Andrew Vachss - Haiku

The Burke Series

Flood

Strega

Blue Belle

Hard Candy

Blossom

Sacrifice

Down in the Zero

Footsteps of the Hawk

False Allegations

Safe House

Choice of Evil

Dead and Gone

Pain Management

Only Child

Down Here

Mask Market

Terminal

Another Life

Other Novels

Shella

The Getaway Man

Two Trains Running

Short-Story Collections

Born Bad

Everybody Pays

Just before dawn. Bitterly corrosive cold has descended, creating a bleak concrete wasteland. The street is deserted except for a man watching the ruins of a recently burned-out pawnshop. The man is as motionless as the dead-eyed lamppost beneath which he stands, a single blotch of shadow in a street of many.

The firefighters have been gone for hours, leaving the ravaged building slathered in yellow plastic WARNING signs.

The man is wrapped in layers of discarded carpet roughly stitched together to form a sleeveless coat. His head is covered by a hooded sweatshirt worn over a dark woolen watch cap.

Another ten minutes pass before the man crosses the street, moving with such economy of motion that he seems to have suddenly materialized out of the ashes.

Again, the man becomes a shadow, one among many.

As dawn begins to threaten the darkness, the man makes his way to what was once the edge of the burned-out building. Spotting a cast-iron bathtub, he lifts one end without apparent effort before gently lowering it back to the ground a few feet from its original position.

The man flows to his knees, and thrusts his hands deeply into the newly exposed bed of ashes. A faint gleam attracts his eyea stainless-steel appliance of some kind. He pushes it aside, quickly covers it with ashes, and continues to dig.

Light from the east is beginning to slice between buildings as the man stands up. His hands disappear under his coat.

As if propelled by the throbbing sunlight at his back, the man starts walking.

By the time he reaches an abandoned pier, the winter sun is blazing in a cloudless sky. The man seems to disappear into the pier itself.

In a capsule far too small to be called a room, the man shrugs off his outer garments and examines his new acquisition: a hand-crafted notebook fully wrapped in oxblood leather, fastened by a tongue-and-groove of the same material. Its heavy pages are slightly yellowed, confirming its status as a thing of beauty from another time.

The man examines each page, using a long thumbnail to separate those that had been age-welded together. Finding the notebook devoid of writing, the man nods as if acknowledging an inescapable truth.

His hands find a slitlike indentation in the wall of his capsule, from which he deftly removes a small jar of India ink and a stylus created from a honed piece of iron. He extracts a tiny scrap of paper from within his coat. Nodding again, he transcribes from the paper to the notebook. Despite the pitch-darkness, his hand moves with confident strokes.

His task completed, the man tears the scrap into minute fragments. Satisfied, he inserts the notebook into a leather pouch sewn inside his coat. It fits as if created for that very purpose.

Only then does the man lie on his back, pull the coat over him as a blanket, and close his eyes.

Sleep comes instantly.

This is the big one, Ho, the man wearing three raincoats whispered to me, his thin, reedy voice steeled with the absolute certainty possessed only by a true believer. He did not face me directly as he spokehis eyes were focused somewhere beyond the nights horizon.

Every winter, Michael lines his raincoats with discarded tickets he collects from the floor of a nearby OTB parlor. He armors himself with what they symbolize that all the world gambles, but most do so without skill. This is the only warmth he needs.

Michael sees himself as a master of logic, scornful of amateurs. His faith is as unshakable as his contempt for those who worship the false idol they call Luck.

That his logic is founded on faith would never occur to him. And I have never pointed it out. It is not my place to do so. I renounced all such conduct long ago, and I have stayed true to my vow.

Yes? I said. All I said.

Its a mortal lock, he assured me. Michael had once enjoyed high status in the financial services industry. But that was when his mind was in perfect synchronicity with his profession, a profession that requires total control of ones own emotions in order to fully exploit those of others.

Michael had spent his days delicately balancing on a high-wire stretched across a world he now describes only in fragments: arb edging, no-cash margin bluffs, counter-hedge plays. Always painfully conscious of a void deep within himself, Michael kept demanding that the wire be raised. Over and over again.

After many years, his expertise at perceiving risk wove itself into Michaels very essence. He became a believer in the religion of his own infallibility. Too late, the risk-taking he had come to worship finally threw off its disguise and revealed itself for what it was.

The impact of Michaels downfall was greatly magnified by the height from which he descended.

By then, it no longer mattered. Gambling had invaded Michaels spirit and taken it captive. The parasite was not symbiotic. It took without giving, keeping its host alive only by increasingly rare gifts of good fortune. All that remains of Michael today is his demented worship of what he calls action.

When Michael began his prayer chant that morning, I waited patiently for him to finish. Patience is not a personality trait, as most believe. Patience is a skilla skill that can be practiced only when undetected.

I knew no further encouragement would be needed for Michael to continue; all he ever requires is acknowledgment that someone is listening. My simple Yes? was more than sufficient.

This need for acknowledgment limits his potential audiences significantly. Were it not for our tribe, no one would ever listen to Michael. Not anymore.

Our very existence stands against Michaels greatest fear: that, one day, he will begin speaking to himself. All those of our band see such tortured individuals every day. We know this to be the ultimate loneliness.

Perhaps that is why so many of this citys nomads are accompanied by dogs as they travel their circular journeys. And why they will feed their animals even before themselves.

I was over in the slot on Nine, Ho. I saw the whole thing, he said, lowering his voice and partially covering his mouth with one hand, as if to further protect his secret. The taut skin covering his face seemed to draw tighter with each word he spoke.