Click here to return to Humdinger Literary E-zine... Click here to return Home...   Mr. Wendal has freedom A free that you and I think is dumb Free to be without the worries of a quick to diss society for Mr. Wendal's a bum Go ahead, Mr.Wendal —Arrested Development   MISTER DOUBLE YOU By Jeffrey Scott Jewett   Clip-clop-clip-clop. On route to Hailsham Park, where madness was bought and sold to anyone fool enough for the purchase, two police officers passed. The brim of their hats hid their faces as they rode high in their saddles. Clip-clop-clip-clop....   The day shined bright, and the sidewalks were shaded, but not by trees. Third Street had no trees, but rather shady inhabitants that mingled to and fro.   And Korean owned liquor stores.   ``Foreigner owners on every corner,'' Mr. Double You grumbled. He pushed his cart down Third toward Bonnie Brea. Gray-C, the ole' gray cat, sat atop a rolled up sleeping bag set among aluminum cans, plastic grocery bags and other odd stuff collected from a series of dumpsters.  Possessions he referred to as his `knick-knack-patty-whacks-give-a-dog-a-bone.'   ``Yeppity," he said. "This old man is rolling home.'' The cat's face craned back. Owl like, her green eyes lethargically blinked with adoration as she yawned. Then she mouthed an inaudible meow. Mr. Double You cackled. Like a captain at the bow of her ship, the cat craned her face back around as her body gracefully wobbled with the jouncing of the cart.   Gray-C and he had been together for a long, long-time, since she had been a handful of lint and squeaks. His eyes glazed with the memory of that morning when they had first met.   The morning had been relatively quiet. The sounds of a city yawning: the snore of a bus passing in the distance, and the whoosh from the traffic on the distant freeway.  A soothing sound, he thought, that reminded him of an ocean’s surf. As he pushed his cart, the wheels rattled warily, like the wheels of a roller coaster running down on its track after a long fast run. Mr. Double You had lived a long, fast life. When he heard the kitten's pathetic cries issuing from somewhere on the corner of Third and Bonnie Brea, he followed the sound. He kneeled in the gutter and peered into a drain, when ...     ``You wanna buy a bowling pin?'' A junkie interrupted Mr. Double You's day dream by blocking his path. The junkie pulled a bowling pin out of a garbage bag, displaying it like a game show prize.   Mr. Double You stopped and regarded the man's wares. ``I see your bowling pin has gotta red neck,'' he said. ``I don't like rednecks, and rednecks don't like me.''   ``Five bucks, man,'' the junkie pleaded. ``Give me three?''   ``Three dollars?'' He looked the junkie up and down. ``I see you got balls too.'' As Mr. Double You continued down Third, the junkie yelled, ``Big ones! Can't live on these streets without `em.''   On the corner of Third and Bonnie Brea, he left his cart on the sidewalk and walked to the curb. Down into the gutter he stared, his eyes narrowed with contemplation as he regarded the drain where he had crossed the path of the gray cat so long ago.   "Humph." After a moment he retrieved his cart and continued his stroll. As he passed panhandlers, those too lazy to panhandle, winos, and a variety of skid row backsliders who improvised at impoverishment, he muttered, ``A sound of a cello seeping up from the gutter.  HA!'' He shook his head doubtfully. ``I'm senile. Maybe always have been.'' Then he replied, ``You ain't crazy.'' He shrugged. ``You say.'' He nodded and smiled. ``I say. You ain't crazy.''   Gray-C began to purr when he stopped, and spotted fresh horse droppings in the middle of the crosswalk.   "I hear you got yer' engines runnin' don't you girly? That's my magic motor."   As he entered the crosswalk, he half spun one way, then another, as he danced a little jig around the horseshit. A happy dance dedicated to Miss Connie's potted tomato plants that would no doubt appreciate the dung. Faces on the procession of commuters waiting for the traffic light scowled with impatience. He stopped and returned an agitated glare as car horns beeped. They sound like swampland frogs, he thought, then tittered. From the cart he retrieved a plastic grocery bag with $UPER $AVERS written across it in large pink script, and for the benefit of his commuting audience, he dramatically shook the bag like a magician's handkerchief. Like magic, he thought.   ... It had been long ago, at Third and Bonnie Brea, kneeled before the drain in the gutter, when he heard an echoed melodic sound mingled with her cries, like a bow dragged across the strings of a cello. The low notes, as though a foreboding hum. A sound that somehow carried from the gutter all its filth and stench but then mended into a sympathetic symphony of something that sounded like ... like hope. Somehow, the sound reminded him of an ugly bud bloomed into a flower, or a bloody birth mended into life. He froze in silent reverie, hunched down with his ass up, half sprawled in the gutter. His hand mid stride from the kitten’s grasp....   ``Man,'' Mr. Double You asked, ``how long you think cats live, anyway?'' He frowned. ``Don't go there! Ya' hear! Just don't!" He smiled. "How much time you think she got left?"   The light turned green. A redheaded lady stuck her head out from a Regal and yelled,``Whad the hell are you doing?''   He stuck his hand inside the bag and pointed at the lady, then slowly waved the bag to and fro. ``Behold,'' Mr. Double You bellowed. ``Before yer very eyes, something heard but rarely seen!'' Another jig around the manure, he kneeled and scooped up the droppings. He pulled his hand out while simultaneously turning the bag inside out, then twirled and sealed it. He held the bag up like a prized goldfish won at a carnival. ``You just witnessed a brotha' taking shit from the police!'' The light turned red, and smiles beamed beyond the vehicles’ windshields as the commuters waited for the traffic light to change to green.   He pushed his cart down Third toward Flower. The cat gracefully wobbled with the jouncing of the cart.   ``But hadn't you been drunk as a skunk when you had heard that sound, what sounded like a bow being dragged against a cello?'' He shrugged. "Yeppity, I was drunk. Drunk as usual,” he muttered. ''And ain't had a drop since, have ya?" he asked. "That's because I ain't been thirsty."     On the corner of Flower, again the cat began to purr.   As he approached a Hispanic couple standing on the corner bewailing one another, he noticed a suitcase at the women's feet. As he neared, he read guilt and shame on her face. On the man's face he read murder, revealed like a red explanation point branded above his brow. Hell, I read faces like Einstein solved equations, he thought.   "Since you crossed her path?" He tittered. "Every since." And smiled at Gray-C.   He parked his cart before the couple, and then half spun one way, then another, as he danced a little jig.   "And how old was you when you found that cat, Wendall?" he asked.  "Eight-three or so," he replied.  "Living amongst the crime and the shootin,' but you hardly suffered a cold." He stopped dancing. "Yeppity,' he said. "Every since."   The man on the corner listened to the old man's mumblings and remarked, ``Loco chongo.'' Mr. Double You proceeded to rummage in his cart while Gray-C playfully swiped and pawed. She didn't swipe like she used to, Mr. Double You thought. But neither could he jig like he used to. The couple watched as he retrieved and donned a child's red plastic fire helmet. Then he retrieved two golf tees, dabbing them with chewing gum stuck to the cart's handle. He placed the golf tees atop his helmet, as though they were a roach's antennae. He reached into his pant pocket and pulled out a lighter, lit it, and made a wild wailing sound while he danced a little jig.   The lady's eyebrows rose. The man glared, and then regarded his girl. When the couple's eyes met, they simultaneously guffawed. Satisfied, Mr. Double You retrieved a plastic yellow rose from his cart and handed it to the man. The man dug into his pocket, reaching over the cart—where Gray-C nudged the man's wrist—and gave Mr. Double You a dollar and some change, even as that red explanation mark faded like a school girl's blush.   Mr. Double You fingered the change with approval. ``A knick-knack-patty-whack-give-a- dog-bone. Yeppity, this old man is rolling home.'' He pushed his cart toward Hailsham Park.   He stopped in front of an apartment building. At Gray-C's relief, Mr. Double-You retrieved the bag of dung and tossed it up onto a second floor balcony, the home of seventy-four year old Miss Connie, who, unbeknownst to Mr. Double-You, had passed away last week. The new tenants were a family from the Philippines.       Hailsham Park was once beautiful with its glistening pond and healthy trees, now even the trees appeared demented. Branches reached up greedily like a malnourished hand from a panhandling dope addict. The pond was a cesspool of murky filth.   Home at last, he parked next to his bench. He lifted Gray-C up to an overhanging branch. She made her way to a cubby-nest that had been constructed more than thirty years past, back before the kid who had built it got in trouble with drugs. He had stopped visiting Gray-C. He locked his cart onto the bench with a bike chain. Strips of roasted chicken and fresh water were poured into a dish in the cart. With the sleeping bag placed on the bench, he sat and nibbled on roasted chicken while he read yesterday's newspaper.     Gray-C awaited him in her spot in the cart when he awoke the next morning. Her slumped posture and the muck around her eyes had failed to alarm Mr. Double You.   "Mornin' my sleepy cat?"   Under Gray-C's tree slept the usual drunks who had suffered a bad spell and junkies that failed to score. A few leaned against the trunk. Many slept sprawled under the twisted and gnarled branches. Each face was a blank page of serenity.   "Can't read them faces,'' Mr. Double You remarked. "Never could when they found their way under Gray-C's tree.''   Every night more and more of the pained found their way under her tree. Ignorant that she was even up there, purring like a tiny motor muffled by fur.   As he pushed his cart up Third, past Hailsham, and then Flower, her body wobbled not with grace, but with tension.   When finally they reached the corner of Bonnie Brea, the cat leaned up on the cart's handle and dragged her chin affectionately across Mr. Double You's cheek. His eyes light lit up with terror as she leapt onto his shoulder and hopped down onto the sidewalk. She had never, ever done that without his assistance.   ``Gray-Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?''   His heart stopped when she trotted toward the street, paused at the curb above the drain, looked back, mouthed an inaudible meow, and then disappeared.   ``Gray-Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!'' again and again he yelled into the drain.   His bench at Hailsham Park was forever vacant. He slept on that corner at Third and Bonnie Brea, right there in the gutter. Curled up and peering into the drain as his life's vitality seemingly seeped out of him like floodwater. As panhandlers, those too lazy to panhandle, winos, and a variety of skid row backsliders passed him as they improvised in impoverishment, he moaned, ``Gray-C...''     © Copyright Jeffrey Scott Jewett   Click here to read Jeffrey Scott Jewett’s Brief Bio.   Click the link above to read what will amuse, frighten, amaze and delight you.   It’s Free, offers inspiration and advice others charge money to deliver, provides resources and links and reminds you that you’re a Writer. Subscribe to Jack of Genre, Humdinger’s monthly e-zine by clicking the above link.   The above link will take you to the idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, and delightful weirdness of Humdinger’s unpretentious writers. 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