The sun was rising, and it looked to be the start of a beautiful day. Rufus yawned as he awoke, breathing in deep lungfuls of the cool, pleasant morning air. He rolled over and sat up on the bed of blankets he had arranged on the pavement of the basketball courts. It was decently comfortable, all things considered, probably because he had had about three months to work on it, collecting blankets from thrift stores, dumpsters, wherever he could find them.
After letting himself wake up for a few minutes longer, Rufus stood up and walked over to his cart. He reached inside and pulled out a joint that he had rolled the day before. He smelled it for a second, smiled, took out a lighter, and started to smoke it. He soon felt the familiar waves of relaxation roll over him. Satisfied, he put the remaining joint away and checked his watch: 7:15. High school kids would soon be arriving at the courts on which he slept to play with their friends before class started. Rufus looked forward to this period of the day perhaps more than any other. He was a favorite among the kids who came to the court, often joining them for a quick game or chatting about recent events at their school. The first of the kids started to wander onto the court in groups of twos and threes.
“You gonna play with us today Ruf,” called a boy named Johnny. “We're gonna dominate if you do.” Johnny was probably Rufus's favorite of the regulars at these morning games. His treated Rufus as one of his good friends, showed him the same respect he would show anyone else, and he almost always picked Rufus first for his team. He also seemed genuinely interested in how Rufus's life was going, and he had even brought him a few blankets, clothes, and food to help Rufus out.
“You know it,” replied Rufus with a grin.
They picked teams and played a quick game. The games were usually pretty short before school, maybe twenty minutes or so, but it was enough time for Rufus to completely wake up, get some exercise, and end up in a pretty good mood.
After the game, everyone chatted for a few minutes, and then the kids left to head to the local high school. That left Rufus to get ready for work at a gas station about a twenty-minute walk from the courts. As he walked to work, he elicited a lot of stares or quick glances from people passing him on the sidewalk. He endured the glance at his unkempt beard followed by the inspection of his stained sweatshirt, his dirty pants, his old shoes that were far past their normal life span. He could see the disgust in many of their eyes, or the discomfort, or the fear, or the pity. He had been experiencing that sort of
reaction from strangers for a long time, but no matter how many times it happened, he couldn’t completely just brush it off. He was comfortable with his place in the world, but somehow, the degrading looks always annoyed him just the slightest bit.
Work went by uneventfully. When he left in the mid afternoon, the cool, sunny morning whether had become hot and muggy. Rufus looked overhead to see clouds starting to form. It looked like he could be in for a bit of rain that night. He walked back to the courts hoping to get in a quick nap before they filled up with high schoolers again as classes ended. Unfortunately when he got back to his place of residence, there was a group of five teenagers hanging around his belongings. A couple of them were rummaging through the contents of his shopping cart. The others were standing around his bed making comments about the cleanliness of it, or lack thereof. God damnit, he thought to himself. Beads of perspiration started to form on his skin. He started to walk across the courts towards the teenagers. They spotted him when he was about halfway and immediately connected his appearance with the bed of blankets and shopping cart
full of assorted items.
“Pretty nice setup ya got here, ain’t that right Joe,” said one of the kids sarcastically.
“It sure is. Hey, you don’t mind if we look through your stuff, do you.”
“I do mind. Get your hands off my stuff and get the hell out of here.”
“Sure thing bud,” said a third kid, laughing, as he started to pull out some of Rufus’s wardrobe and throw it onto the pavement. “Some pretty snazzy outfits ya got here.”
Rufus was turning red now as he started to sweat profusely in the hot, stuffy, suffocatingly humid mid-afternoon air.
“Wow mister, you don’t look too good. Here, maybe this will help.” He pulled the hardest object he could find out of Rufus’s cart and threw it at him. Rufus dodged it and backed up a few steps. The other kids hesitated for a second and then all of them decided to follow the first kid’s lead. They started pulling out whatever they could get their hands on and hurling it at Rufus as he backed away further and further, more quickly than before. The objects were finding their mark now, slamming into Rufus’s body as the teens got more and more into the game, seeming to derive motivation from Rufus’s hurried retreat. He suddenly turned and sprinted away like a scared animal fleeing a predator. He ran down block after block, instinctively turning right, then left, then right again, until he arrived, panting with exhaustion at a city park. He collapsed on one of the park benches, his chest heaving up and down as he tried to recover. It didn’t sound like the kids had followed him, but he still listened closely with keen ears. After a few minutes, he decided he had escaped the threat for the time being. Tired from the effort, he dozed off.
He was awoken abruptly. He was being blinded by bright lights and hit in the knees and shins with something hard. Commands and interrogations were coming at him from all directions, surrounding him, cornering him.
“Get up old man.”
“Don’t you know what time it is? The park closed hours ago.”
“What’s that smell?”
“When’s the last time you washed yourself?”
“Come on. We don’t have all night.”
Dizzy, he struggled to get up off of the bench, but it felt like the humid air was smothering him. He tried to roll off the bench, but just ended up falling on the ground. Blows from the nightstick kept reminding him that the law was demanding that he move, that he wasn’t wanted there. Finally, with a great effort, he pulled himself to his feet. Almost before he could catch his balance, hands were shoving him towards the park exit, not letting him rest even for a moment. He could hardly see where he was going, tripping over roots, bumping into trees, stumbling over bushes. But the hands kept pushing, relentless, no escape. With a final shove, he was removed from the park out into the city.
He felt exposed now as he limped through the streets, wandering aimlessly. He felt the first few drops of rain fall from the night sky. As the rain started to fall harder, he began instinctively to move back towards his basketball courts. As he rounded the final turn and walked along the fence enclosing the courts, he heard footsteps.
“Back again?” said a gleeful voice.
Fuck. Not these damn kids again. Not right now.
“We enjoyed checking out all your stuff earlier, so we thought we’d try to get to know you a little better,” said another one grinning.
He had his back to the fence, and they had moved into a sort of semicircle around him. He now noticed that one of them had a sort of club in his hand, like a ripped-off handle of a broom. One of them picked up a rock and threw it at him. It missed, ricocheted off the fence, and bounced away. Fear was in his throat now as the wind picked up and the rain turned malicious, coming down harder than before, seeming to slash through his clothing. Another of the teens ran forward and shoved him. He fell to the ground, his hipbone landing hard on some sharp object. He felt pain searing through his leg as the teens howled with laughter. He looked into the eyes of the teen with the club in his hand and could see that he was about to attack. All of a sudden, something changed in Rufus. Some primal instinct began to take control of. He could feel the blood coursing through his veins, his heart pounding in his chest. His eyes gleamed in the darkness. He looked down to see that the hard object on which he had fallen was a broken fence pole with a sharp, rusted edge.
The teen with the club moved forward with a smile on his face and began to raise the club. Rufus shot his hand down to the broken pole, gripped it hard, and sprung up, swinging it in an arching motion up and crashing it down into the boy’s skull. The kid crumpled to the ground. Before any of the others could react, he swung the pole sideways towards another one’s neck. The pole connected, slicing deep into his flesh. Blood sprayed out, covering Rufus. He quickly turned to see the remaining boys backing away. Pivoting in the other direction, he darted away down the street into the darkness and the biting rain. He saw an alley out of the corner of his eye and shot into it. Panting heavily, his body collapsed next to a dumpster where he remained, the night closing in on him.