The Strangers of Kindness (2 page)

At last the bars emptied and the city went quiet, except for the occasional truck rumbling past. Theo thought, shivering, that he’d suffer the cold gladly if it meant he’d be alone for awhile. He dreaded morning already. He was hanging again. It felt like his wrists were peeling away, his shoulders shredding, like ripping a chicken joint apart. His thirst raged, and an hour crept by.

He heard them before he saw them. Small noises from the direction of the nearby alley. Slowly his eyes penetrated the blackness there and he saw movement, several forms moving.
Oh, Christ, what now?

A child asked, “But what’s he doing there?” A kid out here at three in the morning? Someone shushed the kid, but it only insisted again, “But why’s he
there
?”

A city cop drove past slowly and the shapes against the building disappeared for a few minutes. Then one of them walked toward Theo. It was a boy, maybe ten. Skinny, dirty, and with bleak eyes that didn’t match the All-American freckles. Theo tried to swallow but his mouth was dry.

The boy squinted at the sign on the pillory. “Says he’s a ‘debtor’”. He pronounced every letter: “debbitor.”

“A bum.”

“Where’d Surgeon go?”

“I dunno.” The boy stepped closer and examined Theo’s prison. A slow smile spread over his face. “This here guy can’t do anything,” he said. He reached out and prodded Theo’s stomach with a stiff finger. When Theo jerked and growled the smile grew wider. A couple more shadows crossed the sidewalk to join him.

“He’s a bad guy,” the taller one, a redheaded girl, said. “They don’t put the good guys out like this. What’d you do, Mister?”
 

But of course Theo couldn’t answer. She kicked idly at his leg. He jerked it away but she just moved over a step and started again. The other one was a black boy about seven years old, who said nothing but stared at Theo with huge, wounded eyes.
 

All three of them wore rags.

“Hey,” the bigger boy said, “I bet Surgeon could fit in those jeans. Let’s get ‘em for him.” He reached for Theo’s waistband snap. Theo kicked out at him and sent him flying backwards across the sidewalk gasping
oof
! Immediately the other two and a tiny little girl, blonde curls bouncing, were all over Theo, hitting, kicking, biting. He’d have roared behind the gag if his throat wasn’t so raw. He thrashed powerlessly. They weren’t very big but they were enraged and their fists and feet hurt like hell.

It stopped abruptly when a gloved hand shot out of the darkness and whacked the bigger boy upside the head, sending him staggering.

“Cut that out, Curt,” the new one ordered. “Sissy, Winnie, stop it. What you doin’, beating up a guy that can’t defend himself?”

“He kicked Curt!” the little girl, Sissy, cried.

“Well Curt probably did something first, didn’t he? Didn’t you, Curt?”

Curt grumbled. Then he said, “I was getting those pants for you. You were saying yours are about wore out.” And it was true. Surgeon’s jeans were more holes than denim. He wore a filthy, ragged Huskers T-shirt and a grimy windbreaker, and his sneakers had holes in the toes. His gloves were strange; thin gray knit, but the tips of the fingers were layered with dirty adhesive tape. He was almost as tall as Theo, but Theo estimated his age at twelve. Maybe, at a stretch, thirteen. His hair was greasy, dark; his eyes equally dark in a pale thin face. Panting, Theo waited for Surgeon’s response. The boy eyed Theo’s jeans wistfully.

“He’s just a bad guy, Surge,” Winnie said. “You need ‘em worse than him. Besides, they’ll give him more when they lock him up again. They won’t give us squat, and you know it.”

Surgeon glanced at her and distractedly handed her a half-eaten sandwich in a paper wrapper. “Found it behind the bar,” he mumbled. “Sissy needs some.” Winnie knelt to feed the little girl.

“Well, Mister, I’m sorry but Winnie’s right. Nobody gives us anything, and I suspect you’ll be in an orange jumpsuit pretty soon. Don’t fight me, okay? And we won’t hurt you.”

Theo nodded, defeated. He couldn’t bring himself to kick at them again. Surgeon and Curt stripped his jeans off him and Surgeon took his own off right there—he was naked underneath and grubby all over—and put them on. He smiled a little, said, “Still warm,” and then had the grace to look ashamed. “Sorry, Mister. Hope you have better luck soon.”

He held out his arms like a shepherd gathering the flock and said, “Come on, let’s go. The Vagrant cops’ll be around pretty soon.”

“Surge, what’s a debbitor?” Theo heard the little girl ask.

The group faded into the shadows of the alley leaving Theo shaking in the cold in his BVD’s. His feelings surprised him. He couldn’t feel angry with them. He was just abysmally depressed.

The cold rounded off his exhaustion and at last he slept, restlessly, with book dust and the feel of books haunting, comforting his dreams. With the first bus’squawking brakes he roused, and immediately the thought came to him that surely someone would see to it that they put some pants on him at least.
 

Surely a mostly-naked man hanging around on a street corner was an affront to polite society that had to be rectified, even if they didn’t do it out of pity.

Wrong again. “Forgot,” he thought disgustedly, “I don’t exist, so how can I offend them?”

The second day was much like the first, except that a newspaper reporter came down to take some pictures and examine the set-up so he could describe it accurately. He didn’t look at Theo, either. “Your interviewing skills leave something to be desired,” Theo thought at him as the young journalist walked away, still jotting notes.

Hunger, thirst, pain and degradation took their toll. By sunset Theo hung like a dead thing, insensible to anything around him. The evening was similar to the night before, except he was nearly raped by a drunkenly aggressive youth who was finally dragged away by a buddy who hissed, “You want people thinkin’ you’re a fag?” and managed to lead him off down the street.

Deep in the night voices stirred his consciousness. It was the kids again. They were sitting against the building where he couldn’t see them. He listened wearily for a few minutes then decided they weren’t talking about or to him, so he let his head drop. Nightmare shreds of thoughts slid around in his mind, eluding his concentration. But he still heard them.

“But why do we have to leave the basement?” Sissy implored.
 

“Because we gotta keep moving,” Surgeon answered. “The VO cops will find us. We’ll find another place. It’ll be even better,” he told her.

“You don’t want the VO’s to getcha,” Curt said teasing.” They’ll send you to the orphanage.”

“The work house,” Winnie’s cynical voice corrected.

“Yeah, they’ll sew your lips together,” Curt said, pushing it.

“But then I couldn’t eat!” Sissy objected.

“Not
those
lips.” Curt’s shocking venom took Theo’s breath away.

“Curt!” Surge barked. “Cut it out.”

“It’s true. They don’t want ‘em to breed more poor people so they sew ‘em up.”

“That’s crap. They might tie their tubes. It’s standard surgery,” he added, half to himself. Theo’s curiosity was piqued. That had sounded . . . almost like . . . someone rubbing a favorite stone. He wondered how Surgeon had got his name.

They were quiet then, and Theo faded.

Even when the crisp, bright workday broke with the bustle of commerce all around, he didn’t come to. When a fender-bender crashed at the corner right behind him and the tail-gating car’s headlight exploded shooting slivers of glass at him, he didn’t stir. There was a brief confusion of pedestrians at the scene, then they sorted themselves out and moved on. If anyone noticed the Debtor bleeding from a dozen needles of glass in his back, no one commented or did anything about it.

* * *

So he was not a prime specimen when Jennifer Skoada spotted him as she drove her produce truck from the Old Market toward the 13th Street on-ramp. The bizarre sight made her quickly find a parking slot and walk back for a second look.

She stood in front of the pillory reading the Court’s notice and chewing at a thumbnail. She circled the prisoner, eyeing him appraisingly but half-attentively. Finally she stood in front of him again, murmuring to herself.

“A thousand bucks? I could do that. What would the projected value come to . . . it might work.” She checked her watch. The Courthouse would still be open. She leaned forward and lifted his head with a gentle pull under the chin. “You alive, pal?” His eyes opened and rolled back. “Well, hang in there, I may be getting you out of this.”

Feeling reckless, she pushed the judge’s clerk a little bit about Theo’s projected value. “But he was a store owner, too, wasn’t he?”

“Not really. Manager, say.”

“But either way, he can do books and ordering and inventory, make change, deal with the public. That’s worth more than just farm labor.”

The clerk cocked a sour eye at her, but added a few percentage points to the total anyway. Under his breath he muttered, “You’re lucky you’re pretty,” but he wouldn’t repeat it when Jennifer challenged him, having heard him perfectly.

“So what’s the total?” she asked anxiously.

“Six hundred sixty-five thousand, eight hundred eight dollars. That’s at $5.82 an hour, 2080 hours per year, 55 years to age 80. Of course, you own him till he dies, unless you sell him, and of course there’s nothing to keep you down to 2080 hours of work a year. But that’s just the formula we have to use.”

Jennifer wanted to squeal and jump up and down. Added to the $400,000 her truck farm and house were worth, that put her safely over the million dollar mark. She signed the prelim commitment form and wrote down the court date. “The day after tomorrow,” she sang in her head, “I’m free! I’m free!”

“Make sure they clean him up and put some clothes on him,” she told the clerk.

“Standard issue,” was his bored reply.

* * *

Standard issue was walking him through the gang shower with all the other miscreants and giving him a pair of cast-off surgical pants with the drawstring waist, and a pair of paper prison booties. Nothing else. In the courtroom two days later Theo stood manacled hand and foot, the too-large scrubs hanging low on his hips, and he listened dully to what the Judge was telling him.

“. . . the sentence of public pillory having been carried out, the statutes dictate the next step in this process is either transport to the nearest Federal penitentiary or the sale of the offender if anyone wants to buy him. In your case, Theodore Dahl, there is a purchaser who has come forward. Miss—ah—Skoada. Is she here?”

Jennifer stepped up to the Judge’s bench. “That’s me, Your Honor.”

“Your preliminary commitment form says you have agreed to pay Mr. Fred Slitter’s asking price of $1,000. Do you have it with you?”

“Yes.” She handed him the envelope and as the Judge thumbed through the stack of twenties, she glanced at Theo, inert by her side. He was staring at a nonexistent place near the floor.
 

There were deep purple trenches under his eyes. Heavy bruises recorded the punishment his shoulder joints had taken in the pillory, and a smattering of smaller scratches and bruises were mementos of Surgery’s half-pint brigade. The glass nicks in his back were scabbed.

“It’s all here,” the Judge intoned, and Fred stepped smartly up to the bench to receive the money. “Mr. Slitter, you and your attorney may start signing papers. Miss Skoada, I have a short list of things I am required to tell Mr. Dahl in your presence.”
 

He turned to Theo. “Under the Debt Adjustment Act of 2005 and by the authority of the District Court of Omaha, I hereby remove all rights of citizenship of the United States of America from your person until such time as you are able to repay the debt you owe in the amount of $126,015 in the form of unpaid rent on the agricultural land, home and outbuildings, back to the year 1975, and $129,881 owed to various agricultural implement, chemical and seed vendors listed herein.” The Judge was reading from a writ.

“The transaction effected here today places your person under the ownership of Miss Jennifer Skoada until these debts are paid or she chooses to sell you to another party. Do you follow this so far?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In effect, Mr. Dahl, legally you do not exist. You have no rights. Not to vote, not to legal representation, not to own property, not to live where you please, none. The U.S. Constitution no longer applies to you. From today onward Miss Skoada decides what you will do, when and where and how you will do it. You must be very sure you understand this, Mr. Dahl, for the penalty for behaving otherwise will be quite severe. I believe that last night in your cell the officer demonstrated the capabilities of the tethering device implanted in your neck?”

Theo’s “Mm-hm” was barely audible. Jennifer stared at him in alarm. They’d already
used
that thing on him?

“Your Honor,” she said, “This demonstration, you called it—had he done something wrong?”

“No, Miss Skoada. It’s policy for the corrections officers to demonstrate it once to the prisoner, for the benefit of the person who will purchase him. That way, in most cases, further use of the device is unnecessary. Ah—here’s the officer now with your control unit. You see it’s quite convenient, you strap it on like a watch, or you can put it in a pocket. Until Mr. Dahl has completely proven his trustworthiness and docility I advise wearing it on your wrist. You have already told the officer the effective range you need on the unit?”