The Coyotes of Carthage - Steven Wright

Part I

The Straw Man

Chapter One

Andre marvels, watching a kid, a stranger of maybe sixteen, pinch another wallet. This lift makes the kid’s fifth, at least that Andre’s seen this morning—two on the train, two on the underground platform, and now this one on the jam-packed escalator that climbs toward the surface. The kid’s got skills, mad skills. He makes his lift and keeps on moving. There. Right there. The kid picks up another, his sixth, with the practiced grace of a ballerino, this time the mark, some corporate chump, probably a lobbyist, with slicked-back hair and a shit-eating grin. No one suspects a thing, and why should they? This kid blends in, looks like a prep-school student—and, who knows, perhaps he is—his aesthetic complete with a bookbag, khakis, and a dog-eared copy of de Tocqueville tucked beneath his arm. The kid reminds Andre of himself at that age—lean, hungry, steel eyes with smooth skin—but Andre concedes that he never possessed this kid’s talent.

Aboveground the kid disappears into the big-city bustle, and Andre thinks, Good for you, li’l man. Go in peace. For sure, the kid has plenty of places to hide. Northwest this morning is a mess: snowy, busy, noisy, the perfect urban jungle in which to flee. Andre works around the corner, and a lifetime ago, his family made a home inside a boarded-up rathole six blocks over. Andre has, in fact, lived in the District his entire life, thirty-five years save a stint across the river, two years in juvie for a grift gone bad on a nearby street. Seventeen years ago, when he left kiddie correctional, he never imagined he’d work on K Street, or that he’d own a walk-in closet full of three-piece suits, and the sudden realization, that he might lose it all, cuts like shards of glass crushed into the lining of his stomach.

He trudges a path through wet snow. Last night’s blizzard has caused panic in DC; the streets, slick with black ice, prove too difficult for all but yellow cabs. He wishes he’d taken a different route, perhaps down L Street, where hobos toss dice and the high-rises don’t funnel the cold. He’s tired of freezing winters. Tired of cold that blisters his fingertips. Tired of crowds and congestion and construction. If he loses his job today, and he’s pretty sure he will, he’ll move across the country, someplace with palm trees, someplace where no one bothers to vote.

On the corner, a homeless man sits atop a grate, his fists punching a peg leg that peeks from beneath his blanket. The man howls, frustrated that no one will help a white veteran. Most folks ignore him. Some folks laugh. A doe-eyed blonde, maybe nineteen or twenty, drops coins into his tin cup. The man sifts the change, sorting nickels from pennies, then pitches the gift back into the blonde’s face. “Bitch, what the fuck am I supposed to do with eighteen cents?”

The blonde, stunned and shamed, looks toward Andre, her wide eyes asking: What did I do wrong? Andre wants to shrug, to say the guy’s an asshole, but he has a point. Three nickels, three pennies: that won’t even buy you ramen noodles. Instead Andre furrows his brow and, in his most apologetic tone, the voice he knows comforts young white women, says, “My God, are you okay? He has no right to treat you that way. Should I call the cops?”

He knows the blonde will say no, and when she does, her humiliation vanishing, she smiles with the confidence of a fool assured by a complete stranger. Andre pops his suit’s collar, breathes warmth into his fists, takes pride that he hasn’t lost his touch.

The homeless man shouts, trembling with rage, his sunburned face and filthy beard giving the appearance of a downtrodden Santa. Andre suspects this guy’s newly homeless. If this bum had lived on the streets for long, he’d know that the archdiocese opens hypothermia shelters when the weather gets this cold. He’d also know that today, near Dupont, the Methodists distribute leather-bound Bibles and burlap sacks brimming with groceries. Louder and louder the homeless man screams, claims he’s a veteran of Kandahar, an assertion Andre doubts. The VA, for all its faults, can do a lot better than a peg leg, a wooden cone that looks like part of a preschooler’s pirate costume. Andre suppresses the urge to snatch the man’s blanket, to expose his working limbs, to prove that the peg leg is nothing more than a