When I was about 24, I returned to the bosom of my beloved Texas after a spell in Oxnard, California. I worked for a while, a long while, at a Diamond Shamrock convenience store/gas station in Austin. After my experience working at Uncle Dick’s 7-11 in California, I figured convenience store work was easy enough to get and would provide some much-needed income while I painted or found a real job. I ended up working there for a little over two years, and while the experience -not to mention the money- sucked completely, the fantastic cast of rogues, reprobates and miscreants I met can’t be beat.
The store was in an ideal location for a thriving community of seedy types right out of a Bukowski novel. It was a few blocks off of I-35 on Riverside Drive, the last big street before the highway crossed Town Lake, aka The Colorado River (at least Austin’s little branch of it). Snuggled up right behind us were a mass of low-rent apartments, many of them Section Eight, and a large empty field that opened up on the banks of Town Lake. This wasn’t the pretty part of Town Lake, where yuppies jogged on the spotless hike-n-bike trails surrounded by a carefully manicured environment, soccer moms led their children on safe nature walks and rowers from the university would shoot across the grape green waters. No, this was the baaaad part of the river. Technicolor graffiti was sprayed onto any building or flat surface that went unguarded for any length of time. Rusty, abandoned shopping carts by the dozen were scattered over the area in various states of decay; beer, cheap booze and even cheaper wine bottles, along with the occasional hypodermic needle, were strewn like wino confetti all through the big open field. When the wind would pick up, the loose garbage would pile up in large drifts against the chain link fences, blowing through the holes. The area had a lingering reek of exhaust, ripe garbage and standing water.
Here and there, unevenly spaced up and down this portion of Riverside Drive, east of the highway, were shabby men in shabby clothes, often sucking bargain beer or cheap booze from a brown paper bag-wrapped bottle or can, and, more often than not, toting handmade “Will Work for Food” signs. They were generally from mid-thirties to early-sixties, almost all men, and mainly white, although there were a few Hispanics mixed in. I found out later that the black homeless and the wetback Mexican homeless pretty much kept to themselves; hobo ‘turf wars’ were not unheard of, and straying into another group’s area might be a quick route to a serious ass-kicking. These men wandered solo up and down Riverside throughout the day. Whenever they would encounter each other, they would say hello, almost formally, often with a tip of the crumpled, filthy baseball cap and a handshake, chat for a few moments and wander along in search of whatever they could squeeze, shake or beg out the day. Much later on, once I found out that most of them congregated in the evenings in a makeshift camp under the bridge where I-35 crosses the river, I began calling them “trolls” after the under-bridge-dwelling creatures from the old children’s story. It kind of stuck, and ‘troll’ became another word in the list of terms they’d use to describe themselves, right up there with tramp, hobo, wino, vagrant, and bum.
My informal introduction to the trolls of I-35 and Riverside was sudden and painful. I had been working at the Diamond Shamrock only a week or so, when one hot summer afternoon the manager noticed one of the local winos aggressively panhandling our customers for change as they were pumping their gas or heading to or from the store. Never one to do his own dirty work, the manager-who shall remain nameless in this narrative, but in my memories is referred to as “the fat bastard”-sent me outside to advise the fellow that he was trespassing on private property, and ask him to kindly move along…or else.
I went outside to where the guy was standing, swaying, out near the gas pumps holding a 40 ounce beer in a brown paper sack. He was a disheveled, beat up-looking old guy of about 60-or so, bald as an egg, with a stained grey beard that reached mid-chest. He was wearing filthy old combat fatigues, a tennis shoe on one foot and a loafer on the other. A few of the patrons looked noticeably relieved that somebody was doing something about this situation and they wouldn’t be forced into a position of either ignoring the guy, giving him some change, or mumbling “…sorry, I don’t have anything,” as they scrambled to get back into the safety and security of their cars. Despite the terror in the eyes of some of the more genteel customers, I thought the old boy looked as dangerous as a fart in a windstorm; a little crazy but most likely harmless.
“Hey guy, you’re gonna’ need to move along,” I said sheepishly, “the manager doesn’t want you hitting on our customers for money.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, sonny!” he barked drunkenly in gust of swamp gas-scent and a spray of spittle, “this is ‘Merica!”
“I’m just doing my job, man; manager says for you to go, so I’m here to ask you to go. Nothin’ personal.”
“I ain’t goin’ no-fuckin’-where, goddammit!” another gale of skunk breath.
“Fine,” I sighed. Confrontations have always made me a bit edgy, and I didn’t want to stand out in the heat with this old fella shrieking at me any longer than I had to. “I’ll just go inside and call the cops.”
I had just started to turn away from him, and suddenly a grubby hand clutching the neck of a brown bag-covered 40 ounce Schlitz Malt Liquor was zooming toward me. I instinctively tucked my head into my shoulder and tried to turn away to protect my oh-so pretty young face.
KERRRRRR-BLAAAMMM!
The bottle struck me on the side of my head just above my left temple. I swayed for a second and the hot, blindingly sunlit day started to blink and go dim; just like in the movies, everything seemed to move in slo-mo. The old guy was pulling back for another swing, and I was just barely able to get my arm up to block him. As he struck, I latched onto his forearm, pivoted, completely dazed and almost overbalancing, and twisted his arm up behind his back. With my other hand I grabbed a generous handful of his soiled shirt. I stood there for a minute, legs spread wide for balance, and struggled to catch my breath and clear my head a bit. Unsure of what else to do, I started marching him back to the store, with him hollering and twisting the whole way.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Godammit, yer’ breakin’ my arm! Lemme’ go, you sunovabitch!”
A young couple opened the door for me just as the manager was coming around the counter with his eyes bugging out of his head in shock. As he saw me coming in, he beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of his register area and it’s tiny locked door that an angry five-year-old could kick in.
“Dude, call the police!” I gasped at the manager, pressing the struggling, cursing Tasmanian Devil in a wino suit against the front counter and wrenching his arm up further. “Stop fighting me, man! You’re gonna’ hurt yourself! Be cool for a minute and I’ll let you go!”
We stood struggling for six or eight minutes before the police showed up. As soon as one of the cops came in, I released the old boy and backed away. He wheeled around and glared at me. His face looked like an apple that had been left out in the sun, and I noticed that there were tears in his eyes.
“What in the hell is going on here?!” the cop barked, taking up a position between the wino and myself and extending his arms, palms out, as if to keep two rabid dogs away from each other. His partner burst in the door followed by the young couple who had held the door open for me. Out in the parking lot, a small crowd had gathered and moments later a second squad car whipped into the parking lot.
“I wanna’ press charges!” the wino roared through his snaggled, ruined teeth, “I was just mindin’ my own business when this young hooligan came up and put some kinda’ karate on me and, and, and…” here the old guy started snuffling and burst into tears, “he done broke my arm, officer!” he wailed. At once the young couple, both shaking their heads and gesturing madly, and the store manager, all started talking at once, explaining their version of what had happened, what they’d seen.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…everybody hold it! You,” the cop said pointing at me, “come out here and talk to me. Everybody else, calm down!”
I followed him outside, leaving his partner to deal with an angry drunk, a panicked store manager, and two excited young lovers who had just gotten their dose of melodrama for the week. My head was throbbing and a sizable goose egg was starting to rise on the side of my melon.
We stood out by the ice machine, out of view of the inside of the store and the spectacle going on there. The cop had a slightly bemused smile peeking through the “I’m a hardass policeman!” facade, and I could sense, but not see, a twinkle in his eyes behind his mirrored cop shades.
“OK, let’s hear it…”
My throat was bone dry, my head ached from the beer bottle slam, I was experiencing that shaky comedown that happens after a huge rush of adrenaline. I would have killed for a cigarette.
“OK, the boss told me to get this old guy to move along ‘cause he was panhandling our customers. I come outside, ask him to move along, he says no, I says “OK”, he clocks me in the head with a forty ounce, I lock his arm up, bring him inside, and that’s it…” the words just gushed out in one long sentence.
“You need to go to the hospital?”
“Nah, I’ve been hit harder. I just want to go home, this day is totally screwed up.”
“You sure? You might have a concussion.”
“No, I’m alright.”
“Well, here’s the deal,” the cop said, taking off his shades, “if you want to press assault charges, you can, but it won’t do much good. He’ll get locked up for a while, but that’s about it; and compared to the way these guys normally live, a month in county lockup would be like the Four Seasons. We could have Mental Health pick him up for observation, but he’d most likely be out in forty-eight hours. Why don’t we just take to the drunk tank and let him dry out; chances are you’ll never see him again.”
“That’s fine with me, ” I said.
“You didn’t break his arm did you?” the cop grinned.
“Naw, he’s fine. If ya’ll could just get him out of here, that’d be great.”
Without taking any statements from the ‘witnesses’, the police loaded the still raging old man into their squad car. I stood out near the parking lot and watched them drive off. Ever defiant, the old fella flipped me off as the car pulled away. I’m not sure, but I think he was mouthing “motherfucker” at me.
Weeks later, the old guy showed up again, seemingly with no recollection of the nasty incident that had taken place earlier. His name was Calvin. He was originally from somewhere in the midwest, Kansas or Ohio or some such. Once we got to know each other, he became one of my regular trolls. Quite some time later, I asked Cal about the whole ‘hitting-me-in-the-head-with-a-beer-bottle-and-getting-carted-off-to-the-hoosegow’ thing; asked him if he remembered any of it.
“Shit, man, I didn’t know you back then, bro” he grinned mischievously, showing off his stained and damaged teeth, “besides, I was pretty drunk.”
