to buy a very large bottle of very cheap whiskey, but what he saw out front changed his mind. It was a shopping cart loaded with a bum’s crazy assortment of possessions. The bum in question was inside, haranguing the clerk. There was a blanket, rolled up and tied with twine, on top of the cart. Dan could see a couple of stains, but on the whole it didn’t look bad. He took it and walked briskly away with it under his arm. After stealing seventy dollars from a single mother with a substance abuse problem, taking a bum’s magic carpet seemed like small shit indeed. Which might have been why he felt smaller than ever.
I am the Incredible Shrinking Man, he thought, hurrying around the corner with his new prize. Steal a few more things and I will vanish entirely from sight.
He was listening for the outraged caws of the bum—the crazier they were, the louder they cawed—but there was nothing. One more corner and he could congratulate himself on a clean getaway.
Dan turned it.
4
That evening found him sitting at the mouth of a large stormdrain on the slope beneath the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. He had a room, but there was the small matter of stacked-up back rent, which he had absolutely promised to pay as of 5 p.m. yesterday. Nor was that all. If he returned to his room, he might be invited to visit a certain fortresslike municipal building on Bess Street, to answer questions about a certain bar altercation. On the whole, it seemed safer to stay away.
There was a downtown shelter called Hope House (which the winos of course called Hopeless House), but Dan had no intention of going there. You could sleep free, but if you had a bottle they’d take it away. Wilmington was full of by-the-night flops and cheap motels where nobody gave a shit what you drank, snorted, or injected, but why would you waste good drinking money on a bed and a roof when the weather was warm and dry? He could worry about beds and roofs when he headed north. Not to mention getting his few possessions out of the room on Burney Street without his landlady’s notice.
The moon was rising over the river. The blanket was spread out behind him. Soon he would lie down on it, pull it around him in a cocoon, and sleep. He was just high enough to be happy. The takeoff and the climb-out had been rough, but now all that low-altitude turbulence was behind him. He supposed he wasn’t leading what straight America would call an exemplary life, but for the time being, all was fine. He had a bottle of Old Sun (purchased at a liquor store a prudent distance from Golden’s Discount) and half a hero sandwich for breakfast tomorrow. The future was cloudy, but tonight the moon was bright. All was as it should be.
(Canny)
Suddenly the kid was with him. Tommy. Right here with him. Reaching for the blow. Bruises on his arm. Blue eyes.
(Canny)
He saw this with an excruciating clarity that had nothing to do with the shining. And more. Deenie lying on her back, snoring. The red imitation leather wallet. The wad of food stamps with U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE printed on them. The money. The seventy dollars. Which he had taken.
Think about the moon. Think about how serene it looks rising over the water.
For awhile he did, but then he saw Deenie on her back, the red imitation leather wallet, the wad of food stamps, the pitiful crumple of cash (much of it now gone). Most clearly of all he saw the kid reaching for the blow with a hand that looked like a starfish. Blue eyes. Bruised arm.
Canny, he said.
Mama, he said.
Dan had learned the trick of measuring out his drinks; that way the booze lasted longer, the high was mellower, and the next day’s headache lighter and more manageable. Sometimes, though, the measuring thing went wrong. Shit happened. Like at the Milky Way. That had been more or less an accident, but tonight, finishing the bottle in four long swallows, was on purpose. Your mind was a blackboard. Booze was the eraser.
He lay down and pulled the stolen blanket around him. He waited for unconsciousness, and it came, but Tommy came first. Atlanta Braves shirt. Sagging diaper. Blue eyes, bruised arm, starfish hand.
Canny. Mama.
I will never speak of this, he told himself. Not to anyone.
As the moon rose over Wilmington, North Carolina, Dan