CHAPTER THREE (8)

“You know what you owe me, Dev. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You know the deal.”

No response.

Ryan stamped hard on the ground with his feet to let Devin know what was his impending doom. He turned stepped past the corner of the building, past the ivy, and without looking at Devin, thrust his hands into his pockets and looked up at the sky. They were standing equally next to each other as Ryan pulled out a joint and stuck it between his thick, wet lips. Pulling out matches, he struck one along his thumbnail and proceeded to hold the flame underneath the end of the joint. As the white paper caught fire, he quickly took the joint out of his mouth and blew repeatedly on the flaming end, the other between his black thumb and middle finger. Satisfied that the joint had been properly lit, he breathed deeply in and proceeded to stare at the sky.

“You got my money?” He said without any eye contact.

“No, man. I told you, I’ll have it after I work on the weekends.”

Squirley finally blew out his hit and took his sunglasses off. He refused to look at Devin, and squinted in the face of the sun.

“You got daddy’s credit card?”

“I mean… uh… I’m only supposed to use that for emergencies,” Devin said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

“Looks like you got yourself an emergency.”

He reached to Devin’s neck and instantly had him in a headlock.

“And this here situation requires yo’ daddy’s credit card.” The joint remained in his mouth as he said this, flopping wildly up and down between clenched lips and even more clenched teeth.

“Alright, alright. Let’s go, then!”

Squirley walked behind Devin as they made their way through campus to Devin’s car. They approached a silver Nissan and Devin pulled out keys, unlocking the doors mechanically from a distance, causing the tiny convertible to respond with two high pitched beeps. He opened the driver’s door and got in. Squirley waited outside of the car with is arms folding across his chest and thought, There ain’t no way in hell…

“Are we going or what?” asked Devin feebly.

“Gimme the damn keys.”

Devin popped out from the car faster than Squirley had expected. This wife-beater really has some charm to it, he thought. But keeping cool, he nodded for Devin to get into the passenger seat.

The brand-new Nissan felt smooth on the road as he used it to full capacity. They were silent in the car as Squirley drove him to the bank, all of this for a measly hundred and thirty dollars. He shifted into third, eyeing Devin peripherally noticing that Devin was somewhat scared. Good. A hundred and thirty big ones is a hundred and thirty big ones, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let a scrawny white boy from California driving his daddy’s attempt as fatherly-connection get away with stealing some pocket money to him. 

CHAPTER THREE (7)

All the burros to him seemed one hundred suburbs looking for a city to call their own to Squirley. He would drive through them, his wake interconnecting each and every suburb (Little Mexico, the University, the City district, the Mile), but he never felt comfortable in any one burro. In the City he felt distant, like an outsider looking in on all the happy businessmen who owned their club memberships to the YMCA and drove home in their Cadillacs (always east so the sun wouldn’t offend their eyes) to their doting wives and perfect children. In Little Mexico he felt immersed in a land whose language was little known to him, but also a black man caught in a world where it wasn’t okay to be white, and its was the norm to be brown. But where did he fit in to that spectrum? Black is darker than brown… In the Mile he felt most security, but realized that things went on around him that he couldn’t comprehend, that women sold their bodies to men like Toddy literally five feet away in the next studio-condo. That he could be blown to pieces by the nearest meth-lab (wherever that might be). He knew none of his neighbors, and their only presence was marked by volatile conversations.

But as he parked his beat-up car and stepped out onto the campus of the University, bearing on the outside his tough-man person, deeply he felt isolated from everyone. True, he had once been part of this burro as well: a humble student advancing his mind in a fertile environment of frat houses and beer bongs, days filled with murky, weathered library books while he reticently played the part of Mr. 4.0/Mr. Hangover, afternoons filled with scalding mocha lattes in pricey coffee houses while he, the English major, crammed for a futile biology midterm. Yes, this was once his forte. Yet, now he planned to offend what little credit the institution clung to with skeletal fingers by selling drugs and making good some debts he was owed.  

Squirley walked along the highly manicured campus, weaving his way through students, like androids, texting on their phones. One girl with frosty blonde hair and downward trodden eyelashes ran into another girl, both of them texting without perceiving the oncoming impact. The collision, as Squirley watched from afar, made him chuckle. Other seemed as though they were walking aimlessly, solely focused on the tiny machines between their thumbs. I’m glad I don’t own one of those, Squirley thought. But then his eyebrows furrowed and he felt pity for himself that he, too, didn’t own a cell phone.

Suddenly, a Ritto walked by. Squirley checked his wrist watch: he’d only been waiting an hour at the stuffy campus. A blonde haired, baby-faced, blue eyed boy with a backpack immense for his body stole through the pedestrian’s walk way. He dashed behind a red-brick building with ivy growing up and around the corner, blocking any view that Squirley had of his debtor. It was now a tactical game, and Squirley’s wife-beater persona built his confidence higher than any sky-scraper in the City district. He rolled his sunglasses perched atop his already-receding hairline, catching shades of oil from his baby-curl hair, and sauntered – but flexing his muscles all the while – towards the blond. He stopped just short of the ivy.

“I think you know what you owe me, Dev.” He said, his voice a hue deeper than normal. Here he was: Mr. Bond, James Bond, that is, praying on the unjust – taking names and kicking ass.

There was no response from around the corner. Rusting was heard as leaves crunched between someone’s shoes and concrete.

CHAPTER THREE (6)

“We have always been part of de land,” said Gato. “Before de revolucíon my mama and papa grew las cebollas – what is de eenglesh word for dees?”

“Onions.”

“Ah yes, onyons. I can remember dair farm, in de hills of Chiuaua. Dey always told me, holms, never to forget las cebollas, for dat is were I come from, ju know?”

“My father always told me to get the hell out of this place.”

Gato shot him a squinted glance.

“And den dey were murdered, ju see, and here I be today,” he said with a spark of revolution in his eyes, “nebair forgetteeng from where I came.”

Squirley uninterestedly cocked his beer upward.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Said Gato wagging his finger in front of Squirley’s face, not allowing him to down his beer. “We make a – uh, what d’ju call eet?”

“A toast?”

“Jes! A toast! Arriba,” he held his own Tecate above his head, motioning for Squirley to do the same, “abajo,” Gato firmly thrust the beer down toward his belly, “al centro,” the beer then went flying to his chin, “Al DENTRO!” he sang, and only then did he take a swig.

After finishing his beer, Squirley itched to get out of this place. The trees were beautiful, yes, but their sublimity was overpowering. It was a dangerous place, so he inched towards the door as Gato ranted on about his Motherland. Noticing that Squirley was about to leave, the Mexican said, “It weel be ready in a month or two months. Alaskan Gold, onlee de best, ju know? Don’t forget from where you came, no?” He grinned showing semi-rotten teeth and serious gum decay. Gato kept his eyes menacingly on Squirley while tilting his head up and keeping the last of his Tecate squarely connected to his mouth.

“I know, man. I know.”

He went back up to Granada and went farther south. The next burro was the City District, where business men all walked along the sidewalks beneath towering buildings full of men who looked just the same. There were coffee cool coffee shops to guard these fully suited men from the harsh heat of the day, and the glare of the sun in the afternoon when it flooded through from the west as if parting the Dead Sea. Only in the afternoon would sun explode through the city District, causing big-business clad men and women to pull down their visors in their buffed and waxed Lincolns and Audis and Cadillacs and curse the fact that it happened – of course! – right at five, when they made their journey across town towards home.

But it was not quite 5 p.m. yet as Squirley made his way through the bustling crosswalks and one-way streets. He was almost to the University now, and the only thing on his mind was Collections. Oh, Collections Day, he sighed but with a smile while he stopped at a red light, one of which he would hit about every 300 feet. He peered up from his vehicle, his eyes rolled to the top and his eyebrows partially covered his view. He sat hunched, with his shoulder bones almost painfully close together. He could not see the top of these buildings, and mused over what exactly went on inside them; their goings-on were quite foreign to him, but  the majestic presence was nothing new. 

CHAPTER THREE (5)

He rolled up to the trailer park, immersed in corrugated steel and mangy dogs that were ridden with god-knows-what. He was glad Toddy was not with him today: not only did Toddy fail at being a he-man (which is an integral characteristic of any collector, weed or taxes or anything else to be collected), but he failed at being a minority. This pained Squirley, but that is the way things work in both southern and northern Little Mexico – if you weren’t dark, you were fucked. A white man dare not show his face in Little Mexico, less he be mugged or even worse.

Squirley stepped out of the car and threw his feet to the ground, creating a miniature dust cloud. He took of his sunglasses and squinted under the sun. A trailer stood before him with an ancient steel frame, an unpainted, verging on dilapidated, box that rattled in even the minutest gust of wind. The entire structure was propped up on concrete slabs displaying the weeds that grew succulent beneath its monstrous shade. It was clearly a double-wide, perhaps even a triple-wide (if they even made those), and its enormity overwhelmed Squirley. He felt like a man at the base of a wide mountain. The windows of the trailer were sealed with cardboard that had been bleached by the sun, and they, too, rattled as he banged on the door.

“Hola, cabrón,” answered an ebullient Gato, in thick Spanish rolling the o for an unusually long syllable.

“Hola, amigo,” foiled Squirley in his horrendous broken-accent.

Gato held out his hand and Ryan noticed the missing left pinky. Trying not to stare, he shook it.

“You got any weed for me today, Gato?”

“Holms, I got notheen. I been dry for dos weeks.” Gato held up two fingers in European fashion, exhibiting a stub and a ring finger.

“Pedro got busted last week,” he continued, “dey sent heem straight back to México man. We all scared shitless ov’r he-ur.”

Squirley looked around as Gato went to the fridge and handed him a Tecate beer. The triple-wide had been gutted, the remnants of past walls seemed pierced through the whitewashed frame. The kitchen was moderately clean, which was to his left, but the rest of the trailer was full, so full that only small pathways could be made between the trees. Fledgling marijuana plants, only three feet high and relatively young, crowed the entire span of the rest of the trailer. They were uniformly potted in opaque, plastic, black containers, each with a drip-system that connected each row. The conspicuous care taken with each plant, the factory-like output, the whole idea seemed a dream to Squirley in this beaten down part of the Burro where nothing was perfect but these, these beautiful creatures.

“You like?” asked Gato, with the same wide-eyed pride. He went over and rubbed one of the leaves between his fingers, then ritualistically put it up to his nose and breathed in deeply. Squirley intensely wished to do the same, but fearing Gato, and the revolver on the kitchen counter, he opted not to go near Gato’s precious orchard.  

CHAPTER THREE (4)

Ah, the old super-mercado, where Toddy brought only the best flautas. They were warm, filled with lard and sodium, but on the first bite all fell away and there remained nothing but the flauta and its reprobate. The thick smell of them hung heavy in the air surrounding the entire corner that housed El Super-Mercado Jose Pancho Velazquez. If one was lucky, who just happened to be passing by, one might catch the very Jose Pancho (called “Panchito” by his friends, though his given name was actually Jose Fransisco Morales Velazques) walking sturdily out of his dumpy but immense superstore, paved with neon green and pink signs that read ¡Ahora: Calabasas 89 centos cada uno! and the like. He wore an extremely fitted suit, though bulgy in girth, and his breath wreaked of brandy – but in a bad economy – vodka. But never, never tequila. “Woudn’t touch that stuff to save my life, ju know? Too many of them Mexicanos drink tequila, and you wouldn’t catch me dead with a bottle of de stuff! Babosos!” he would say, throwing his soft hands in the air and scrunching his perfectly manicured but sweaty moustache. 

Today Ryan had the pleasure of viewing the half-drunken man reach for his keys and begin the search for his car as he stepped from the automatic doors. He first attempted at a Buick, but Panchito, finding that this was indeed the wrong car – or perhaps the wrong keys – screamed some expletive about his wife and tried another. Squirley watched from his beaten, mobile, collections car, amused to say the least. His snaggle tooth peered from his full purple lips as Panchito again failed to unlock the correct car. Green light. Ryan was off.

The buildings began to become more unique as he drove south toward the University. They became colorful and were built without the uniformity of the northern and eastern parts of the city. Some were framed-stucco with hand-carved doors reflecting images of either the Virgin Mary or Jesus himself, little lambs on a pasture being delicately goaded by their master, even particular saints. It was quiet here, though children could be heard screaming for their toys, dogs were barking, sure, but only innocently at cats. A precise tranquility thus ruminated from Little Mexico; Ryan drove through it forgetting his collections, as he always forgot everything in Little Mexico, and was engrossed in the swirl of random colors and enchanting smells.

But as soon as he passed Avenida Mariposa, the iron and metal ran unyielding through out the burro. South Little Mexico (El Sur, as called by the locals – but El Diablito by the Northern Little Mexcio burrowers) was a blot, and ugly black and silver blot in the city. Literal underground tunnels ran untamed underneath the city, trafficking everything from stolen goods to drugs to women. Squirley drove hastily through this sector, but turned left suddenly on La Granada to visit his drug dealer Gato. Perhaps he might be able to sell him a pound or two – after all, there was always time to sell some weed on Campus in between Collections. 

CHAPTER THREE (3)

There were numerous accounts similar to these, each indentifying their own scuff on the car. The cumulate of these produced a spotted black surface. But what was most stirring about the LeBaron was the convertible option. The huge one and a half ton machine exposed its innards after about seven minutes of adjusting and re-adjusting its rasping leather top, revealing torn leather seats and sullied carpet upholstery. Tiny plumes of dust and debris poofed from the unfolding leather as it slowly made its way to the open position, extending the cracked and dry canvas into a taught arrangement, while various elements here and there moaned under duress. Despite the contraption’s pain, Squirley watched with pride.

The University was located at the opposite end of the city from Corrotto’s, which meant that Ryan would have to go through a sketchy part of the city in order to make his collections. Since most of his debts were from people at work, and most of the people at work attended the University, it was easy as they were all rounded-up into one two-by-one mile span. Like a shepherd, Squirley rounded his unfaithful black sheep and would reprimand them according to how much he was owed by each. The merriment of the chase is what Squirley saought with an unprecedented commitment to justice and capitalism, and by-god, he was going to get his money.

He jumped into his car and began the engine. No, no good. He tried again, without despair; this had happened before. The rummm, rummmmm of the engine signaled its distaste for that which had recently mounted it. Defiance rang through the air, but Squirley was wearing his he-man wife beater today, and who in the hell – even a damnable machine – would want to mess with him today? At last the faulty engine started the climb out of the unusually quiet apartment complex, each ride over a speed bump causing it to lose considerable weight as the dusty particles accumulated by under-use fell from the car. Squirley reached for the sunglasses, always finding their way under the passenger seat, without taking his eyes off of the street. Barley missing the sign that read: Welcome to the Monte Vista Apartment Complex: Studio Apartment Blowout!!!!!! with an unconscionable number of exclamation points, he swerved out of the complex hoping to burn a little rubber (he was, after all, in his wife-beater) but failing.

He drove south, hitting no more than the normal amount of red lights. He wasn’t particularly paying attention; there would always be at least one person whom he could track down like a mad-hungry animal and squeeze at the University. Besides, he had nothing to do today – it was Collections day. It was hot, but the air conditioner hadn’t worked for years. Niether did the speedometer, or the AM stations. The black and dusty radio in the center console emitted some incoherent hard-core rap, in Spanish or English. This is what one must play when entering through the little burro Little Mexico.

CHAPTER THREE (2)

As Toddy left, still tying his tie walking out the door, the smell of booze and marijuana invaded Squirley’s nostrils like an offensive from an army. He fought back the stench by breathing through his mouth, but it was too overwhelming. He slid off the bed feeling the crunch of the soiled carpet between his toes, and felt suddenly very alone.

Let’s see, no deals today.

His eyes followed a line straight to the Board and, as his first inclination was to sigh at the amount he owed, a thought poured into his head: Collections Day. Every once and a while, there would be a day when he had not one thing in the world to do – no work, no errands, no laundry. On these days, Suirley might find himself glued to the public access station on television, engulfed in a world of horrible acting and explicit opinions. But of those few and precious days, every once in a while – in a long, long, while – Squirley rampaged the city, all parts of the city, in the name of collecting the small amount of debt he was owed. It wasn’t as though he really wanted the money, because the more money he had, the more he’d have to keep from the prying eyes of the banks, thus the sticky fingers of the government. And they were sticky. But what he really enjoyed was the brute he became; a hard, dangerous man.

Squirley pulled on his jeans and reached for a white T-shirt. No, he thought, a wife-beater, it adds a certain statement to the whole get-up: manly yet casual. But, really, manly was the main thing. So he threw the t-shirt with little aim towards the closet (missing horribly) and put on the wife-beater. He slapped his back pockets for wallet and keys, and was at once out the door.

His feet hit the pavement with a harsh thud, thud. It was sweltering and he felt the pavement would sear right through his rubber soles. Something was missing; it was serenely quiet today. Ah, there was no one fighting on the lawn. Too hot. He dashed towards his 1989 black Chrysler LeBaron in escape from the smoltering sun.

The car had been through a few raumatic events in its life. The taillights were suspect, only admitting their age. They had been yellowed over by years without the shelter of a garage. Though the paint job was still holding strong, it was betrayed by knicks and dings here and there, each one he remembered with vivid detail their birth. Oh yes, 1993, road trip to Alabama with his brother Nate. That was a doosey, quite a fender-bender. There still remained some of the gold paint from the Buick he crashed into at that mysterious red-light in that one hick town –what was it’s name, again? And then the time when Toddy and he were fleeing from a bar downtown after effectively peeing beneath the bar itself and onto the tools, then proceeding to crush salted peanuts into the pools below their innocent feet, all the while the bar man articled some marital issues he’d been having with the wif-ee in the most demoralizing and licentious way. Another employee of course noted the fact within ten seconds of them having relieved themselves, and chased them out of the bar into the street. Squirley remembered Toddy pulling out his wine key (as they had just gotten off a miserable Saturday double-shift) and producing the harmless blunt knife for loosening the wine bottle seals. “Watch out, mistah, I’m armed!” Toddy yelled at the furious employee. The man threw full cans of Bud Light at the duo and yelled expletive after expletive. One of the Bud Light cans hit the passenger door. 

CHAPTER THREE (1)

But what was going on inside the van was too exciting. A Sublime smile had now formed on Katz’ face as needles poked and prodded him, as chemicals of various kinds were being pushed into his blood.

“What in hell are you giving him!?” Cried Mitzi as he pushed on the gas with his right foot. He made an extreme U-turn out of this fore-saken Ditrict 11, and speeded at the Mark III’s will – as fast as it could go – out of this hell-hole. No more the natives – the bums who had plagued him with their skeletal faces, the men (if you could call them that) with their scruffy faces and dying auras – could locate him in this diseased land. Mitzi, in all of his essences, fled. He fled something as he’s never fled before.

“Morphine, he needs relief. HE NEEDS RELIEF!!!” The doctor said rapidly

Katz was certainly responding to his “relief.” His eyes, those glazed, inhuman bulbs, twirled towards Mitzi, saying “Come on, I need RELIEF.” Whether he did or not, Mitzi couldn’t decide.

“Oh – so you’d give this relief to someone like Katz, but not to a native in dire need. I see…” said Mitzi, who wasn’t really focusing on the life of Katz, but really on the life of himself and vaguely on the life of all the rest in the moving vehicle. He quickly turned towards the enveloping scene in the back, and realized that Katz’s eyes found nothing but his.

The eyeballs were a metallic yellow, pupils looking defiantly into his. Why wouldn’t you let me have relief? You are just like me you piece of foul manure. You couldn’t handle what I’ve learned about the real world, you couldn-

 

CHAPTER THREE: Work and Work

 

Squirley woke to a start. The blinds let in bread-sliced visions of light rays onto his black skin. He fidgeted under his warm oven of covers, and fell back asleep. This would be the right way to go today, the warm oven. Always the warm oven of covers. It was no use now, trying to go back to sleep. Toddy was squirming under his linens on the floor, it was no use, it was just simply no use now. They both had woken under the 2 pm warm sun.

“You gotta be at work in an hour.” Said Ryan, ashe unsheathed himself from the comfotor.

“Says you, the man whose slept on an actual mattress.”

Toddy rose from the floor, his boxers half off. His chest betrayed flabby man-boobs. There was hair showing definitely from the nipples, but no real he-man hair. Despite the fact that he was 30, he had not a real forest grown on his chest. It didn’t really bother him in any way.

“Regardelss, you gotta be at work.”

Toddy reached for his white pressed shirt, or what should have been his white pressed shirt. He swathed himself in it, rolled on his rumpled Dickies and buckled the black belt. He suddenly looked like a half-dressed Ritto. 

CHAPTER TWO (18) Mitzi's dream continued...

The bundle-turned-man broke from Mitzi’s arms and crawled not towards the door to his shack, but to the warehouse behind that was at least 8,000 square feet. The pasty skin clung to his body, fearful of falling off as he crawled. He attempted to stand but in finding that he could do nothing more than scuttle towards what he referred to as his “stores,” he made very slow progress. Everyone watched in bewilderment, in total silence, in complete disgust. Here was a man who hadn’t seen daylight for a thousand years, crawling like a slimy insect in a dark cave back towards his birth.

Unable to comprehend Katz’s strength, Mitzi stood in awe. The heads smiled down on the situation. They spoke to Mitzi: “Why do you bring this back?” He had no idea; maybe because he was told to by NORML. Maybe because he had nothing else to do. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to take all of the native and Mr. Katz in his hands and ring their necks, or join them, or leave them – anything but this. Anything but this.

Meanwhile, a pilgrim had taken it upon himself to run in front of Katz, not touching him, but blocking his path to the store-house. A hissing came from Katz, a hissing so vile that Mitzi stepped back, ready to fly from this scene at any moment. He took a few more steps back and tripped on a collection of re-barb stumps. Bringing him back to his senses, he ran once more to retrieve the man-child.

“You take the legs, I’ll take the arms.” They hoisted him up into the air, suspending his horribly emaciated midsection as if he were a show cat. His eyes had glazed, he was loosing energy (what little he had), and he began to slowly give in. They carried him to the van – this time with success – with the help of the other pilgrims. Dogbert and Vergil – those pissy little wastes of space, thought Matt – cowered among encroaching natives who seemed to be drooling over their thick bodies. Back-to-back, they hurried towards the protection of the van.

“One, two, three!” The pilgrims lifted the man into the van.

“What should we do with the other one?” He pointed over to the homeless man whose face had been blown off by a projectile.

“I dunno – toss him out?” Said another.

“K, I got it.”

The doctor, who would never have shot the man, now carelessly dragged him by the foot, a pool of blood tracing his path, and dragged him to the concrete. Thump. The body lay contorted on the pavement and left. The natives closed around the corpse and left Dogbert and Virgil to claw their way, puling one another in a war to gain the passenger’s front seat, into the security of the Mark III.

Mitzi couldn’t look back, but figured they natives – starving – were tearing apart the dead man bone from bone, joint from joint.

If he had only turned around to witness their humanity…

CHAPTER TWO (17) Mitzi's dream continued...

This – this is what he had come so far for. This thing, this half-man half-changeling creature laying helplessly in bed was what Mitzi had risked his life for? Venturing into uncharted locations along the dreaded Broadway Boulevard? He needed escape, this was all unreal. He couldn’t look at the dying thing in front of him; the long bony arms somehow arranged Christ-like, so heavy though they were so thin nailed to the flimsy, soiled sheets. But he wasn’t Christian, no, he wasn’t anything. His nose was Jewish, without a doubt, and Mitzi figured his last name was that of a Jew’s anyways. But his head was swathed in a mass of blonde hair, and his jaw-line gave him the air of something Nordic. His eyes strangely slanted and stretched, revealing Asian roots. He was a meld of so many ethnicities, there was no qualifying this man; he was them all. But Katz – no, you couldn’t call him Katz anymore – was a wasted and withered swell of fleshy bone that resembled nothing in particular of a race but what is inherently part of every race: the carcass, the bare minimum, the very thing that even after death every race, color, ethnicity came down to: a collection of bones. It was sick, this whole place was sick.

The quilted man broke the silence: “So he is not dead, then?”

“No. He is not dead.” This revelation brought Matt back to the situation at hand: the recovery of Katz. Mitzi effortlessly scooped the bundle – sheets and all – into his arms and rushed him to the occupied stretcher in the back of the Mark III. A crowd had formed outside of Katz’s station. Along with the Pilgrims, Virgil and Dogbert, and the surviving native, there stood before the travelers at least one hundred and fifty homeless men. There were there to see their oppressor off – but they didn’t smile, they didn’t rejoice in his near-death, rather, they stood there amidst the decaying cityscape expressionless as always, each of them as torn and tattered as the next. They parted beneath the smiling decapitated heads looking in on everything, saying ‘I told you this day would come,’ as Mitzi whisked a dying fiend in his arms near their impassive faces. Some would reach out and try to touch the soiled linen, but most just stared onwards.

Meanwhile, Katz had livened and begun to open his eyes. The whites were yellow. Jaundice, Mitzi thought, that means liver failure. He is almost there. From some unknown force, the heap of wiry flesh fought back against Mitzi, clawing with unprecedented strength at the confining linens. Why would a man want to escape earnestly from his savior’s breast?

“Let me go you fool…” came a soft command from the suddenly animated bundle, “I must get back… let go.”

“Mr. Katz – we must take you back to head quarters – “ Mitzi tried to explain. The bundle was now violently trying to free itself, and becoming quite successful. Mitzi dropped to one knee – the man must have weighed no more than 120 pounds at must have been more than seven feet tall, but his drive was staggering. Katz’s nails grasped whatever was fixed into the ground: cement, re-barb, electrical cord, whatever he could clench. The fragile nails broke on any one of this, but he continued mercilessly.

“I must get back to my stores. There is much more to be had!”

CHAPTER TWO (16) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi was expecting a cobweb-ridden, dilapidated, dark room that was stale and acrid. He was expecting a wonderful man sitting in the midst of it all, disgusted by the filth he had to live in, victimized by a company he had given the last decade of his life to. He expected an ominous Katz to come up to him and take him by the hand and somehow force all of his prowess and erudite experience through his pores into Mitzi. He expected to be saved as the quilted man had, for the quilted man had somehow found light in such a world of darkness. This was the defining moment of his journey to the heart of District 11, where all of his expectations were met by a man who would even exceed them…

But it wasn’t like that at all. The quilted man pried the door open to reveal a somewhat organized room. It exuded no smells, was not unkempt, and it did not seem to have a cobweb anywhere in sight. At the right corner of the studio room, there, shielded by soiled blankets lay the body of the infamous Katz. His bony feet hung at least two feet past the end of the mattress, which seemed to be infested with flees. They were uncovered, showing a diaphanous and sinewy skin, much like a newborn’s. The man must have been at least seven-feet-tall, which is why his feet protruded from the sheets and the mattress. His head was faced toward the wall; Katz was either dead, near dead, or sleeping. From what Mitzi had gathered, remembering the words of his commander (“the aim was to get Katz in one piece – and if in one piece, perhaps even alive”), Katz was not in the best condition. Adding that to the quilted man’s experience with Katz, thing were not looking well.

Mitzi’s aim, then, was to gather the giant man up and whisk him away on the battered Mark III.

“Doctor,” he said to the pilgrim, “shall we begin?”

The pilgrim had already rehearsed in those few moments of witnessing the dire Katz, his last rights. But to make sure, he told Mitzi, “You should first relinquish the covers from his face. They may be smothering him.”

Mitzi cautiously walked towards the lump in the sheets. He detected movement, but the lights were so dim that his eyes played tricks on him. He protruded his hand over the body, then hesitated. What if he is dead? Would the wretched bugs have already gotten to him? What was he thinking – bugs didn’t exist in such a dark place. Fuck it…

He pulled back the sheets to reveal a sleeping Katz, serenely sleeping. It was clear that he was emaciated and probably anemic, hence the sinewy, pasty skin. He was stark naked, and on his whole body was only fuzzy hair, nothing like the hair of a man past puberty. He was pre-pubescent, he was juvenile, he reminded Mitzi of an overgrown toddler.   

CHAPTER TWO (15) Mitzi's dream continued...

I have tried to get him somehow back to civilization so that he can restore more normal values. But he is ill now, again gravely ill. I think it is in part due to the fact that NORML has abandoned him, I am sure of it.”

Mitzi had never before confronted a man like this before. Frankly, he was the most frightening thing he’d seen before. He was quite in awe of Katz, but so was Mitzi. Nut this was different: The quilted man could not see through to the misery that Katz was dispersing into this godless land. The man could only see Katz as a hero. This was all very, very scary. A young man like any in America, completely without the comprehension to feel, completely veiled by Katz’s apparent heroism. What a farce, but still, Mitzi was in hideous awe himself. He felt absurd for judging this ridiculous quilted man, but at he same time identified with him. He both loved and despised Katz; they both did.

Suddenly the scenery changed. The rubble had been cleared and around the cleared area was erected a fence of various odds and ends of re-barb, wire, telephone poles, etc. All of the assorted sharp stakes were sticking out from the cleared ground at different angles, and their shadows oddly were cast forward and backward; there was the fading light of station belonging to the quilted man, and from inside the motley fence was a dimming fluorescent light. The scene before Mitzi was horrifying enough, until he saw the heads.

Upon every other sharpened stake, there was jammed a head belonging to a native; or, rather, a head that used to belong to a native. Their bodies were nowhere to be found. As macabre as the whole sick vista before the crew was, none seemed exceedingly aghast. Dogbert and Virgil cowered as they had been since the battle, the Pilgrims seemed to clutch their books in the same way. The quilted man appeared enlivened by the thought of checking on Katz. The only other eyes were the vacant ones embedded in the shrinking heads of the natives, staring from atop their posts. The queerest thing – besides them being heads on a stake – was that all but one was facing inward towards Katz’s dwelling. As the quilted man opened to gate, Mitzi eyed the heads, suspicious of their meaning.

All of them, facing inward or outward, were smiling. Smiling! Their yellow and black teeth still decayed on their thrones, while their hair dangled below their ears in a nappy tangle. Some – the older ones – had skin that looked as if it were dehydrated leather, the more recently murdered still showed dried blood on the stake and around the chin. It was a macabre air that heavily flowed like magma through the makeshift courtyard, and Mitzi was singed incessantly not only by the magma, but by the smiling eyes of the decapitated natives.

Not a word was spoken as the wooden door was pried open.  

CHAPTER TWO (14) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi found the young man with energy an enigma: here he was in the middle of this horrible world with so much enthusiasm and vigor. His smile was constant showing a perfect smile in spite of the situation. There was something amiss in the man, though. He was too keen.

“You are in search of the greatest man I have ever known,” said the quilted man, “He has shown me the way to lead my life. Watch your step…” He hopped effortlessly over a large part of what seemed to be the remainder of a sidewalk, propped on an obtuse angle from the decaying sewer seemed below. The whole train followed behind. “We once spent a night encamped together under a large building which used to be a bank. It was a wretched night – we were backed up two against what musta been a hundred homeless men. Katz did somethin’ to piss ‘em off. Anyways, we were fending them off, and our senses were high – you know? – and I saw the man himself (Katz, that its) come right out of his shell. He had his AR-15 with him and that’s it, and I was lovin’ on this beautiful Desert Eagle Fifty-cal. We must of killed at least twelve of them, and it seemed like they retreate, but, you know, one can never be too sure, so we bunked out in the broken-down bank for the night. He enlarged this very organ that night,” he pointed to his temple and continued, “He told me of love, and death, and especially about business. ‘A man is nothing with out his business. You go to a dinner party, and what is the first thing someone asks you?’”

Mitzi found it ridiculous for someone to be talking about a dinner party is such an atrocious situation, but managed to answer nevertheless, “I dunno. What?”

“Well, they ask you, ‘what do you do?’ In other words, what is your business? How do you make money? I always tell them I’m a young man traveling the United States for some good, wholesome experience. I aim to travel the world when I get out of here. After he enlightened me I felt like I could do anything I wanted. But he went down so quickly with his affliction for weed. He doesn’t smoke it, you know? He just… collects it. He aims to sell it on his own when he gets back to the real world. Anyways, we got outta that bank as fast as we could the next morning, tripping over all of those dead bodies and stuff. My father, a priest for the Russian-Orthodox church in Memphis where I grew up, always told me that a man needs a proper burial, no matter how far from pious he is. But I wasn’t exactly listening to a man a thousand miles away at that moment, if you know what I mean. We just got our hides outta that situation and made a run back to this post; it was silly of us to try to even make a raid into the heart of District 11. I think of that man a lot out here… but anyways, back to the story: we went our separate ways after that. He went to his hub, I went to mine (which is were we met). Well that certainly wasn’t the last time I met him, no-sir-ee. WE crossed paths a couple times. Once I nursed the very Katz back, but I could see after that that he had lost himself of this earth. He was compelled only by the thought of weed, by the thought of selling it. And I knew it. I should have just let him die.”

“Then why did you nurse him back?” Asked Virgil.

            “He’d taught me so much. Man can go awry very quickly, but all it takes is a little bit of convincing to get him back on track. I thought that if I could get him healthy, I could get him sane again. But it obviously didn’t work out that way. He got farther and farther into this delirium. He would go out to the farthest part of our charted maps and find leauges of growers and raid their stores. But he’s not such a bad guy. You just can’t judge him as you would a normal person – he is so… so intense, so – well, he is indefineable really. I have just so much respect for him…”

ChAPTER TWO (13) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi found the young man with energy an enigma: here he was in the middle of this horrible world with so much enthusiasm and vigor. His smile was constant showing a perfect smile in spite of the situation. There was something amiss in the man, though. He was too keen.

“You are in search of the greatest man I have ever known,” said the quilted man, “He has shown me the way to lead my life. Watch your step…” He hopped effortlessly over a large part of what seemed to be the remainder of a sidewalk, propped on an obtuse angle from the decaying sewer seemed below. The whole train followed behind. “We once spent a night encamped together under a large building which used to be a bank. It was a wretched night – we were backed up two against what musta been a hundred homeless men. Katz did somethin’ to piss ‘em off. Anyways, we were fending them off, and our senses were high – you know? – and I saw the man himself (Katz, that its) come right out of his shell. He had his AR-15 with him and that’s it, and I was lovin’ on this beautiful Desert Eagle Fifty-cal. We must of killed at least twelve of them, and it seemed like they retreate, but, you know, one can never be too sure, so we bunked out in the broken-down bank for the night. He enlarged this very organ that night,” he pointed to his temple and continued, “He told me of love, and death, and especially about business. ‘A man is nothing with out his business. You go to a dinner party, and what is the first thing someone asks you?’”

Mitzi found it ridiculous for someone to be talking about a dinner party is such an atrocious situation, but managed to answer nevertheless, “I dunno. What?”

“Well, they ask you, ‘what do you do?’ In other words, what is your business? How do you make money? I always tell them I’m a young man traveling the United States for some good, wholesome experience. I aim to travel the world when I get out of here. After he enlightened me I felt like I could do anything I wanted. But he went down so quickly with his affliction for weed. He doesn’t smoke it, you know? He just… collects it. He aims to sell it on his own when he gets back to the real world. Anyways, we got outta that bank as fast as we could the next morning, tripping over all of those dead bodies and stuff. My father, a priest for the Russian-Orthodox church in Memphis where I grew up, always told me that a man needs a proper burial, no matter how far from pious he is. But I wasn’t exactly listening to a man a thousand miles away at that moment, if you know what I mean. We just got our hides outta that situation and made a run back to this post; it was silly of us to try to even make a raid into the heart of District 11. I think of that man a lot out here… but anyways, back to the story: we went our separate ways after that. He went to his hub, I went to mine (which is were we met). 

ChaPTER TWO (12) Mitzi's dream continued...

They drifted through the crumbling buildings. Every now and then Mitzi would spot a trashcan full of flames that glowed showing only hands warming themselves. He felt the time nearing when he would meet the awesome Mr. Katz… they couldn’t be more than a few miles away…

He was beginning to feel his eyelids slowly set towards their lowly partners against his cheeks, when out of the corner of his eyes waved a white man full of vigor and liveliness in front of a semi-developed building. There were electric lights within, the only mark of civilization besides his monotonous headlights, that illuminated this charismatic figure and cast his shadow clear across the street onto the chaos beyond.

“This must be it,” announced a weary Mitzi.

Many of the crew members had long since fallen asleep, except for Dogbert and Virgil. The rest awakened with a start and began to rub their eyes and focus on the scene outside.

The white man was dressed in a home-made get up consisting of intricately sewn parts that resembled a quilt. He motioned for the van to come nearer and to park in a spot clear of rubble, which Mitzi presumed was a faux-parking space. The travelers descended from their battered Mark III one by one, exhausted from their mini battle. Mitzi was the last to exit from the driver’s seat, turning the engine off and placing the key in his pocket; this shouldn’t take long, he thought.

“Welcome!” said the white man dressed in his fitted quilt.

“Where is Katz?” asked Mitzi bluntly; this was not the time for a formal greeting. His mission was clearer than ever: Get Katz and get the hell out of this god-forsaken place.

“Ah. You wish to speak to Katz. He resides within…”

The quilted man beckoned Mitzi come nearer to him so that he could see his face. The electric lights, a blessing and a curse, dilated Matt’s pupils and blinded him for a moment. Shading his face, he asked:

“How far?”

The man’s face showed that of a young man’s; no wrinkles, barely a scruffy fledgling beard. But he was gaunt and white. The sun couldn’t reach far into this place the buildings had so toppled on one another. But that fluorescent fake, man-made light again! How it does no pigment good, from the deepest of ebony, to the most chocolate Mexican, to the whitest of ivory of Europe. God, forsake this place, Mitzi thought.

“A twenty minute walk.” Deeper into the disarray he would have to go…

They began their walk, with Dogbert and Virgil trailing behind, and behind those two fools were the pilgrims. They clutched their books so tightly it seemed they might meld with the holy Word, but it was artificial – only a bunch of nouns those books were without verbal association. In fact, all the buildings, the near-dead, dead, and dying homeless men, their metal trash cans full of fire, the fluorescent lights, Dogbert and Virgil, the pilgrims themselves – all were just a disassociated bunch of nouns cramped into the same space at the same time. None of them really knew each other. The homeless man strayed far behind in search of food. He would doubtless find a morsel in this wasteland. 

CHAPTER TWO (11) Mitzi's dream continued...

But there was simply no need to shoot the man, because he took his final few breaths – strange, animalistic, heavy breaths – and his eyes rolled back to his head and he died. His only surviving cohort stood up from his corner of the van and looked deeply into the eyes of his deceased friend. He delivered his black and dingy hands to the man’s face and slowly closed his eyes while muttering something in audibly. There was a moment of silence, and the doctor forgot his austerity, and Mitzi forgot his loathing at the man who seemed so pitiless only moments before, and the van floated down the darkening street with not a homeless man to be spoken of except the mourning one inside that moving shell.

It was night now and they drove in silence. The corpse still lay on the stretcher because no one dared open the sliding doors. And if they did, no one would know what to do with the body anyways. The sweet smell of blood ran thick in the air, though Mitzi’s shoes had become crusty as the blood was beginning to coagulate. Outside, the  night was darker than any Mitzi had ever seen: the buildings contained nooks which could hide the most abominable creatures in their depths. The pilgrims began to talk of Katz and weed again, always under their breath. The whispering made even more eerie this horrible mission. 

Dogbert and Virgil, who remained hidden during the catastrophe under some fire-retardant blankets procured from the first aid kits, eyes wide open and stuffed with fear, were silent. They looked around them with brutish instinctive eyes. None of them, including the pilgrims, had been this deep into the District. The motor hummed above all else, as Mitzi steadily waned on the gas. They were almost to where Katz had been last located. A sinister mood had arisen in the van: no one spoke unless to utter something about their destination and the communal focus was on finally meeting Katz for the first time. An eerie, eerie silence ran deep through the vehicle. Even the last homeless man felt it, and showed his curiosity with tiny beads of sweat.

His remaining beef was starting to rot. Nevertheless, he chewed it every once and a while with slow drawn out bites. The rest of the van was sickened, but too tired to make a point of the nauseating ritual. For once, Mitzi thought of him as a man with carnal hunger, a man who hadn’t eaten a good meal for months. He was showing signs of serious anemia, but it didn’t jade him. He might make it through Katz’s recovery, but his being alive past that would be a miracle. 

CHAPTER TWO (10) Mitzi's dream continued...

They howled and howled at the van, something so primitive and beast-like, yet filled with human reaction and base anxiety. It was as if they were howling as a device to let the intruders know that they wanted nothing to do with them, but if necessary they might take up the means to do away with the whole damnable vehicle.

Flat tire or not, Mitzi jammed his foot onto the gas and sped down Broadway. As they were gaining speed, with sparks flowing from the rear wheel hub-cap, a small rock found its way through the passenger-side window into the head of his accomplice and instantly killed him. Right to the temple. Blood splattered like house paint onto Mitzi’s cheek and arm and caused the steering wheel to become slick. He swerved the van nearly hitting the militia coating the street but soon regained control. During the whole fiasco, the man – the corpse – fell to Mitzi’s lap limp and cumbersome. A man seemed to weigh a thousand pounds when he was dead.

Mitzi began again to speed up and out of this mess. His foot squished against the shoe as he pounded on the gas, and a warm sensation filled in his toes. Disgusting, blood gushed out of his right shoe. The driving became difficult. He felt no pain and realized that the man’s head on his lap was losing blood somewhat rapidly and draining into his socks.

While maintaining his speed, Mitzi reached over and pried loose the passenger door, propped up the dead man, and kicked him out. His body tumbled to the street and briskly somersaulted out of view. A whimpered was produced from the back of the van somewhere, probably from the man’s comrades. The howling had stopped as had the bullets, and the commotion now seemed to cease, leaving an intense silence. The injured man on the stretcher had half of his face blown off by a rock, “probably propelled by a sling of some sort,” conjectured one of the pilgrims. They had stabilized him, but for what? The man layed groaning on the stretcher, gutteral groans for part of his throat had been mamed. His groaning was growing intolerable.

“Don’t you have morphine? Why don’t you give him an overdose of morphine?” asked Mitzi, unable any longer to bear this man’s pain.

“Do you think that is the only use I have for morphine? Would you like me to have to operate without morphine? You have a revolver, shoot him yourself.” Said the apparent doctor.

“He’s been hit already. If you’d been hit, I am sure you’d think differently.” Mitzi was beginning to sweat.

“I will shoot the poor thing. I am a humane man. I will not let him suffer…” announced one of the other pilgrims reaching for his pistol.

“Shoot him then!” yelled the doctor, raising his bloody forceps in the air, “Shoot him. Assume the responsibility!”

“You are not a human being!” Yelled Mitze still driving, raising his voice as loud as he could to drown out the man’s groans. Cold this man understand the velocity of this conversation? About hi own life hanging in the balance of a few men who could never understand his world?

“I’m not killing anyone here. I care for the wounded, I don’t kill them.”

“Why don’t you care for him then?”

“I have done so. I have done all that can be done.”

            “Fuck yourself!” Mitzi aimed the revolver at the wounded man’s head. The man’s eyes grew big and he shook what was left of his face back and forth violently. Oh yes, he could understand what was going on.

CHAPTER TWO (9) Mitzi's dream continued...

They had been reduced to animal existence, which is why they were threatening to Mitzi.

They had been driving now for about three hours, right into the nucleus of the District, which is supposedly where Katz had been holding up. The street was appallingly disheveled with pot-holes that sunk into the soft earth beneath the asphalt sometimes more than two or three feet, and it was getting considerably worse. Many times, one of the natives had to cautiously exit the vehicle and change a tire, or fill one, while the rabid animals in the form of human bodies screamed and yelled and hollered from within the mess of buildings. Often, a bit of concrete was thrown or a sharpened piece of re-barb, but not once was one of the men injured.    

As they stopped, Mitzi eyed one of the forms in a dark chasm of what used to be a convenience store.

“You know that they are the growers for the distributors,” announced Dogbert, “and the distributors have to reel them in like their catching tuna with nets. The distributors go out into this madness,” he pointed to the decrepit ramshackle mess of buildings, “and take them in so that they can teach them the civilized way to live. They teach ‘em structure and discipline and all that. Good for a man, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” Replied Mitzi, half listening.

“Out there, they are just spics and niggers running wild. Lawlessness, utter lawlessness.”

“Yeah – lawlessness.” Virgil sickened Mitzi.

One of the homeless men had moved into the passenger seat next to Mitzi, which caused an issue. Mitzi voiced nothing, but felt he was too close to the help. They belonged in the back of the van pointing their firearms out the peepholes. Suddenly, the bum changing the tire outside screamed with terror which made the atmosphere inside the van quiet and concentrated. For a few moments, nothing happened. All Mitzi could here was the heavy breathing of the pilgrims. He looked into his rearview mirror and found panic on everyone of their faces, all of them clutching miserably to their blue leather bibles. Some had begun to pray under their breath.

The injured man swung into the van and one of his fellows helped him to the floor. One of the pilgrims went to work with bandages, screaming for various utensils and CCs of this and that. Everything had become out of control, and the natives outside had begun to close in on the lone Mark III.

The homeless man next to Mitzi was on extreme alert, but Mitzi could tell he had little if no training whatsoever. The man constantly oscillated the shaft of his gun every which way, resembling a sprinkler connected to a thin brown water hose. A rock or a piece of concrete (it came too fast to identify) struck the front window in the upper left corner, causing a heavy line to protrude towards the middle.

“We’s got us a rumble,” announced the bum sitting next to him, still swinging his gun every which way, “They’s gots quite an arsnul out there.”

Mitzi grabbed revolver from under the front seat and cocked it. Shots were coming from the back of the van’s peepholes beside the chaos that was ensuing with the injured man. The pilgrims had swarmed around him and loaded him onto a stretcher at this point, while one of the men obviously trained in emergency medicine stuck a long tube down the bum’s throat and attached the end to a machine. Pandamonium insued: everyone was yelling.

“I need fifty CCs of epiponephrine!”

“Duck!”

“I thinks I gotstheem!”

“Forty-five over one-eighty!”

            Matt could see a swarm of natives outside the van lining the street: they had no weapons except what they could gather from the debris of the buildings. Very few of them if any seemed to be throwing these weapons, rather most of the noise was from guns exploding into their assembly. Three or four were picked off by the man sitting in the passenger seat, and Mitzi watched them drop to the ground while another native was brought forward to fill his place. They screamed a most horrible chant, which by Mitzi’s standard were quite foreign and daunting.