Garbage by Stephen Dixon Read Free Book Online Page B

Somewhere on the street near it or maybe in my hotel or my old neighborhood or the diner I go to every morning now for muffins and coffee? He starts running and I run after him. Zigzags between some cars when the redlight’s against him and I have to do that too, and it’s snowing harder and I could easily lose him in the falling snow. I’m lean and he’s pretty heavy though we’re both about the same age it seems but his coat’s long and bulky while mine’s short and light. He also has tall heels on his boots and I have my special bartender shoes with the rubber ripple soles that almost throw me forward. He runs into a lady when I’ve just about caught up with him and her umbrella flies, paper bag she was carrying goes elsewhere and a few rolls roll out, woman landing in two men’s arms just before she would have hit the ground faceways. The man spins around from the crash, arms wind-milling to stop him from slipping, sees me right next to him and throws his hands up in front of his face, but I’m so mad at who I see he is that I come down on his head with my fist and then the other fist to his ear while he can’t keep his feet from sliding from under him and he falls down and when he’s on his back on the ground but his head rising I get my knee on him and slap him twice in the cheeks and then take him by his coat shoulders and slam his head on the pavement a couple of times though I only meant to shake him in the air.
    His lids close, body goes limp. I say “Get up, you mother,” but he doesn’t move. “Come on, don’t bluff me, I’m not going to hit you anymore, so get up.”
    An old man’s screaming, back and hands pressed against a building wall, then walks off. Woman’s cursing while she picks up her rolls, blows the snow off them and puts them in her pocketbook. I raise one of the man’s lids and only see what looks like a dead eyeball. I put my hand under his coat; he’s beating. The two men who caught the woman stand over me and look like they want to grab and throw me to the ground but by their weak faces I know won’t and I say “Don’t, listen, this man, he set fire to my apartment three weeks ago or else helped because he left a note saying something of mine was going up, and it was for nothing I did. Nothing. I own a bar. Mitchell’s Grill four blocks back. They’re hoods he belongs to and trying to ruin me.”
    â€œWe don’t know about hitting a man like that though,” one of the two men says.
    â€œBut I lost everything in that fire. You name it. My parrot who I loved and lost her with all my personal belongings too. Someone call the police while I keep guard over this guy.”
    â€œAll right,” the man says. “Someone should probably phone them.”
    â€œYou do it. From that booth over there.”
    â€œI’m not getting in like that, since how do I know you’re the truth?”
    â€œIt’s the truth, the truth.”
    â€œThat’s what you say, though the man you dumped might be in the right.”
    â€œWould I ask you to get the police for me if he was?”
    â€œYou might be just saying that to later get up and run away once one of us goes to call. At least with two of us here you might not try.”
    â€œYou,” I say to the other man. “Don’t listen to him. Please call.”
    â€œWhat this gentleman says about your maybe being wrong could be right. I’m staying. Send someone else.”
    â€œSomeone, please, call the police,” I say to the small crowd, snow falling on us, starting to stick. “This man’s a crook, was trying to extort money from me or was definitely in on it some way. I’m the owner of Mitchell’s Bar and Grill—Shaney Fleet, the police in this precinct know me—the Fifteenth. Ask them, phone them now.”
    The woman the man crashed into is gone. Her umbrella flew into the