Victim (fiction)

The neighborhood on Oakland Avenue was well worn , bordering on ghetto. The cement stairs were off center and cracked in my rent controlled building. The roof, had seen better days - it was the embodiment of the old joke that the only time that one could fix a leaking roof was in the rain- when of course, roofers could not physically fix the roof.There was no grass in the yard.I had the feeling that when the current batch of tenants were gone, commercial rentals would replace us. The cemented walled yard would make a perfect parking lot with very little work. This might have been a nice neighborhood, at one time , with families. But the nice families had all moved away to higher ground. The morality of the area was as skewed as the building in which I lived- it was off kilter as part of the back had been blown off during a DEA raid. Students, working single women , drug dealers, Hells Angels and hookers shared space with the remainder of the "nice " elderly. The niceness was not so far away- it lay just beyond the twilight, fading into the darkness of forever gone. When I looked quickly - I could just catch a fleeting glance of that perfect past. During the day , it was not uncommon to have to cross the broken sloping street a couple of times to avoid passed out drunks, sleeping homeless, and possible dead. The safest route was to mind my own business. When it was truly dark , the homeless sheltered in the covered alley between my apartment building and another house also turned into apartments ,were usually moderately quiet- not that it would have mattered , because the response time was anywhere from over three hours to never by the local police. Only the wealthy further up in the hills were entitled to prebody bag responses. Hells's Angels kept the neighborhood peace and I grew to like them, as did much of the neighborhood. No one, not wishing to be shot, ventured near the windows after sunset. Rival gangs and drug dealers donot leave forwarding addresses . Grudges die hard in economic want. People in the way ,were collateral damage and up for grabs , no matter their innocence. Everyone was either involved or up for grabs. Bullets donot ask your name.

What woke me in the dark of that first morning was the sound of a regular light skinned homeless man baying like a beaten basset hound. I could hear the young thugs pounding him into the wall of the alley. His words were garbled by sleep, drugs, and drink- but the tone was that he did not have that which they desired. Their collective laughter was cold and ugly. I knew that the homeless man had survived the night- for I heard him crying painfully. I heard him shuffle off. I saw the multicolored Renaissance crocheted cap round the corner as he lowered his treasures in a Safeway cart down two stairs. The squeak of the wheels of his shopping cart headed up the hill towards the intersection with Broadway. It was late enough that there might be food in the dumpster behind Safeway- if he were not too broken up to eat. I forgot about him for the remainder of the day.

The next morning, I heard the cold sound of laughter and the breaking of bottles in the alley. I noted the scuttle of the homeless man push his cart down the hill before bearers of cruelty had reached his position. I listened hidden by drape and wall- for I had a vested interest in them being so close. Unlike the homeless man, I could not push the apartment building out of the path of their distruction. Their plans did not appear to involve me . They did not stay and finding no victim to punish in the shelter over the path , left as they had come, with loud bravado and boastful abuse for those of us who lived there. But leave, they did.

On the morning of the third day , the homeless man had not slept in the alley at all. When I looked over the railing of the porch , there was no shopping cart. As the nights had grown cooler, I thought tht perhaps, he had gone to a charity facility. I didn't care- but one gets used to the repetition that constructs reality . It was odd to have him gone. As the day grew stronger, I saw him once on Broadway from the bus. Perhaps , he had, indeed found somewhere else to sleep. At sunset, as I hurried home with my dinner of kung pao chicken and brown rice, I saw him pull open an abandoned garage door on an adjoining side street.He pushed the cart bearing all that he owned, out of sight inside the rickety structure. He left the door open slightly and gave me a small wave as I passed. Somewhere he had found a folding chair and was sitting in it.

Midnight woke the neighborhood with the screams of firetrucks and ambulances. The abandoned garage with its green cathedral like doors was a torch in the darkness of that lost neighborhood. The smell of gasoline chocked the air as the fire rose yet higher. The tenants in that neighborhood stood on their lawns. I could only think that the kids had found the old man.
The neighbors nearest the garage reported some screaming from inside towards the end. But the flames were too high, and the person screaming lost to the inferno.

In the morning, the story of the the burning garage was on page 3 of the Tribune. The bodies of what appeared to be three young men were found in a garage on Cedar Street. They were known to have gang affiliation and it was believed that a rival gang had executed them. The exact identities would not be released until dental records could provide a confirmation . The door had been bolted from the outside by a length of chain, a cheap lock and 2 legs from a folding chair.