Serpents Rising. David A. Poulsen
their hinges; others were missing altogether.
The first door we came to had no handle but was closed. Cobb studied the door for a while as if trying to figure something out. He didn’t say what and finally knocked. No answer. He knocked again, waited maybe thirty seconds, then pushed on the door. It offered no resistance.
Flashlight out again. We were looking at a room about the size of my own, framed and drywalled but not painted. Holes in several places in the drywall. A couple of rooms led off of the big room; they were intended to be a kitchen and bathroom maybe. The main room was empty but for a sleeping bag piled in a heap on the floor, a few cases of empty beer bottles, and a discarded cereal box — Honey Nut Cheerios — in one corner. A large grey and white cat, surprisingly healthy looking, watched us, unconcerned.
“Anybody home?” Still no answer.
We stepped into the room. Several candles and a box of wooden matches lay next to the beer bottles. I lit the longest of the candles and moved to one of the rooms leading off of the main room. I peered into what I guessed was to be the bathroom, though nothing was plumbed. Part of a newspaper lay on the floor and I bent down to note the date. November 17. Less than a week old.
I stepped back into the main room at the same time that Cobb returned from the other room. “Kitchen,” he said, “but all that’s in there is a wooden crate, two empty wine bottles, a used syringe, and half a Coke can.”
“Stove,” I said. Heroin users had taken to using half a soft drink can to heat their smack. Better availability. Easy to use.
“Uh-huh.”
“Someone’s been here not that long ago.” I told him about the newspaper.
We stopped at the door and looked back into the place.
“The cat looks like he’s doing okay,” I said.
“Maybe he likes Cheerios.”
Cobb stepped out into the hall. I followed him and we moved on to the next place. This one had no door but a stained and tattered makeshift curtain hung limply from a couple of nails. Again Cobb called and again received no response. He pushed the curtain aside and we stepped in, did the tour — same layout as the last one. This one looked a little more lived in. Rumpled clothes on the floor, another sleeping bag, this one rolled up, lay next to a makeshift ashtray that was overflowing, mostly cigarette butts, a few roaches.
Several bricks supported a length of board that served as a counter or cupboard or maybe both. Two tins of cat food, a large jar of peanut butter, a plastic-wrapped half loaf of bread, a deck of cards, and one bottled water container, half full, occupied space on the board.
“Must eat out a lot,” I said.
Back in the hallway we continued down the hall, past the generator, still humming, a couple of black extension cords leading away from it. The third door in the hallway was closed and had a handle. Upscale. Cobb knocked once, then again, louder.
A male voice from inside said, “Yeah.”
“All right if we come in?”
“What d’ya want?”
“We’re looking for someone, wondered if he might live in the building.”
“Shit.”
Cobb looked at me. I shrugged.
“All right if we come in?” Cobb repeated.
A pause, then, “Yeah.”
Cobb gestured for me to step back, turned the handle and pushed the door open, stepping to one side as he did. He slowly leaned forward, looked in, nodded to me, and stepped across the threshold. I followed him inside.
The man was the one we’d seen from outside. He hadn’t moved and didn’t now. He was turned away from us, sitting on a stool, still staring out the window. I didn’t get a sense that he was actually looking at anything.
He was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, faded blue jeans with no belt, and some kind of slippers that looked like deck shoes. No hat, and what hair he still had was mostly grey. It hadn’t been combed in a long time. He was either the toughest person I’d ever met or he had two or three shirts under the sweatshirt. The room was the temperature of a meat locker.
It was also the cleanest we’d seen to that point, which isn’t saying a lot. And there was actual furniture — a worn armchair in one corner, a TV with rabbit ears adorned with scrunched up tinfoil at the tips in another corner, and a refrigerator with a cord that ran into the other room. I guessed if I followed the cord I’d find the other end hooked to the generator in the hall. A space heater was also plugged into the extension cord. Its effect was negligible. A second heater sat unplugged a couple of feet away. I wondered if it would be bad manners to go over there and plug it in, decided it probably was.
There was a kitchen table with two chairs sitting to our left, a dishpan with an inch or so of water in it perched on the heater that wasn’t heating. But what jumped out at me was a potted geranium, healthy and well-tended, sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. I wasn’t sure how the plant survived in the polar-like conditions, but maybe where it was — closer to the functioning space heater — the climate was somehow more tropical.
“Excuse me, sir,” Cobb said in a low voice, “my name is Mike Cobb and this is Adam Cullen. We don’t mean to disturb you but as I was saying —”
“Yeah, you’re looking for somebody.” The voice was sandpaper on mortar, rough but not very loud. And somehow not mean. Mostly he sounded tired, or maybe unwell.
“A young man, late teens,” Cobb continued. “We thought it possible he might stay here sometimes. We’re wondering if you might know of him.”
The man didn’t answer.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to come over there and show you a picture of him, see if it rings any bells.”
“Rings any bells,” the man said.
Cobb crossed the room, held the picture in front of the man on the stool. No reaction at first, but eventually the man moved in slow motion, his head pivoting just slightly to the right as he seemed to study the photo. Then nodded slowly.
“Forget his name, crackhead kid. He’s okay though. Borrowed some winter gloves from me … hasn’t brought ’em back yet. Ray or Clay or something.”
“Jay Blevins.”
The man nodded. “Borrowed some mitts from me.”
“When was the last time you saw him, Mr. … uh …”
“Morris. Not Norris. Last name, not first.”
“Right, Mr. Morris. When was the last time you saw Jay, do you remember?”
“Couple of days ago. Not here. On the street, out there.” He lifted his chin to indicate outside.
“Which street?”
A long pause. “I don’t remember.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Sure, said hey, asked him how he was doin’, stuff like that.”
“Does he stay here?”
For the first time Morris turned away from the window, swivelled slowly on the chair, and faced us. “Not enough room in here.”
The face was lined and creased and the nose was off-centre a little and bent. Thin lips, set back in a face that had gone unshaven for a few days. Looked like he still had most of his teeth. Morris was a man who might have been handsome once.
“Yeah, I meant in the building,” Cobb said.
“Down the hall … at the far end. But he hasn’t been here for a while.”
“How long since he was last here?”
“Don’t know … month maybe.”