Dancer 3

I learned what happened from the next day’s newspaper account that called Puck Fetterland “an unidentified youth of about 16” who shot a man in an apparent drug deal gone back on Market Street. Apparently, they did not connect him to the robbery because there was a separate story for that.

Apparently after the shooting, police chased Puck up Market Street to Spruce and then up Spruce to the Great Falls. With the police blocking the bridge over into the Totowa section, Puck ran into the park, then onto the pedestrian bridge that overlooked the falls --from which he leaped 157 feet into the water below – presumably to his death.

But he did not die, despite being handicapped by his broken arm. Instead, he floated down stream to a pint where he could climb out and made his soggy way to my uncle’s house where I found him dripping on our front door welcome mat.

“The cops are after me,” he said. “I need you to hide me out.”

“No way,” I whispered. “My uncles would kill me.”

“Just let me in for a minute until I dry off.”

“Not for a second.”

“Screw you, then. I’ll go find somebody else to help me.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you,” I said. “You just can’t come in. Let me go find you some dry clothing.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” he said as I turned to go.

“You’ll get sick,” I said.

“I’m already sick.”

“Then I’ll get you a coat.”

“Forget the coat. Forget letting me in. Come with me.”

“Why?”

“Because the cops are looking for someone walking alone. There’ll be two of us.”

“I don’t want to get caught up in anything.”

“Look, man,” Puck said, pulling his pistol out of the drenched sling he still wore, water still dripping from the open end of the barrel. But he didn’t aim it at me, instead he said, “My gun’s all fouled up and where I’m going I’ll need someone to watch my back. Can you get the car?”

“Not now,” I said, glancing over my shoulder fearing that one of my uncles might at any time step out of the kitchen or living room.

“Come anyway,” Puck said. “You said you wanted to help.”

**************************

Where we headed was a place a lot of blacks and whites called “Nigger Town,” a five block stretch along River Street known for its whore houses, saloons and violence – the scent of perfume mingling with the smell of alcohol and blood. I was scared and kept looking over my shoulder for signs of an attack.

No white boys my age had any business being in this part of town at that time of night.

Yet if Puck was afraid, he showed no sign of it, strutting down the center of the bottle littered sideway as if he belonged there instead of everybody else – his wet sneakers still leaving a mark with each step.

Clumps of black men halted their conversations to watch us pass – so did a few scantily clad women with their eyes aglow with promise of blood shed.

Neon bar lights set the sidewalk on fire ahead of us as the smell of hops oozed out open tavern doorways along with the scent of cigarette and cigar smoke, perfume and cologne, and body odor.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked finally when we were far enough away from anyone to keep my whisper from being overheard.

“I told you. I’ve got to meet somebody,” Puck said.

“What for?”

“I need clothes, dope and a place to stay.”

“You expect to get those here?”

“You can get anything you want here, if you know who to ask.”

“And you do?”

“I know the best.”

The fact was Puck seemed less a stranger to the people around us than I first thought. Some of the more savvy street people nodded at him while others whispered the name “Red Ball: to their companions.

Puck growled at me. “Will you please keep up. All I need is for you to get mugged or something.”

I hurried my pace until he slowed, and I stopped when he stopped in front of a dark apartment building.

“In here,” Puck said, indicating the dark doorway and the even darker foyer beyond.

From somewhere on the upper floors, the rumble of soul music sounded, more vibration that sound, coming at me through the walls and cracked floor tiles.

“Ring number three,” Pick said, pulling out his pistol, which no longer dripped, but was unlikely to function if he pulled the trigger.

I found the button above the mail box with the corresponding number and pressed it.

No bell sounded, but the music ceased.

A harsh voice squawked out from a small speaker near the door.

“Who is it?”

“Who do you think?” Puck barked. “Get your nigger ass down here.”

A pause filled the next moment, although the person on the other end still has his finger pressed on the speaker button. We could hear him breathing, and finally he said, “I’m not dressed.”

“I said get down here,” Puck snapped.

The transmission from above stopped and a moment later, a door opened and the sound of bare feel sounded slapping their way down the stairs.

A tall, very muscular and completely naked black man emerged from the darkness.

“You son of a bitch!” Puck said, lifting his position with his uninjured arm. “The cops nearly caught me tonight. You said you would keep them off my back.”

“I said I would protect you if you laid low,” the black man said. “You killed a store clerk, killed a drug dealer and then took a leap off the Great fucking Falls. You call that laying low?”

Puck grinned and lowered the pistol.

“You heard about all that?”

“And more. Earlier in the day you did a few more noteworthy deeds that did not result any deaths – though stealing a police car and ramming it into the mayor’s wife’s car caused the most stir. Everybody’s talking about it.”

“Is that a fact?” Puck said, his expression beaming.

“Don’t be so goddamned proud of yourself, asshole,” the black man said. “You’re so hot you wouldn’t have gotten here except everybody thinks your dead – or should I say thought you were. Coming here blue that. The cops are bound to hear about it and come here looking for you.”

“Protect me,” Puck said. “That’s what I pay you for.”

“I’m telling you,” the naked black man said, “Nobody can protect you with the way you act. You don’t see me sweating any local heat, do you?”

“No, but you keep going off to the county lock up. Is that how you work the system?”

“Absolutely. I get out every time I go in. If I didn’t have the system working for me, they’d keep my black ass locked up.”

Puck started to say something, but the whoop of a police siren interrupted him.

“Quick,” the black man said, yanking Puck in by the uninjured arm. “Get up the stairs.”

“Like hell,” Puck said, yanking his warm free so he could lift his useless pistol. “If they want me, let them…”

“Don’t be a bigger ass than you already are. Get up the stairs,” the black man said. “You said you wanted me to protect you. So let me do it. And take your skinny cracker friend up there with you.”

*******************************

So we went, leaving the naked black man standing in the foyer to greet the policed as we felt our way up the narrow wooden stairs, the banister smooth with the passing of so many hands before us, generations of hands that had come and gone from this place – our feet stumbling along that trail of tears until we saw the light above.

This was not a pale light by which me might navigate, but deep crimson light so intense it seemed as impenetrable as the darkness it replaced.

A teasing, barely existant scene also seem to emerge, stirring up as if out of the light, though I recognized the small from the headshop downtown which burned sandal wood sticks o incense perpetually.

The intensity of the light and the small increased as we rose as did the temperature of the air, a clinging wet warmth that made my shirt moist.

As we neared the source of it all, a new more tart scent emerged, sharp with the taste of chemicals and the scene of incense seemed to be trying to cover it, but could not.

As we mounted the last flight before the floor with the source of the light, a naked woman stepped out at the top, her blonde hair and white skin painted red by the light, though her lights and finger nailed needed no light for their tine, glistening as if she had dipped both in fresh blood.

“Here,” she said, holding out a smoldering glass pipe out of which the chemical scent came. “Take a quick hit before it goes out.”

Behind the woman other women emerged, a harum of naked shapes, some white, some black, some of other races and shades, but all made into the same order by the intense crimson light, each looking at us and smiling as if they had plans for us that we did not yet suspect.

Puck grabbed at the pipe and sucked on it vigorously until his shoulders sagged and the contents of the small bowl turned to ash and he could collect nothing more from it.

“More,” Puck demanded, and one of the women refilled it with a small chucnk of white, which Puck again sucked on until it glowed, then handed the pipe to me to suck on next.

I shook my head.

Puck choked out the smoke.

“You take some,” he insisted. “I’m not getting high alone.”

So with my fingers trembling, I took the pipe. The glass was so hot it burned the palm of my hand. But I sucked. The sharp smoke cut into my lungs, more irritating than any cigarette smoke I had tasted, spoke that spread a heat up into my chest and a fog over my eyes so that the crimson lighted room and the crimson colored women loss all sharpness, as if I was seeing through though a lens thick with petroleum jelly.

My arms and legs seemed to melt a little and I felt a little like I imagined a jelly fish might feel. All I wanted to so was sit down or lay down and not move.

**********************

We slipped over the crumbling concrete wall where some accident had broken it, leaving the graves inside exposed to the street.

“This is crazy, Puck,” I said, when we had settled onto the leaf strewn ground inside, the smell of the rotting leaves making the place all the more haunting to me. “We can’t spend the night in here.”

“We won’t have to if Red Ball gets off his duff and fins us something better,” Puck said, moving again, like a cat, his legs slightly bent, his free arm loose as if he could react to any unexpected attack. “Besides, I’ve slept here before – plenty of times.”

In spring or summer maybe, but it’s getting cold,” I said. “The air feels like it’s getting ready to snow.”

But the air also had a sweet scent to it, from the stirred up leaves, and the recently dug graves. Someone had even mowed the grass, although winter was upon us.

“Stop whining and follow me. It’s not safe for us to stay this close to the wall.”

Puck’s sneakers still squished from the river water because he had refused to take the gaudy clothes Red ball’s girls had given him, he claiming he would stand out like a pimp if he did.

Puck knew his way around the cemetery, leading me down a narrow path through private family plots, some which dated back to the Dutch and the founding of the city in the 1700s.

Puck kept looking back over his shoulder at me, and at the gap we had come through.

“Hurry,” he said. “We don’t want anybody seeing us.”

I hurried, but I was not as familiar with the landscape, and I kept stumbling over things in the dark, drawing curses from Puck who urged me to stay quiet.

The cemetery had a lot of ground-level markers, stones implanted for the unimportant souls who could not afford to mark their passing with anything more significant -- paupers compared to the grand style in which the prominent families went to their end. Numerous important families from the rich history of Paterson had planted their bones here, reserving walled in sections or full glass-doored above the ground facilities.

Eventually, Puck brought me to a place where several huge willows formed a canopy on a small hill and while nearly all of the spidery limbs were bare, they were so numerous that they provided protection from the cool air and any body looking in from the street.

While Puck refused to light a fire, he did pull out the bag of dope Red Ball have giving him, claiming we would get high and not have to worry about the cold.

Then, opening the bag, he let out a howl.

"That son of a bitch!"

“What’s wrong?”

“that mother fucker gave me acid.”

"Acid?"

"LSD."

“So?”

“Do I wanted pot or downs, not a head trip.”

“Why don’t you just throw it away?”

“Like hell I will.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

"What do you think? We're going to take it."

"I don't want any of that!"

"Keep your voice down," Puck hissed. "Kids might think we're ghosts. But the cops won't."

"I'm sorry."

"You're always sorry. I don't understand what your problem is."

"LSD scares me."

"Hell, everything scares you."

"I've heard talk," I said.

“From who? Your uncle, Charlie?”

"Leave my Uncle Charlie out of this."

"Why? You're the one who's always bringing him up."

"Because he's dead."

Puck blinked. "When did this happen?"

"I don't know exactly. We got a call from the Department of Defense. His unit was overrun in Vietnam. I found out about it after I got home with the car to night. The whole family is freaking out."

"So that's why you were brave enough to come out with me."

"I couldn't stay in the house like that."

"And being with me is better than being with a bunch of sobbing ass holes?"

"I wouldn't put it that way."

"How would you put it?"

"Let's say I don't think the family cares as much as they let on."

"That's too bad. Hold out your hand."

"I told you I didn't want any."

"I don't care what you want. I need to get high and I'm certainly not going to trip out while you sit there straight as a Buddha. Hold out your hand."

I did what I was told and Puck dropped several tiny purple pills into the palm of my hand.

“You want me to take them all?”

“I want you to put them under your tongue and let them melt," Puck said.

"But I don’t want to..."

"Do it!"

I stared down at the pills in my hand, then with a sigh, I put them all in my mouth, letting them settle under my tongue as if I was an oyster and they were grains of sand destined to turn into pearls over time. They tasted vaguely metallic, though they also had a taste that reminded me of paper paste from grammar school.

"What now?" I asked.

"You'll see."

"See what? At least give me a clue as to what I should expect."

"I couldn't describe it even if I wanted to," Puck said. "But you should always try and do things you've never done before."

"Is there anything you haven’t tried?”

"I haven't died. Yet.”

I was about to respond when something – perhaps a twig – snapped in the wooded dark beyond the canopy.

“What was that?” Puck growled, yanking out the pistol I thought was useless.

Someone coughed in the dark.

"Come on, asshole, show yourself,” Puck said, aiming the pistol in the direction the cough came from.

At first, only a shape showed, a foot-dragging, limp-shoulder shape, emerging from between two pale grave stones, as gray and grim as the graves behind which he had hidden. The features of his face and clothing were sanded smooth by darkness. Not until the man neared, could I smell the stench of alcohol and that gut-wrenching smell of life on the street I recognized from the bums I had met around town. He was an old man, so haggard and stooped. He already seemed on death's doorstep.

"Who the hell are you?" Puck snapped.

"Nobody, mister," the old man said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just sleeping on somebody’s grave.”

"Here?" Puck snapped. "Why don’t you got to a shelter like the other bums?”

The old man answered with a shrug.

A flash erupted from the muzzle of Puck’s pistol, followed by the roar.

The bullet struck the bum square in the chest, spinning him around, weak arms failing at the air as his slugglish feet stumbled over a grave mark causing him to reel to the right in a strange and pathetic dance.

The second shot hit the bump in the side, interrupting the old man’s attempt to regain his balance. He felt sideways onto the flat face of a gravestone, seemingly pinned to it, his dark shape sketching out a human silouhette as a stream of red flowed out onto the stone.

This allowed Puck to take more careful aim.

The third shot exploded the bum's head. The darkness and grave stone backdrop showed only the gray mass as it boiled out the other side of the dying man’s head, splattering blond, brain and bone against the stone’s inscription, a mass that dripped down the stone face like a misshapened slugs.

No moan came from the bum.

He no longer had a mouth with which to moan.

That last shot had removed most of his face, shattering jaw and nose, leaving only a black hole in their place.

The smell of street evaporated -- replaced by the pungent scent of spent gun powder and the sticky sweet odor of blood.

The scent flowed over me as if I floated in blood, each breath drawing it into my lungs so that what was outside of me was not inside of me, and I began gagging over it, vomiting it out again. I retched and retched again, as the echoes of the three shots died in the distance but I could not expel it again.

The runs of the bum’s body fell into a heap at my feet, a soggy mass of blood and brain I no longer recognized as human.

Puck did not puke, He just eased towards the damaged body, his pistol hanginglimp at his side as he stared down into the oozing flesh. He seemed to be searching for something important among the ruins, something rising of steam. Perhaps he was looking for the escaping spirit.

Where did the life go? How did it get away so unnoticed? Why did the man's eyes -- which remained frozen open in their moment of horror -- show a sense of intelligence even when the heart had ceased? They were the same eyes. It was the same wreck of a man. Yet staring down, Puck merely frowned over the differences.

I stared, too, even as a retched, as that single moment of horror stretched into an eternity, those wide eyes staring at me, filled with the flash of Puck’s firing weapon, filled with the memory of the impact as the bullets stole his life away.

When the sounds had diminished, I found my voice again and yelled, "Why the fuck did you do that?"

"Keep your voice down," Puck hissed. “The cops'll hear you.”

"Fuck the cops," I said."You just killed someone and you expect me to stay calm."

"I killed a bum."

"That's still somebody."

"No," Puck mumbled. "It isn't."

Another wave of nausea rolled over me so I had no more energy to argue, retching again, my vomit falling over the ruins in a man a dreadful show of disrespect.