rain and even the doorways and stairwells fill with a coldness that goes straight to the bone, and to the heart. We Lee Maynard 144 steal ragged clothes from Salvation Army boxes and nothing fits and our steps drag and our jeans sag so that the cuffs wear against the grinding sidewalks, tattering, like kites left too long in the wind. In less than a week I know that we both have assumed the anonymous and sightless attitudes of street people. Bums. We don’t know how to make a living in a big city. We steal some more stuff to wear and then steal something to eat. We think about begging, but there is no way either of us can do that. We’d rather steal than beg. We know it is only a matter of time before the systems of the city catch up with us. And then people might ask about a whorehouse and a police car and a tough Mexican with a flaming whiskey bottle and an enormous faggot with deep slashes across his ass. And we didn’t want to talk about any of that. The Indian and I walk the streets, mostly looking for the Mexican, but there is no way of finding him. We take newspapers from busted racks and read them through, but there is no mention of the police car or the Mexican. I borrow the phone in a pizza shop and call the police, asking about the Mexican. The cop on the other end of the phone seems more interested in finding out exactly where I am. I hang up and we walk away, quickly. But not before I steal a pizza. Once, we come across a soup kitchen run by the Salvation Army. We go in and stand by the door for a while, just trying to get the hang of the place. The lighting in the big room is uneven, different light bulbs hanging from the electric cords. The light drains down over rows of long tables and narrow benches that sag and tilt. Silent men move in grim shuffles past large kettles where steam drifts up and washes among them, men moving through a soup of fog to the benches, hunching over their bowls. We get in line and get our soup and sit on a bench on the far end of the room. The little man sitting next to me takes his spoon and pours The Pale Light of Sunset 145 some hot soup down inside the front of his pants, holding his pants out from his belly and dribbling the soup in, a little at a time, letting the hot liquid splatter down inside his pants, soaking them, steaming his penis. When the spoon is empty he does it again, this time blowing on the spoonful of scalding soup before he dribbles it in. The Indian eats his soup and does not look around. As the little man dribbles the soup into his pants he hunches back and forth on the wooden bench, his mind not in the room. Then he makes a little grunting noise, stiffening on the bench. In a few seconds he relaxes, almost folding forward onto the table. He never eats a single spoonful of the soup. He puts the spoon down and leaves, soup dripping from his pants legs. The Indian gets up and walks...