Prior Bad Acts

17

KARL FIGURED THERE likely were no homeless people in the part of town where he was headed. It was a sunny, warm fall day, warm enough that he could discard the ragman’s coat, which he did in a Dumpster behind a closed printing shop. He kept the matted dreadlocks and knit cap, though his head was itching something fierce and he couldn’t stand the feeling. He had no doubt that the ragman’s clothes were full of lice.

He wanted a hot shower, and to shave himself. He imagined he could feel the hairs pushing their way up through the skin on his chest and groin. The idea made his skin crawl.

Checking out his reflection in the printing shop’s barred back window, Karl was pleased enough. The ragman’s pants were baggy on him, on account of Karl’s not being a large man. If he had been a woman, he would have been considered petite. There really was no equal word for a man that he knew of.

He put his hands in the pants pockets and slouched into a sort of lazy S profile. That was a good look, lazy, not in any hurry to get anywhere. No one would think he was running from the law if he didn’t move faster than a shuffle.

Digging through the ragman’s cart, Karl found several pairs of sunglasses, some scratched and broken, some not. He tried them on until he had a good fit, covering the bloodred of his eyes, which would call attention and people would remember.

He studied himself in the window and liked what he saw. But he wasn’t satisfied. He hadn’t changed the appearance of his jawline or his mouth, and a lot of people looked there first when they looked at somebody. Everyone in Minneapolis was looking at his picture on the news and in the paper.

He had the five o’clock shadow. That was helpful, but not enough. He had the bruises from the night before. He reached into his mouth and took out his bridgework, leaving a couple of black holes in his smile. Better, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He rummaged through the junk in the ragman’s cart, looking for something that might spark an idea.

Street people kept the damnedest stuff. This one had a collection of near-empty aerosol cans, mostly spray paint and hair spray. For huffing the fumes, Karl knew. A cheap high. There were half a dozen one-off shoes that all looked to have been run over in the street. There was a trash bag with some aluminum cans and glass beer and liquor bottles. These were probably the source of the money Karl now had in his pocket and taped to his privates. There was a claw hammer, which Karl took and strapped to his ankle with shoestrings under his pant leg. There was a pliers.

Karl picked it up and studied it, ideas turning over in his mind. He put a fingertip in the mouth of it and squeezed a little.

Standing in front of the store window, he tugged up the T-shirt he wore and put it over his lower lip. Then he took the pliers and very methodically began to squeeze the lip hard, hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. From one corner of his mouth to the other and back again, he pinched his lip with the pliers.

When he started to get faint from the pain, he stopped and looked at himself in the glass once more. The lip was already swelling, there were some lines from the teeth of the pliers, but he had only broken the skin a couple of times.

He was a satisfied man. This would do for now.

Slouched and shuffling, fat lip sticking out from his face, Karl abandoned the ragman’s cart and went back out on the street. The day was glorious. The sky was an electric shade of blue, and the air was warm-well, fairly warm for this place with fall slipping away. But there were hardly any people on the streets. Nothing much happened on Saturdays in this part of town. Businesses were closed. People had no call to be walking up and down.

The lack of people, however, did not stop the city buses from running. Karl sat at a bus stop, slumped, and waited. Some lonely soul before him had left a newspaper scattered in sections on the bench. On the front page was a mug shot of himself, and a photograph of Judge Carey Moore in her judge’s robes, sitting up on the judge’s bench, overseeing some trial or another.

Karl’s heart pumped a little harder. His picture and the picture of his angel on the same page. His mother would have said it was a portent, a sign. Karl didn’t believe in signs, except for now. Carey Moore had taken a beating on account of him, because she had ruled in his favor. He couldn’t imagine any other judge doing that. Everyone in the state wanted him dead.

She was a woman with the courage of her convictions. Karl found that idea excited him. A strong and passionate woman who wouldn’t back down from anybody.

The city bus rumbled up to the curb and groaned and hissed like an old man letting a fart. Karl folded up the newspaper and got on, heading toward his heroine.