‘I didn’t sign up for this.’
‘Shit, none of us did.’
‘No need for language, kid.’
‘We’ll clear out for now.’
Copper turns away.
‘For the best.’
I look up the street.
‘T?’
‘What about T?’
‘We watch out for you, old man.’
‘I’ve got nothing left to take.’
I remember T saying what he said.
‘He’ll leave me be.’
I remember Copper flinching by the basement door.
I remember dying in the Baker basement.
I don’t remember what I had before I lost it.
‘Your call, old man.’
Copper sighs, won’t look at me.
‘Dead meat, no use to anyone.’
Copper looks over his porch railing to the boarded-up windows of 272 Gilmore.
‘You’re no use to me at all.’
Copper moves his left hand over his right wrist.
‘Getting colder.’
‘Don’t matter.’
Copper looks at me with those baby blues, clouded with age and loss and pain and the coming cold and the sure knowledge of how cold it’s going to get.
‘We don’t feel it, old man.’
Copper looks at me for a long, long time.
‘We don’t feel nothing.’
I look up at Copper.
‘No cold.’
Copper gets up and goes inside.
Maybe he does know.
I walk down Gilmore to Spruce and turn right.
Stout winks at me from the basement window of Ratboy’s old digs.
Fetus and Shiner meet me in front of the old Baker home, and we go inside.
It is our last night in the Baker digs.
Stout stays behind while Fetus, Shiner, and me hook up with the two amputees and McFay to squat in a new basement on the other end of town.
We pull down four of the strip gangs over the next two months.
McFay is skank enough to keep tabs on the latest discards, and we move from shell to shell, lingering on the upper floors until Shiner brings some action our way.
Shiner is fresh enough to mingle and spread the word among the lifers that there’s cherry-pickings in the new shells.
We sit tight for a time until the action arrives.
Let them go to work on the plumbing and wiring downstairs, letting the noise cover our formation.
Take them out, one by one, then dig in.
We tie on the feed bag and sit tight for more.
Usually can get one, two strip teams before it’s time to move on.
More come.
It’s a big town.
It’s a big state.
There’s a lot of shells.
There’s a lot of strip gangs.
It’s a long winter.
Word is Copper lost his nest egg on the repairs after T stripped Copper’s house.
Word is the repairs sucked up over twenty grand.
Word is no sooner did Copper replace the gutted plumbing and wiring than the insurance inspectors showed up and demanded further repairs on the roof and clapboards, on threat of cancellation of policy.
Word is Copper had to refinance to make those repairs, and on his lonesome signed away the farm without even knowing it.
Word is a zombie bank ate Copper’s bankroll.
A zombie fucking bank.
Zombie bank?
What a world.
Word is even with his veteran benefits, Copper thought he was broke.
Wouldn’t have happened with Becca.
She would have kept the paperwork straight.
Copper was never any good with all that.
Word is he thought he was so high and dry by St Patty’s Day that he stopped paying some bills.
Word is the power company shut him off, the last house on Gil more with juice dark at last.
Word is the juice was off when the cold snap hit, nights of ten below.
Word is Copper is still there.
I enter through the kitchen door.
I’ve been here before.
I remember.
Kitchen all neat.
Shelves, pantry, cupboards.
All neat, nice.
Copper keeps it nice.
In the kitchen window, a ceramic sign.
It’s dark, I can’t read it.
I remember, though:
WHOEVER DIES WITH THE MOST THINGS, WINS.
I rest my fingers on Copper’s oak table.
I pass the cellar door by the pantry.
I walk down the hallway.
The quilt is not on the wall.
I touch the wall.
I leave a little stain on the wall.
I walk down the hallway.
I find Copper in the living room.
I find Copper in the front room, on his chair.
There are six blankets over him, all askew.
There are six blankets and a quilt over Copper.
Becca’s quilt is bundled close to his neck.
Cloth houses on the cloth street, bundled around Copper’s neck.
Cloth Copper on his cloth rocker on his cloth porch.
Cloth Copper with a stain on his cloth clothes.
I put that stain there.
There’s a fresh stain over mine.
A stain from Copper’s mouth.
A reddish, ruddy stain.
Copper sits in his chair.
Copper, wrapped in the cloth houses and cloth street and cloth neighbors and cloth Copper in his cloth rocker on his cloth porch.
Six blankets and the cloth neighborhood didn’t keep him warm.
Six blankets and a quilt, but how to cover oneself when you can’t feel your fingers?
Six blankets and a quilt, but it’s not enough, and it doesn’t quite do the trick.
Six blankets and a quilt, but one leg is bare between the top of the sock and edge of the pant leg, its crease gone.
The bare skin is blue-white.
Copper is blue-white, his skin the color of his eyes.
Under the blankets, his right hand is wrapped over his left wrist, his left hand clutching his right wrist, his fingers locked over wrists like dead crow feet.
The cold bit deep this time, deeper than deep.
Copper’s face is waxed, his jaw fixed cocked to the side, his lower gums bared, mouth slightly open.
A light frost bristles on his lips, spiking from his unshaven chin, whiter than the paraffin-white of his skin.
The frost continues down onto the cloth Copper on his cloth rocker on his cloth porch.
Copper’s spider-leg eyebrows crook upward over his nose, frozen in surprise.
I remember dying in the Baker basement.
It was cold.
Copper hates the cold.
Copper hates the cold, but it still took him by surprise, a slow, steely revelation of how bad it really had become, could be, was, is.
It took Copper hard.
It hurt.
It took a long fucking time, and it fucking hurt; it hurt bad.
The cold took him and his and all he still had and all he’d been.
Took it hard.
I sit and watch.
I sit and watch Copper.
I watch him until he’s watching me.
I watch his eyes trade one glaze for another, just like when I watched Fetus when his eyes did the same thing.
When was that?
I can’t remember.
I watch Copper’s brow furrow, his milky blues go from watching nothing to watching something to eventually taking me in.
‘It hurt, didn’t it?’
Copper straightens his jaw.
His jaw pops, and he works it back and forth.
‘The cold, I mean.’
He closes his mouth and purses his lips, testing them, like an infant.
‘It really fucking hurt, didn’t it, old man?’
Copper glares at me.
‘No need for language, kid.’
Turns out Fetus and I were right.
Turns out Copper is just what we need:
A commanding officer.
Copper takes command.
Copper knows the neighborhood.
Turns out Copper knows more than this neighborhood.
Copper knows more than this burb.
Turns out Copper knows most of the city.
Turns out Copper has maps and charts and floor plans.
‘How do you remember all this?’ I ask.
‘Worked in just about every nook and cranny at some point, kid.’
Copper winks at me when he says it.
‘What I didn’t work, my brother-in law did.’
Copper reprimands us for thinking small.
Copper has plans.
Copper has plans and makes plans.
Copper is in command.
Copper sets up his command outpost in his own basement.
Copper doesn’t flinch at the basement door.
Copper leads us all downstairs.
Basement is clean, neat, tidy. Like the whole house.
Copper spreads out the floor plans and the street plans, and Copper looks and makes marks and asks questions and looks some more.
Copper calls Fetus and Stout and Shiner and McFay and those two amputees and me in for a powwow.
He lays it all out and we drink it all in and we sit real quiet for a long time and think about it, and we sit real quiet.
Copper calls Shiner and Fetus in with state maps.
Copper has big plans.
I stop dreaming about Mount McKinley.