The sky was falling. It had curtained down in whisps of mist of hard spitting pin heads of ice. Preston leaned, like a Sampson, against the columns of the grand old church. The ice stung his face. He pushed, imagining that one modicum more of strength would send the columns plummeting into the busy avenue below.
Across the avenue from the church was the plaza. It was now a remodeled shopping area, what was called an “open mall.” It had been, in the decade before, part of a red-light strip. The bookstore on its north corner had sold girlie magazines. The movie house had shown blue movies--rated triple x. The Majestic, a bar and grill, had been the dingiest of dives, where drunkards slipped in and out of consciousness at the tables and prostitutes sold themselves in the toilets.
All that remained of the old plaza were the neon signs, now parti-colored and working, and the bums.
Through the mist, Preston could see shoppers, their collars drawn around them, slipping busily in and out of the shops, finishing the last bit of their Christmas buying.
But in the alcove under the marquee of the movie house where an adventure about a soldier of fortune was playing, huddled the still figure of a man. He was a goose-necked figure who leaned into the alcove, avoiding the needles of ice that the wind drove, capriciously.
Preston pushed again, straining his back against the columns. For a moment he imagined they moved. But when he looked, he saw that it was only that his hand had slid on the icing surface of the pillars. Such was his fantasy to move mountains.
He went about the errand which had brought him out into the ungodly cold, that of buying supper at the local supermarket. The market was well stocked with Christmas fare: turkeys, oranges, nuts, fruit cakes and cookies cut into the shapes of Christmas trees and Santa Clauses. The shoppers scurried about the aisles, each intent on his own errand, each seemingly too engrossed with the merchandise to pay much attention to the other shoppers. Occasionally, conversation could be heard. Occasionally, two who knew each other, from work or church, exchanged season's greetings or chatted for a moment about nothing important. Occasionally, one was overheard grumbling to another about the prices of the items or laughing to the cashier about some joke about money; or they talked about the weather. But by and large the shoppers went about their business, interacting only when interaction was unavoidable. It was not that they were oblivious to one another. No one who shops is blind. But there was a refusal, or perhaps a fear, or maybe they were just too busy to see beyond the simple pictures of each other.
Preston bought chicken thighs, carrots and rice at the deli. Eat more chicken than a weasel! He held the sack under his coat as he crossed the avenue, traversing the plaza, to walk the few blocks to his home. As he rounded the corner at the far end of the plaza, he came face to face with the man he had seen in the alcove. He had seen the man before. He had been panhandled by him.
The man looked elderly, worn down by alcohol and exposure. His face was grey-stubbled, and it seemed to droop from the scowl on his lips. He was not a friendly looking man. His eyes averted when he saw Preston. He did not ask for spare change. He leaned against the wall, pushing his forehead into it and rolling it forward, so that his neck seemed to bend like a lamp.
This position made no sense to Preston, as he could see that it exposed more of the man to the weather rather than it protected. Now the ice fell onto his bare neck and doubtlessly, Preston thought, ran under the plaid, threadbare jacket onto the man's back.
He should go to a shelter, Preston thought. Then he tried to think where the nearest shelter was. It wasn't far. Just a few blocks beyond the plaza in the other direction. Someone should point him in that direction. Perhaps a cop will come along.
Preston's apartment was the bottom floor of a large Victorian, never a mansion, but certainly in its day, a well-dressed house. The house was still attractive. It was raised nearly a story above the street level; fancy lattice fenced the supports of the grand porch which in better weather provided a view of the neighborhood and the high rises of downtown. Inside was simple, square and bare. A sofa, a table and two chairs, a coffee table, a telephone, a television--and in the bedroom, just a dresser and a bed furnished the place. The bare necessities were all he felt he needed, and he liked it just that way. The first thing he did, after putting down the sack of groceries, was to turn on the television.
A man preached the gospel. He was famous throughout the South and Preston hated him. Preston called him "God's real estate agent" because he owned several resort hotels and often made pitches for them in his sermons. Changing the channel immediately, he found All Star Wrestling where Rick Americka was about to put the finishing touches on Sheik Abdul. Rick, whose starched blond hair seemed never to fall out of place slammed the sheik into the mat. The Sheik bounced from his back to a sitting position and shook his head. He growled at the audience. Rick preened, flexing his huge biceps. The camera zoomed in on the Sheik who was taking something from his boot and concealing it in his hand. The crowd roared, trying to warn the unsuspecting Rick. The referee, as usual, was arguing with Rick, when he should have been watching the Sheik. The Sheik came at Rick and threw white powder into his eyes. Rick fell to the mat; he floundered. Now it was the Sheik’s turn to prance about the ring and preen.
Preston plated his meal and sat down at the sparse table to eat it. He looked out of the window into the night which seemed blue with the cold. He could see the glints of the ice needles reflecting in the streetlamps. He heard a sound. It seemed at first to be the wind tugging at the corner of the house. He paid it little attention, his mind filling with the ranting of Rick Americka who had just defeated the Sheik with a backbreaker slam.
The food was too hot, and he waited a moment for it to cool. Again, the sound came, as if from under the house, a gentle broad scraping set against the thin tinkling of the blowing sleet. Again, Preston thought the sound to be that of the elements punishing the house. But now the noise was more than just a scraping; it was the long sound of something being dragged, and was directly under him. Something was crawling beneath his house! His first impression was that a wild animal, a bear or a bobcat, vying the cramped crawlspace to escape the pinpricks of the ice storm, was seeking refuge under his house. But no such animal lived in the city, except in the zoo. The animal must be a stray dog which had loosened the lattice frame around the porch and somehow pulled itself through gaps in the foundation of the house.
Preston went to the door. He could feel the chill of the draft invading over the threshold. He did not want to sacrifice his warmth to go out and chase away a stray. It would mean crawling under the house on the frozen ground, and with a stick or a mop handle, battling the animal in the close quarters. Besides, the poor dog deserved shelter. In the morning it would go out, and he would patch the hole.
The dinner had cooled quickly, and was almost cold before he knew it. He was a slow eater. He turned the vegetables over in his mouth, as if fondling them with his tongue, chewed dispiritedly before swallowing.
Again, a noise came from under the house. It was the sound of breathing, loud, even—but not the peaceful breathing of sleep. Desperation permeated the breathing and came up through the floorboards. The breathing had the gurgle of phlegm in it. It sounded unmistakably human.
There is a man under my house! Preston almost voiced the words. He stopped in the midst of chewing, the fork, in hand, halfway down to the plate. A man under my house. A man. He waited. The breathing quieted until he could hardly hear it. No, he thought again, it is an animal. It is a stray dog. It is not a man.
And then the cough came. A man! A dog cannot cough like a man. A dog is not a man. He listened hard now, getting down on his knees and putting his ear against the floor. He could barely hear the breath. Or perhaps, he was now only imagining the breathing. He strained, trying hard to hold his breath and not give himself away. Finally, he was convinced that he could hear nothing. No man. It was an animal. He had seen stray dogs in the neighborhood. They came over from the poorer sections of town, from the projects, and they tore into garbage cans for food. He remembered one of them, a fur-matted, thin mutt, which had run across the avenue in front of traffic, causing a motorist to screech his brakes and to slide on the slick street. There were hundreds of these dogs across the city. The dogcatchers couldn't keep up with them. The pounds were overloaded with them. They put hundreds of them to sleep every year. Hundreds more must die from the cars. He had seen them, on the interstate, lying stiff and flat like ragged fur coats. He could see in his mind's eye the one beneath his house, curled into a ball, tail over muzzle, comfortable and safe from the elements.
Secure with the idea that if the animal was still under his house, it was safe and warm, Preston went back to his dinner. But now the dinner was too cold to eat. He would have to warm it, but decided, instead, to leave it for later.
The cough came again. Twice. It was a man.
Preston turned the television off and listened. He could hear the breathing plainly. It was long and uneasy. It gurgled at the end of the inhalation as if the phlegm which made the sound were deep inside the lungs. It was soft on the other end, as if the labor tapered off into an easiness. With the next breath the labor came back. And then a cough.
Preston tip toed to the spot above the cough. He could feel the presence of the man. He imagined how the man lay—on his side—where his head was; how his arms were folded around his knees; how his head was buried in his arms for warmth; how his knees were drawn into the chest; how the chest, constricted by the knees, labored to draw in warm air from the chill of the frozen ground. Preston put his ear to the floor again. He could feel the coldness and grit of the floor against his cheek.
He heard nothing.
He moved to the couch on the opposite side of the room from the spot below which the man lay, and considered what he must do. He must call the police. But was this a job for the police? This is what they were paid for. After all, the man was trespassing. He was breaking and entering. He was committing a crime, and the police were paid to arrest criminals. It was not arrest that Preston wanted for the man. Obviously, he was one of the street bums, one of the men—maybe even the very goosenecked man, the alkie, he had seen under the marquee. He was harmless. This much Preston knew from having lived near the plaza.
But if the police took him to jail, then he would have a bed and a meal and a place to wait out the storm. Or perhaps they would take him to a shelter. Finally, Preston convinced himself that he would call the police. It would mean that he would have to go down to the police station and make a complaint against the man. Wasn't that the way it worked? He was the plaintive and the bum was the defendant. He would have to charge the bum with trespassing, otherwise what could the police do? They couldn't arrest a man without a charge. The thought of having to go out into the storm, much less of having to go down to the police station, filled with the stench of alcoholics, displeased him. He would have to fill out forms, probably hundreds of them. A form for everything. He might even have to pay something, and he didn't have that kind of money. He wasn't rich.
But the man needed shelter. The man was likely to freeze to death under the house. He needed the warmth of shelter and a hot meal--even if the cooking was bad. Preston took a step toward the telephone on the wall in the kitchen. The floor squeaked loudly, and he stopped. The man could hear him! The man could hear every move he made, amplified by the floorboards, much better than he could hear the man. He tried to walk softer, on the balls of his feet, but his shoes clicked against the hardwood floors. He took off his shoes, balancing stork-like in the middle of the room, and carefully tipped to the phone.
What would he say? He didn't know. He didn't know the number of the police station. He would have to look it up or call the emergency code. But this was not an emergency. This was not someone who had had a heart attack or who had broken his neck falling down the stairs. This was just a man under the house.
Preston chuckled. Just a man under the house. He said it aloud, "Just a man under the house." The very thought was humorous. How could he say it into the phone? "Hello officer. I'd like to report that there is a man under my house."
"What!" the officer would say, "a man under your house? Is this a joke?"
"No m’am," he would reply, but how could he keep a straight face? The officer would know he was laughing. He would laugh out aloud into the phone receiver. "There is a man, a man crawling like a mole under my house."
"Who is this man?" the officer would ask.
"A bum. I guess. I haven't actually seen him. I have just
heard him. I have just heard a man breathing under my house."
"And what's your name?" The cop would say. "Where do you live?"
Could he tell her? He would have to tell her, or she couldn't remove the man from under the house. If she didn't remove the man from under the house, the man would die. But the cop wouldn't believe him. The cop would think it was a gag. "This better not be a gag, buddy."
"No m’am, I swear. I swear on my mother's bible. This is no gag. A man is breathing under my house."
"Then why don't you get him out? Why don't you bring him up and put him into your bed? We have more important things to handle than a man breathing under your house."
"He is coughing, too. He is sick. I think the man is dying." That would get the officer's attention. He could say the man was dying under the house. He could say the man would die under the house. He knew the man could die under the house. Something told him that the man was dying under the house. "Officer, listen, please," he would have to say. "Please, there is a man dying under my house."
"How do you know there is a man dying under your house?"
"Please, I can hear him breathing."
"You hear him breathing," the officer would answer flatly and incuriously. "You hear a dying man breathing under your house."
The cop would think he was on drugs. She would send help, all right. They’d be coming for him.
What did it matter? What did it matter for whom they came? They would hear the man, too. They would hear him if they came. Preston pulled the phone from the hook and dialed the operator. But the phone was dead. No sound, not even static. It was the storm. The storm had broken a line. The storm had killed the phone.
Preston walked aimlessly, for a moment so absorbed in his problem that he forgot that the man was just below. He heard the breathing again. This time not so loudly, but more labored, as if the poor man were struggling to keep his breath. Preston stared at the place in the floor from which the sound, a sickening rush and a gurgle, came. The man coughed so deeply that Preston could hear the phlegm move in his chest. For a moment afterwards it seemed the breathing eased and was quiet and smooth.
Perhaps, Preston thought, he was not so sick as to be near death. Perhaps it was only a bad cold, not pneumonia. What could he do about pneumonia anyway? He was not a doctor. Perhaps it wasn't even so cold under the floor for the man. Afterall, the man was used to the elements. He, whether by choice or not, had lived in them for years. His skin was toughened to the cold. He would not feel it like someone who had never spent a night out of doors. Besides he was probably wrapped warmly. He had seen them, the street people, in winter, bundled in sometimes as many as three coats. They carried their own blankets too. In the bags. He was probably drunk. He was the alchie, wasn't he? The liquor would have fortified him. If it did not, at least it would dull the cold. He would not feel it.
But he was probably hungry. He probably hasn’t eaten today. Preston struck upon an idea. He would do something for the man. He would rewarm the dinner and take it out to him. With a hot meal in his stomach, the man would be all right.
A relief came to Preston, and it was then that he realized just how tight he had been. His stomach seemed to unfurl, his neck and shoulders relaxed. He would help the man. That had been the answer all along. He would give the man some dinner.
Preston almost whistled while the chicken and carrots warmed in the toaster oven. He felt a kinship, a brotherhood with the man who lay under his floor. He listened to the man's breathing, which came gently now, as if he were asleep. There was less phlegm in the breath. With the meal, Preston was thinking, the man would be brand new.
Preston put two chicken pieces and a few carrots and a slice of bread into a bowl. He put on his shoes, and his long coat and stepped out into the pit and patter of the ice storm. The lawn lay under a crust of ice as if glazed by fairies. The streetlights reflected eerily from the ice which coated the sidewalks, the sides of the house, and the trees. Going out was like entering into a cold, foreign world. Familiar things--the shrubbery--seemed gnarled and hunchbacked. The trees drooped under the weight of the ice. The telephone wires were swaybacked and glistened. The street was uncomfortably silent. The steps were slippery, and Preston descended slowly to prevent from sliding. He saw his own breath come out in a cloud. On the lawn, his feet crunched through the ice. He knew the man would hear him coming. He could do nothing about it. The ice would not support him. With each step, he crunched through like some otherworldly beast who was too heavy for the surface of this planet.
Finally, he came to the place where the man had broken through the lattice. A small section had become unnailed from the post. He peered beyond it, and in the scant light from the street, he could see another opening where the stone foundation of the house had cracked along a mortar joint and had been pulled away. It seemed too small an opening for a man to have fitted through. A man would have had to squeeze his shoulders too awkwardly. A dog would have had no problem getting through. But the cough was a man's cough.
He could not see into the darkness beyond the hole. His nose was getting numb. The smell of the food was not coming to him anymore. His ears were beginning to be pinched by the cold. He would never fit through the hole, and he couldn't see another way in. He would leave the dinner for the man. The man could crawl out and get it. Then things would be all right. He could rest easier.
He cleared his throat. What was he to say? What was he to call this man. "Hey," he called out. It seemed inappropriate. "Sir." Again, it felt inappropriate. "You. Hey, you. I know you are there. That's all right. You're welcome to stay there. I brought you some food. I'll leave it right here." He put the bowl down as close to the opening in the wall as he could manage. Peering through, straining his eyes in the dimness, he thought he saw a grizzly apparition through the hole. Yes! Yes, it was a man, he thought. The figure he saw, or imagined he saw, was a man, lying straight and still with his head propped from the ground. Perhaps it was nothing he saw, only part of the structure of the house.
"I hope you like chicken," he said.
Inside again, he felt at ease. The man would get the food. It would warm him. He would be OK. He listened again for the breathing and heard nothing. He didn't know if that was a good sign or not. Perhaps it meant the man had moved to get the food. Or maybe he had made an escape through yet another opening under the house. Perhaps the house was honeycombed with secret tunnels, with passages through which these winos came and went.
Preston turned on the television and flipped the channels and then switched it off. He paced, and then he remembered his shoes and took them off. He tried to sit. He tried to read the newspaper. Again, he paced and listened for a sign of the man. He stood by the window to see if he saw anyone. The window did not look out onto the part of the porch where the opening was. He listened at the spot on the floor, but could not hear the breathing.
"Come on," he found himself saying, "Breath. Breath! I know you must be there. I'm not imagining this. You are there. Breath!" He heard nothing. The man must be gone. But how? How could the man suddenly appear under his house and then disappear? Disappear just when he had gone out to help him. But did he even know what kind of help the man needed? He was not a social worker. He was not a policeman. He was not a doctor. Christ. He was not Jesus Christ. He didn't know what kind of help the man needed. But he had tried. “Yes!” He said aloud to himself. “I tried.” He had given the man some food.
Suddenly Preston feared the worst. He could not hear the breathing because the man was dead. There was a dead man under his house. He must call the police now—oh God! The figure he had seen in the dimness, the still figure. It was the figure of a dead man.
He went to the phone again, but halted before he picked it up. Suppose, he thought, it's working. If it were working, then he would have to call the police and he would have to say that there was a dead man under his house.
"Did you see a dead man under your house?" the police officer would ask.
"Not exactly—it was too dim—I thought—yes! I thought I saw a man under my house. I did hear a man under my house. I don't hear him anymore."
"Go to bed" the officer said to him. "What you need is a good night's sleep. Get the Christmas brandy out of the cabinet and have a nip, and then get a good night's sleep. If there is a man under your house, you have tried to help him. You aren't God—you can't raise the dead."
Preston drank a glass of brandy. It was cheap brandy and burned the inside of his chest when it went down. He stopped his pacing and sat on the sofa. He looked at the spot on the floor, scuffed, and blackened with years of old wax. A faint sound, a soft balanced rhythm came from the floor. He was sure he was hearing it. He got on his hands and knees and put his ear to the floor. It was a quiet sound. He lay his cheek against the floor and listened. He enjoyed what he heard, the easy sound of sleeping. The old bum was sleeping. That was why he hadn't heard him. He was sleeping.
* * *
Preston awoke slowly, rolling his head to stretch his stiff neck. He had slept on the floor and all he remembered was having shut his eyes for a moment. Through the window he could see that the blue sky was full of cold light. A wonderland of the sleeted surfaces were melting. He was standing up before he remembered to check for the old bum. He heard nothing. He put on his shoes and coat and went out to get a look at what had bothered him the night before. It was probably nothing, he thought. Nothing at all but the ice storm beating against the old house. As he rounded the corner of the house, he saw a stray dog. A dog! It was a dog! A yellow cur whose ribs showed through his fur was nosing something in the ice—a piece of the chicken!
As he approached, the dog retreated, forfeiting a piece of ice-glazed chicken. Ha! It had all been his imagination. He leaned through the broken lattice and found the bowl, the rest of the chicken and the vegetables hardened. Nothing, not the dog, not an old man—if there ever had been one—had eaten the food. He leaned farther into the hole, peering, with the daylight, into the cavern of the house's foundation.
At first, he startled, then froze, was unable to take his eyes away, and then he jerked back, hitting his head on the underside of the porch. Through the small opening, not an arm's length from him, a cold, wide-eyed stare looked out at him. He had seen the face before, only then the man had averted his eyes. Now the eyes, puffed out of the face, were fixed on him. The lips were stiff and parted, showing off the bad teeth. The knees were brought up to the chin and the arms were wrapped under them. All of him was stiff. Preston's white breath expelled and greeted the stranger at last.
The End
Note: I regret the loss of The Chattahoochee Review, which after more than forty years of publishing both emerging and established writers, was chopped, a victim of the University System of Georgia’s budget axe. An immensely important voice for writers in the US South, its loss in 2021 has created a hole in the region’s literary fabric. The magazine published “Cain” under the title of “Abel” in Volume 9, No. 2 in 1989.
Like “The Bridge,” the story centers on the unhoused in Atlanta’s Poncey-Highland district, during, what is for Atlanta, a rare winter storm.
Dick,
Thanks for the compliment and thanks for reading! Most of what I've learned about writing--and continue to learn--comes from you!! I'm enjoying Lisa's stories and will write soon to tell her.
I think this is a great story, and I so admire this wonderful writer.