There It Is.

By Steve Warner

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664191259

Steve Warner

Steve Warner, a former monk, Marine and mad man, lives in Cleveland

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There it is.

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Steve Warner

Copyright © 2021 by Steve Warner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Contact Steve Warner at

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Rev. date: 02/02/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

820861

CONTENTS

There it is.

God knows.

capable of almost anything

There it is.

1

T he hole was almost too small for me and Lucky.

Jack and the new guy had the radio so they could take turns napping in the hole next to mine. I wouldn’t be able to nap, but I didn’t care because I rather be with Lucky, and if I dozed, he would be alert. He was warm and it was comforting pressing against him in the blackness. He smelled a lot better than Jack, that’s for sure.

When Sergeant King, his handler, was killed, Lucky lied next to his body and showed his teeth, growling, if anyone came too close. The LT said the dog would have to be shot because they had to get the Sergeant’s body.

I learned a lot about dogs when I was growing up. I’m good with them. I took off my helmet and moved toward him until he let me know I was close enough. I crouched and talked nice Hey Lucky.....Hank’s dead.....There it is.....He’s wasted.....Gone, Lucky.......You gotta move on.....It’s a bitch, Lucky I said his name over and over and gestured with my fingers. Lucky, come over here. Lucky.....Come on After a time, he crept over.

I was a grunt, not a dog handler. I didn’t know how to use Lucky on patrol to smell out gooks. We kept him with us because, goddamn, he really could smell them. Lucky was gook radar—he could tell when they were a mile away. Anyone who wanted him when they went out on night OP could take him with them. Some did, some didn’t.

As I said, I was good with dogs so I had him with me as much as I could. I believe he saved my life that night.

It could not get any darker. Total black. I could see nothing, hear nothing but the constant background buzz of flying bugs, the fuck you croak of the fuck you frogs, and the quiet, half-hour radio’s squeaky sit rep.

Shit rolls downhill and at that moment I was at the bottom of the hill, ten thousand miles away from home, huddled in the damp earth a hundred meters in front of the rest of the platoon.

One thing I knew with all the fervor of my heart: I did not want not want to die. I would do everything I could to go back to Cleveland and get a mile of ass six inches at a time. That’s all I wanted.

As soon as I stepped out of the airconditioned American Airliner onto the tarmac, I was in a pool of shit. A thousand Nam vets have written what I’m about to write—it’s like reciting a Litany the way we used to at St. Joseph’s. My turn now: Good God, how I hated the heat. I hated the canned crap I had to eat. I hated being filthy dirty. I hated the leeches and snakes, centipedes, spiders, scorpions, those terrible ants and mother fucking mosquitoes. I hated the smell of my sweat and stink of my asshole. I hated the never ending tiredness in my legs, the ache of my sprained shoulder, the blisters on my white feet, the fungus on my hand that would not go away. I hated the thought of booby traps that could turn my legs into ground beef, the randomness of the mortar round lottery that would determine if I lived or died. I hated the red dust when it didn’t rain, and then the mud when it never stopped raining. I hated the hills that were always there, the swamps, the shit stink rice paddies, the thorns and wait-a-minute vines that drove me nuts the way they held on. I hated the smell from hell-- rotting flesh. I hated the animal moans of the wounded that I heard in my head for days afterwards. The penny-in-your-mouth smell of blood. I hated how the gooks hated me when I burned their villages and shot their dogs. I hated the gooks because they were trying to kill me. I hated the Lifers, the Crotch, the glory Captains who didn’t give a shit about us. I hated the cocksucking politicians for getting me here. I hated the people back in the World who hated me for being in Vietnam. Sometimes I even hated myself for what I was doing.

Most of all I hated the constant dread that never left even when I was in a safe camp. I was scared all the time. I could relax if I smoked MJ and drank beer. That worked. But otherwise, I was one scared motherfucker all the time. I lost twenty pounds and I was a 155 pound skinny when I stepped off the plane into the oven.

I wasn’t so much scared that I could die—what the fuck, I would be gone and that was it. There would be no one to notify the fact that I was dead. No one gave a shit about me, if I lived or died. I was nothing. If I died, lights out. But I was really afraid of being maimed for life. I love my two arms and two legs and I didn’t want to part company with any of them. Hey, I’m all I got in this world. What if I got hit in the spinal cord and couldn’t do anything. What if I lost an eye, or half my face or my balls.

My brothers could add another reason to hate the Nam. They had a girlfriend, a wife, a family, and I didn’t. The red mailbags never had a letter for me—in eight months the only letter I got was from a nun at St. Joseph’s. She was a nun who sort of cared about me. At Christmas she sent me a package of incredible cookies that I remember to this day. They were chewy with honey and nuts and chocolate chips in them.

Everybody gets out of the Nam, alive or in a coffin. One hundred and twenty-two days and a wake up was my mantra.

In the dark I thought about Liat’s ass while I kept my fingers around my dick. Her ass was a free range where I was free to roam during my R&R in Bang-Cock. I thought about how diligently she fucked me, how wide her eyes squinted in time with my squirts when I came. She would sigh so sweetly, almost mystically, when my fingers played with her tiny muff.

Lucky gave out a soft breath and stirred a bit. I loved the dogs that roamed the grounds of St. Joseph’s. Prince, a German shepherd just like Lucky, used to sleep next to my bunk in the cabin I shared with three other boys. Prince was by me every night.

Lucky sat up and gave a small whimper. His tail began to thump against my arm. I put my hand on his back and could feel him quivering. Wassup? I whispered. I put my hand on his head. His nose was twitching. His tail whipped harder and he began to pant.

I put my head above the hole and in a loud whisper said: Lucky smells gooks.

What?

Lucky smells gooks. Tell them gook are around.

The radio hissed as Jack mumbled into it.

I stared into the blackness. My balls puckered and tried to climb into my asshole. Lucky trembled harder.

I heard a tink of metal on metal, a vague rustle, a soft metallic click, more rustling, a sign-song whisper.

Dear God, please don’t let me die. Let me go home.

I began mumbling Okie Dokie…..Okie Dokie…..Okie Dokie….. I clicked the Hellboxes and two blasts of ball bearings from the Claymores tore a swatch through the jungle. Within seconds green tracers were flying above us. The explosive CLACK- -CLACK-CLACK-CLACK of AK-47 fire was everywhere. I chucked three grenades and was reaching for another when one of theirs thumped next to me.

My first week in the Nam, a Sargent who was on his second tour advised me to dig a shoe box sized hole, a deep one, in the corner of my fighting hole. If a grenade came in I might be able to kick it into that hole so the blast would mostly go up. I believed him and it saved my life.

The blast shook something violently in my head and one small piece of shrapnel, the size of a BB, pierced my skull and two other small pieces tore through part of my larynx and across my face up to my ear.

I came back to Cleveland with a large scar, a gravelly voice like Willy Nelson drunk, and a small piece of metal in my brain that would be there for the rest of my life.

2

I ’m 53 now.

For as long as most people who work downtown can remember, I’m the guy who rattles a red plastic cup everyday underneath the big digital time and temperature clock in the middle of downtown Cleveland. Summer or winter, sunshine or not, I’m there every work day from eight in the morning until six at night. I disappear mid-morning and mid-afternoon when everyone is working.

I’m not shabby. I don’t dress fancy, but I’m not scruffy. I’m clean shaven, my hair’s not too long, and my clothes are clean and casual. I’m Walmart chic. In the summer I’m partial to Hawaiian shirts. Wool sweaters in the fall and spring. A thick black jacket with a hood in the winter.

When I get to my corner, I put on a black baseball cap with a small Eagle, Globe & Anchor pin in the middle and a small purple heart pin on one side of it and a green and yellow Nam service pin on the other. If you weren’t in the military, it don’t mean nothin’.

Whenever someone drops a coin in my cup, I say: God bless....Have a good day. Most of the time people just pass by, but I still say, every so often, God bless....Have a nice day, just because. It’s a mantra. God bless.....Have a swell day. God bless....Have a cool or wet or snowy or weird or whatever day.

I’ve said it so many thousands of times, the words come out normal and I like that because most of the time my speech is garbled and my voice sounds like an alligator growl.

The VA doctor told me it was Broca’s Aphasia. I looked it up. It said that I could write, read, listen to and understand people, but I don’t do so good putting words together and saying them so people can understand. I usually can do the first words okay, but that’s about it. That’s the way it is.

I’ll give you an example. Me and Virgil, my friend who lives two doors away in our building, are drinking beer and shooting the shit. I want to tell him about the black whore who stood in front of me and asked for the money in my cup. She said she needed the money more than I did. I gave it to her. It wasn’t that much. Who cares? When I wanted to tell Virgil, it came out like this: BlackHo.bad teeth.yaayaa.begin’ me.shit fucrrrr.gave her cup.yup.

If it was anyone other than Vergil, I would have taken out my notebook and written it down.

The VA didn’t say anything about the metal embedded in my head. We can’t get at it for fear of fucking you up, a doctor said. It’s real small and it’s in a tight spot. Let’s leave it alone for a while and see what happens.

That was long ago. Over the years I’ve come to believe that tiny piece of metal has given me a true super power: I don’t give a shit.

I get a good veteran’s disability check each month. I don’t have to do anything, but I want to stand on the corner. My choice. I am Al, the panhandler on the corner of East 9th and Euclid.

Both streets are Cleveland’s main arteries and they crisscross in the heart of downtown Cleveland. Both lanes are more than twice as wide as most city streets. There’s the roar and buzz of stop and go traffic, the constant smell of bus and car fumes, lots and lots of pretty girls passing by.

The sun always finds new ways to gleam and sparkle off the glass of the concrete towers around me. Twenty feet from where I stand there’s a hefty urn Cleveland keeps fresh with plants and flowers.

Not to brag, but standing on the corner all these years, I’ve become a celebrity of sorts. One Christmas, Higbee’s, the big department store a few blocks up Euclid filled its giant two-sided corner window with an elaborately accurate scale model of downtown Cleveland. A small, red&evergreen train carrying a lounging Santa and his reindeer was weaving in and around the city landmarks. There were some tiny people along the streets. Underneath the big clock on East 9th and Euclid was an inch tall guy in a black baseball cap holding out a red up

3

W hen the Indians are at home I’ll stand on the corner into the evening and on weekends. On those days I wear a Chief Wahoo baseball cap. When the Browns are playing, I’ll be there on Sunday wearing a Browns sweatshirt. If it’s cold I wear a thick orange&brown jacket to ward off the wind as I jiggle my cup. God bless.....Go Browns, I rasp.

There was a story about me a few years ago in the paper’s Sunday magazine. It appeared a couple of weeks after I tripped a robber running his ass off from the bank that’s close to where I stand. I saw the young white guy barreling out of the bank and sprinting down the sidewalk with a guard watching him get away. The kid knocked a woman down before he came by me. I stuck out my foot and sent him head over heels. He hit the sidewalk awfully hard. The story is true, but overwritten by a zealous young woman Plain Dealer writer. Here it is:

PROMINENT PEOPLE PROFILES

AL

[PHOTO: From across Euclid, Al w. cup, under clock]

A few months after I moved to Cleveland I happened to mention the guy in the baseball cap and beggar’s cup who stood on the corner of East 9th. Others knew him and my editor said why don’t you write a feature about the man.

If you work downtown you probably know him too. He’s the guy in the black cap under the clock with the odd face and ear worm voice. His God bless.....God bless y’all sticks in your ear. It’s got a penetrating, horseradish edge to it, a musical rasp. half screed, half throat horn that both mocks and praises. It’s a piercing jaybird caw, rude, rough, and full of bristles.

For those of us who pass him once or twice each day he’s become a living statue. For some, a good luck charm if you give him a quarter. Two weeks ago he became a downtown hero when he tripped a bank robber and stood with his foot on him until the police came.

Seeing him standing there with a cup in his hand you would think he’s a lost homeless soul. Not so. He bought me a hot dog, found a bench and he told me he has a disability pension, a small apartment, a dog and his place on the corner.

Up close, Al looks like a robust 50-year old. If his bright eyes didn’t catch you staring at his face you’d see a mean scar that starts on his neck and ends up under his ear. That’s why you can’t be sure if his grin is a smile or a sneer, and why his voice is so other worldly.

How many people do you think have walked passed you?

Fifteen million.

[PHOTO: long profile of woman dropping coin in cup]]

Bet you’ve seen a lot.

Yep.

Name an awesome thing you saw.

He thought about it, then grinned and pointed at the sidewalk. Baby! Right there. He took out a small notebook and wrote:

Kid born there

Fell right out.

Boy! he said.

Al writes when he has to because he has trouble speaking clearly sometimes. An exploding grenade in Vietnam put a sliver of metal in his brain which he carries to this day.

[PHOTO: Al almost smiling at camera, no scar]

I had to ask. Why are you doing this?.....You could be doing something else

I’m sure he asked himself this before, but he took a few seconds before he wrote:

Ineffable

I nodded as if I knew what he meant, thought about it for a few seconds, then asked: What does that mean?

He gave me a beats me look and pointed at the word.

What do you do when you’re not on the corner?

Read.

Can I ask how much you make in a day?

He shrugged. Five..Ten...Fifteen

Keeps you in cigarettes and beer.

He pointed to his throat. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink.

"Do you have a family?

Raised at St. Joseph’s.

Al was brought up from the time he was eight at the Cleveland Catholic Diocese’s St. Joseph’s Home in Parma.

You were a decorated Marine.

Purple Heart. No hero.

Why did you tangle with the bank robber?

He kicked his foot as if a nurse had tapped his knee. Instinct.

We’re you afraid you might get hurt?

Didn’t think.

We walked back to his corner. I put a twenty in his cup. God bless, he said.

4

F or a couple weeks after the story appeared, a number of people I recognize, people who often drop change into my cup, wanted to take a picture standing next to me. I was flattered.

I lied to the newspaper girl. I figure if you’re gonna lie, lie. I never saw a woman giving birth on the corner. I’ve seen many things, that’s for sure, but not that. Okay, I stuck out my foot, then stood on the unconscious cocksucker. Big deal. No brainer at the time. What would you expect—that I would just stand there and let the shit run past me?

Telling the reporter that I didn’t drink or smoke was a lie. I drink beer and smoke pot a lot. I don’t really stand on the corner. I have a three-pound contraption—a skinny bicycle seat on an expandable pole that I use to prop up my butt. I’d be dead on my feet without it. I’m half-leaning, half-sitting. If I were sitting on a box, I would look like a bum and Officer Bob would have me move on. But he likes me and we laugh together sometimes. And after I stuck out my foot, he likes me more.

I told the reporter that I wasn’t afraid, and that part of the interview was true. I don ‘t get nervous about anything any more since the Nam. Maybe it’s the metal in my head.

I detest violence. I don’t want to be tripping bank robbers. I remembered when we were almost overrun. A skinny boy, naked in a loin cloth, grease all over him, black arm bands wrapped tight around his arms, was running across our perimeter in the light of parachute flares. It was psychedelic. He was holding a satchel charge. It was pure instinct, didn’t think about it for a second. I immediately shot him and he was immediately dead.

A bit more about me.

I’m a serious creature of habit. My weekdays are xeroxes. Like a goldfish, I grow in strength and wisdom swimming in the same water, the same everything every day. My day is my Mandela. I revel in regularity the way a monk enjoys the choreography of monastery bells. My place in the big Church is on the corner of East 9th and Euclid, under the time and temperature clock.

When you’re going to blow your horn, blow your horn.

I’m as happy as a frog in a broken down well. I’m rich—I have everything I want. I have magic in my brain, a slit larynx, and a hard time speaking coherently, but I’m alive. I didn’t die! I’m here.

Being here means the world to me.

I get up at six, except Wednesdays when I take a shower and shave. I feed my Polly a half can of dog food. She’s light brown, 26-pound, half beagle and half pug. God, she is one brown eyed, floppy eared, smart sonofabitch. She’s my dog and I’m her human. We were meant to be.

I was sitting on the bench in back of my building and she came up to me just like that, tail wagging, her eyes all big. She said: Hey Buddy, what’s for supper? She didn’t have a collar. We hit it off right from the start.

Anyway, after I’ve fed her in the morning, I have a real strong cup of black instant coffee with toast and a banana or a bowl of cereal with canned peaches. I swallow a multivitamin and half an aspirin. Around seven I take Polly out back so she can do her business, then I take her to Virgil, my friend down the hall. He works nights so he can take care of her during the day. He loves her.

Year round I wear a small backpack, Inside is a military rain poncho, a Swiss Army knife Lois gave me for Christmas, a face towel, four aspirin in a small bottle in case I have a heart attack, some candy to suck on and a two-pound ball-peen hammer I call Jesus. My leaning seat fits nicely into the top of the backpack. I carry library books in canvas bag.

I catch the bus at the corner, the #26 DOWNTOWN. It isn’t there exactly at 7:30 but it never comes earlier and rarely much later. Usually I’m the only one in the bus shelter, and often there are the same passengers on the bus when I get on. I try to live each weekday with the attitude that I am in an amusement park. The #26 Downtown is the first ride.

The bus is my zendo. I sit up straight, and gently pull slow, deep breaths deep into my gut. I am a Taoist and part of that means I have a desire to be detached as much as I can from constantly judging and discriminating the phenomena around me-- this is good, this is bad, this is pleasant, this is unpleasant. I want to see reality just as it is, without inner comment. I fail all the time--I’m a mammal, not a Buddha. But I keep trying by not trying to try and thereby accepting it as it is. Capiche?

I get off the bus at the stop across from the time/temperature clock. I rattle my cup from eight to ten. Then I walk a few blocks to the huge library, the third largest library in the country, and the only one of its size open to the public. It’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter so all types of down-and-outers go there to sit and doze. But I’m not down-and-out and I don’t look like I am. Over the years the library staff has come to know me and even smile sometimes when they see me. In the morning, in the newspaper room, I have the time to read what’s up in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, NYTimes and the Washington Post, whatever.

I take a different way back and walk past Zorba’s blue and yellow umbrella. At least once a week I get a dog with onions and kraut. Zorba’s a cool guy, lots younger than me. Sits on a stool and listens to a small radio. His stand is a football field away from me so when the wind is right, I’m smelling ball park hot dogs all afternoon.

Often Rudy, the black saxophone player with the bags under his eyes shows up on the corner of East 6th and Euclid and plays his slow music—Summertime, Never smile again, Told you lately that I love you?, kind of tunes. I always say How’s it goin or something to him. More than once he said to me: Hey Old Timer, when you quit, let me have that corner.

It is the best corner in town.

I’m back on my perch around 11:30 and stand there until 2:00 when I usually go back to the library. In the magazine room, I skim news magazines, read what interests me in Harper’s, Atlantic, whatever. If a current issue is in, I laugh at the New Yorker cartoons.

POPULAR says the sign above the room down the hall. It’s where I get most of the reading I bring home. I pick and choose what catches my eye. I read everything, but I don’t read fiction because it’s bullshit

Sometimes I take the wide marble staircase, slowly, up to PHILOSOPHY to get a fresh buzz of something or other; Or I’ll bring a book with me.

The department has soft chairs and solid desks that look out at the Lake from clean third floor windows. There is good Chuang-Tsu in the Asian philosophy stacks. If I’m in the mood, I take one of the Taoist commentaries and read a few pages Lectio Divina, looking up at the blue water outside the window

I’m on the corner from 4:30 to 6:30. What I’ve read bounces around in my monkey mind. Politicians, Dictators, corrupt CEO’s, advertising bullshit, gorgeous/total asshole pop stars, drugged baseball players, movie stars going to hell on coke, guys who can run with a football as if they were running with a stolen TV, and all the infinite forms of human beings who sing their own songs, make their own music every day. Tao, the life force, is like the wind off the Lake that makes the big rocks on the shoreline and trees sing. My song, accompanied by the rattle of coins in a cup: God bless.....have a nice day.

There are times when no one is walking past me. I pull air deep into my body, filling my lungs from the very bottom with oxygen and exhaust fumes. Then I let the breath out slowly. I listen to the sound of the cars going past. How wonderful this is, I say to myself. At those moments I’m a mirror with nothing in front of it. I breathe deeply, slowly, in and out, and the marijuana tar in my system, or something, kicks in. I am a set of eyes, a ghostly voice saying: God bless to no one.

I catch the 6:40 bus back to Lakewood. I often stop at the Superette to buy beer. Sanjay and Kanti, the owners, know me. Then I pick up Polly from Virgil—she goes crazy, spins around, yelps that I’m finally back. Where have you been! I missed you, she says.

The coins I’ve gleaned bling when I drop them into my big black begging bowl. Every couple weeks, I sort the coins and put them in wrappers. Once and a while I take what rolls I have to the bank and get one-dollar bills.

When I have a stack of a hundred, I rubberband it and stash the money in an attaché case. I find old at the Salvation Army store. The locks won’t lock but the springs work on my stack of black and tan cases. When I snap one side open/pop the other and there’s the splendor of tidy stacks of cash looking the way they look in movie attaché cases. My retirement fund—God bless.

Whatever, I feed Polly, pop a beer and fix something simple and easy: beef stew over good bread, soup with good bread and cheese, sometimes I fry a ground beef patty and open a can of beans. On weekends I may broil a steak or bake a chicken next to potatoes and a yam. That’s what I eat with a hot dog here and there and Baby Ruths.

I met Mary Jane in the Nam and have been in love with her ever since. Her companionship and support helps me steer a straight and steady course in this world.

I get my smoke from Virgil. He’s the night clerk at a small motel right here in Lakewood. Virgil’s a great guy, ten years younger than me though he doesn’t look it. His teeth aren’t so good, he has a large beer belly and he’s lost his hair is why he always wears a baseball or watch cap. He was a military policeman in the Army for four years.

His motel is an upscale fuck palace, clean and discrete, hardly noticeable, just a nondescript, two story brick building and a parking lot surrounded by tall Lake shore apartments and condos. There are a lot of bars in Lakewood and when people want to fuck, the Westlake is right there. The stories Virgil has!

5

W hen I was convalescing at Great Lakes, trying