And Crawling Things Lurk
Chapter 23: Potentials

From the debris and trash at the Hole, Jackie extended his search to encompass piles of junk along the trestle, around the abandoned buildings, and so on through the alleys of town. He found lots of pieces of wood, mostly splintered, cracked, broken, large and small. But, two days of poking into every hole, corner and alley in town had yet to result in the replace of a pole he thought he could turn into a spear. The tale of his search soon spread from Joe to Erica to everyone else in the grapevine. Although almost everyone was sympathetic, just about everyone thought it was hilarious. Jackie was going to make a spear, and then it turned into a lance for killing his dragon. They all gave him encouragement as long as he was facing them, but he had no trouble hearing the laughter after he turned away.

Still, he continued to look in every new place he could think of, then in the places he had already checked. More things were discarded daily, and he was sure that sooner or later someone would toss out just the thing he needed.

The sun was getting warm as it passed the zenith, so he moved slower from alley to alley. But, when he opened the dumpster behind the Old Glory TV shop with one hand and spotted the broken end of a dark brown wooden pole, he reached for it with the other hand and hope in his heart. He jiggled it and yanked it until it came free, its lower end having been hooked under something. And when he got it out, he understood why it had hung up.

He gripped it in both hands and held it up to take a good look at it, beaming that he had just happened to stumble upon such a thing. It was a flagstaff with a fleur-de-lis finial the size of his flattened hand and made of solid brass. It wouldn’t take much to grind down the side petals enough so it wouldn’t inhibit penetration too much, especially if he put honed edges on it. With the other end of the shaft broken off, it was just under six feet long, but six feet was long enough. In fact, except for the tapered and splintered wood of the broken end, it was just about as perfect as he could imagine. He could smooth out the splinters easily enough.

In his heart, he was jumping up and down, shouting his joy, and ramming his fist into the air in a salute to the gods and to announce his triumph to a doubting world. To the actual watching world, he merely smiled and muttered, “Yeah!”

He had just lowered the dumpster lid back down and started to turn to go with his precious replace when a brusque voice called out. “Hey! What the hell you doing there? You can’t just go into my stuff whenever you feel like it, you damned drunk.”

Jackie looked back at Doug Keller, the proprietor of Old Glory TV, a man known for his flag-waving patriotism. He had always kept two flags just inside the front door of the shop, proudly displayed with their staffs crossed. Apparently, they had met with some kind of in-store disaster.

Jackie mumbled, “You threw it away. I need it.”

“I don’t give a shit what you need. That’s a flagstaff. It’s for holding a flag. What the hell would a drunk like you want with a flagstaff, even a broken one?”

Jackie stifled his reflex to scream at the man that he knew what a flagstaff was. Instead, he made himself speak calmly and clearly. “I’m going to replace it and kill it.”

“You’re not going to kill anything. Not with my property. Give me that!” And he wrenched the broken staff from Jackie’s hands.

“Wait! No! I need it! You threw it away.”

“Yeah, well I’m un-throwing it. I decided I want to keep it, so just get the hell out of my alley. Go on, beat it!”

“Please, it’s just what I need.”

“Just what you need, huh? Well, let me show you what I think about what you need.” Keller turned toward the dumpster and swung the staff over his head like he was splitting firewood with an axe. The staff slammed against the edge of the dumpster, and the end with the finial splintered off and flew over the dumpster, slamming against the back wall of the shop before clattering back to the alley floor. Keller tossed the stub onto the pavement at Jackie’s feet. “There, now you can have it.”

Jackie gazed in awe at the now-destroyed staff that had been so perfect. With tearing eyes, he looked up at Keller. “Why? What’d you do that for? You didn’t want it. Why couldn’t I have it?”

“Because you’re a piece of crap. I wouldn’t give you the sweat off my balls.” Laughing like he had just said the most cleaver thing, he turned and walked back through the door to his store.

Jackie peered down at the three-foot length of wood at his feet. It wouldn’t be much good for anything now. But when he looked over at the finial, he felt a surge of hope. He stepped over to it and studied it for a moment before reaching down and picking it up. He turned it over and examined it, checking it for any damage that would render it unfit as a spearhead. It was strong and had a good weight. It was also undamaged. If he could get the stub of wood out of it, he could fit it onto another pole, if he could replace one.

The door to the shop open and slammed, and he turned towards it.

Keller strode over to Jackie with a glare in his eyes. As soon as he was within reach, he snatched the finial from Jackie’s hands. “I said that’s mine. Now, get the hell out of my alley.”

Jackie felt his ire begin to rise. Normally with Jackie, confrontations led to nothing more than an exchange of harsh words, but he usually always had the feeling deep inside that whatever harsh words came his way did so because he deserved them. Not this time, though. This time he had done nothing wrong. He hadn’t strewn trash from the dumpster on the ground. He hadn’t taken anything that wasn’t headed for the dump, anyway. And he had a good, legitimate use for it.

“Go on, you damned drunk. Get out of my alley.” Keller stood with his feet apart and with his hands on his hips, even the one holding the finial, and his chin thrust out toward Jackie. Even before he spread his shoulders and expanded his chest with a lungful of air, he was bigger than Jackie by a couple of inches and more than a few pounds.

But Jackie wasn’t drunk, hadn’t been since the day before. He was tired from his long days of fruitless searching, and he felt just a bit put upon. He set his own feet apart, clenched his own hands into fists and braced them against his own waist. Then, with his jaw thrust forward, he glared back at Keller and growled, “This ain’t your alley, asshole. It’s public, just like the street in front of your store.” With a hook of his thumb to his chest, he added, “And I’m public.”

Keller’s puffed out chest lost an inch or so when he exhaled, sorta like a balloon with an irritating, shrieking, whistling leak. Before he could re-inflate it, he fell back half a step.

He sputtered, “Wha...why...you can’t talk to me like...”

Jackie didn’t say anything else. He just stood there with his fists on his hips and his jaw thrust forward.

Keller raised his hand and shook his finger at Jackie. He opened his mouth to express his outrage further, appeared to rethink it, and shook his finger again as he took another step back, a full one. Finally, he turned to walk back to the door to his shop with the finial still in his hand, but then turned back to walk sideways so his back wasn’t so exposed, and he found his voice, “You get the hell away from my shop. I’m a tax-paying citizen of this town, and I don’t have to put up with some damned wino raiding my stuff and threatening me. I’ll have your ass arrested for stealing. Threatening and stealing, that’s what you did. You tried to rob me. I’m calling the police.”

When the door slammed, Jackie dropped his hands to his sides and looked over at the dumpster. He was almost tempted to climb inside and make sure there were no other potential spear parts—maybe both flag poles in the store had been broken – but he was pretty sure there wouldn’t be. If Keller did call the police, he didn’t want to still be here when they arrived. He had learned long ago that his word against that of a tax-paying business owner didn’t amount to much.

So as not to push his luck, Jackie spent the next few hours prowling alleys in other blocks away from Main Street and Keller’s store. When he returned to the Hole under a darkening sky, he was empty-handed except for another bottle.

Jackie was back down at the Hole well before noon the next day. He would have made it sooner, but Gramma talked him into a breakfast of oatmeal and toast. He had to admit he did feel more like walking through alleys all day than if he hadn’t eaten. He had almost stopped at the store for a bottle on the way down, but talked himself out of it. His quest for something to turn into a monster-killing spear was becoming an obsession, an unfamiliar state for him. For as long as he could remember, his only obsession had been filling his gullet from a bottle. It felt sort of good to have a need for something else. But when he thought about the reason for his quest, depression began to creep in again.

He sat on the crate beside his space and faced out toward the river. He didn’t really know why he had come down there except that that was the way he started most days. Everything else, what few things there ever were for him, started there.

He sat and gazed out toward the water, unmoving other than slow eddies with the turning of the high tide, and tried to think of what he could do today that might be different from his other days of searching. He had come so close yesterday. If only he had been able to keep that flagpole. He could have spent today and tomorrow, too, if necessary, adapting the spearhead, sharpening it by grinding it on rocks and chunks of concrete like he remembered they taught in that long-ago training course. But that was all gone, now. He was back at the beginning, no closer to having his weapon than he was on that first day when he told Josie what he was going to do. He felt like he had spent days struggling to get to the top of a hill only to have some asshole trip him and send him tumbling all the way back to the bottom. He could get up and start up the hill again, or he could just say to hell with it and get himself a bottle. Maybe that would be best. After all, he was nothing but a damned useless drunk wino most of the time. Even when he wasn’t drunk, he was still a damned useless wino…just a sober one. Who did he think he was, some silly knight in shining armor? He was Jackie. And everyone in town knew what Jackie was.

“Oh, now, darlin’, you just stop feeling so sorry for yourself. You’re only a damned useless wino if you don’t do anything.”

He didn’t have to look around the Hole to see who was speaking. But he did look closer at the water that was just beginning to pick up the current of the receding tide. From there among the swirls and eddies, Josie’s face smiled at him, and she went on, “But a person don’t have to be a wino to be useless, and a person don’t have to be useless just ’cause he is a wino. I think we’ve both known one or two of both kinds, now, haven’t we?”

“I tried, Josie. I tried, but I couldn’t replace anything.”

“I tried, Josie.” She had always been really good at imitating his tone if not his voice when she mocked him. “I tried, but no one came along and put it in my hands for me.”

“But, I did try. I’ve been looking every day. I found one, too. It woulda been perfect. It even had a spearhead. All I had to do was sharpen it.”

“Aww. And the nasty man came and took it away, huh?”

“Yeah, and...aw, Josie. …I ain’t never gonna replace what I need. I might as well quit looking and get a bottle.”

“Yep. Might as well. Hell, make it two – or even three. Then, when another friend, maybe Joe or Erica, meets you-know-who, you’ll already have it handy to help you forget how you might have stopped it but gave up instead.”

“But – but, I already looked everywhere in town. I’ve been in every alley, and what I need just ain’t there.”

“Of course, it is. You just think you need what ain’t there. Maybe you need to think about your idea of how to make your spear, and maybe think of some other way to make it with what is there. Meanwhile, if you don’t keep looking, how in hell are you going to know what is there? That stuff gets picked up all the time, and new stuff gets tossed. You never know when you’ll replace just what you need. Maybe some angel with white wings and a golden halo will even come along and put it in your hands, after all.”

“Yeah,” he sneered. “Lotsa angels around here. A spear has to have a long handle just the right size and a head made out of metal that I can sharpen.”

“Well, honey, that don’t sound all that hard. Lots of things can be used for a handle. And a sharp piece of metal can look like lots of things, too. That flagpole had a nice fancy point on it, and it was really pretty, but it don’t have to be fancy or pretty, does it? It don’t have to have just one shape, does it?”

“Uh...no, I guess not. I just have to be able to put it on the handle, and I have to be able to make it sharp.” His mind felt like it was shuffling several decks of cards together, catching just glimpses of each card as it flittered past, occasionally recognizing a suit or face card as related to the search he was on. Then he started seeing how several different cards could count the same if they were used correctly. His mind kept grasping at the image of the spear he had made in training, a fine work, everyone had said, with its broad, honed head of steel. But, occasionally another image flashed past. After it had made a couple of passes, his mind grasped it and examined it. It was a spear one of the other guys had made. It was different from his, but it was also applauded as a good, efficient weapon by the instructor. He looked at the emerging image closer, at its components and how they went together, and he felt a quiver of hope in his heart. “Maybe a piece of pipe...”

“Well, there you go, dumplin’. Lots of possibilities.”

Jackie stood up and started for the slope back up to the outside world. He stopped and looked back, past his space to the area where Erica had established her homestead. There was no sign of Josie, but he could see Erica’s feet sticking out into the sunlight. He walked back over there and squatted before the opening. She lay on her side curled in a loose fetal position. Her breathing came slowly in soft snores.

After a minute of just looking at her, at her ratty clothing and her hovel dug into the dirt, he stood back up. She had between very little and nothing, but she always shared what she had.

Whispering so as not to waken her, he said, “I ain’t gonna let it get you, too.”