GETTING OUT OF VENICEChapter I.
If he hadn’t had been for Carrie and his unique childhood, Leonard wouldn’t have been any good at living on the streets. His single mother had been a ghetto survivor in flight, defensive and inventive. She had walked out on his father with four children under the age of 6. Leonard had been the baby. From infancy on, he’d watched her scoop food off tables in fast food joints and eaten that food, not knowing the word ‘cooties,’ even when his older brothers pronounced it scornfully, turning the half eaten burger and fries down. Leonard knew how to survive on the street. Eat the burger, screw Cooties, screw his older brothers.
Hard as it was for him eating garbage today, it had probably been harder for his Mother. She was good looking, educated but she was lugging 4 unwashed kids around, living on the dole when she could get it. That had to hurt. But the woman had been made of steel.
Leonard wasn't as indomitable now. He was vulnerable. The State of California was after him and would grab him, take him in. After homelessness, hunger, fatigue, cops busting you was the big danger. He couldn't be seen on the streets after ten p.m., or if out, he really had to keep an eye peeled. His mother’s rear view mirror driving, stammered explanations to cops so that conspicuously expired tags on her plates wouldn’t be cited, made up his childhood.
Leonard didn’t have a car but the ‘College of Mom’ was useful to him on foot. Cops hassled men on the street worse than they’d ever hassled her back in the seventies. He was a little long in the tooth to tell cops he was a kid and I.D. wasn't required for him. After l8 it was required So l8 was one cut off point and ten p.m. was the other. Was it ten yet? He thought about it. He'd left the city of Hawthorn at sundown, he was in the Valley; it had to be 3 a.m. After ten p.m. you were fair game for any passing unit. He'd heard it many times. Cops could grab your ass and haul you in to the station, book you for being vagrant, then pull up your record or package. That would be very unpleasant as he had one. First, eating out of trash cans. Second, lighting a fire to warm his hands on a cold November night. Burnt a wood shed down. Arson. Not cold, not outside at midnight. Arson. THe memory shot guilt through him. He sighed, tried to focus on the now.
Leonard did not cross the street immediately, not before staring deeply into oncoming traffic searching for the conspicuous black and white unit with the lamp bar on top. One day cops would stop using those foolishly conspicuous cars and the game would be over— for homeless men. You can't fight what you can't see coming.
He was homeless now, trolling the streets like a shark, unable to pause, sleep, eat, or phone family members because they were probably eavesdropping. They really were after him. Like the joke about the paranoid only the tag is, he's right. They were after his ass, had his file, had his fingerprints, his face with a number, his package. Lunacy was a cite-able infraction. Set one little fire and you join the jailbirds, complete with your mother begging the court not to send you to prison, but to a mad house instead. For a year he'd waited the court's decision in Twin Towers Jail loco ward where he'd endured attempted rape by other prisoners with no one to hear his bleated screams. He'd had his nose broken by a Mexican, his crime had been winning at chess. Later at the madhouse, he’d been attacked for being a semi-competent running back during a football game and had his shoulder near pulled off his spine by some lunatic. How bad could prison have been in comparison? Prison would have been a year. In and out burger.
He'd dreamt of flight in the mental hospital but it was impossible there. The hundred and fifty years old asylum had two-year old fences. They medicated you until you were unable to climb a fence. In the last 700 days, nobody had escaped. So instead, he became the prize student, the moderator for all social events and 4 years later, he was in an open-to-the street- halfway house and escaping had been easy. It hadn't been his plan. He was going to do the whole job, curfew thing but a kid accused him of drinking. Untrue. But he knew they'd return him to the madhouse. He'd fled.
He wondered if escaping on a felony charge was another felony, on top of the original arson which hadn't been case closed yet. If so, two times a felon was getting there. Getting marginal. Three times and it was jail for life in California. They didn’t care if it was just a piece of stolen pizza. Unless the Supreme Court reversed that law as unconstitutional. His mother didn’t know Leonard knew about things like that. She thought he was dumb. Well he wasn’t. He knew about the three times you’re out law. He was probably out right now.
He tried to recall what might be his third felony. Leonard didn’t always remember things clearly. Five years of meds had worn off, and he roamed the streets in irritated, foggy withdrawal. He’d set a fire in a closet at the factory. He’d wanted to warn a plane that the airport was fogged in. It had been November and L.A. got foggy. Definitely a felony.
He’d slept in a park once, when he was wandering, walking back and forth between L.A. and Mexico. Cops had hauled him out at 4 a.m., thrown him in jail. Two. The fire and the park. Many traffic violations, too when he was driving around trying to escape Interpol and Mossad assassins. Were those felonies?
Setting the fire had seemed the thing to do. He’d saved a commercial airliner from crashing. He’d gone to the factory to sleep, at midnight, because it was familiar. He’d worked there long before— before the assassins began chasing him. He’d jumped the fence. Made himself at home. Then heard the plane, lost, heard its motor faltering in the fog. The pilot was lost, all those people in danger. He’d run to the corner, bought a coke bottle of gasoline, brought it back. He’d put it on top of the wall. Jumped the fence, lit the rags. The memory stopped there. He’d biked home afterwards, 30 miles. Slept, contentedly. Forgotten about it. But the cameras on the fences forgot nothing. His sister worked there and turned him in when the cops grilled her and showed her the video. She recognized the bearded man. The other employees hadn’t, because he hadn’t worn a beard in the old days. His sister didn’t have to rat him out. She could have said "I dunno, looks like a bum."
The sting of what she’d done. Why? He concentrated on the traffic and the wince passed. Stay here and now. Focus and you drift off. Look for cops. No cops. Cross the street and move on. Like a shark, he fancied. Sharks never sleep. They sleep while they swam, probably eat dead asleep with their mouths open. Leonard was hungry and had to eat right now. Off to the right was a residential street. He looked both ways again and then crossed.
This is where experience paid off. Some houses had lawns dotted with fruit trees. Some houses with lawns dotted with fruit trees had dogs inside. Some houses with fruit trees with dogs inside had owners, who even at midnight, hearing the barking, would look out, and seeing him filling his pockets with oranges only these buzzards would call the cops.
Leonard’s experience told him home owners were heartless and dogs heard everything. They didn’t smell him or see him through the windows. They could hear sound asleep. A dried leaf crackling, a branch snapping, a tennis shoe squishing on wet lawn. Dogs could hear your heart pumping.
Leonard moved along the sidewalk, saw a tree full of ripe grapefruit. His least favorite fruit of all. Its peel puckered his mouth for hours afterwards. Even if you did get a ripe one (which, in the dark, was hard), that aluminum mouth feeling drove him crazy.
Well, not really. His childhood had driven him crazy. Suceptibility was in his genes from a great great grand aunt who’d emptied chamber pots into the street, pawned silver to buy chocolates. The family’s trick pancreas.
Leonard hadn’t stolen. His mother was certain he’d pawned her stuff. She always said her antiques were so valuable. Garage sale nostalgia crap. She boxed it up and it was in the garage. He hadn’t stolen anything. He’d borrowed a sander to lend to his brother the guerilla contractor. His Mom had suspicions when he walked out, she’d known it was something, driven after him, made him empty his backpack and found the belt sander. Now she didn’t trust him and he was innocent. Totally innocent. That was his life pattern. No good deed shall go unpunished.
Leonard moved on up the street looking for peach or loquat trees, apples, anything but grapefruit. Nuts. Nuts would be good. This street had nothing. He walked another block before he found an apple tree. Lucky. They were dead ripe. Dozens of them, half eaten by birds, rotting all over the lawn. Watching the house windows, he filled his pockets then went back to the sidewalk.
If they saw him tiptoeing through a residential area, they’d think he was nuts. The furtive step had to be replaced with an easy saunter --- as if he lived on that street. At times like this, he wished he had a dog on a leash. Pet owners didn’t get hassled by cops or arrested. An arrest would put him right back in the Mental Hospital, once they ran his prints. Twin Towers. The concentration camp from Hell. A prop dog.
He laughed at the thought of convincing some mutt it should join him, live on the street an endless dog walk. What every dog wanted. He laughed. He imagined the dog’s unwillingness after a few days of it. Like, lemme back on the rug, the lino floor, anything but this endless walk.
No dog. Walking without a reason after ten pm. was dangerous. They could hassle you for your I.D. And he had no I.D., empty pockets for five mindless, pickled years. But in their world, no I.D. was dangerous. That alone could get you put in the calabooze. He sighed. Maybe he should forget about food and just find a place to sleep. Trash Dumpster was the safest place, nobody looked inside them. They were sheltered, warm. Find a tarp, a newspaper sheet and climb inside. That would mean going back to the boulevard. He turned and headed back. A door slammed a few houses away. Residential neighborhoods and Private property were the really dangerous places. You could feel the ownership. Literally feel all those rigid people who’d bought snarling if you set a foot on their lawn. An unlocked car may seem warm and cozy but next morning, the car’s owner would look right in and call the cops and you’d be dozing like a baby when the cops opened the door, pistols cocked.
NO. Residential areas had nothing to offer him.It was a fantasy that some old lady in a big house needed a hired hand and would give a cot and hot food. His mother had --- to many homeless men and women.. His childhood had been full of them. He remembered Mountain Walker who’d slept in the plastic green house at back of the garden, eaten rice curry stews like a cave man wolfing pawfuls down ravenously. Mountain had torn his mother’s back gate off the hinges after he’d kicked it in and then he left. What was his complaint? Leonard had never known.
He remembered the one eyed woman who did nothing right. She’d pulled a whole row of pretty lettuce instead of taking the outer leaves, making her mother shriek. When his mother turned on you, it was permanent.
He remembered a turbaned guitar player who smoked weed, had laughing merry eyes and told bawdy stories but sat up straight to do yoga when his mother came in. That guy understood his mother.
There was always a cop. His childhood had prepared him for all of it. The need for duplicity. Hard times. A thin diet. Swallowing your grief and just plowing on. Leonard made his way back to the boulevard to find a dumpster in an alley, behind a liquor store, so he could eat his apples and get some sleep and when the sun came up, root around in the dumpster for stale chips. A good plan. Leonard liked having a clear, good plan. It made dark times bearable. He wondered if sharks had plans.