Soon the Rest Will Fall

There was nary a breeze that day, not even a stirring. The aging Civic Center Hotel cast a dissipated shadow over the Honda showroom. Two Salvation Army volunteers in raggedy Santa Claus costumes, a middle-aged black dude and an elderly white guy, had a donations kettle in front of parole unit number four. The telephone lines were flush with pigeons drunk on the heat.

A man had died near the flower stand at Market and Van Ness. In a rush to get the body, the coroner accidentally backed his van over the corpse, crushing it under the vehicle’s rear tires. More than a dozen pedestrians witnessed the incident.

Several bands of homeless lived on Market Street. There was the library tribe at the Civic Center. There were the speed freaks on mountain bikes headquartered by the recycling center in the Safeway parking lot at Duboce and Market. The crusty punks with dogs on strings were down in Hallidie Plaza.

Each group had a clothing style. The crusty punks wore re-stitched denim and suede coats, old pants and vests, and had homemade tattoos on their faces. The speed freaks had black leather motorcycle jackets, baseball hats, and beards. The library tribe, an intergenerational band of winos dating back to the 1960s—the oldest group on the scene—sometimes didn’t wear any clothes.

Two cops on dirt bikes patrolled the scraggly lawns below Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park. Homeless vets had pitched a tent behind the tennis courts. Crows vamped over a grove of eucalyptus trees. Raccoons snooped in nearby flower beds. Picnickers ate lunch on the grass. Robert Grogan crouched in a stand of oleander bushes with the Winchester rifle and said to his daughter, “You know what, doll?”

They were alone for the first time since he got out of prison. Both of them were nervous about it. Diana hunched at his side and examined her sneakers. The left one had no shoelaces and a jagged hole in the sole. “What is it, Daddy?”

“Your mother and myself are gonna have trouble. You need to get ready for that.”

“Why?” The girl’s hooded eyes glistened with suspicion. He started out slow. “Our marriage is, sort of, like, you know,” he grasped for the correct thought. “It’s evolving. That’s going to affect you.”

“Because I met this guy in prison.” Robert decided to test the waters with her. It was now or never. It was sink or swim in a minefield with a blindfold on. One wrong word, and everything would explode. “He and I, uh, we fell in love.”

“No, this is . . . sort of different. He’s a man. But we sleep together. At least we did in the pen.”

Robert was appalled. “My husband? Oh, god, no.” He didn’t want her to get the wrong impression. “Slatts is my other wife. I just happen to have two of them.”

“Right. I’ve got two wives. One is a guy and the other is a female, your mother.”

Diana absorbed the information and blanched. It made no sense to her. Why would anyone want to be married to two people at the same time? And then there was the other issue. She had a new competitor for her old man’s attention, someone named Slatts.

Mistaking the shock on her face for comprehension, Robert continued his soliloquy. “The problem with all of this is Harriet. She’s the only hitch. If it weren’t for her, everything would be copacetic. But sad to say, she’s not hip to it.”

“You know, the other guy. There’s no way I can tell her about this dude. It’ll send her over the edge.”

Robert laid his cheek against the rifle’s parkerized barrel. “I don’t know. But one thing is for sure. You’ll have to grow up real fast and start pulling your own weight.”

The girl mulled over the facts. Her father had another wife, a convict in San Quentin. They’d slept together in a cell no bigger than a soup can. Harriet would go to pieces if she ever found out about it. Most importantly, Diana was now a grown-up. Before she could digest the news, a possum sashayed out of a hollowed-out log and into a clearing.

Robert let him have it with the Winchester. The first shot whooshed by the possum’s front paws. The second shot zipped over the animal’s back. The third shot sped past its snout. The possum twitched its tail when the fourth shot went astray. It waggled its fat butt and vanished into a copse of sumac.

Lowering the rifle, Robert pulled the bolt, ejecting a cartridge. “I can’t shoot.” He racked the bolt twice, listening for any telltale defects. His lumpy white face was curdled with frustration. He rarely missed a shot, much less four in a row. “Hell,” he jeered. “I’ve lost my touch. I’m a fucking loser.”

In prison, as a rule, convicts weren’t emotionally demanding. Except for Slatts. Robert wanted to tell Harriet about him. Just to get it over with and have it done. But he didn’t do it, knowing it was suicidal, and to make matters worse, now he’d taken his daughter into his confidence.

The relationship with Slatts was deeper than anything Robert had ever had with Harriet. Slatts was willing to die for Robert. His love was unconditional. Harriet wasn’t capable of that kind of loyalty. She couldn’t even imagine it. This pained Robert. He got on with most women. Brought out their motherly side. Ladies wanted to take care of him, do things for him. But he was not good husband material.

All his life it had been this way. You lied to survive. You couldn’t tell anyone the truth in prison. Only dumb fucks did that—and they ended up dead. It wouldn’t be long before Harriet found out about Slatts. The secret Robert had kept under wraps for three years was coming like a hurricane up the coast of Texas.