South Street Read Free

bar. “Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw.”
    The street lay empty in the wee-hours-of-the-morning darkness. There was a chill in the air, and Rayburn pulled his jacket close about him, shuddering, shaking in alcoholic tremens. He had trouble standing, so he hauled himself over to a graffiti-covered wall and leaned against it, trying to hold his head up and his vomit in. The light on the corner changed, but there was no rush of rubber-tired wheels; there was no traffic. Just as the light was changing from yellow to red one lone car, a long pink Cadillac, careened through the intersection, raking its high beams across Rayburn’s slumping form, and vanished in a rush of wind and a blare of radioed soul music mingled with drunken voices. Rayburn watched it go, then he tottered into the alley and retched laboriously over some garbage cans.
    When he had vomited he felt better. He fumbled in his pocket and found change, pulled it out, counted it, unbelieving. There was a dollar there. A dollar. He considered going back in for another drink but shook his head, shoved the money back into his pocket, and struggled back out to the curb. His flat nose wrinkled at an unfamiliar stench, and his eyes darted around erratically until they focused on the body of the cat, lying in the gutter. Rayburn fought down the urge to vomit again, turned right, and began to walk. Every few steps his sense of direction would give out, and he would stagger into a wall and bounce away, half spinning from the impact. He mumbled loudly as he struggled along, conversing with the grimy walls, the light poles, the cars parked at infrequent intervals along the curb. “I ain’t too anxious to be goin’ home,” he informed a dented Ford, “’cause you see, if I goes home, that bitch gonna give me a hard time for sure. I can hear it now. ‘Rayburn, you done gone an’ spent up all the money an’ didn’t give me nothin’.’ As if to say she wouldn’t a spent up all the money. Bitch.” He nodded for emphasis, stumbled on to a garbage can. “But,” he elaborated, “it’s possible, it is definitely possible, that the bitch ain’t gonna be there at all. I mean, it’s hard to know, you know? I don’t know. I don’t even know if I want the bitch to be there. I mean, it’s bad if she do be there, but it’s bad if she ain’t there, too, ’cause then I gotta wait for her to get back, an’ you know I think it all the time, maybe this time she ain’t gonna be comin’ back. Maybe she gone for good. Or maybe she done gone off with somebody an’ she’ll come tippin’ on in tomorrow with some shit about how she was out with that bitch sister a hers an’ she was too tired to come home. Lyin’ her damn head off. She knows I know she’s lyin’. Knows I ain’t gonna call her on it, ’cause if I do she’s liable to go right on an’ tell me all about it. Then what the hell am I gonna do? I mean, I know , but so long as she ain’t tole me nothin’ I don’t got to be believin’ it, you know?” The garbage can declined to reply. Rayburn launched an uncoordinated kick that did more harm to him than to the can, then hobbled, cursing, on down the street. Dark empty windows gazed at him blankly. Rayburn bounced off a wall, gyrated like a tightrope walker along the edge of the curb. “She’ll be back though,” he told the street. “Oh yeah, she be back, switchin’ her ass around like it was a goddamn flyswatter, wavin’ money in ma face. She say, ‘You ain’t got no money, baby? Workin’ in that damn bank, place where they keeps that money, an’ you ain’t got none yourself? What’s the matter with you? You ain’t much of a man, that’s all I got to say.’ An’ then by Jesus I’ll take the bitch in an’ fuck the hell right out of her. Make her forget whoever that bastard was, make her forget his damn name. Fuck him right out of her. Make her climb the damn walls. I can do it too, by God. Only”—Rayburn stopped and addressed the cluttered