Living in Cardboard Boxes

LIVING IN CARDBOARD BOXES

A police officer once told me, "A homeless bum with a bottle of
Captain Morgan is as content as a rich man with a
glass of chardonnay." If I ever met that cop again I would ask him for
some hard liquor then punch him in the
kisser. I have given up on my two-year venture in search of the golden
city of Captain Morgan, an oasis the
officer promised lay just around the corner. Although the journey
turned up no palaces or fountains flowing with
expensive liquor, I did discover a roof to put over my head.

My newfound house was a cardboard box I got from some cripple on a
Rascal. She needed it to make a kettle for
her poodle, chased me half a block on her electric mover in a plight
to take it from me, and made the mistake of
crossing the street. The battery died within her machine by the
overuse of maximum throttle and it stopped her in
the middle of a busy avenue. A massive semi plowed through her
backside and sent her flying in the air. When
she flew like some half-ass biblical chariot over me, I was scared,
for I thought at that moment she was Superman.

It was a good steal, though, I must say. The sides of the box are wide
and can fit my body nicely. I stole a
hacksaw from the bed of a truck and used it to slice holes for
windows. I also made a large cut in the cardboard for
the door. With black tar scraped off the street, my finger painting
skills were put to the test in making the house
invisible. Although I'm not a firm believer of voodoo magic and master
spells, tar is the best magicians powder to
keep a bum at sleep when drunk teenagers are snooping about. I
sometimes laugh hysterically at the places where
my neighbors were taken away in the night never to be seen again,
being too stupid to not paint their homes.

As I sit in front of all the happy faces of Tony the Tiger on the
Kellog box covers stuck to a makeshift hinge, the
door into my flat, my dog lay next to me, lapping his tongue on the
hot pavement. He is awake and skinny. I see
his eyes are turning shiny now-the bad shine, where the ball glazes
over and turns into plastic. His brown face is
only sad and his long snout points down to the ground. Under the hot
sun, his black lips smirk to show the pink
watery skin he has in the mouth. I wish my dog would go find a bitch,
so I would have another friend before he
dies. But he never goes for the humping thing and sits with me and
eats the garbage that I shovel out of the can
behind the drug stores.

Today, because the afternoon is hot, I decide to attach an overhang
made of soiled diapers woven together like
balloon pillars to shade myself from the sun. I gazed out at the
street to await the arrival of Fat Roy, the big boy
from the gang, "Get Me My Drugs With My Big Mac Please". Fat Roy would
walk by my cardboard house on the
afternoons to chat off his fat lips. He was an Afro-American who
lumbered a monstrous hogs belly. If Fat Roy
were thrown into a pig-weighing contest, he would always come out the
winner for in his stomach would be the
swine that could of won but was eaten instead. His white quadruple X
sized shirt draping down to his belly read:
You Don't know Shit, and then below it, Now Hiring At McDonalds.

"Waz up shit pants," he said to me.

He looked like he had been fast walking a few blocks from the sweat
pouring down his forehead.

"How you doing, Fat Roy?" I asked.

"Just cruising, with my B.I.G.'s, howz things in your hood?"

"Nothing a whole lot happening here. Just sitting, you know, looking
at cars, being homeless. You've got a beer?"

Fat Roy let out a roaring burp that sounded like it came from King
Kong. He dug his fat hands into the pockets of
his baggy cargos, size quadruple X, and brought out a warm
Budweiser.

"Warm beer! Is that all you got?"

"Is what I stole from my momma," he bellowed, pulling up his falling
breeches.

"Your mamma, huh." I looked at him with a smile of yellow teeth. "I'll
take it."

He gave me the beer, and then dug his hands into his pants to scratch
the behind. He looked at the street that ran
by my cardboard house. There were cars honking their horns at us, the
drivers yelling out profanities. I took one
sip from the warm beer, grimaced, and then nodded to my dog to come
near. The dog sadly walked up to me, eyes
cast down, and sat on my lap. I poured down the can into his mouth,
cradling the beer like a milk bottle over a
baby.

"That's the driest crap I've ever tasted!" I cried.

Fat Roy turned round to look at me while sniffing the finger he had
thrust into his pants.

"It's all I got," he said.

"Well my dog will like it. He loves hot beer."

"I been wanting to talk to you, Shit Pants. There's somethin' going
down tonight. Can you give me some of your
eyes, you know, to help see who my opposition is?"

"You're asking me to do a favor for you?" I asked.

"Yeah, just one favor. So's you can help me. I'll bucket out a
Benjamin from my crib, if you do this."

"But I have something planned tonight," I said.

"Whatcha going to do tonight, huh, masturbate or something?"

"Me masturbate. To what, Fat Roy? I've never had a woman."

"Are you gay or something?"

"I'm homeless, what will a girl see in me? I'm homeless, can't you see
Fat Roy, or do you got a board stuck up your
ass?" I pushed him with a strong arm.

"So's are you going to do it?"

"Won't it be dangerous doing your little gig thing?"

"Nope. The cops got this street eyed. If them hood does anything, they
let's out a whole show of shooting guns."

"A Benjamin, huh." I snuffed. "You've got a hundred dollars?"

"I got it from my hoods."

"What did they do, get hired to kill someone? That's a lot of money
for a kid to carry around."

"Whose you callin' a kid. I'm eighteen now. I'm a man," he said.

"A man? You're living with your mother. You're not a man."

"My hoods are going to set me up with a crib pretty soon. And's the
cops don't know where it is."

"Why are you worried about the police knowing where you live? Are you
going to sell drugs at this crib or
something?"

"No, fool, just going to chill with the ladies. Them sixteen year olds
are mighty fine. My hoods are going to bring
them over every night for partying. Hey, are you goin' to do
it?"

"Do what?"

"Do me the favor," Fat Roy said, pulling up his sagging pants.

"For the hundred bucks I will."

"I knew I could trust you." He shook my dirty hand.

I smiled under the overhang, and then pointed to my dog that was
finishing the last of the beer. Fat Roy bellowed
out a giggle.

"It smells like shit in here. Get you some new Fruit of the Looms," he
said.

"Why? They won't even let me into the damn K Mart."

"I'll gets you some and come back tomorrow. See you-tomorrow."

"I'll see you, Fat Roy."

"Don't forget our deal. Yell out Fat Roy if you sees them."

"I will, you can count on me."

Fat Roy stomped away from me, following the sidewalk to the
intersection. I saw him swinging the weight he had
for arms and the baggy pants that always seemed to slip down below his
waist wanting to fall down to his feet.
When he was at the light, the crosswalk was busy with car traffic, and
he walked into the lane anyway without
notice to the vehicles racing by him with horns blaring under a green
light. He was jay walking.

A king-sized truck screeched on its brakes and stopped just short of
slamming into Fat Roy as he lumbered down
the crosswalk at a turtle's pace, his eyes looking blankly at the
screaming drivers who were cussing at him to get
off the road. He almost stopped to look at one angry driver who was
cussing up a lightning of profanities.

"Get off the road you jerk!" I could hear the driver scream.

Fat Roy answered the man by giving him the birdie and then he started
at a snails pace to the other end of the
street. As soon as he had stepped on the sidewalk, the crosswalk light
had changed from a red hand to a white
person.

"What a boogy boogy bat boogy," I said, at the moment lost to an
episode of dementia.

When night came, the lights came on in the city, and there was the
orange gleam of street lamps casting their
shades on the sidewalks. I looked at the dark sky only briefly, seeing
my mother in her rocking chair amongst the
stars. She said tonight would be the night that I will become a star
and be rich or something like that, but I did not
believe her. I looked down to count the headlights that drove by on
the busy streets. When you stare at them too
long, you start seeing yellow lines, then red ones, and then your
blind. My dog was already blind with the glare of
car headlights. His eyes were as big as stage lamps, mirroring the
reflection of the cars racing down the street.

"Go inside," I told my dog, opening the cardboard door that led into
my house. The brown canine ignored my
order and ran behind the house.

"What are you doing?" I cried. "Where are you going you stupid
mutt!"

The dog disappeared into the darkness, but I could hear him panting
behind the box. I stumbled up to my feet, and
walked hunched over to the rear of my house. When doing this, I heard
the squealing of tires on the street. I
turned around quickly and saw two cars stopped at the side of the
street in front of my porch. One of the cars was
a long limousine, and the overhead streetlights made orange spangles
on its black top. The other car was an open
low-rider, its music blaring like a bugle horn with Latino rap. The
mega bass rocking from the speakers inside the
convertible caused the diapers atop my door to shake off its wooden
supports. They fell to the ground and still
clattered with the earthquake trembles of the music.

The limousine driver got out of his car and tapped his black shoes
towards the back passenger door of the
vehicle. He stood like a butler at the rear door, and opened it
gently. Two men walked out from inside the
limousine, wearing black business suits and dark sunglasses. The
sunglasses reminded me of the pair Arnold
Schwarzenegger wore in Terminator. Under the shades, their faces were
hard boned, chins sharp with small
go-tees, and their bodies were built like Italian wrestlers. They were
men with the intention of killing somebody.

There were five Hispanics and one white guy inside the low-rider, and
they shut off the music and leaped out onto
the sidewalk. One of the riders was a young woman with brown skin that
shown soft under the orange glow of the
light. She had long wavy black hair and delicate hands that were now
caressing the tattooed head of her boy
friend, who I proposed was a skinhead. She stood up on the leather
back seat and was helped out of the low rider
by a posse of Hispanics in tight white shirts revealing bulging
muscles. She smiled cutely from her bowing lips. I
could see her smooth legs, and her tight black shorts cut just below
her thighs. Her butt cheeks were the size of
two pressed globes and they seemed to bulge out of her shorts.

"Oh senorita," I whispered. "Give me some lovin'." I felt the thing
grow between my legs, and my eyes were in a
trance staring at her behind. "Grrrrr!"

The dog was startled by my growl and snapped at me, his eyes shining
with anger through the darkness.

"Your just mad, because you can't get none." I said to him.

The dog answered with a ferocious bark, and the men at the cars turned
to look in my direction. I tackled the
canine to the ground, and closed his snout with a half nelson.

"Shut up." I whispered. "You're going to get us killed you damn
mutt."

The Hispanics muttered out some Spanish words in my direction. I
waited, scared for my life, holding the dog
against me. The dog was jerking and scratching at my arms but I would
not let him budge.

"Stay down," I whispered.

Car doors slammed shut and I heard only faint voices from the
distance. After lying on the ground for five
minutes, I decided it was safe to peek. I raised my head just nay
above the roofline of my cardboard house and
stared at the bodies lit brightly by the headlights of the low rider.
One of the men wearing a business suit carried a
black briefcase, and he was pointing to it as he talked to the white
shirted gangsters. The young woman, with the
fine bottom, leaned on the shoulder of her boyfriend as he talked to
the men who wore the sunglasses.

"Man, what did Fat Roy get me into?" I said to myself.

Loud huffing breaths, and stomping feet came at me from the darkness.
When I turned my head to see what was
making the sound, Fat Roy's plump face jumped up next to me.

"Heyz you wanted me," he wheezed.

"Did you hear me from all the way at your house?" I whispered, staring
in awe at his surprising arrival.

"I got ears, you know. I can hear as good as a wabbit."

"You can hear as good as a flying piece of shit." I pushed down his
round head with a strong hand. "Stay down,
they'll see you."

"They can't sees me, I'm brown."

"Not as brown as night," I said.

He bent down, and started petting the dog, scratching his snout.

"They came in a big hood," he said. "If theys sees us, we're done
for."

"Thank you for the good advice," I said, staring at the bodies that
were talking in the distance. "You know who
they are Fat Roy?"

"Yeah, a bunch of Hernando's boys. They's come in my hood all the
time, but, but, heh."

I turned to look at Fat Roy and the dog was licking his hands.

"He's a good licker," Fat Roy whispered.

"What about Hernando's boys, again?" I asked trying to start up the
conversation anew.

"They carry the big guns. Like you did when you killed all them
Viet-Cong guys in Vietnam."

I could have killed him for bringing up such a goddamn memory. It was
always him bringing me back to Vietnam.
Suddenly my mind flicked into a flashback. I was standing in the
middle of a leafy green jungle, my steely M-16
cold in my hands, the bushes rustling and the guns chattering with a
ferocious roar that woke up the whole
freaking jungle. My lieutenant flew over my head while I knelt low
behind the bush, his face red with no eyeballs.
His severed hand spiraled through the air like a loose Frisbee, until
it hit against a tree bark. Surprisingly, I had
never heard the explosion.

When I awoke from the terrible flashback I looked at Fat Roy in the
darkness-he smiled at me.

"You know what Shitpants?"

"What?" I said coolly.

"I think we should break them up."

"How are we going to do that?" I said in a whining tone.

"We's hit them with everything we got."

"What do we have? It's not like we have a box full of AK-47's or
automatic weapons to break them up."

"They's selling drugs though."

"Oh, they selling drugs," I said in a deep whisper to make me sound
big. I was making fun of Fat Roy's remark.
"You sell drugs don't you?"

"No, I quit that shit long ago."

"But I say who cares. Let them make their deal. We don't need to get
into their thing."

"The cops are waiting at the Circle K down the street."

"The cops. Where are the cops?"

"Don't you see's them down there at the K? They probably inside having
a Big Gulp or something. I know's they
aren't having doughnuts because they don't go for that any more. Late
at night the caffeine get's a chuggin'
through their veins?."

He started to talk nonsense, and I decided to ignore him.

I studied the parking lot of the gas station standing at the left of
my house. Behind some large green bushes, I
saw the glinting body of a car.

"Is that it, Fat Roy?" I whispered, pointing to the car behind the
bushes.

"Yes, I think."

"You think?"

"I know, I know. It's them."

"How come they haven't breaked it up yet?"

"Because they havin' a Big Gulp from the Circle K, I don't
know."

We had a long conversation on how the cops could not see us from the
gas station, and finally the dog shut us
both up with a small bark.

Then it happened. The words slipped out of my mouth with a high
nervous shrill in hopes of silencing the dog. I
screamed out, "Shut up!"

"What you do that for, huh?" Fat Roy said in a loud whisper. I knew
they had heard me, because the gangster's
were getting jumpy and scared and they were edging towards their
cars.

"Why you have to yell like that huh?" Fat Roy whined. "Now I gotta do
it."

Fat Roy got up from a kneel and stood up in his Nikes. Under the
orange gleam of the streetlight-I could see the
side of his dark blue shirt with the start of white lettering that
hinted of another embroidered profanity.

"What are you doing, They'll see you. Get down, get down," I whispered
frantically.

I was trying to pull him down, but he pushed my hand away and stared
at the cars where the gangsters were
talking.

"Damn it," I whispered and pressed my body against the cold
earth.

Fat Roy went to the front of my house and I watched him as he walked
to where the gangsters were having their
conversation.

"Damn kid doesn't know what's best for him," I said.

He walked right into the crowd of conversing drug dealers as if he
were a member of their posse. But when the
Hispanics saw that he was not one of their own, Fat Roy opened his
arms to the sky and started running circles
around the men yelling at the top of his lungs: "HELP! HELP!
HELP!"

Fat Roy sounded like a sick cow moaning for the farmers shotgun to put
him out of his misery. The loud and
terrific scream made me leap up to my feet to see the gangsters
scrambling to their cars. In the confusion, they had
left the black briefcase resting on the sidewalk. The police officers
came out of the bushes from the Circle K and
suddenly police cars started popping out from every side of the
street. Behind me, a police car raced with blaring
white headlights toward my cardboard box and the driver did not see me
standing there. The car ran over my dog,
and the blood from his dog's body squirted all over my old brown coat
and I leaped to the side before the car
flattened my house. I quickly got up to the sidewalk where the
streetlights were shining orange on the pavement.
Both the limo and the low rider backed away from the drive, squealing
their tires. I picked up the black briefcase
sitting on the pavement and saw Fat Roy leaping onto the back of a
police car after it had stopped when hitting its
turn too sharp. In that short span of a halt, Fat Roy managed to bring
himself up onto the top roof of the police
car. His belly print was left on the rear glass and the top crumpled
and made a bending after he pressed his weight
against it.

"Hey, Shitpants, I go get the gangsters!" he cried.

The police officers in the car were oblivious of him being on top of
their vehicle and so they pushed the gas and
went full speed to catch the fleeing getaways. Fat Roy held on tight
to a silver rail that ran behind the bright red
and blue sirens, and his blue shirt blew wildly as the car sped up to
over seventy miles per hour, its engine
roaring, the car vanishing in the darkness at the far end of the
street, Fat Roy hanging for his life atop it.

About to speak, I closed my lips looking at where the cars had once
been. Silence hung over me like a damned
mime who tries to talk but can only whisper. It was dead. The sirens
had shimmered into nothingness, the streets
looked drunk with litter, and the streetlight turned yellow with no
cars below it. Was it two o' clock in the morning
already?

I heard a snap from the briefcase that hung from my hand and looked
down at it. The gold locks on it were loose
and I raised the black briefcase and cradled it in both of my hands.
They probably left their drugs behind, I
thought. A hint of curiosity arose in my mind, and I opened the
briefcase.

"My God," I said, almost stumbling backwards.

Inside the case, there were neatly banded rows of Benjamin's, and they
were green, white, and new looking under
the orange light. There had to have been over fifty million dollars
within that one briefcase. I closed the black lid
over the money and smiled at the night sky.

"Mother," I said, staring up at the stars that peeked out of the hazy
brown smog. "You made your promise."

I went over to the Circle K and went inside the brightly lit
convenient store. The cashier in her blue Circle K shirt
looked at me cautiously from behind the pay counter, readying her hand
on the phone to call the cops, but I wove
a one hundred dollar bill, and her eyes lit up.

"I need change for a hundred," I asked coolly at the counter looking
at the small display of key rings, cigarette
lighters, and lottery tickets clustered next to the cash
register.

"Change for a hundred," she said in a rattling voice. She must have
been one of those frequent visitors to the
bowling alley who only went there to smoke. Her hair was a silvery
gray with small patches of black hair that
sprung around her ears.

"We don't break a hundred dollar bills," she said.

"All I need is change for the phone," I said.

"We don't break a hundred dollar bills," she said.

"Then keep the change," I said.

"Really."

"Yes," I said, getting very annoyed.

"Here," she said hurriedly, taking the hand she kept on her thin neck
away to stretch out to get the money. "How
much you want?"

"Thirty-five cents."

"For a hundred bucks?"

"I say take it."

I gave her the bill and she took out thirty-five cents from her
register. "Thirty five cents is your change," she said.

"Thank you," I said.

"Yes, you need to get some help. You smell worse then my rotting
mother, okay. And she's dead. And only a
crazy rich person would just give me a hundred dollars for payphone
change."

"Goodbye," I said and went out of the store with the black brief case
hitting against my brown trouser legs.

I came up to the phone booth outside the store and opened up the
yellow pages. My dirty finger passed many
listings until it fell on one that I really liked. It was the phone
number to the most luxurious hotel in the city, the
Golden Ritz. I dialed it up and got an answer from a very proper
speaking individual.

"Good evening, this is the Main Lobby of the Ritz, would you desire a
reservation?"

I turned my head away from the phone and let out a small cough then
put on my best impression of a
domesticated Harvard graduate.

"Hello there my boy, I would like a room with a fine shower and a
fresh pair of Fruit of the Looms underwear
waiting on my bed covers."

"Underwear, sir," the Lobby man stuttered.

"Yes the finest most brightest underwear tailored for my clean bottom.
I would prefer that it come from K-Mart.
They never let me into K-Mart."