Hrothghar, An Introduction---complete rewrite
I've now almost completely rewritten this piece. I still have a long ways to go, but I am darn happy with the way things stand right now. More changes are coming tomorrow, as the back story between Frank and Hrothghar becomes clearer to me. My thanks to everyone who has expressed interest and curiosity.
I keep experiencing these "flashes" of images and ideas---not necessarily anything I can easily put down in words---and often with no sense of where they fit into the larger story, but when they come to me, I write them down... I figure I can fit them in later. Right now, the words are here, and anybody who writes knows you have to seize hold of them when they flash up in your mind, otherwise they may very well be gone. This new character is based on a guy I've seen several times at the library... I don't know him, and know essentially nothing about him... but, obviously, he inspired me.... The story is told from the perspective of private detective Frank McGuire, though I am not certain why or for what purpose the two have met. At any rate, and without further ado...
I've seen him around---at Nick's Cave, the few times Show Biz Kids played, and over at Tom Robertson's Killing Floor---Tom seems to know him well, but Tom knows everybody, so that doesn't mean much. More often at The Terminal Bar, Parade Club, Ballard's Orbit Room---all the "jack-in 'n' jack-off" joints along Lower Greene Street as it merges with Clark, where Mid-City, Portside, and Hell Town rub shoulders for a few blocks. Down there where the neon puts a little color in otherwise dead faces. This is the turf of the Day-Glo Freaks, Young Torpedoes, Downtown Nihilists, Wild Boys, Desert Vipers, Dead Rabbits, and a host of other colorfully-named fools, drugged-out weirdoes, and death-worshipers. He is not one of these, not even really of their world---he just appears to be.
His height and weight are average, though he gives the impression of a once-muscular man who has gotten somewhat soft---trust me when I say I know of what I speak. He always wears old military fatigues (sometimes green, but generally black), with knee-high lace-up boots desperately in need of the polishing they'll never get, and an officer's green wool trench coat from which all insignia have been stripped. I’ve never seen him without a five-foot-long oak staff in his hands or within easy reach. His red-to-blond hair would hang down nearly to his ass were it not pulled back into a severe braid, into which a strand of silver-metallic beads is woven. His red sideburns are long and unkempt, and he has no other facial hair, except a perpetual mask of stubble. He wears one lug in his left ear lobe, and a dozen-or-more small loops and rings are divided between left and right ears. Oh yes, and he has a moddie implanted behind his right ear. He has the air of one who is simultaneously primitive and ultra-contemporary---like some kind of cybernetic Viking. When I'm told his name is Hrothghar the Red, I'm not sure whether to laugh, wince, or shit myself. Huh… cyber-Viking, indeed.
Alex Hill says he's the best, Tom agrees, and, as a friend-of-friends, he'll do the job at a cut rate. How can I say no? I follow him to his place---in an area of Hell Town I rarely go. He rides a stripped down BMW R69/S motorcycle, speeding through streets of shattered glass and refracted light. He parks behind a launderette, in an enclosed, brick-paved alley gated at its far end, walks around the corner, down a flight of steps to the basement, and unlocks a well-reinforced steel door. We step into a narrow entranceway with a similarly-reinforced steel door directly in front of us, and another door five feet to the right with a handwritten sign which reads employees only. He unlocks the first door, pushes it inward, flips a switch on the wall, and a lone, bare light bulb hanging in the center of the room comes to life. He motions me in, but does not follow---I hear his footsteps moving away, a door open and close, and the sound of running water. Stepping into the room illuminated by that single 60 watt bulb, I find a dank cell better served by darkness.
The room stinks of animals, fetid water, and damp, rotting wood and carpet. Two steel columns stand in the center of the floor---each evenly spaced from the other and the side walls---supporting a steel girder which runs the length of the room. Ductwork runs alongside the girder for several feet before curving upward into the ceiling. A webwork of metal and plastic pipes, translucent cables, orange extension cords, and electrical wires of red, silver, and black crisscross just above my head---this room was not designed for anyone as tall as me---all of them festooned with a thick layer of spider webs like faded streamers and tinsel from a party long-forgotten. Fastened to the ceiling between the girder and heat duct, a wide bamboo curtain divides the nearer half of the room from what can only be a storage area for unclaimed laundry. To the right, along the back wall, clothes lines are strung---crowded and burdened with musty, dusty, cobweb-enshrouded garments from some other century. A large dark green plastic canvas, hanging from nails pounded into the ceiling, conceals the entire wall opposite the door. Along the front wall, beneath still more clothes lines carrying the load of another era’s fashions, the concrete floor is stained a putrid brown where groundwater had once spread, sat for a time, and slowly receded. Along the narrow seam where floor and wall meet, I can see water slowly advancing again. On a short length of rope strung between two steel pipes hangs a small rectangle of carpet which was, I guess, once blue, but is now faded to a dirty, dismal grey-green---the color of a murky, polluted ditch. The discolored floor just below it is riddled with pockmarks where the wet carpet had dripped, creating a mottled grey-brown pattern.
In the midst of this, on a raised platform constructed of layers of pallets, is Hrothgar’s living and working space---the whole area can’t be more than 12’ square---framed on three sides by these walls of bamboo, green canvas, rotting carpet, and old clothes. Ducking to avoid a fat steel pipe, I step up on to the platform. An umbrella stand loaded with canes, walking sticks, and staves, and a tall coat rack like a dead tree spreading its naked fingers to an empty sky, guard the left corner.
Just past these, a large chest of drawers---a valuable antique, perhaps, once upon a time---water stains now climbing its flanks---occupies the center on the left. Piled on top are his sacraments and fetishes: cigar boxes, pouches and bags of hashish and various tobaccos, a dozen pipes made of wood and clay in a variety of sizes, numerous small boxes of wooden matches; four bottles of Irish whisky in varying stages of consumption, two glass tumblers, and four shot glasses; candles, an incense burner, cards with pictures of Catholic saints, a plethora of small bottles containing liquids of different colors---tinctures and oils of exotic extraction; a garishly-colored postcard of the goddess Kali; an old Colt .45 revolver; two framed black-and-white photos of an unnamed city-at-night; and a framed black-and-white photo of a well-dressed older man sitting behind a desk with a similarly-attired younger man standing behind him, holding a whisky glass identical to those sitting on the dresser top only a few inches away.
Above all this, suspended by a length of bailing twine, is a framed black-and-white poster of an unidentified man playing a saxophone.
In the far left corner, a small black wooden desk with a Russian knock-off of a Japanese computer, beside it stand two sets of metal shelves filled floor-to-ceiling with computer hardware. A tangle of electrical cables and wires extends down from the ceiling, splitting off in different directions, connecting a network of machines whose uses and purposes elude me.
Glancing behind the tarp, I see an old washer-and-dryer, with appliances of every kind and description piled on top of them, the whole lot sitting on wooden pallets on the damp floor.
Directly opposite the chest of drawers sits a small refrigerator on top of which are a small espresso machine, a grinder, and a sealed jar of beans. Hrothgar returns with a small pitcher of water, and sets to making two double shots of espresso with sure hands that work effortlessly. He puts a lot of sugar and cream in his, but I take mine straight.
In the corner formed by the meeting of bamboo and green canvas, a ragged army cot slouches; a gray tabby cat sprawls across it. Above it, four bags---two large, faded olive duffels, a small backpack, and a bag specially-designed to carry communications equipment, like a small computer---hang together limply. An effort has clearly been made to obscure or remove any identification from them, but one still bears the faded insignia of the Smyrna Marines.
From a crate next to the refrigerator, Hrothghar retrieves a can of cat food, opens it, and spills its contents on to a dirty saucer. The tabby cat rises, stretches himself, and lazily moves toward his dinner. The smell of it---like fish rotting on the piers---overpowers all the other odors in the room---hitting me so suddenly, I unexpectedly feel a sudden rush of nausea. I grab the nearest bottle of whisky, pour and guzzle two shots in quick succession, and find my way to the cot, holding on to myself.
He seats himself at the desk, picks up an old cassette tape, labeled "Jazz Greats of the '40s," slides it into an even older cassette deck, and presses play. A short chorus of hisses and pops is replaced by the sonorous tones of a trumpet. "Louis Armstrong," he says, with a quick glance over his shoulder.
The cat, his meal completed, climbs up into the corner behind the tarp, to stare out into the night through a cruddy window. I close my eyes and drift off...