Chapter 2
Flynn’s Olde Boston Eating and Drinking Establishment
MATTHEW’S TOTING a bag of groceries in each hand, those bags made of thin, improbably strong plastic. He carries groceries home successfully in these bags several times a week, but he always expects them to break. Today he has too many bottles of spring water, the only water he drinks, because the water in his apartment smells of fish. Stretched thin, the handles of the bags dig into his hands.
In front of the library two boys are fighting. They are small and thin, one black, the other Vietnamese. The larger boy is clutching the smaller one’s neck. He has a look of odd detachment, shows no anger. The little one is choking. About forty adults are watching, waiting for a bus.
Matthew feels that he should do something. He walks over to the boys, saying, “Hey, hey. Cut that out,” speaking with the voice of reason, as a peacemaker. The boys ignore him.
A large man, who strikes Matthew as quite likely a high school football coach, walks up to the boys and bellows at the larger, “You little shit! Get your fucking hands off him!” He smacks the boy on the head, and the boy releases his choking grip. The smaller one drops to his knees and retches into the gutter. “Get out of here!” the coach shouts at the larger boy. He takes a fearful step backward and seems about to cry, but pride toughens him, and he tries to look defiant. More quietly, but with real menace in his voice, the coach says, “Get the fuck out of here.” The boy runs away.
Matthew’s about to say that his method would have worked, too, when the coach looks at him and snorts. Matthew’s certain now that the man is a coach, because this is the same snort Matthew’s high school gym teacher used to make when Matthew handed him a note asking that he be excused from gym with an upset stomach. Now that Matthew has seen a little of the world, he knows that bulls and even bison snort this way. From coaches, this bull snort means, approximately, “Stay out of my range, you fuckin’ pansy.”
Matthew walks on, but at the corner he makes another stop, to read some work of the writer he calls the Neat Graffitist. The Graffitist leaves messages all over Boston, printed in small, precise capital letters. He always uses a black marker, and he favors smooth surfaces free of other graffiti. He’s especially fond of the metal boxes that house traffic light controls, but sometimes he uses the sides of newspaper vending boxes. His work combines elements of a personal philosophy, pronouncements exhortatory and cautionary, snapshots of contemporary life, and bits of autobiography. The result is varied, intriguing, and mad. This is the message that stops Matthew:
NEVER FEAR PAIN. TIME DIMINISHES IT. BUT AVOID BOSTON CITY HOSPITAL. NURSES THERE WEAR USED UNIFORMS PURCHASED FROM BURGER KING, TREAT PATIENTS WITH FATALISTIC DETACHMENT.
Considering this on the way home, with the plastic handles digging into his hands at each step, Matthew decides that the heart of the message is the business about fatalistic detachment. That must be what’s really bothering the Graffitist, not the used uniforms purchased from Burger King.
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