The Losers

  “It did from your parents, though. I’ll call around and see what I can find out. I can give you a call later, if you’d like.”

  “I’d appreciate that. Thank you.” He signed the forms she handed him and sat down to wait for the doctor. It was good to get out. He had not realized how circumscribed his life had been for the past several weeks.

  The doctor examined him and made the usual encouraging remarks about how well he was coming along. Then he made arrangements to enroll him in a program of physical therapy.

  Because he still felt good, and because it was still early when he came out of the doctor’s office, Raphael rode buses for the rest of the day, looking at the city. Toward late afternoon, miles from where he had first seen him, he saw the burly old man again. The old man’s face still had that grimly determined expression, and his pace had not slowed.

  In the days that followed, because the scanner and the books and Crazy Charlie were no longer quite enough, Raphael rode buses. For the most part it was simply to be riding—to be doing something, going somewhere. For that reason rather than out of any sense of real need, he called the helpful receptionist.

  “I was meaning to get in touch with you, Mr. Taylor,” she said. “The people at social services are very interested in you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re eligible for all sorts of things, did you know that? Food stamps, vocational guidance—they’ll even pay for your schooling to train you in a new trade.”

  “I was a student,” he told her dryly. “Are they going to make a teacher out of me instead?”

  “It’s possible—if you want to get a degree in education.” Her voice took on a slightly confidential note. “Do you want to know the real reason they’re so interested in you?” she asked.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Your particular case is complicated enough to provide fulltime work for three social workers. I don’t really care for those people. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just give the money to the people who need it rather than have some girl who’s making thousands and thousands of dollars a year dole it out to them in nickels and dimes?”

  “A lot more sense, but the girl can’t type, so she can’t get an honest job.”

  “I don’t quite follow that,” she admitted.

  “A friend of mine once described a social worker as a girl who can’t type.”

  She laughed. “Would you like to have me give you a few names and phone numbers?”

  “I think we might as well drop it,” he decided. “It’s a little awkward for me to get around.”

  “Raphael,” she said quite firmly, asserting her most motherly authority, “we don’t go to them. They come to us.”

  “We?”

  “You probably didn’t notice because I was sitting down when you came in. I’m profoundly arthritic. I’ve got so many bone spurs that my X rays look like pictures of a cactus. You just call these people, and they’ll fall all over themselves to come to your house—at your convenience.”

  “They make house calls?” He laughed.

  “They almost have to, Raphael. They can’t type, remember?”

  “I think I’m in love with you,” he joked.

  “We might want to talk about that sometime.”

  Raphael made some calls, being careful not to commit himself. He remembered Shimpsie and wondered if she had somehow put out the social-worker equivalent of an all-points bulletin on him. He was fairly sure that escaping from a social worker was not an extraditable offense, however.

  He was certain that the various social agencies could have saved a great deal of time and expense had they sent one caseworker with plenipotentiary powers to deal with one Taylor, Raphael—cripple. He even suggested it a couple of times, but they ignored him. Each agency, it appeared, wanted to hook him and reel him in all on its own.

  He began to have a great deal of fun. Social workers are always very careful to conceal the fact, but as a group they have a very low opinion of the intelligence of those whom they call “clients,” and no one in this world is easier to deceive and mislead than someone who thinks that he, or in this case, she, is smarter than you are.

  They were all young—social workers who get sent out of the office to make initial contacts are usually fairly far down on the seniority scale. They did not, however, appear to have all attended the same school, and each of them appeared to reflect the orientation of her teachers. A couple of them were very keen on “support groups,” gatherings of people with similar problems. One very earnest young lady who insisted that he call her Norma even went so far as to pick him up one evening in her own car and take him to a meeting of recent amputees. The amputees spent most of the evening telling horror stories about greater or lesser degrees of addiction to prescription drugs. Raphael felt a chill, remembering Quillian’s warning about Dr. Feelgood.

  “Well?” Norma said, after the meeting was over and she was driving him home.

  “I don’t know. Norma,” Raphael said with a feigned dubiousness. “I just couldn’t seem to relate to those people.” (He was already picking up the jargon.) “I don’t seem to have that much in common with a guy who got drunk and whacked off his own arm with a chain saw. Now, if you could find a dozen or so one-legged eunuchs—”

  Norma refused to speak to him the rest of the way home, and he never saw her again.

  Once, just to see how far he could push it, he collected a number of empty wine bottles from the garbage can of two old drunks who lived across the street. He scattered the bottles around on the floor of his apartment for the edification of a new caseworker. That particular ploy earned him a week of closely supervised trips to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

  It stopped being fun at that point. He remembered the club Shimpsie had held over his head at the hospital, and realized just how much danger his innocent-seeming pastime placed him in. Because they had nearly total power over something the client wanted or needed, the caseworkers had equally total power over the client’s life. They could—and usually did—use that power to twist and mold and hammer the client into a slot that fit their theories—no matter how half-baked or unrealistic. The client who wanted—needed—the thing the social worker controlled usually went along, in effect becoming a trained ape who could use the jargon to manipulate the caseworker even as she manipulated him. It was all a game, and Raphael decided that he didn’t want to play. He didn’t really need their benefits, and that effectively placed him beyond their power. He made himself unavailable to them after that.

  One, however, was persistent. She was young enough to refuse to accept defeat. She could not be philosophical enough to conclude that some few clients would inevitably escape her. She lurked at odd times on the street where Raphael lived and accosted him when he came home. Her name was Frankie—probably short for Frances—and she was a cute little button. She was short, petite, and her dark hair was becomingly bobbed. She had large, dark eyes and a soft, vulnerable mouth that quivered slightly when someone went counter to her wishes.

  “We can’t go on meeting this way, Frankie,” Raphael said to her one afternoon when he was returning from physical therapy. “The neighbors are beginning to talk.”

  “Why are you picking on me, Raphael?” she asked, her lip trembling.

  “I’m not picking on you, Frankie. Actually, I rather like you. It’s your profession I despise.”

  “We’re only trying to help.”

  “I don’t need help. Isn’t independence one of the big goals? Okay, I’ve got it. You’ve succeeded. Would you like to have me paste a gold star on your fanny?”

  “Stop that. I’m your caseworker, not some brainless girl you picked up in a bar.”

  “I don’t need a caseworker, Frankie.”

  “Everybody needs a caseworker.”

  “Have you got one?”

  “But I’m not—” She faltered at that point.

  “Neither am I.” He had maneuvered her around until her back was against the wall and ha
d unobtrusively shifted his crutches so that they had her blocked more or less in place. It was outrageous and grossly chauvinistic, but Frankie really had it coming. He bent forward slightly and kissed her on top of the head.

  Her face flamed, and she fled.

  “Always nice talking to you, Frankie,” he called after her. “Write if you get honest work.”

  His therapy consisted largely of physical exercises designed to improve his balance and agility, and swimming to improve his muscle tone. The sessions were tiring, but he persisted. They were conducted in an office building on the near north side of Spokane, and he did his swimming at the YMCA. Both buildings had heavy doors that opened outward and swung shut when they were released. Usually someone was either going in or coming out, and the door would be held open for him. Sometimes, however, he was forced to try to deal with them himself. He learned to swing the door open while shuffling awkwardly backward and then to stop the seemingly malicious closing with the tip of his crutch. Then he would hop through the doorway and try to wrench the crutch free.

  Once the crutch was so tightly wedged that he could not free it, and, overbalanced, he fell.

  He did not go out again for several days.

  He called the grim-faced old man “Willie the Walker,” and he saw him in all parts of the city. The walking seemed to be an obsession with Willie. It was what he did to fill his days. He moved very fast and seldom spoke to anyone. Raphael rather liked him.

  Then, one day in late March, the letter from Marilyn came. It had been forwarded to him by his uncle Harry. It was quite short, as such letters usually are.

  Dear Raphael,

  There isn’t any easy way to say this, and I’m sorry for that. After your accident I tried to visit you several rimes, but you wouldn’t see me. I wanted to tell you that what had happened to you didn’t make any difference to me, but you wouldn’t even give me the chance. Then you left town, and I hadn’t even had the chance to talk to you at all.

  The only thing I could think was that I wasn’t very important to you anymore—maybe I never really was. I’m not very smart about such things, and maybe all you really wanted from me was what happened those few times. No matter what, though, it can’t go on this way anymore. I can’t tie myself to the hope that someday you’ll come back.

  What it all gets down to, dear Raphael, is that I’ve met someone else. He’s not really very much like you—but then, who could be? He’s just a nice, ordinary person, and I think I love him. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and wish me happiness—as I do you.

  I’ll always remember you—and love you—but I just can’t go on hoping anymore.

  Please don’t forget me, Marilyn

  When he finished the letter, he sat waiting for the pain to begin, for the memories with their little knives to begin on him; but they did not. It was past now. Not even this had any power to hurt him.

  His apartment, however, was intolerable suddenly, and although it was raining hard outside, he pulled on his coat and prepared to go down to the bus stop.

  For only a moment, just before he went out, there was a racking sense of unspeakable loss, but it passed quickly as he stepped out onto the rain-swept rooftop.

  Willie the Walker, grimly determined, strode past the bus stop, the beaded rain glistening on his coat and dripping from the brim of his hat. Raphael smiled as he went by.

  Across the street there was another walker, a tall, thin-faced young Indian moving slowly but with no less purpose. The Indian’s gait was measured, almost fluidly graceful, and in perhaps a vague gesture toward ethnic pride, he wore moccasins, silent on the pavement. His dark face was somber, even savagely melancholy. His long black hair gleamed wetly in the rain, and he wore a black patch over his left eye.

  Raphael watched him pass. The Indian moved on down to the end of the block, turned the corner, and was gone. It kept on raining.

  iv

  By mid-April, the weather had broken. It was still chilly at night and occasionally there was frost; but the afternoons were warm, and the winter-browned grass began to show patches of green. There was a tree in the yard of the house where Crazy Charlie lived, and Raphael watched the leaf buds swell and then, like tight little green fists, slowly uncurl.

  He began walking again—largely at the insistence of his therapist. His shirts were growing tight across the chest and shoulders as the muscles developed from the exercises at his therapy sessions and the continuing effort of walking. His stamina improved along with his strength and agility, and he soon found that he was able to walk what before would have seemed incredible distances. While he was out he would often see Willie the Walker and less frequently the patch-eyed Indian. He might have welcomed conversation with either of them, but Willie walked too fast, and Patch, the Indian, was too elusive.

  On a sunny afternoon when the air was cool and the trees had almost all leafed out, he was returning home and passed the cluttered yard of a house just up the block from his apartment building. A stout, florid-faced man wheeled up on a bicycle and into the yard.

  “Hey,” he called to someone in the house, “come and get this stuff.”

  A worn-looking woman came out of the house and stood looking at him without much interest.

  “I got some pretty good stuff,” the stout man said with a bubbling enthusiasm. “Buncha cheese at half price—it’s only a little moldy—and all these dented cans of soup at ten cents each. Here.” He handed the woman the bag from the carrier on the bicycle. “I gotta hurry,” he said. “They put out the markdown stuff at the Safeway today, an’ I wanna get there first before it’s all picked over.” He turned the bicycle around and rode off. The woman looked after him, her expression unchanged.

  Raphael moved on. His own supply of food was low, he knew that, and there was a Safeway store only a few blocks away. He crutched along in the direction the man on the bicycle had gone.

  The store was not very large, but it was handy, and the people seemed friendly. The stout man’s bicycle was parked out front when Raphael got there.

  It was not particularly busy inside as Raphael had feared that it might be, and so he got a shopping cart and, nudging it along the aisles ahead of him with his crutches, he began picking up the items he knew he needed.

  Back near the bread department the stout man was pawing through a large basket filled with dented cans and taped-up boxes of cereal. His florid face was intent, and his eyes brightened each time he picked up something that seemed particularly good to him. A couple of old ladies were shamefacedly loitering nearby, waiting for him to finish so that they might have their turns.

  Raphael finished his shopping and got into line behind the stout man with his cartful of damaged merchandise. The man paid for his purchases with food stamps and triumphantly carried them out to his bicycle.

  “Does he come in often?” Raphael asked the clerk at the cash register.

  “Bennie the Bicycler?” the clerk said with an amused look. “All the rime. He makes the rounds of every store in this part of town every day. If he’d spend half as much time looking for work as he does looking for bargains, his family could have gotten off welfare years ago.” The clerk was a tall man in his midthirties with a constantly amused expression on his face.

  “Why do you call him that?” Raphael asked, almost startled by the similarity to the little name tags he himself used to describe the people on his block.

  The clerk shrugged. “It’s a personal quirk,” he said, starting to ring up Raphael’s groceries. “There’s a bunch of regulars who come in here. I don’t know their names, so I just call them whatever pops into my mind.” He looked around, noting that no one else was in line or standing nearby. “This place is a zoo,” he said to Raphael in a confidential tone. “All the weirdos come creeping out of Welfare City over there.” He gestured vaguely off in the direction of the large area of run-down housing that lay to the west of the store. “We get ‘em all—all the screwballs in town. I’ve been trying to
get a transfer out of this rat trap for two years.”

  “I imagine it gets depressing after a while.”

  “That just begins to describe it,” the clerk replied, rolling his eyes comically. “Need anything else?”

  “No,” Raphael replied, paying for his groceries. “Is there someplace where I can call a cab?”

  “I’ll have the girl do it for you.” The clerk turned and called down to the express lane. “Joanie, you want to call a cab?”

  “Thanks,” Raphael said.

  “No biggie. It’ll be here in a couple of minutes. Have a good one, okay?”

  Raphael nudged his cart over near the door and waited. It felt good to be able to talk with people again. When he had first come out of the hospital, his entire attention had been riveted upon the missing leg, and he had naturally assumed that everyone who saw him was concentrating on the same thing. He began to realize now that after the initial reaction, people were not really that obsessed by it. The clerk had taken no particular notice of it, and the two of them had talked like normal people.

  A cab pulled up, and the driver got out, wincing in obvious pain. He limped around the cab as Raphael pushed his cart out of the store. The driver’s left foot was in a slipper, and there was an elastic bandage around his grotesquely swollen ankle.

  “Oh, man,” the driver said, looking at Raphael in obvious dismay. “I told that half-wit at dispatch that I couldn’t handle any grocery-store calls today.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I sprained my damn ankle. I can drive okay, but there’s no way I could carry your stuff in for you when we get you home. Lemme get on the radio and have ‘em send another cab.” He hobbled back around the cab again and picked up his microphone. After a couple minutes he came back. “What a sere wed-up outfit. Everybody else is tied up. Be at least three quarters of an hour before anybody else could get here. You got stairs to climb?”

  “Third floor.”

  “Figures. Would you believe I did this on a goddamn skateboard? Would you believe that shit? My kid was showin’ me how to ride the damn thing.” He shook his head and then looked across the parking lot at a group of children passing on the sidewalk. “Tell you what. School just let out. I’ll knock a buck off the fare, and we’ll give the buck to a kid to haul your stuff up for you.”