Our Napoleon in Rags. Kirby Gann
opened the withered flap of his oilcloth satchel and scrounged through one of the interior pockets. He cast a glance back up the stairs at Chesley Sutherland, who was a cop, a true working cop, although at the moment he was on leave pending an investigation of his behavior and was thus moonlighting as security for Beau and Glenda. Sutherland made a show of fiddling with the dials of his police scanner (an off-duty hobby, a way of keeping up with the trade), and Haycraft stole two blue pills from the satchel and handed them over the bar.
—You are a dear boy, Glenda said; she caressed his hand once and disappeared behind the swinging saloon doors that led to the kitchen behind the bar.
The row of regulars watched her leave. None of them offered comment. Her husband wiped down the teak of the counter with a damp hand towel as he set out a pint of English ale for Haycraft – his eyes, pouched in beer-gut pads, following Glenda until she was out of earshot.
—What will those do to her?
—A couple of smiles, nothing more, answered Haycraft. She will be calm tonight, my friend. No nagging for you; no agitation.
Haycraft knew agitation like an old friend; he knew anxiety the way the stable mind knows when it’s time to flee a scene. Rigorous schedules helped him maintain: the wristwatch looped through his belt gave specific measure to where he was in his timetable, pointing him also to where he should be without the allowance of delays. And Beau and Glenda knew that schedule well: three hours of meditative writing, three hours to canvass the Old Towne district registering voters (or taking action against the community’s latest outrage-in-common), thirty-five minutes for the tending of needs such as grocery shopping and basic grooming. Afterward he liked to pass one hour and fifteen minutes with the homeless men who played chess on the ironslat benches near the library, offering them bananas and squash, an assortment of nuts – Haycraft steered clear of the passionately colored foods, preferring the calm safety of earth tones. Each evening he proceeded in haste to the Don Quixote for his beer, his studies, and chance companionship.
He did not worry for work. Being dramatically bipolar and publicly registered as such, the government sent checks that he signed over to Beau Stiles, who acted as something of a guardian. The agreement being that Beau would hand over the money in increments (Haycraft could not fathom the responsibility of a bank account), ensuring that the fundamental expenses were covered first: rent, utilities, pharmaceuticals, et cetera. But Beau was a busy if good-hearted man, and more often than not he cashed the check at his own register and forked over one lump sum of bar-damp bills with the order Now Hay, don’t you go manic with all this in your pocket. Haycraft swore to a regimen of acute self-diligence; but – also more often than not – he would skip doses of medication (testing how long he could go without, when feeling well) and hit a spell before the cash found the landlord, or the gas and electric company, and a tip jar would appear at the corner of the bar with a strip of masking tape across the glass, HAY’S RENT inscribed in permanent marker. Beau covered the rest when he could. Beau said he never had cared to live as a rich man.
Haycraft remained aware of the debt he owed such charity.
—Beau Stiles, if and when I begin to play the lottery, and if I were ever to find myself reveling in the good fortune of such unlikely victory, you may rest assured you will receive my entire first year of deposit. I swear on that!
—We need two hundred K to get clear. Be sure to pick your numbers before the next full moon, we could both use health insurance.
Such loyalty originated in shared family history. As a young man Beau played bluegrass with Haycraft’s father – Beau on bass, Representative Keebler on fiddle – and he and Glenda had been there as bystanders when the connection to the race track was discovered, investigated, publicized, et cetera; they had watched sadly as the bright child Haycraft used to be developed into the strange soul the regulars knew. Beau felt some measure of responsibility for the tragedy, too, as he had led the retinue that brought Hay’s father to the horses.
He tried to look out for Edmund’s son, though it was not always easy. He had this place, a haven for the man, he would like to say; if he could, he would like to tell his old friend that his son was doing all right, that he was doing as best he could.
But the Don Q was not always the great refuge Beau hoped to create or Haycraft hoped to find. Hulking Chesley Sutherland eased down the stairs cradling his radio close to his cheek, the volume swept low to a bare crackle and burst.
—Yo Haycraft, you hear what I’m talking about? Bus crash tonight, four blocks down on Second. Guy pushes junk out in the street and wrecks a bus. Took out three parked cars and some lady.
—I can assure you I don’t know the first thing about it, Chesley. You said a lady? What do you mean, is she all right?
—They didn’t make a formal announcement. They got an ambulance there is what I know. What’ve you been up to? I notice you come up late.
—Leave him alone, said Romeo Díaz. Let the guy be, Sutherland, you’re not even on the force these days.
—Not today, no, but I will be again, you know. And I’ll have my eye on you, too, Díaz.
—Buses crash, officer, answered Romeo. It’s a tough world out there.
—Garbage doesn’t just fall into the street. Somebody put it there, they shoved it there. I think I know somebody.
—You don’t know anybody, man, you need me to tell you that?
Haycraft made a point of examining the yellow suds clinging to the insides of his pint glass.
—Yes, Haycraft said. Buses do crash all the time, don’t they? It is a dangerous neighborhood, you know. I think it a shame you are not allowed at the moment to keep us safe, Chesley; perhaps I’ll explore that in an upcoming editorial. All kinds of crazies running around.
The notion of becoming the subject of Keebler’s obscure essays did not impress Sutherland in the least.
—Yeah, your editorial. You put that in there, I’ll take it to my hearing.
—It could help! Discernible proof that the community stands behind you!
But this was said more as an aside, an afterthought. Haycraft’s head was already on to other things: After the day’s modest action, and the growing certainty that he may have gotten away with it, he could be forgiven the rush building inside him, his emotions insurgent and mutinous, the roilsome confidence that identified him (he felt certain) as a brash leader of men. This notion of “a lady” hurt – maybe even killed? – because of his actions was quickly morphing from an object of guilty fright to one of fateful purpose:
—I do hope your old woman is all right, of course. But maybe her misfortune is precisely what we need to inspire people to action. This district, what we need is a catalyst, Hay postulated. Something to fuse our determination, firm our resolve. A symbol, an icon, an issue to gather the many into one. A martyr.... Old Towne is a dangerous community, a community in danger; we need nothing less than a crusade. Crusades produce martyrs.
—We’ve had enough of martyrs here, Beau reminded Hay, curling a dry tongue over white-whiskered lips.
—Yes, but maybe this lady.... Haycraft trailed off.
He had no comeback; he knew Beau had it pegged: The two boys from St. Luke’s High School had created no catalyst to a saving crusade six years before. Instead they had started the engine behind Old Towne’s hastened decline. Lost one night on their way to a football game, they ended up in a discarded alleyway freezer – a block behind the Don Q in Huddle Gate Square – with trousers about their ankles, hands bound, one bullet wound each at the base of the skull. It had been Beau Stiles who found them. White suburban kids raped and murdered, killing too any further interest from investors. That the murderers were found at the investigation’s fever pitch, and were both black, unemployed, had previous violent records and contraband pasts the legal system had let slip through – locals, in other words – did nothing to encourage the moneyed public to find more to salvage there. Charming, once-lavish houses,