by Geoff Gouveia

“Hey Anthony- that guy is back again.”

Anthony paused his wiping of the espresso machine.

“He never leaves!”

The man picked cigarettes off the ground with yellow stained fingers.

“Look- look. I’m tellin’ you, George, every week!”

A green Ford Mustang rolled onto the side street. Through the window of Red Bench Coffee the sun smashed into the green and made it sparkle. The tinted windows receded in a perfect muted counter to the shining surface, remaining black until one rolled down and the man by the coffee shop shimmied over towards it, bobbing his head up and down.

“Every week that green car comes around and that guy walks up to it.”

The man reached with one hand into the window and withdrew a small brown package. He pocketed the contents and threw away the bag.

George watched the man’s head shake from side to side, mirroring his flapping hands as they followed a serpentine course through the air.

“Must’ve been his drug dealer.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me. This guy sits on the bench and just shakes. Makes me feel weird. I’ve kicked him off of it hundreds a’times. I would kick him out sooner if he didn’t always a gift card to buy crap. How does he always have money on that thing? These guys are crafty, man.”

The man bobbled back and forth in a fight within himself. He collapsed onto the namesake of the coffee shop and the backing bumped into the window. The bump stirred the inhabitants of the coffee shop. The rattled caged animals looked out at the beast fending for himself in the wild. His hands folded over themselves in his lap before they produced metal wires from his jacket.

“What’s he doing?”

“This is where it gets weird. Actually, you might like this, art boy. He makes sculptures, bends and folds that wire into statues. I’ve seen a few he’s done. He’s no Picasso though.”

The man on the bench began with hunched shoulders, the tops of which shook from side to side in small swaying figure eights. His head looked all around him, checking the street and then the cars and then inside of the shop through the window. He didn’t see anything, only open eyes passing around while the conversation went on inside of his head.

“Who’s he talking to?”

“Himself probably. That fool is crazy. That’s why people call him Crazy Ty. Watch the hands, man, the hands.”

The hands worked with mechanic precision, strong movements bending the wire over and over. His hands were the ones thinking, feeling, twisting, living, being – the body they rested on had lost its control years ago. The wire danced in between the burnt flesh and above the tattered sleeves of an old green sweater that hung loose on a frame that mimicked the material he manipulated. A figure began to emerge from the bits of wire, hands and torso next, small legs to make it stand. As it propped up on its own, the man retrieved a few pieces of string and tied them as if it were a bandana to its head.

“Is it always a figure?”

“Always. And he leaves them there, watch.”

The man stood up chest first, stretched and returned to shaking. He walked away from the bench. The wire figure stood sturdy while the man stumbled down the road away from the shop. A cyclist rode from the opposing side decked in full red and white tight polyester road gear. The cyclist locked his bike while he gazed at the red bench outside of the shop. On his way to the door he grabbed the wire figure and stuffed it into his back pouch.

The baristas greeted him as his road shoes clacked on the checkered floor.

“What’s good Blaine? Why’d you take that?”

“The wire figure?” Blaine said.

“Yeah- I’ve seen you take it before, right? You know who makes those?”

Blaine retrieved a cup to fill it from the free pitcher by the side of the bar.

“I’ve known Crazy Ty before he got the title Crazy.”

“Bullshit!” Anthony grinned.

“No, I’m serious. He grew up on my block as a kid. Didn’t see him for a bit after high school but he came back. Well, until after he ran away.”

“What does it take to get to that point?” George said.

Blaine shrugged.

“Maybe some are born that way - without all the wires connected.”

“Wait- go back. ‘Ran away?’” Anthony said.

“Yeah- ran away. Listen, there’s more to him than that.”

“Then tell it. Today’s slow and I don’t feel like cleaning the display shelves.”

Blaine leaned his elbows on the counter. He unzipped the top portion of his cycling outfit while he spoke.

“I remember Ty shaking his arms a lot when he was a kid. We’re near in age and whenever we played together, he had a pretty big temper. Not many of the kids in the neighborhood could hang on account of his shaking and anger. He scared them off. We always used to build things together. Stick huts, forts, ramps. The kid liked to build and use his hands, you know?”

“Is that why he makes those sculptures?” George said.

Blaine tilted the cup of water back while he shrugged.

“I don’t know. Say- how about an espresso?”

Anthony winked and then knocked the grounds from the portafilter. Blaine raised his voice over the whirr of the espresso grinder.

“I do know that his hands have always had only two powers: to create and to destroy. Ty didn’t have a middle ground. I remember one time his Dad gave him a rabbits foot to calm his shakes. It worked too, I guess, because they stopped for a bit. But as soon as he put it down, he picked up a stick and I watched him walk behind a tree and swing at a bird. We watched it twitch and then stop in the dirt.”

“He’s always been weird then?” Anthony said as he pushed the illuminated button on the espresso machine. 

“Kind of. Like I said before, born without the correct wiring. The medication his Dad gave him as we grew older seemed to work with his shakes. But I think his mind began to rattle at that point. He stopped talking. I mean, he never talked much before the medication, but he certainly didn’t talk after it. Ty ran away when he was sixteen, right after I graduated from high school. My parents said they found him under the 60, right over by Mission, near the riverbed. The same week I went to college his Dad took him to a mental facility. Apparently he escaped or something the first few weeks he was in there. Sad, really. Just busted himself out. He needed that place.”

“So what happened to him after he escaped?”

“His Dad tried to keep him at the house but you can run away only a certain amount of times before people give up on you. I don’t think his Dad gave up. He simply moved on because Ty chose to move on himself. I always remember his Dad being the nicest. This is where I speculate - I haven’t talked with the man in over five years - I only see him sitting on the bench and then walking away if I am lucky to time it right.”

“How do you think he got the way he is today? What happened in the last five years?”

“I’ve seen him walking. He’s still got the shakes, the same ones I saw back when we were kids. But he’s got more shakes now and he talks to himself-”

“That guy is so cracked out it isn’t funny. George and I just saw him walk up to his dealer right before he made the sculpture.”

“Really? That’s sad. You see a guy you knew, who lived close to you. Look how I turned out- not perfect by any means, but living and normal. No one notices when I walk and that’s a good thing. I don’t exist to everyone, only to those I care about. He got the opposite treatment. I think he fell into the wrong crowd. He had gifted hands, man. I tell you he could make some beautiful pictures as kids. He was talented. I think the streets found a better use for those hands, something nimble fingers could do.”

George wiped the counter with a wet rag. His eyes followed the mindless activity as his mouth let his thought escape.

“It probably started with the guy in the car.”

“You said that already – what do you mean, ‘the car?’” Blaine said.

“The green one. George and I think it is his drug dealer. Here’s your espresso.”

Blaine held the tiny saucer in his hand and closed his eyes when the hot beverage hit his tongue.

“Coffee is only good hot.” Blaine smiled at his statement, affirming his identity in the coffee elite.

“I don’t know about a ‘drug dealer’ but I do know its been a long time since I’ve talked with him. You can’t blame him if that’s what he fell into.”

George nodded and took the empty cup from Blaine’s hand. The cyclist clacked towards the trashcan and threw away a napkin he used to wipe his face. He waved at the baristas and then exited the shop.

“Let’s get ready to close.” Anthony said.

“You working tomorrow?”

“No, but I open on Friday.”

“Ok- I’ll see you then. I’m closing tomorrow and then come for the mid morning shift.”

The door locked with a click and the two men turned towards their cars. The weak lamplight lit a limp body in their path. The bottom half lay on grass while most of the torso flattened against the cold ground. When they walked past, the figure mumbled in its sleep and raised a dirty hand with tobacco stained fingertips.

Anthony leaned into George.

“Crazy Ty is a character- isn’t he?”

**

In the early afternoon heat, Crazy Ty lowered himself on the bench with his back against the backstop. He leaned against the glass until his hair touched it and then rocked forward. His eyes travelled over every detail, every crevice near him and his hands swooped along the ground until they found loose cigarette buds, half smoked and crunched but still able to be lit to stash away for later.

When he had finished his cigarettes, he rummaged through his jean pocket. The violent shake ended when his right hand clasped onto the metal wire spool flattened by the carrying and his left gripped colored string. He set to work bending the wire and the string into one. The two items combined into his hands and they too became extensions of the sculpture. He warped the materials and flesh into a blur and his face muscles relaxed. The finishing of the statue set his wild inner motions back into place, the shaking beginning in his arms and ending in a convulsive narrow frame until all that remained was an outside beast.

George watched this event from the interior and waited for the finished product. As Crazy Ty moved on, stumbling away from his perch and knocking through several groups of people, George retrieved the wire figure on the edge of the bench.

The figure watched from atop the shelf above the espresso machine as George gathered together the trash from every bin.

“It looks like it’s at home,” George said to himself as he walked the trash outside of the shop to the dumpster.

A green mustang parked outside of Rio Seco across the street over in the abandoned lot by Eleventh and Main. Crazy Ty approached it from the right side, on the opposing street away from Rio Seco. George paused to watch the scene.

Crazy Ty made it near the car and tapped with a gentle hand at the window. When the window didn’t roll, Crazy Ty looked around with a twisted face like a dog scratching to release himself from his kennel. He clawed the window.

“Hey- Hey!” A man ran to Crazy Ty.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Startled by the voice, Crazy Ty paused to look at the man.

“What are you, retarded or something? What are you doing by my car? Answer me damn it.”

Crazy Ty began to shake and this made the man tense up, his fist raising and his eyes narrowing into prepared slits. Crazy Ty backed away but the man still came forward. The Mustang blocked George’s view of Crazy Ty as he turned back towards the shop.

A squealing of tires preceded the green Mustang peeling off past the shop as George locked the door. Down the street the color shifted towards a blue hue as the light licked upon the car. The night swallowed it in the distance.

The street was empty except for Crazy Ty sleeping on the curb.

George walked to his car. 

“What does it take to get to this point?” George said as he unlocked his door. Crazy Ty rested his head against the concrete with an awkward elbow bent under him. “How is it comfortable to lay like that?”

**

George walked around the yellow caution tape that sectioned off a portion of the curb across from his work. Blaine looked straight ahead as he sat on the bench, looking out into the street at nothing but the asphalt heating with the morning sun. In his lap was a spool of wire. He pressed his lips tight together and gave George a shallow nod. Inside the shop a police officer stood at the counter questioning Anthony.

“We’ve seen him around, alright. He always comes around, cracked out – high as a kite usually.” Anthony said.

“You’ve seen him do drugs on the premises?”

“No, I didn’t say that. I said he was always cracked out, shaking and mumbling and talking with himself. But I wasn’t here last night. Finally - I’ve been calling you, George - That’s the guy you want to talk to.”

The officer turned on his black boots to talk with George in the doorway.

“Do you know anything about the events that occurred last night?”

“I’m sorry – what occurred?”

“The death of a vagrant in the area. People here at the shop have been calling him ‘Crazy Ty.’ The time of death is twenty minutes after your closing time. Did you see anything last night?”

George looked at the shelf above the espresso bar. The wire figure stood over them with short legs.

“I heard the commotion last night but I didn’t think anything of it. All I saw was Crazy Ty arguing with a guy over by the green Mustang and then when I came outside to walk to my car, Crazy Ty was laying against the curb. But he always did stuff like that. He looked asleep. What happened? Did his drug dealer do something?”

“Drug dealer? We can’t confirm that right now. Besides, the license plate was registered to a blue Mustang. You’re now saying green?”

“From the window it looked green. When it drove past me it was blue. We always see a green mustang pull up when we are working here. Someone inside gives him a bag and then keeps moving. Like a drug deal.”

The officer wrote the information down in his notebook.

From behind the officer a green Mustang pulled into a parking spot near the coffee shop. It idled for a moment with the man looking down the street and behind him. He exited the vehicle with fast steps and walked through the door.

“What’s this about?” The man asked.

Anthony looked out at the caution tape. “Some homeless guy tried to break into a car yesterday. The owner pushed him and he fell back.”

The man’s face lost its color, the white filling where the peach used to reside.

“Was his name Tyler?”

“He went by Crazy Ty. So maybe his name was Tyler. All I know is that he was probably cracked out-”

The man left the conversation to walk towards George and the officer.

“Tell me it isn’t Tyler.”

“Sir, I’m not sure of the vagrant’s name. All I know is that people in the shop have been referring to him as Crazy Ty.”

The man began to breathe heavy, deep pulls of air into his chest. He stared at the yellow tape and the curb across the street.

“Sir, is that your vehicle?” The officer pointed at the Mustang as he walked outside. George and the man followed at a short distance. Anthony looked through the window at the conversation.

“Y-y-yes. Why are you asking me this?”

“We’ve had reports of suspicious activity in the area involving a green mustang and the deceased. Have you had contact with the deceased in the last week?”

The man pursed his lips and looked at George and then the officer.

“Yes. I come here once a week or so and give my son a gift card and wire.”

“Is it your son that interacted with the deceased?”

“No, you’re not understanding me. He is my son.”

The officer looked up from his notebook.

“I’m sorry to be the one telling you this, sir. Would you mind coming with me down to the station to get a statement…”

George walked back into the shop. Anthony stood behind the counter staring out the window at the officer and the man.

“What did you see last night George?”

“I didn’t see much. I saw a guy yellin’ at Crazy Ty and then come close to him. When I came outside again, Crazy Ty was on the ground - same as when we closed the other night. Did you hear from the officer the real details?”

“Guess he was trying to break into someone’s car and the guy took a swing to protect it. Sad, but he had it comin’ to him. It’s crazy what drug addiction will do to you.”

“I swore he was sleeping. Man if I knew…”

“The police said he was dead on contact- hit that curb at the right angle.”

Crazy Ty’s father walked with the officer back to the police cruiser.

“I’ve never seen a drug dealer before- but that guy sure doesn’t look the part.” Anthony said while he straightened the cups near the bar.

In the distance Blaine rode by on his white bicycle. Swerving near the yellow caution tape, he folded his arm back into the pouch behind him. The bicycle sped up with powerful pumps from his legs. He tossed the item onto the ground and kept riding.

The item rolled on the asphalt and then teetered onto its own two feet, holding its ground on the rough street.

And it was made of wire.

 

---

Thank you for reading this story. If you'd like to read another one in this similar "world" go here.