Crimes and the People Who Commit Them

A Canticle for Frank-3

Anyway, Shy was alert enough that he understood what was coming his way and tried to drop down and get away from the blade. In the end, the slice started next to his left eye, went across that, over the bridge of his nose and on across his forehead. The cops told me that they had brought him over, but all the medical personnel were either on break or off on tending to an emergency somewhere and they didn’t know what to do so they called me. I told them relax, I got this.

I laid Shy on his back on an examination table and went to work getting him cleaned up. I put a stack of 4 x 4 gauze pads on his forehead where the deepest part of the cut was and wrapped an Ace bandage around them for pressure to staunch the bleeding, and just stuck white tape over the rest of the cuts to stop the blood flow until I could get him stitched up. Back in the old days, inmate nurses did sutures. Shy asked me what it looked like and I told him that as such things go, I see worse on a regular basis. “A few stitches and you’ll be back in action on no time”, I assured him.

Shy told me that he thought he had something in his left eye; he said it stung like crazy and asked me to take a look. I noticed that he had kept that eye scrunched tightly shut the whole time. I pried the lids open with my thumb and fore finger and it took a moment to realize what I was looking at—which was the inside of his eyeball. The knife had sliced it in half. Imagine slicing a grape in two and lifting the top of it up. You get the idea. Shy asked me what it looked like. I told him, “It looks like you will be going downtown, Big Guy.” At that moment the captain arrived and asked me for my assessment of the situation.

I told him, “This man needs to see an ER physician immediately. He needs way more attention than we can give him here.” The captain motioned me off to the side, out of ear-shot of Chi-Town and listened to my explanation. He immediately called the Control Center and said he needed transport to the hospital downtown pronto. I’ve watched this scenario unfold a number of times over the years and I have been angered and appalled at how long it takes from the time such a call is placed until he guy is actually out the gate and headed to the ER. In this case, for reasons unknown, it happened fairly quickly. I was impressed.

Chi Town was likewise impressed. “You the man, Dude,” he said, slightly awed. “You make s**t happen around here. Guys bleed to death waiting for a ride downtown. You speak, and the place starts jumpin’. You my new hero, Dude.”

“Keep that to yourself,” I told him, “we don’t want people to start taking.” Shy was giving me way too much credit. Sometimes things work, mostly they don’t. Believe me, the fact that things fell into place for him on this thing had nothing to do with me. Still, Shy heard me tell the captain he needed to go down town, and downtown he went. Shy was the kind of guy, I knew my prowess would be broadcast far and wide.

It was three or four days later before I saw Frank again. He was wearing his arctic socks. When I noticed, he explained, “Obviously, my toes are not freezing now, but they hurt. They are sensitive to the touch and it is painful when shoes and socks rub against them. These socks add a lot of padding, and that helps. So, thanks for the socks, Dude.”

I shrugged, “Glad you like them,” I said. “So how you doing generally?”

“How you doing, Dude?” Frank was in a sour mood, but that seemed to be as good as it was going to get. “Know how many times a day someone asks me how I’m doing?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, matching his tone. “Tell me. How many times a day does someone ask you how you’re doing?”

“Too fuckin’ many, that’s how many.”

“You have my sympathy,” I said. “You know how many times a day someone lets me know they don’t give a rat’s ass how I am doing?”

“That’s because you are such an asshole,” Frank opined. “That’s why I have always hated you.”

“I’ve always hated you back, Frank,” I responded. “I should have stuck a screw driver in the side of your head a long time ago.”

“You should have jumped off a bridge a long time ago, and then I wouldn’t have had to carry you all these years,” he said

“You carried me?” I asked incredulously.

“I only let you hang out because I felt sorry for you. We both know, it wasn’t for me, these yard sharks would have eaten you alive long ago.”

It went on in this vein for a while. This is what passes for friendly banter where I live. A lot is said between the lines. You get it or you don’t. When it finally wound down, Frank picked up where he had left off, “There are a thousand great stories from my days in that slum.

A sociologist could go crazy just studying how people live like that and make it work. I mean, on three sides of you, people are living their lives and somehow, they make it work. In most cases, all that is between you and your neighbors is cardboard or some kind of flimsy scrap material, but you adjust your reality to where you don’t hear their sounds or see them through the cracks. Your space is yours and people respect the boundaries. If your neighbor wants to talk to you, he could say, “Hey Dude, what’s up?” without raising his voice, but that would be rude. If he wants to speak to you, he goes outside and comes to your front door. Just like neighbors do anywhere in the world. So many things about that life were fascinating, but I’ll admit, it got old living like that.

I found a little place to rent in what passed as a pretty decent neighborhood and moved without leaving a forward. There were people around me I had begun to care about, but I didn’t need any of that.

Let me tell you something else without going too far afield here. People hear Calcutta, and all they can imagine is the scene from movies or whatever of a city with masses of beggars and lepers and starving children with flies crawling in their nostrils. Calcutta has all that, to be sure, but there is a beautiful city there, Dude. Pisses me off when people say disparaging things about Calcutta. The city is right on the Hooghly River, which makes it not only the oldest seaport in the state of East Bengal, but the only riverine port as well. It is the cultural, and economic and educational center of East India. They have a stock exchange.

There are over ten million people in Calcutta, Dude; way too much poverty, it’s too hot, and pollution is out of control, but I love that city. I love the museums, and the theater, and the concerts; the history, man.

I had liked living in the slum, but that was a little too much reality for me. Sleeping on the ground in my little shack, the smells, no plumbing. There was way too much disease. I compromised on getting a funky little place that was just a few steps up the social ladder from the slum. Mr. Ford had paid me real well, but had to make this money last. I was like Scrooge McDuck. It hurt me to let go of a nickel. So now I am living in a tiny apartment in downtown Calcutta and I knew this wouldn’t last long. I stood out, and was swarmed by beggars whenever I stepped outside. It is true that the worst thing you can do is give them something. When I say swarmed, I mean being mobbed like a rock star. It’s no joke. I had people grabbing at me, begging me in desperation for a penny, anything. They were utterly pitiful, Dude, but my sympathy wore out fairly quickly. They were shoving their diseased children in my face, please help save my child’s life!!! It was just too much.

After a week or so living there, the kid who had brought me the gold card showed up at my door. I didn’t even ask how he had found me. A westerner who lived in the slums? Yeah, I blended. He said there were some friends of his wanted to meet me. I told him I wasn’t interested, but he was persistent. The thing we had done with the credit card was a very big deal. I hadn’t thought much of it, but that haul fed a lot of people. One of the things we bought was a small water pump that ultimately improved the standard of living for a number of people in the slum. On and on. Word of my “bigness” circulated and people just wanted to say thank you. I told him to relay that I said “you’re welcome,” closed the door. Several hours later, I stepped out the door and stumbled over this kid sitting there on the door step. “We go now,” he said and led the way.

“Oh, why not?” I thought. “I’m here for the adventure.”

We ended up in a dark club a few blocks from my apartment. There were six guys there, maybe early twenties, well dressed, throwing money around like showboats and gangsters anywhere in the world. One of them introduced himself as Naveen and poured me a glass of Dom, establishing himself as the Alpha. It took a while for me to relax, but these guys were cool and the champagne was good. The inner circle of this clique appeared to be Naveen and the five guys with him, Amit, Mahesh, Raj, Kumar, and Alok.

There was a lot of joking around, there were women—beautiful women, Dude—don’t get me started on the women—hanging all over us. The party revolved around our table—champagne never stopped flowing, good food never stopped coming. There was coke, hashish—they don’t really smoke weed, but hash is common. I was high as a witch doctor and felt like we had all be friends for years. It was a great time.

You been high before, Dude, you how it is. Anything can be funny. With these guys, everything was funny. I never laughed so much in my life. A big part of it was—and they didn’t have a clue—I was laughing at them. They obviously learned how to be gangsters from watching American television shows and movies. They mimicked Scarface, and The Sopranos, and all the Godfather movies. Raj did his damnest to talk like Bogart. On top of that, they tried to use as much American slang as they could and were constantly getting it wrong. It was hysterical sometimes. My favorite was when Kumar was going for the expression tore up from the floor up, to describe how stoned he was, said, “I am tearing the floor up.”

In the same conversation, Alok made reference to the Richard Gere in the Movie, A Woman Who Is Pretty. All in that lilting accent they have. I loved it.

Even so, you know, Dude, that kind of thing, it’s never been my trip. Sure, I’ll cop a buzz now and again, but I’m not about flashy clothes and night clubs and jewelry and that whole bling scene. But—I don’t know, I just really enjoyed that night. It was fun, and I really hadn’t let off any steam since I got out of the joint. Next day that kid came for me again, said it was time for brunch and the others were waiting for me. Do you know how odd it is to hear a Calcutta street kid use a word like “brunch?”