Garbage by Stephen Dixon Page A

You’ll be all right,” and he says “What’re you doing, get out of my stuff,” and shuts his eyes. I feel for his pulse but don’t get any mostly because I don’t know how to get a pulse if it’s not just squeezing the wrist for a beat. Then the police car comes and when they take a look at the man, one says “You should’ve thought of this when you called us—he seems like he’s dying and needs an ambulance,” and I say “One’s supposed to be on the way,” and he says “Where is it then?” and puts in a call for one.
    The police search me, find the billy, tell the two men and the young one with the pad and pen to stay. They wrap a blanket around the man I hit, massage his hands and keep the crowd back and a couple of people from trying to make phonecalls from the booth when they didn’t see the man on the floor, and soon at the same time two ambulances come from opposite ends of the avenue and the drivers argue for a while over who’s entitled to take the man while the two doctors from the different hospitals work on him. Finally one policeman says to a driver “You, for no good reason, just you,” and that ambulance team puts the man on a stretcher and takes him away.
    More police come and they divide me and the three men into two groups and while they’re asking me questions I overhear the more talkative of the two older men say “All I know is I saw that guy hit him, the barowner he says he is, few times real hard in the face and I think once with that club you took off him, but on that I’m not so sure. I didn’t see him provoked—he just went wild, ran after him shouting, knocked over a lady and attacked.”
    I say to the policeman interviewing me “What that fellow just said’s not true,” and I show them the note I got and say “The one I sent the man through the phonebooth shelf is in his wallet, but that’s gone with him and probably lost by now,” and the talkative man yells “Yeah, but you opened his wallet before because you said you didn’t trust the police force, so how does anyone know what notes you might’ve stuck in there?”
    â€œDid you see me?”
    â€œI didn’t see you not do it.”
    â€œAnd your friend?”
    â€œHe’s not my friend. I don’t know him and he’s got a mouth for himself.”
    â€œI didn’t see you take or insert in the wallet anything like paper,” the other man says. “But my vision isn’t the sharpest except for bigger things, such as your beating up for no justification it seems the man they took away.”
    â€œWhat are you guys? You with the man I hit? You were there from the start, so maybe you are.”
    â€œExcuse me,” the young man says to the police. “But I have it in my notes where, and I quote, ‘suspect removes unconscious man’s wallet—seemingly unconscious—peers inside, puts it back in man’s same pants pocket left side,’ but there’s nothing about removing anything from the wallet.”
    â€œDid you see him taking anything out though?” a policeman says. “Or putting anything in?”
    â€œI’m not sure. I was doing a little looking but mostly writing.”
    â€œLet’s see that.” The young man tears some sheets out of the pad and the policeman reads from them. “‘Victim, up till now seemingly unconscious against glass panel of booth, says “Stop searching me” to assailant but assailant does not .’”
    â€œI was looking for the exact names and maybe his contacts of the people who’ve been hounding me, but maybe this pen-and-pad kid’s in with them too. Before I thought they were all just passerbys—passersby—whatever the hell they are, it is, walking past. But now, well—”
    â€œThat’s all I am,” the young man says. “I live with