It was summer, and as usual they were looking for an out of the way place to smoke some dope.  Andy noticed a trail cutting through the tall weeds at the foot of the Fulton St. bridge.   From the top of the levee they could see the trail twisted 90 degrees as it went down and disappeared under them.

They stumbled down the bank and under the bridge to find the trail widened into a little grassy plateau looking out over the river.  The air was cool there in the shade under the bridge and the view was excellent.  Could not believe this place had been there the whole time, under their noses.  Laughing, they didn’t notice the old man until they were already into the joint.

He had built a nest of sorts up high near the embankment, protected in back by the bridge itself and on two sides by concrete pylons.  He sat there peering down at them from his pallet of cardboard, bleary eyed and silent as they passed around the joint and giggled.

“I swear to God – if he tries to queer off with us I will fuck him up.”

“That old man ain’t bothering you , give me the joint.”

“Yeah, pass the joint, Billygoat Gruff.   Fuck that old man.”

“Fuck all ya’ll.”  Gruff made a show of stretching his skinny frame, scratching at his scraggly goatee.  Ignoring their reaching hands, he sucked down another quarter of the joint before passing it.

They hung out there bullshitting the rest of the afternoon.  The old derelict just sat there in his nest the whole time, blinking and staring at them, eventually pulling out a pint of fortified wine and sipping from it.

Andy looked at his watch. “Fuck, me and Eddie got to go, man.  The old woman will be pissed.”

“Aight.  I’m taking off too.”  The Billygoat launched his cigarette butt into the weeds and stood.

As they were leaving, scrambling back up the bank, the old man farted, high pitched and loud, like a trumpet blast.  As if to say goodbye.

He listened to their shouts of laughter echoing above him as they went on their way.  He might have smiled a little.  He carefully put the bottle back in its hiding place, stretched out on the cardboard, and went back to sleep.

***

Once they found the hideaway under the bridge, they kept coming back.   The old man was always there, up in his spot.  Over that summer, they saw him nearly every day.

They would amuse themselves hollering crazy shit up at him while they smoked their joints or snorted their crank.

“Good afternoon, old brother.  How would you like a nice Dirty Sanchez?”

“He don’t know what that means, he ain’t got the internet!”, snorted Eddie.  He had a razor blade and was chopping up tiny lines of dirty looking powder on the back of a paperback book.

“Sure he does.  I can see leftovers from his last Sanchez there on his upper lip.”  Billy fished out his lighter and relit the joint.

The old man smiled down at them from his perch and gave them a big thumbs up.

“He’s an agreeable old fuck.”

Once he’d come down and offered them a can of Spam he’d acquired that day.   But mostly he sat on his cardboard perch and drank and listened to the boys shoot the shit.

On those rare occasions when they had money, he was happy to buy booze for them.

On one such occasion they had scraped enough to buy a bottle of Everclear.  When the old man finally made it back from the store, everyone was all huddled under the bridge shooting the shit around a small fire they’d started in a bucket.  Fall was coming on, but the fire was more for light than heat.

“Outstanding, my brother” said Gruff, taking the bottle and pounding the old man on the back.   He opened the bottle, took a swig, gasped, and passed the bottle to Ed.

Ed sniffed the bottle.  He looked at the Billygoat. “What is this shit? “

“Its alcohol, son.  Let me show you how its done.”  The old man stared at the bottle.  He hadn’t ever said much, hell he was mostly silent.  This was the most he’d ever said, in fact.

Ed mostly faked taking a sip and passed it to the old guy, who wiped the neck with his filthy sleeve, turned it up, and drank a solid finger out of the bottle.  He kind of froze in place for a few seconds before coming to himself and passing it to Andy.

“I gotta take a piss.” he said, and wandered off into the weeds.

Andy, emboldened by the old man’s ability to chug the stuff, took a healthy slug  and immediately started gasping, tears in his eyes.   “Fuck, man.  This shit is nasty!”

They heard the old man coming back before they saw him.  When he made it into the light of the fire, they could all see he’d left his dick hanging out of his pants.  Like he’d forgotten what he was doing mid-piss and blanked out.  If it had been some stranger they’d have beaten the shit out of him, but but with this old man they knew there was no sexual intent.

Andy hollered and pointed.  “YOU!   Your indian name is DICKS-HANGS-OUT!”

How they’d all died laughing.  Nobody thought to ask why it was DICKS instead of DICK, but then again none of them were sticklers for grammar.  Nobody said anything, but they all felt a little closer to Dicks after the naming, like he’d been brought a further into their group, despite the age differences.

***

Then all of a sudden summer was over and school had started up again.  Ed and Andy couldn’t hang out as much.  They had normal lives with a Mom and a Dad and expectations to live up to.

The Billygoat, on the other hand, was pretty much on his own all day.  During which time he couldn’t really be seen hanging out in public during school hours. Which meant he spent a lot of time under the bridge.

Not long ago was a normal kid getting ready for the ninth grade; everything was just fine and dandy. But then his Dad took off.

Overnight, things changed, she changed.  She started partying, running the roads. At first it had been cool to have a Mom you could hook a joint from every now and then.  But within a few months she’d quit even pretending to be a Mom.   He’d never been a great student, but he’d always gotten by if someone made him do his homework.  When that quit happening, he sloughed off.  If she couldn’t pay attention, then fuck it.

She didn’t even notice when he quit going to school entirely.  Or if she had, she was pretending that she hadn’t. He found his papers and started building a joint.

He sighed, lit the joint, and lay back in the grass.  He watched the river lick its banks as Dicks snored softly overhead.  There was a rhythm to it.  Snore, snore, snore – silence – SNORE, snore snore – silence – SNORE.

He turned around to look up at Dicks and he saw it.

It had been there all along, but he’d never taken note of it.  In a flash he was up and on his feet and climbing up the embankment toward Dicks.

There was empty space under the bridge to the right of Dicks’ nest.  A mirror image of Dick’s space, in fact, separated by the reinforced concrete pylon supporting the center of the bridge’s mass.  Pulling himself up the last few feet, he swung his butt up on the lip of  the abutment.  He stood up and looked around.  It looked huge compared to Dicks’, but Dicks’ was full of crap the old goofball had collected.  This was like an empty room with one open wall, like a big concrete box formed by intersection of the walls of the abutment and the girders supporting the first span of the bridge.  Like Dick’s it was as wide as one lane of the bridge above, bigger than the living room of his mom’s trailer.

Why not build his own nest?  He could take his time and cherry it out.  Plenty of old scrap lumber in the shed, and he thought some carpet too.   And then maybe start sleeping here whenever he couldn’t take the trailer anymore.

Him and Dicks would be roommates.  He laughed out loud and relit the joint.   Over on his side of the pylon, Dicks paused mid-snore to roll over and fart, as if in agreement.  Giggling, happier than he’d been since his Dad left, he started to make a mental list of the stuff he could take from the trailer to build his new digs.

***

By noon Billy could wait no longer and started up the path, headed to the trailer for the first load of supplies.  After a few minutes Dicks rose, stretched, and stumbled down from his nest and into the weeds to piss.

He’d been awake a while, but hadn’t felt like talking to anyone.  Not that he didn’t enjoy the boys, it was great having them around. He’d been lonely for a long time.  Still, sometimes he didn’t quite feel up to the effort of being Dicks.

He finished pissing and climbed back up to his nest to look through his provisions.  He had a half loaf of stale bread, a can of Spaghetti-Os, and a fourth of a bottle of Thunderbird.  He’d have to go into town after breakfast, which was not a prospect he relished. He pulled a slice of bread out of the bag, sat down on his pallet, and began to eat. His stomache wasn’t up to the Spaghetti-Os this morning.  Maybe later.  He finished the bread, washed it down with the warm wine, and pulled out another slice.

***

When he got there she was sitting in the kitchenette with a cup of coffee, smoking a joint and waiting for her stories to come on.  She raised a sleepy eyebrow at him as he came through the screen door.

“School let out early. Teacher in-service day.”  He went over to the refrigerator and pulled out the milk.  She went into a minor coughing fit.   He got a box of cereal and a bowl and sat down at the other end of the table.   She finished coughing and relit the joint.  He ate with his head down to avoid looking at her tits through her flimsy housecoat.  The Days of Our Lives theme sounded from the television. She took her joint and went to the couch.  Billy had decided that what he wanted first was the carpet in the shed. Any food he could carry easily. Maybe a pillow.

He brought the dish to the sink and returned the milk to the fridge, and then went back to his room without glancing her way.  He grabbed a pillow and the rest of his stash. Too bad he couldn’t carry more shit, but he didn’t want to be too obvious. He went back into the living room where Bo and Hope were sadly observing for the umpteenth time that their great undying live for each other just wasn’t enough to carry them through.  Mom was trying to roll another joint without taking her eyes from the screen, and not having much luck.  He walked out the front door with the pillow under his arm and went around back to the shed.

There was the carpet remnant Dad had never got around to installing in their bedroom.  Well, thanks for the parting gift, Dad.  He spread it out flat on the ground and began looking for other shit to pile onto it.  A roll of duck tape.  Some shears.   A framed picture of him as a little kid, posed on the bitch seat of his Dad’s bike, all cherry and sparkling in front of the carwash.  A can of Off.  A pair of needle nosed pliers.

He hesitated for a second and pulled the picture out of the pile before rolling the carpet and folding the roll to hold the loose crap in the bottom.  Tossing the bundle over his shoulder, he took one last look around the yard before heading down the lane to the levee.  Behind him, the shed door banged twice in the breeze and the picture lay in the dust where he left it.  Inside the trailer, Maggie was explaining to a tearful Hope that love was truly the only important thing.  Billy’s mom dropped her roach into the ashtray and wiped a tear of her own as they went to commercial.  She knew Demetrius was awake because she could smell one of his foul, first thing in the morning shits pouring  from the half-bathroom at the back of the trailer. She thought about  getting up to get the Lysol, but then Days started again and she forgot about the smell.

***

Dicks was shambling up Main St., thinking how much he despised this part of his life.  He found it demeaning.  Then he saw her. Up ahead, sitting at a little bistro table right near the sidewalk, reading her paper as waiters bustled in and out cleaning up.

He slowed, made respectful eye-contact, said “God bless you, young lady,” nodding his head as he trudged slowly past.  Her hand, darting out, squeezing his elbow, stopping him there.

“Its really okay, isn’t it, sir?  Its been so long… You – I – you feel so… good.”   Her face crumpled, tears sprang onto her pretty cheeks and dropped onto her plate. She clutched him tighter, pulled him down into the seat beside her.

“Yeah, its going to be okay, little lady. Whoa, now, Whoa. You hold on to that, now.”

She was pressing money, all her money into his hands. He waved his over hers.

“Maybe just that twenty? I could use a hot meal.”  She was sliding it towards him before he finished speaking.

“You forgive me, don’t you?”  Her eyes were wide. She made no move towards putting her money back in her purse.  She still held his arm.

Dicks slid the money into his coat pocket.

“You are forgiven, honey. Believe that.  And listen, those things your folks are saying?  That don’t mean nothing. They’ll come around  Everyone will come around.”

Fresh tears.  She grabbed him with her other arm and put her head on his chest. He patted her on the back and waited for a chance to begin his exit routine.

After he left, the girl sat in silence at the bistro table.  People shuffled in and out, nervous waiters hovered, and still she sat, aglow from the feeling of being with him.  It would last a long time.

***

Billy found he had more than enough carpet to cover the floor of his nest.  He folded the leftover section and put it aside to give to Dicks for his collection of shit.  It was looking sweet.   Next he needed some furniture.  Even Crackmom would notice if his whole bed went missing, but maybe if he left the boxsprings there with the covers intact she would shine it on.  Maybe he’d hit that first thing tomorrow morning while they were still sleeping.  He heard gravel on the path down from the bridge and saw it was Dicks struggling up the rise toward the abutment with a grocery bag.  He looked even more cashed out  than usual.

“Dicks, you look beat, man.  Need a hand?”

The old man stood there panting, looking up at Billy’s nest.

“You movin in?” he said finally.

“Yeah. Cool with you?”

“Cool.”  He picked up his bag and set it on the abutment on his side of the pylon.  “I got some Mad Dog.”

“Good God, Dicks, that shit is going to pickle your liver.  I think I’ll stick to weed for now.”

The old man reached into his bag and pulled out a pint. He took a swig of wine. “Nice rug.”

“Yeah. Hey I got another piece, about 4 by 4, you want it?”

“Sure.  Hey, hold on.”

He pulled himself up onto the abutment on his side and disappeared behind the pylon. A minute later he was back down below huffing and puffing and holding up a ratty old beanbag.   Billy took it and handed down the piece of carpet.  Dicks let it drop to the ground, sat down on it, and doffed his bottle in salute.  “Welcome to the neighborhood, Billygoat.”

Billy threw the beanbag to the ground beside Dicks.  “Thanks, Dicks old bean, I’ll join you on the veranda.”   He took a step back and launched himself at the beanbag, landing on his butt with a loud thump and a flurry of styrofoam pellets.  Dicks flicked them from the front of his dirty coat and took another swig of Mad Dog.

Billy fished out his bag and started rolling a joint.  For a few minutes the only sounds were the water and the occasional rumble of car on the bridge above them.

“Dicks, you ever smoke pot?”

“I used to.”

“You want to smoke some now?”

“Sure, if you want.”

The boy lit the reefer and took three big hits.

“Dicks?” he said on the exhale.

“Yeah?”  Dicks was holding the joint and looking at the burning end.

“Where do you come from?”

Dicks took a long hit, a huge hit, a real lungbuster.  To Billy it seemed like he held it in forever.  Finally he let it out and sat there with the joint still burning.

Billy elbowed him and took the joint back.  Dicks sat looking out over the river. After another long pause he looked at Billy.

“I come from another little town just like this one. Only shittier.”  He might have smiled, it was hard to tell with Dicks.

Billy laughed and took another hit.  This was a good day.  He couldn’t help thinking maybe things were finally going to get a little better. He handed the joint back to dicks.

Dicks took another lungbuster, and handed it back to Billy with smoke blasting out of his hairy nostrils.

“You’re right, Billgoat.” He clumsily patted the boy on the back as he with withdrew his hand. “They will.”

It was so good to hear, Billy cried with relief, curiously – perhaps even amazingly – unashamed to be bawling like an infant in front of this old man. Dicks stared at the river, lost in his own reverie.

It was only later, long after Dicks had crawled back into his nest and was snoring on his new carpet before Billy realized he hadn’t said anything aloud for the old man to agree to.