RED BITTLES AND CARAVAN DAWNS

129. RED BITTLES AND CARAVAN DAWNS - ('Only the dead know the dead'), NYC, 1968:

Anglefire was a crazed streetguy I knew through the years he walked the streets - almost savage and always ridiculous he was edging constantly towards a state of total insanity - mixed as a concoction through the use of alcohol bad food the occasional whatever and an anger which sometimes cropped up unexpectedly and weirdly too and he would reiterate to anyone 'it's Anglefire not Angelfire just remember that you asshole and throw something my way a'fore I steal your dreams and rip your daughter's head off!' - undoubtedly a real way to gain sympathy money and comfort I always thought - and he was taken away so many times that it became ludicrous to think of them even trying but they kept it on and every little assorted stupid thing he did along the Bowery or MacDougal or 8th or wherever usually got him into some form of stupid problem and then released just as quickly because no one can understand a stupid homeless idiot and no one wishes to expend time or money trying and one day along Waverly Place some drunk kids turned on him after he started annoying them and they beat the living daylights out of him which is how I came upon him crumpled on the sidewalk and with his face bleeding from a few cuts but he was still cogent and I was able to get him up and he stared talking again "dem dem bastard kids I could kill 'em if I got 'em they ain't woirth the piddle they piss in and this is what I mean y'see why I can't go nowhere it's always something coming up like some frigged class warfare against the lonely single ones and I jes' want to be left alone but they won't so this is what you get now take me somewhere I gotta' shit and my stomach's killing me too" and with that he sort of just collapsed and became lifeless and propped up against me for the instant I could hold him up but that wasn't long and I let him down gently onto the cold sidewalk where he just stayed and I noticed his color and it wasn't good and I thought to myself Jesus Christ he looks like the Civil War a blue turning to gray and I kind of knew he was dead just then like it dawned on me I had to do something but luckily too other people had come out from their places and they were standing around watching and all I could do was say "somebody call somebody this man I think is dead" and a few minutes later there was a cop car and then an ambulance later after that and they'd already covered him when I got back from answering questions with the cops whose main concern was what I was doing there and why and who I was and all of that stuff and I said I really really didn't know much except what he'd muttered to me and then someone else piped up they'd seen the beating and the kids from their window (they pointed up nearby) and they said he was getting hit and kicked pretty hard for a minute or so by three guys who then ran off but that wasn't any help except to me when he said I wasn't around for that so the cops let it go and the ambulance took his body away and I later figured he'd been processed as dead homeless without anybody and probably taken out to Randall's Island or wherever they take the Potter's Field dead people who get buried by work crews from Rikers Island prison and that was it for me and him and it was a hard lesson to understand - some unmarked dead guy who you just occasionally run across but never get to know and the simple fact was even after he was dead I knew nothing absolutely nothing of him - not if he had effects or where he stayed or where anything might be NOTHING except the fact of his presence and now its lack and I wondered how many unmarked people like that just die in doorways or are taken to shelters and stuff to languish and die and they never speak of connections nor want anybody to know anything about them either and it's the best way they can see to live a life unseen and still never get happy but so what I guess it's always like that for everybody else too and maybe only the dead know the dead.