A cell phone dinged and lit up, fracturing the darkness like smoky glass and unveiling a square, concrete tunnel, twin-size box spring and mattress on cinder blocks, and milk-crate nightstand. “Abashed the Devil Stood and Felt How Awful Goodness Is” was spray-painted on the wall above the bed, and a tall, thin man lay on his back on the mattress sharpening a hunting knife with a rock. The man set down the knife and rock and picked up the phone. The aquamarine light from the screen illuminated thinning, blond-brown hair cinched in a ponytail and a salt-speckled goatee. His nose was large and crooked. His arms were sleeved with cryptic tattoos.
The text was from his sister, who he’d not spoken to in several years. “Mom has lung cancer,” it read, “and we don’t know how long she has to live. Just thought you should know.”
The man clicked the phone and the black curtain fell. He’d smoked speed the previous night and was coming down off the high and, lying motionless in the dark with his eyes opened, he wished he had a few remaining crystals. Speed numbed his emotions. When high and alone in the tunnel, he’d ponder the terrible things going on in the world—a coastline devastated by a tsunami, children starving to death in Africa, a grade level of elementary school students slaughtered by a gunman—and not feel one twinge of sympathy or sadness. He never cried when he was tweaking.
The darkness was profound: so black it was blue, so still it appeared to be stirring. He could hear the distant rush of fast-moving traffic. Body odor and urine tinged the air. The phone remained in his hand. He didn’t want it too close or far from his face and he didn’t want to respond to the message emotionally. Any decision he’d made, particularly related to family, that was influenced by emotion turned out to be the wrong one. “Emotions Will Always Betray You. Never Respond Emotionally.” This philosophy was scrawled on the tunnel wall, along with his nine other “Rules to Live By.”
A frail, orange flame split the curtain. Still clutching the phone, the man gripped a lighter in his other hand and held the flame unsteadily to the tip of a half-smoked cigarette, illuminating his lined face and sunken, blue-gray eyes. He exhaled and again the tunnel went dark. As the tip of the cigarette pulsed, he imagined arriving at the one-story, concrete home on the outskirts of Bakersfield, where he grew up and his mom had lived for fifty years, and the front door being locked. Standing in the low-ceilinged, dimly lit living room and absorbing the cold stare of his stepfather. (He had his share of enemies, but his stepdad is the one he thought about most often as he sharpened his knife in the dark.) His mom, brittle and pale, stretched on the floral-print couch in her pajamas, breathing tubes snaking up her nostrils.
His bony, gnarled fingers released the filter, and the butt clanked into a makeshift ashtray (an empty can of soup) atop the milk crates. He held the phone to his face and began tapping the screen.
“I’m gonna try to come and see her,” he responded to his sister. When she didn’t reply within the hour, still in bed he added, “I’m on the way.”
“We don’t want you and your problems round here,” she answered promptly.
The man sat up on the side of the bed, toes grazing the damp floor. He brushed back his hair with his hands, then reached for a headlamp and strapped it on. As he sauntered to a nearby shopping cart, crouched slightly in the six-foot-high tunnel, the beam bounced off a moss-green blanket that served as a curtain, yarnlike cobwebs on the walls and ceiling, and a mesh camping chair. He reached into the well of the cart and slid on a secondhand, black T-shirt and faded pair of jeans that were ripped at the knees. A camo-patterned duffel bag occupied the seat of the cart; he stuffed a change of clothes into the bag, along with a disposable razor and bar of soap. He then set the knife on top of the clothes and zipped the bag shut.
Sitting in the chair, the man strapped on a pair of combat boots and returned to the bed and removed two shiny watches from under the mattress and placed them in the pocket of his skull-print hoodie. After tossing the milk crates and chair onto the bed, he shouldered the duffel bag and took off the headlamp and put on a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Finally, he ducked through the curtain and was greeted by sunlight and the rush of traffic from the Las Vegas Strip. The light framed rule number three: “It’s OK to Be Afraid, But Never Show It.”
* * *
En route to the downtown Greyhound station, the man, whose name was Raymond, ducked into McDonald’s. He ordered a black coffee, paying for it with the remaining dollar in his scuffed leather wallet, then claimed his customary corner booth and charged his phone. Myles, who lived upstream from Raymond in the underground flood channel, entered the fast-food restaurant, and Ray waved him over to the booth and told him he would be away from his campsite for a few days and to keep an eye on it. Ray wasn’t sure when or if he’d be returning to the tunnel, but he didn’t want anyone else to know that. Even the camp of the most feared man in the drain would be looted or claimed if it was known he wasn’t coming back for a while.
Alone again at the booth, Raymond considered texting his dealer and buying a gram. The dealer or a runner could arrive at McDonald’s within a half hour and Ray could smoke in one of the myriad nooks and crannies on the way to the bus station or in the bathroom at the station. He wasn’t sure if, after a twenty-year absence, he could face his family sober, if he could control his emotions. Of course, in order to score, he would have to sell one of the watches on the street or trade it to the dealer, and he still needed to buy the bus ticket. His plan was to sell one of the watches to buy the ticket and give the other to his niece April, who, unlike the rest of his family and for reasons even he didn’t understand, had always supported him. He thought about being high in the presence of his mom, as she lay on her deathbed, and winced. He’d stay sober for her, he decided. It was the least he could do, after all he’d put her through.
Coffee cup empty and phone fully charged, Ray started north on the Strip, pausing periodically at intersections and on pedestrian bridges to pitch the watch to passersby. He’d flash it in his palm and, over honking cab horns and high-decibel casino ads, recite the key selling points: brand-new Fossil; retail price $200, but he’s selling it for fifty; he needs the money to visit his mother, who’s dying of cancer. When he mentioned his mom and her health, he could see that the people didn’t believe it; their faces remained leery. He didn’t believe it, either. Every time he brought it up he had to fact-check himself. He was an honest man—to a fault, his wife and lovers had told him—but two decades on the streets had compelled him to, at times, manipulate the truth. To, like the writers whose words he scrawled on the tunnel walls (Milton, Poe, Yeats, and others), take artistic license. But he’d never lie about something like this, he convinced himself as he crossed Flamingo Road. He still had morals. He still had some boundaries.
Crossing Spring Mountain Road and approaching the Wynn Las Vegas, Ray encountered a group of sunburned men in khaki pants, polo shirts, and Nike and Callaway caps. He flashed the watch and made his pitch, and one of the guys—short and fit with shallow crow’s feet—stopped. He motioned for the watch and briefly examined it in his hand. He then strapped it on and nodded in approval.
“Fifty bucks?” the tourist confirmed.
“Yeah,” said Ray, scanning the bridge for cops and security guards.
The tourist dug into his pocket and produced a wad of cash—Raymond assumed he’d fleeced his friends at the Wynn Golf Club that afternoon—and peeled off two twenties and a ten and handed them to Ray.
“Best of luck to your mom,” he said, shaking Ray’s soiled, calloused hand. He then jogged off to catch up with his group, pointing at his wrist and smiling.
Ray arrived at the Greyhound station in the late afternoon. The next bus to Bakersfield was scheduled to depart that night at 11:45 and, with one stop, arrive around 6 a.m. It was forty-five dollars one way. That’ll work, thought Ray, standing at the tarnished, steel ticket counter and frisking for his wallet. He knew he wouldn’t be able to afford a round-trip ticket and he wasn’t sure how long he’d stay in Bakersfield. As he’d passed a couple and their child in front of Circus Circus, he thought maybe he could reunite with his wife and kid and get a job in the oil fields, not just vanish when his mom died. Stick around, go to twelve-step meetings and stay clean, and make an honest go of it. But within a dozen paces of the family of three, reality banished that thought. There were so many things that couldn’t be changed.
After buying the ticket, Ray made the short walk to Fremont Street and hustled up a few cigarettes. He then returned to the station and used the restroom sink to take a bird bath, before sitting in the lobby, where he played video games on his phone and texted his brother and a few old friends to let them know he was coming to town. No one had responded by the time he boarded the bus and settled into a window seat in the back. When the door snapped shut and the cabin lights dimmed, the seat next to him was empty. He set his duffel bag on it, reclined his seat, and glanced out the window. The bus eased onto the connector and swung south on I-15. The campfire glow of the Fremont Street Experience, the peacock plumage that is the Strip, the line of lights in the eastern sky leading to McCarran International Airport—then suddenly a perfect black.
Ray closed his eyes. He never thought about his stepfather in the glare of the Mojave Desert or when hustling at night on the Strip. His thoughts turned to him only in the dark. His stepdad had been in the Army and served three tours in Vietnam, and when on leave he’d come home and take out his anger, confusion, and frustration on his young stepson. He liked to use his fists. The boy did what he could to stay out of the house—fish the Kern River for trout or play hide-and-seek in the grape fields—until his stepfather returned to Fort MacArthur and then Southeast Asia. He watched Walter Cronkite with his mom and knew that thousands of American men were dying in Vietnam, and he wondered why his stepdad kept coming home. Before turning ten, he realized life wasn’t fair.
His thoughts, as they often did, segued from his stepfather to violence at large. Violence is the ultimate education, he decreed. People don’t truly learn, they don’t understand, through any other means. Fear and fury help them understand.
A few years back, a homeless man known as “DL” was routinely sneaking into the tunnel and stealing stuff from Raymond and the other residents. DL got word that Ray knew what he was doing and he approached him at McDonald’s and vowed to stop. Ray started to get up from the booth to escort DL to the back of the building, but the restaurant was busy and a security guard was on-site, so he remained seated and simply said, “That’s what I’d recommend. You’re stealing from people who don’t have nothin’.”
But things kept disappearing from the tunnel—until Raymond ran into DL one afternoon in the open-air flood channel downstream from the drain. Ray removed his serrated, fifteen-inch knife from his backpack and was planning to scare DL, rough him up a bit, but DL started to run and, in reaction, Ray threw the knife and it stuck in his back. DL survived, but he never returned to the tunnel. He never stole from the residents again.
As the lights of Jean, Nevada, approached like a far-flung galaxy, Ray—eyes still closed—started counting using his fingers. He stopped at seven—the number of people he’d stabbed in his life. None of them were family or women or had died, as far as he knew, and they were all bullies, thieves, liars, snitches, child molesters, and the like. He’d never stabbed anyone who didn’t deserve it, he reminded himself.
It takes violence to get someone’s attention, Ray concluded, rocking gently in his seat. Guess I learned that from my stepdad. It may be the only thing he taught me.
The bus sprinted across the state line and began to climb the California mountains … and Ray was seven years old, sitting Indian-style in the dirt under the front porch of the family home. He ripped open a bag of balloons he’d stolen from the supermarket and sorted them by color. Finally, he picked up a red one and blew it up. It popped. The boards of the porch gave, a shadow swept over him, and, before he could crawl deeper into the darkness, his mom yanked him into the light and slapped him across the face.
“You’re gonna take every one of those balloons back to the store!” she screamed.
She dragged him to the supermarket, the bag of balloons hanging limply from his hand, and asked to see the manager. The store was bustling, and Ray and his mom knew many of the employees and customers. He stared at his dirty, tattered tennis shoes. When the manager appeared—clean-shaven, slicked-back hair, a golden vest—Ray handed him the balloons and, still looking down, apologized for taking them. The manager lectured the boy on the immorality of stealing, then patted him on the head and made him promise to never do it again.
I was brought up in a Christian home and taught to do the right thing, thought Ray, emerging from the memory. Ma did the best she could. There was no reason for me to turn out the way I did.
When he was fourteen, Ray broke his promise to the store manager. A friend talked him into stealing a bicycle that was unlocked in a front yard and that led to them boosting more bikes for an older acquaintance, who stripped them and sold them in Los Angeles. While his friends worked summer jobs in the fields and prepared for their junior year of high school, he’d dropped out and was stealing cars with his younger brother Wesley. Wes would jimmy the driver-side door and Ray would remove the ignition and start the car with a screwdriver. The whole process took ninety seconds and they were paid $500 per car.
Bakersfield breeds outlaws, he thought. I know it because I lived it.
The first time he was arrested for stealing cars he was sent to juvenile prison in Salinas, California. It was gladiator school. You got off the bus swinging or were labeled a punk. Attack the first big guy you came across—punch him in the face or throw him over a railing—or your time there was going to be hellish. In many ways, his experience in juvie shaped his philosophy of life: attack first and fearlessly. It also informed rule number seven: “Be Strong in Everything You Do. Not Only in Your Arm, but Also Your Mind.”
From age nineteen to thirty-three, Ray was never out of prison for more than a month at a time, but he didn’t mind it. He preferred prison to life on the outside. Most of his friends were incarcerated and, passing through the gates, he felt like a gladiator entering the arena. Inmates greeted and even cheered him and gave him tobacco, soup, books, porn magazines, drugs, razor blades, and shanks. By choice, he cleared most of his probation time in prison. He even served a stretch for Wesley. He’d let Wes borrow his truck and he stole some rims and stashed them in the flatbed. The cops found the rims and asked whose truck it was, and Ray said it was his and they arrested him for possession of stolen property. He did three years for Wes, but his brother didn’t seem to appreciate it. He never even thanked him. As the bus lumbered up yet another mountain, Ray wrestled his phone from his pocket and saw that there were still no messages.
Though rebellious and lawless, Ray didn’t drink or do drugs regularly as a teenager or young adult. He tried heroin for the first time when he was twenty-seven and in prison. A fellow inmate called him a square for never having experimented with smack, so Ray scored some from his cellie, who was a dealer, and used the empty chamber of a light bulb to inject it. He came out of prison an addict.
Shortly after being released, when his girlfriend Gina kicked him out and he became homeless, he discovered meth. He loathed life on the streets—the frigid nights, unforgiving concrete, constant migration, loneliness, uncertainty, fear, and shame. Meth numbed the pain and gave him the energy to endure the lifestyle. It became his drug of choice.
As the bus summited the mountain, Ray shook off a chill and opened his eyes. It wasn’t cold in the cabin; in fact, he wiped a film of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. It was 1994 and he was slogging out of the wintry water of Morro Bay, dragging Gina by her hair. The soft light of a half-moon revealed they were drenched head to toe.
Less than two years after she kicked him out and he became homeless, Ray got Gina pregnant during a conjugal visit at California State Prison in Solano. He was released a few months later and they drove to Morro Bay in his rusted, red Chevy pickup to discuss their future. They ate dinner at sunset in a seafood restaurant overlooking the harbor and its signature volcanic rock and peninsula, then strolled up and down a miniature boardwalk. In the moonlight, they found their way to the beach and walked barefoot along the shore. They weren’t holding hands or conversing. Before the dinner plates were bussed, it was clear where they stood—he wanted to get married and have the child and she wanted an abortion—and they’d reached an impasse. Waves thudded against the shore. The moon resembled a beggar’s cup.
Suddenly, Gina dropped her sandals and started walking toward the water. Ray turned and watched with mild curiosity, as she marched into the surf. The waves tried to shepherd her back to shore, but she kept advancing. She won’t do it, he thought. She doesn’t have the courage. When she disappeared beneath the surface, he dropped his shoes and sprinted in her direction, his shirt, wallet, and keys marking his trail. He hurdled a trio of waves, dove in headfirst. The water was devastatingly cold—a thousand needles piercing his skin. It took him a full minute to find her and she fought him off with her hands and feet. Finally, he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her toward the shore.
Ray eventually convinced Gina to get married and have the baby. When the child was born, he was back in prison on a parole violation. They’d agreed that if it were a boy he would share a name with his father, but she named him Anthony, after her maternal grandfather. Frustrated by Ray’s inability to stay clean and out of prison, she also threatened to put the boy up for adoption.
“Get rid of him and I’ll kill you when I get out!” he told her over the prison pay phone, before slamming the handset onto the cradle.
She cared for the boy until Ray was released and then handed the ten-month-old to him, along with a half-filled baby bottle and a bag of diapers, and turned and walked out. She filed for divorce a few weeks later.
Facing yet another stint in prison, Ray asked his mom and sister to tend to the baby. They balked and the boy was placed in foster care. This was the source of one of Ray’s two major fissures with his family. The other was related to his stepfather. After the fall of Saigon, his stepdad received counseling and stopped beating him and didn’t hit his younger brother or sister. His siblings liked and respected their stepdad, and Ray resented them for it. His mom also defended her husband.
“He was tryin’ to make you into a man,” she said.
“I am a man!” he responded. “Do you like how I turned out?”
Ray was on the precipice of sleep, but his mom’s words pulled him back from the edge. He exhaled and opened his eyes. The bus had eased down the mountain and emptied into a desert valley, steadying itself on an extended straightaway. The cabin was dimly lit, the other passengers stone silhouettes. Ray turned toward the window, and saw only an unfinished portrait of himself. Again, he closed his eyes.
After disowning Gina and his family, and giving up on getting back his son, Ray stuffed a change of clothes into a backpack, tied a bedroll to the shoulder straps, and hitchhiked out of California. He needed to escape Bakersfield and his home state. He needed to be able to breathe. For two years, he crisscrossed the country, sleeping in churches and homeless shelters or unfurling the bedroll in parks and under freeway bridges. He’d stumble on somebody working on something—an old car or painting a house—and he’d jump right in. Inevitably, they’d give him a few bucks.
One starry night, less than 350 miles from Baker, which the bus was now approaching, his odyssey came to an abrupt conclusion. As he was walking along the shoulder of one of central Nevada’s lonely highways, a pack of wolves surrounded him. He was high, but he was sure he wasn’t hallucinating. He could smell their musk, and their eyes glistened in the moonlight. Ray slipped out of his backpack and began to reach for his knife, but the alpha male sprung from the circle and clamped down on his arm. He could’ve crushed it; however, he simply made sure Ray didn’t move. The pack growled, flashing sizable fangs, and narrowed the circle. Ray dropped to his knees, bowed his head. There was nothing he could do. When the alpha suddenly released his arm, he looked up and watched as the wolf disappeared into the dark, followed by the rest of the pack.
The dim, scattered lights of Baker came into focus on the horizon. Ray rolled up the sleeve of the hoodie and ran his fingers over the scars on his forearm, reading them like braille. “Don’t ever forget that night in central Nevada,” they told him. “Don’t forget that you should be dead.”
The morning after the encounter with the wolf pack, a long-haul driver gave Ray a lift to Las Vegas, where he squatted in an abandoned hotel on the south end of the Strip, quit using drugs, and worked as a handyman for various small businesses. Woken by bulldozers early one morning, he used a shopping cart to move his furnishings—a queen-size mattress, two-drawer dresser, armchair, and nightstand—into the underground flood channel, which he’d discovered a year or so earlier while exploring the area. To endure the bleak, new environment and fit in with his neighbors, all of whom were meth addicts, he picked back up the pipe. He’d lived in the tunnel, off and on, for more than fifteen years now and could navigate it without a light source—the echo of his boots letting him know if he was close to the wall or some other object.
His mother and stepfather, brother and sister, ex-wife, and child (now a twenty-three-year-old man) didn’t know he was homeless and living in an underground flood channel. They thought he was a hustler, a middleman, who had a low-rent apartment in Vegas. Maybe he’d come clean during this visit, he thought in the void between Baker and Barstow. Tell them everything: the hitchhiking, the wolf pack, the tunnel, the meth addiction, the people he’d stabbed, the regrets (though he didn’t have as many as one may suspect). Or maybe he’d just hug his mom, tell her he’s sorry and he loves her, and turn around.
The only emotion I’ve expressed in the last twenty years is anger, Ray realized, again on the precipice of sleep. I don’t know if I can change that now.
* * *
The brakes squealed and the bus came to stop, prodding Ray from his slumber. He’d slept through the sojourn in Barstow and the hour-and-a-half drive west on State Route 58. Eyes slitted, he glanced out the window. A faded, rectangular sign read “Welcome to Bakersfield/Bienvenidos a Bakersfield” and, beyond a three-rack newsstand, glass double-doors displayed the amber glow of the station. The sky above the dingy, tile façade foreshadowed the sunrise.
Ray felt for the watch he was going to give his niece, then clutched his duffel bag and stood. Waiting for his fellow passengers to collect their carry-on items and proceed to the door, he checked his phone. There were still no messages. He’d hoped to stay with his brother or a friend, or at least catch a ride from the station. I guess three years in the joint isn’t good for a ride and a few nights in Wes’ apartment, he thought sarcastically.
It’s all right, he went on, shuffling toward the door. I can walk to Ma’s house once the sun comes up and crash on the streets or in a homeless shelter at night. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Halfway down the aisle, the door in sight, Ray exhaled. He plucked a cigarette from the pocket of the hoodie and jammed it into his mouth, then dug into his pants pocket for the lighter. The reality of the situation set in and, as the line stalled, he fought the urge to light the cigarette. Though he’d considered several scenarios in the tunnel, at the station, and on the bus, he had no idea how the day would play out and he was growing apprehensive. He regretted not texting his dealer and buying some meth. As the line continued forward, he recalled rule number ten—“Forgive but Don’t Forget”—in an attempt to steel his emotions.
He watched as the passengers exited the bus, one by one, in an orderly manner. We’re all traveling down the same road, he thought. We know the final destination is pain and disappointment and heartache, but we continue the journey, with little doubt or hesitation. He didn’t find this sad or profound; it was just a fact.
He descended the stairs and stepped into the breaking light.
*
Matthew O’Brien is a writer, editor, and teacher who lived in Las Vegas for twenty years and is currently based in San Salvador, El Salvador. His latest book, Dark Days, Bright Nights: Surviving the Las Vegas Storm Drains (Central Recovery Press 2020), shares the harrowing tales of people who lived in Vegas’ underground flood channels and made it out and turned around their lives. You can learn more about Matt and his work at www.beneaththeneon.com.
New Critique 