Heading Homeless (A Short Story)

Albert could not remember much before today, and all he remembered of today was the explosion and violence of a college kid kicking open his door and roughing him into the hall. All of Albert’s stuff got soaked and smoked with soot for no good reason. The fire hadn’t made it off the coffee table when the kid came in, but everything got sprayed.

He thought of suing the Saint Paul Fire Department for enthusiasm. And he thought of suing his land-lady for dramatics. Sure her stuff got ruined but the kid didn’t have to kick down the door, and the SPFD didn’t have to ruin the house.

Albert was out and gone too was a half case of Corbel.

He headed down to Selby where a stretch of fluorescent and a blink of yellow lights swooped at the curb to pick him up. The bus bucked and rolled as Albert mounted the steps. He fought back at the attacking handrails until collapsing into an empty seat.

He remembered he needed to ask the driver something but the jerk was driving crazy and Albert bounced between the seats then finally tripped into the driver himself. The bus swerved slightly as an elbow launched Albert into a couple of black boys who began barking at him. They kept on barking, like kennel crazed mutts, they barked and barked but remained chained to their seats, so Albert didn’t give them a second thought.

Where was he now? Cathedral Hill.

Downtown Saint Paul sparkled in the valley. What idiots, Albert thought -- who would erect tall buildings at the bottom of a valley? It makes no sense. The world is and always has been run by idiots.

The bus passed by the shelter. Albert was not going there. The shelter’s courtyard was defended by a fence of ten foot welded steel spears; that ought to tell you something. All around yelling young blacks milled and illegals speaking in a blur of Spanish sheltered by the side of the building. He would have none of that. Nor would he be served a mewing meal by earnest suburbanite “volunteers”.

Albert scooped a good six inches of the City Pages newspaper out of a free distribution box and bobbed along with the current of the streets toward the tracks and a freeway bridge he had used before. The night was cold; not the biting cold of deep winter, but the wet windy cold of this global warming shit that kept Minnesota free of snow until after Christmas.

In a fleeting moment of lucidity, he thought of heading south but then where would his pension check go? Come to think of it, where would it go now? Screw it!, he thought, that is for another day.

People shot by, diving in and out of his way -- so god damned full of purpose.  Albert tumbled through a torrent of light into the quarter panel of a cruiser.  His newspapers flew to the wind. Albert snatched at the air but none came back at him.

“Doing some heavy reading, Albert?”

A familiar voice. Not the kind of voice to struggle for, one that should flow easily to mind, but who? Then the world righted itself and Albert recognized a guy from the neighborhood, one he went to High School with.  But Jesus, he looked bloated… all puffed up like a horny robin on the verge of a song --- ah, that was his armored vest. But Christ, he looked too old and gray for a cop.

“You headed for Catholic Charities?”

“Sure”

“Your going in the wrong direction”

“I’ll get there”

“See that you do” and he was gone.

Just covering his ass, thought Albert. He grabbed another square of The City Pages from another free box and slide down the hill toward the tracks where the hum of the city hushed into the whirr of tires on the freeway bridge overhead. The light condensed back into the softly glowing solids of advertising and a strings of white pearls lined the river.

Albert found his spot beneath the bridge. He got himself squeezed into a space under the deck where he could spread down some of the papers for insulation. He saved an inch of paper to stuff his coat and pants for additional warm.

Above him, the fizz and bump, bump of cars on the expansion cracks played an urban lullaby. God he felt good! Tucked away from the thugs and bums, warmed by newspapers, the same deep sense of warmth and security that he felt as a very young child welled up inside him. Hovering between wake and sleep he listened to the hiss of traffic and felt like he was back in the thick blankets of his bedroom so many years ago, listening to the soft moist breathing of his little brothers, and the reassuring snore of his father down the hall.