Willy's Sleep

Willy's Sleep
1945


Ever once and again God grants the perfection of sleep. A quilt less, voiceless void so deep fear, loneliness and disillusionment leave to visit other wood lawn fairies. Such was Willy's sleep
A freight train came without warning. Came barreling out of the darkening woods so hard and so fast Willy sat straight up and screamed... A silent scream even he could not hear. His breath gave out before the train did.
He was on the west side of town, which happen to be as far as his imagination could take him once he left Russell Street behind. There lay an empty bottle of Early Times to his left. He immediately felt his pockets and inside his shoe making sure he had not been robbed.The folding money was all the family he had. Dollars,the counterfeit Grace, made Willy feel worthy.
His new friend, Chink, passed out on the far side of the tracks. Or, he might be dead for all Willy could remember. Struggling to his feet, he walked over to stare down at Chink just to see if he could tell the difference. He nudged him with his shoe, a badly scuffed shoe he noticed. Walking through woods and brush was a lot harder on shoes than sidewalks. He and Chink had to stay off the beaten paths cause two boys on the cusp of manhood walking alone at night made the police nervous.
"Chink... Chink...Get up from there... Come on. You got to wake up... I'm starving. I'll buy us a bowl of soup a piece if you get your sorry ass up..."
Nothing. Chink didn't move.
Willy stared off down the railroad track after the ghost train. Would that he'd been fast enough to have caught a ride on that train. Or, drunk enough to have have been sleeping right on the track...never to wake again. Just be anywhere but here... That's all that passed for a plan in his mind. Chink moaned and rolled over. One opened eye caught sight of Willy.
"Damn, Willy... What happened to you? You look like the devil... Where we at?" Chink managed to sit up coughing and choking his way toward lighting another cigarette.
Willy asked him why they called him Chink.
"Wha.. Aww, something about me having fat cheeks. My mama said when I grin my eyes go to slits,so, she called me a "Chink", said my daddy might've been one... She couldn't remember... Where we at?"
"Damned if I know... All I know is they ain't no food out here and I'm near about starved to death. Let's run back up on Charlotte Avenue and get us some soup from that place we ate at yesterday."
"I thought we had a rule? Wadn't gonna go in the same place twiced that way nobody would get curious about us. I been to the Boy's Home once't and I ain't going back..."
"Yeah.. That's right. Well, we got to eat something and it's gonna be a cold night. We best find a warmer place to sleep than this.. Come on."
The two of them walked side by side down the train tracks. The fist sized limestone track bed made walking irregular but it was a better path than the weeds presented. Everybody knows it's bad luck to walk right on a train track. The moon came and went giving them a glimpse of the way ahead. From a distance, hands shoved in pockets, collars raised to the wind and shoulders hunched forward, they looked like twin visions of youth but on God's timeline one of them was a very old man.
Must have given off the scent because even dogs didn't run after them. The noise they made themselves was all there was. Not a word past between them and each was lost in thought to the other. Couldn't mistake them for runaways. A runaway has a home to run from in the first place.
Directly, the train track was good to them. Led them by a dark and silent complex of smoke stacks, railroad crossings and a small clapboard shack where the sound of music and the promise of comfort beckoned them in.
Willy broke the threshold first. First glance told of maybe five souls total. A man and a heavy set woman clung to each other on the make-do dance floor. She shaped more like an egg than an hourglass... The man, stick skinny,hoping skilled loving would substitute for cash. Both clearly lost in their own agendas, they never looked up but the owner behind the L shaped bar did.
"You boys lost?" she asked without pause in her mopping of the bar's splintered surface.
" No Ma'am, just hungry." Chink shot her a slit-eyed grin.
A solitary man seated on a stool wearing a pork pie hat raised an eyebrow in their direction. "Looks like trouble to me, Tootsie."
Tootsie must a have been at least two hundred and ten pounds topped by long coal black hair dyed to match the circles under her eyes. The "Tootsie" part long gone as well as her front teeth.
"Mostly what we sell in here is beer and dreams, boys... Ain't open to trouble." at which point she pulled a large billie club from beneath the bar.
"My nose is rarely wrong, Ma'am. I smelt beef stew from fifty yards. Beer money and beef stew money spends the same?" Willy looked her right in the eye and held it.
"Any stew left?" Tootsie yelled over her shoulder while she held gaze with Willy.
"Hell yeah... Nobody et none yet." the cook replied.
"How much?" Willy asked.
"Fifty cent a bowl. Cornbread included."
"Can we eat our fill?" Willy pushed her.
Tootsie grinned and nodded her reply while putting the billy club to rest.

Sitting at the bar, the two boys ate in silence and drank a lot of water to nurse their hangovers. A war raging between nausea and hunger in Willy's gut, Willy stopped mid swallow of his first bite when he caught a glimpse of himself in the cracked mirror behind the bar. Eli, his daddy looking out at him. Mistaking his own self for his daddy put nausea in the lead.
A conversation struck with Mr. Pork Pie Hat.
"Where you boys stay?" he asked.
"We stay outta trouble and on the move." Chink answered between bites.
"I'd think young bucks like you would be hunting up some fun on a Saturday night." Mr. Pork Pie grinned another toothless smile.
"We looking for a warm place to sleep... Bout had a days limit of fun." Willy answered.
"Out on your own are you? Well, I was too when I was your age. I wisht I'd had sense enough to worry more about where I was gonna sleep than where all the fun was at. You pretty smart boys... I bet you got plenty money too?"
"Enough to pay for this bowl of stew... That's about it." Willy lied.
"At's right son! Don't never show a stranger your cards... Keep it all under your hat!" Pork Pie grinned and lifted his hat to them.
"I venture you boys is wondering where I found a fine hat like this... It come all the way from Australia... Riding on the head of one of their sailors. I was in the navy till I washed out on account of I got shot right in the butt! Now, stop it! It ain't funny! You try laying on your belly for six months and then we'll see whose laughing... But Naw, now, I really was in the navy and we cross trained with them. Me and a fellow named 'Bungy' swapped hats. When I got back to my ship and claimed I'd lost mine it cost me two days of peeling spuds... Them was the days.... Know what else I come back with?"
Neither boy answered which did not discourage Pork Pie at all.
" Guns... Service pistols... German Luger P08....Be just the kind of protection a young man starting out in the world would need... I got your attention now don't I boys?"
Only pictures of naked women could have interested Chink more.
"Where's it at? Can we see it?" Chink said.
"Ain't just one.. I got two of them, but they's high... Worth a lot more than a bowl of stew. You got the price of admission?" Pork Pie set the hook.
Willy was leery but interested for reasons he could not name.
"Might be... "he looked to Tootsie who had been eavesdropping.
She nodded her approval as if to vouch for Pork Pie.
"Take it outside men." she whispered.
Chink was the first to leave his perch on the stool and head for the back door. In the vacant overgrown yard behind the beer joint Mr. Pork Pie had parked his rusted out pick up. The boys followed. Willy dropped further back in case he needed to take flight if it all turned bad.

From under the seat of the pick up came a old plaid shirt concealing a sure enough German Luger. Pork Pie held it like it was made of fine Irish crystal.
"This here is it fellows... The other one is just like it."
"Can I hold it?" Chink spit sideways and leaned forward.
"Yeah, well, I need to see the color of your money fore we do any exchange of a weapon..." Pork Pie looked to Willy.
Willy, hands shoved deep into his pockets, was staring off looking for the elusive moon. He knew he ought not be standing in a vacant lot with a stranger and a loaded weapon. Years with Miss Lee taught him that if nothing else.
Miss Lee... Would she care where he was? Yeah, she loved him. Might have been the only one who did... He wondered what his Daddy would do... Shit, if his Daddy was here he'd take the gun and shoot him with it himself. He had nothing left to lose.
Willy slowly bent to his shoe and removed the wad of bills he had hidden. Chink's eyes grew wide. He hadn't known Willy was holding that much stash. The look on Chink's face gave Willy a measure of pride.
Pork Pie grinned, " I'm a excellent judge of character, ain't I? Here, son, you take the first measure of this weapon. Careful with her..."
Son?
The moon chose that breath of time to light the extended plaid covered sovereign metal. Willy took the light as a sign.
He held the strange weight in both hands. His breath was labored but finally still. All in the spit of a minute, Willy maneuvered the gun to inspect the barrel. The plaid shirt dropped to the ground...Pork Pie bent to retrieve it...the fire of the gun lit the dark, shattered eardrums...buckled all three. All three lay as blood rained down in the silence.


For years Chink seldom closed his eyes, night or day, without finding Willy's blood and bone riding the inside of his lids. He ran that night. Ran back up the train tracks all the way to the river where he waded right into the icy waters of the Cumberland trying to wash Willy's blood from him. He cried and he nearly froze during that long night. He didn't even know Willy's last name. Couldn't even remember where he said he was from...nothing... Couldn't remember nothing about Willy. Nothing except what he wouldn't never forget...the only time he ever saw Willy smile was just before the gun went off.