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Alynne ate her chicken dinner sitting on a broken plastic crate outside her tent. The city had opened the sanctioned camp two weeks ago. Alynne was one of the first applicants. The camp was surrounded by ten-foot-high chain link with barbed wire at the top.
“I ain’t staying in no prison,” Jasper had said.
“But it’s our own tent and we won’t have to keep moving,” she had told him. She decided to try it. Maybe Jasper would change his mind.
The city gave her a tent, still smelling of new plastic, all to herself. She hardly slept.
There weren’t any locks.
“I’ve been raped twice out here,” she had told the public radio reporter. That was a few months ago when she was still on the streets outside the camp. That was enough to tell him. Too much maybe.
Alynne ate without tasting. She knew she needed to eat, and the food was free, and she ate steadily, chew and swallow, until only bones were left. She tossed the Styrofoam carton aside. Later, she’d trudge it to the camp’s only waste bin. They didn’t give out trash bags. But she didn’t like mess.
Alynne volunteered every day at the entrance gate to ask people why they wanted to get in, keep out people who shouldn’t be there. Her shift was uneventful until late in the afternoon when an older man came to the gate. He didn’t look too good, like he’d been on the streets for awhile or maybe he was dying of something. Maybe both. His dark skin was mottled. Leaves clung to his gnarly gray-speckled hair.
“My daughter’s in there,” he said. “I gotta see her.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?” Alynne asked. “I’ll send someone, see if they can find her.”
The man tried to push past Alynne. Small as she was, she was young and easily pushed the man backwards.
“You can’t come in here.”
“It’s a gated community!” Holler hollered. A bunch of them that didn’t do any work were always sitting nearby shouting and making trouble. The rest of the bunch, about a half dozen folks, laughed at Holler’s words.
“I gotta get in there,” the old man said, still pushing on Alynne.
“Well, you’re not,” Alynne said, still pushing back.
“Get ‘im, A-lean,” Holler shouted. “Get ‘im good. Don’t let no nigger in here.”
The bunch laughed. Holler and more than half of the group around him were some degree black.
“Just tell me your daughter’s name,” Alynne repeated. The man was huffing and puffing trying to push past her. His pants were grimy, and his right tennis shoe flapped where the front of the sole had seperated. As he got in close, Alynne could smell chicken dinner better than she had smelled the meal she just finished. And wine. That’s how it was outside. A lot more wine than dinners. In the camp, it was a little more even.
Later, she would think if only she hadn’t noticed the smell, she would have been more alert for what happened next. She didn’t see the blade and only barely felt a prick in her side, but then there was gooey warm liquid all over her hands, still pushing the man back, and then she was slipping away from him. Some of the bunch had finally gotten off their asses and had pummeled the man free from his knife and gotten him far away from the gate. Alynne never saw the knife except a glint of metal as it went into someone’s pocket.
Some of the fellows helped Alynne up from the dirt. Hatty gave her a couple of old rags or maybe it was her own good clothes to push up against the slice in her side. The city workers were nowhere in sight, which was pretty much how it was. They only came around when you didn’t want them in your business.
“You’ll live,” Holler said from where he was still sitting. “Won’t you?”
“Of course,” Alynne shouted. She limped back to her tent, ignoring the questions if she needed an ambulance. It did no good to get into that system. Alynne knew that better than almost anything else she ever knew.
She rested through what was left of the day. Threw up her chicken dinner in the dirt next to her cot, rolled onto her side and buried the vomit the best she could with her hand. Her side ached and she felt like she was floating away. But she tried to stay awake. This would be just the time some wise ass would come in her tent to rape her again.
The next morning, she felt okay enough to get out of the tent. The sky was beautiful: blue crisp air she hardly remembered ever noticing when she was a kid. She hardly spent time out of doors then. She was always being moved from one apartment to another, sometimes living in cellars or closets for weeks. The weather wasn’t a necessary thing to notice in those days. Nowadays she noticed the weather always. It was one of the good things about being out here. She never liked staying in a shelter, even in snowstorms. She’d rather be out in it.
She was tired and sore and missed her shift at the gate. A lady city worker Alynne hadn’t seen before came to her tent. Alynne was sitting on her crate in front of the tent staring at the dirt in front of her. She knew from long practice, all she needed was a little time and to sit here staring, thinking of nothing.
“You missed your gate duty,” the city lady said. Alynne nodded. “You done, then?” the city lady said. Alynne nodded again, then shook her head, trying to get fully awake.
“I’ll be back tomorrow. I just don’t feel great today,” Alynne said. The city worker was standing over Alynne, blocking the sun. Alynne didn’t look up.
“Next time, you gotta find a substitute,” the city lady said. “You can’t just not show up.”
The city lady left and Alynne was glad for the sunshine back on her face. Where the dirt in front of her was riled up from the city worker’s boots, Alynne smoothed it with her hand, wincing against the pain in her side.
A storm blew through overnight, dropping a quick flash flood. Alynne’s tent flooded with the water trying to get to the river on the other side of the camp. She didn’t blame the water. Alynne lay in it, on her wounded side, which hurt at first but then not so much. Tomorrow she would feel all right, she decided. She would get up and go back to her gate. They liked any excuse to kick a person out of the camp. They could say they housed a hundred people, not mentioning that they kicked out fifty to let another fifty in. Counting them all up. That’s what Holler and Spack and some of the others said. Alynne thought it was just as likely as anything else.
Alynne got some real sleep that night in the rain. The cold water numbed her side. It wasn’t likely anyone would be out in this mess stumbling around trying to find her tent. The next morning, she made it to her gate duty just fine and nothing happened, so she could spend most of her time sitting on a bucket Gaitor brought her, and staring down the city street that stretched straight ahead outside the camp gate, disappearing into the jumble of buildings that cast shade onto it. She knew that street, but she didn’t want to know why. The day was cloudy, but it wasn’t going to rain anymore. After her shift ended, she walked out of the camp, as she did every few days, just to see something different, get a hot meal. The city let you have food in the camp but no stove or candles and no glass bottles. Which was reasonable. Alynne didn’t have a problem with it.
“I don’t drink alcohol,” she had told the city worker when she had applied to live in the camp. “Not anymore. Not for three years.”
“That’s great,” the city worker had said, not looking up from his paper on a clipboard. “What drugs do you do?”
Alynne couldn’t remember what she answered. Was she on something then? Was she on something now? Loss of blood, she thought as she walked. That’s what I’m on now.
Maybe infection.
“It’ll heal up,” she had told Gaitor when the bunch of them asked her how she was doing. He had wanted to take up her shirt to look at the wound, but she wouldn’t let him. Her shirt was clean and still a little damp. She hadn’t looked herself, didn’t want to. “Leave it alone. Best to leave it alone,” she had told Gaitor and the others.
“You living in denial,” Gaitor had said. “That thing could get real bad infected.”
Alynne had kept shaking her head. How had she made it to twenty-eight years old except by using her own instincts?
Alynne stopped at the shelter and got a cup of coffee with loads of sugar in it. She hadn’t started drinking coffee until she had moved on the streets, had started living with Jasper. He liked coffee and had gotten her hooked on it and a few other things. Jasper kept others from bothering her. A few bruises around the neck occasionally, a black eye once. Not bad in comparison. Not bad at all.
She had to stop thinking about Jasper, or she’d go looking for him, and her tent would be cleaned out and given to someone else the city could count as having been “helped.” Jasper probably had another lady by now anyway. He was a good catch. Her body started shaking. She turned into an alley to get a hold of herself. Her side was aching again. Her coffee was gone. She had a long walk back to camp.
She felt someone watching her. Her heart started racing and at the same time her expression became blank as stone. She looked around carefully. She saw the eyes. Not someone. A scruffy, medium-sized shepherd-terrier mix. Matted hair. Even from where she was ten feet away, she could smell rot.
Alynne collapsed on the alleyway pavement, relief making her weak. She felt warmth on her side. Her wound must be bleeding again. That might be a good thing. Keep infection away. If not too much came out.
“Hello, little fellow,” she said. The dog took a step towards her. She could see its tail wagging a tiny bit, like the tip was trying it out before the rest followed.
She didn’t hold out her hand or do any of those stupid things people did. She looked at the dog out of the corner of her eye. When had she learned that? Her uncle. The one who she had stayed with the longest.
The dog scooted towards her, body crouched, tail wagging a little more, nose extended. Alynne thought maybe she smelled as badly as the dog.
“Are we alike, then?” she said softly. The dog must have thought so because it scooted forward. She could see it was a male dog. “You are certainly a rough one,” she said. The dog reached her and sniffed her sleeve. He pushed his nose against her hand, and she petted him behind the ear. She felt things squirming in its matted hair.
The dog followed her back to the camp. They didn’t travel quickly. Alynne got another coffee and a hamburger in a brown bag from the shelter on the way back. She fed the dog bits of the burger. It kept following her. Edge was on the gate. He was lax at his job, which usually made her angry, but today she was glad. She waved at him as she walked by.
“That your dog?” Edge asked. Alynne nodded. “What’s its name?”
“Bandit,” Alynne answered. The name just popped out. Edge nodded.
That night Alynne slept well. Bandit curled up near the opening of the tent as if he knew his job. Days went by peacefully, until city worker asshole Brian came to Alynne’s tent early in the morning and told her she had to put her dog on a leash, or they’d take it to the shelter.
“People are complaining,” Brian said. “You can’t just let your dog run all over the camp loose. It might bite someone or get in a fight with another dog.” She didn’t argue. What was the point? That day in her wandering through the city she found a piece of rope and tied it around Bandit’s neck. He didn’t complain, as if he had been on a leash before.
One of the ladies at the shelter didn’t think a dog should have a rope around its neck, and gave Bandit a brand-new blue collar. Alynne thanked her and wondered why the lady didn’t buy Alynne a new sweater or some make up or something. But she didn’t complain. She tied the rope to Bandit’s new collar and walked with him back to camp.
From then on, Bandit stayed with Alynne. She tied him up to a tent pole or around her waist. Life was good. Alynne slept well. Folks got used to Bandit and gave him scraps of food and asked Alynne if they could borrow him sometimes. She always said, “no” to borrowing. She needed Bandit to stay by her. He was even better than Jasper. He never bit her or even growled.
One evening, when it was almost dark, Alynne and Bandit were in their tent. Alynne wasn’t doing much of anything. Just lying on her cot trying to decide if it was worth the trip to get some dinner, or if she should just be hungry until early morning when she could scrounge for leftovers in the waste bins in downtown. Suddenly Bandit leapt up barking and baring his teeth. Alynne’s heart stopped and she saw stars in her eyes.
“Jesus, it’s just me, dog!” Gaitor shouted from outside the tent. “A-lean, call your dog off!”
Alynne didn’t know how to call Bandit off anymore than she knew how to make him attack on command, but she repeated, “It’s okay, buddy, it’s okay,” until Bandit came over to her. Alynne got out of the tent. Once Bandit saw Gaitor, he acted friendly again.
“He’s a vicious guy,” Gaitor said, but he was petting Bandit now, rubbing him behind the ears. Bandit had a look on his face like sheer bliss.
“He’s my protection,” Alynne said.
“I can see that,” Gaitor said. “Hey, I got an extra half a pizza. You want it?” Alynne and Bandit sat outside the tent with Gaitor and they ate the pizza. Gaitor even threw a slice to Bandit to show there was no hard feelings.
The next morning city worker asshole Brian found Alynne at the gate where she was working.
“He’s tied up,” Alynne said, motioning to Bandit who was tied to the chain link fence behind her.
“I heard he nearly attacked someone last night,” Brian said. “That’s against the rules.”
“Naw, it didn’t happen like that,” Alynne said. “Bandit didn’t attack anybody. We were both in our tent. He never even went out of it. And it was only Gaitor. Once Bandit knew it was him, he calmed down. He just didn’t want anyone busting into the tent. He’s my protection.”
“You can’t have a protection dog here,” Brian said. “No vicious dogs. It’s against the rules. You’ll have to get rid of him.”
“I’m not getting rid of Bandit,” Alynne said. “He’s not vicious.”
“Folks heard him growling and barking like he was getting ready to tear someone apart,” Brian said.
“What folks heard him?” Alynne said.
“Confidential,” Brian answered. “Just get rid of the dog or you’ll have to leave. We can’t take a chance on the dog biting someone. No arguments.”
Alynne started keeping Bandit tucked against her side at night. He didn’t like sleeping on the cot, though, and he squirmed away and curled up at the door when she fell asleep. A few nights later she was awakened by Bandit growling and staring at the zipped-up tent door.
“It’s okay, buddy. Good boy. It’s okay,” Alynne said. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it might pop out of her body. Bandit eventually settled down again, but Alynne lay awake waiting for morning, listening for any sound of Bandit starting up or anything coming from outside. Every time the breeze rustled the plastic tent, Alynne felt her chest tighten. But nothing happened.
The next morning, when Alynne was sitting on her plastic crate trying to get the energy to get into town for some coffee before her gate shift, Brian returned. Bandit wagged his tail. Brian ignored him.
“There’s been another complaint, Alynne,” Brian said. “You’ll need to get rid of the dog.”
“He was in my tent with me all night. He only growled. You want someone to get in my tent and rape me? Is that what you want? You setting me up? It’s not fair!” Alynne knew she was on a rant and hated the words flying out of her mouth, but she couldn’t stop them.
“You signed the rules when you moved in,” Brian said. “We can’t make exceptions.” He left. Bandit wagged his tail hopefully, as if he thought Brian might come back, change his mind, pet him some, give him a treat.
Alynne thought she’d have a week or so to think it over. She wasn’t going to get rid of Bandit, but she thought a week of her being extra careful and Bandit not making a peep would make the whole thing blow over. But the next day Brian came back with two other city workers who looked like club bouncers.
“We came for the dog,” Brian said.
“I’m not giving you my dog,” Alynne said.
“Either give him to us to take to the pound or pack up right now,” Brian said. “He’ll go to a good home, Alynne. He just can’t live here, going after people. The city can’t take the risk.”
Alynne went back inside her tent where she had left Bandit. He pushed his nose against her hand.
She shoved her stuff into two plastic bags. She tied Bandit’s rope to his collar and the other end around her waist. She looked around her tent one last time.
“It’s been great to know you,” she said.
Alynne walked the two hours to the settlement under the 4th Street bridge. She still knew a few people there, and one of them told her where she could put her stuff and not be in anyone else’s space. That night, without a tent, she huddled in a rain shower, with her arms around her knees and head bent. Bandit curled up on her feet, keeping them warm. The next day was cloudy and cold and she never dried off all the way. She did not regret leaving the camp. She wondered if she should have fought harder to stay. Asked to talk to Brian’s boss. Ask Gaitor and some of the others to help her argue. No one had come up of their own. It was like they were okay with her leaving. That made her more unhappy than anything. After she had worked the gate so many days and always tried to be a good citizen. No one helped her out at all. No one cared enough even to say goodbye. It was like they had all disappeared at the same time. She had walked out without a word to anyone.
The tent had been a good home, and here she was, after all she had tried to do to help at the camp, right back under the bridge. She wondered if she should try to find Jasper. But no, she wouldn’t do that.
“I got you now, don’t I?” She said to Bandit. “We got each other.”
She knew she’d have to get food somehow. She couldn’t walk two hours every day to the shelter for the free lunch and free dinner and then make it back here. She could try to stay in the city, closer to the shelter, but the cops did sweeps, clearing the areas, almost every day. Here under the bridge, she could have her own place to keep her stuff and to just have a familiar bit of twigs and trash every day. It smelled, but what place didn’t in some way?
Her side began to hurt again. She still hadn’t looked at it. She was young, she figured it would heal up eventually, and then she thought it had healed up. But apparently not all the way.
One of the women she knew from her Jasper days brought her a sandwich that was only a little squished and moldy, and a bottle of water. She gave Bandit half, exactly tearing the bread, lettuce, tomato, lunch meat and cheese in half. Bandit left the lettuce and tomato and after a couple of minutes Alynne ate his half of those things. There were advantages to having no sense of taste left. Bandit would have liked more of the other stuff, but so would she have. She poured some water in her cupped hand and Bandit licked it up.
“It’s a good thing you’re not too picky,” she told him. “But I guess if you were, you’d have left me a long time ago.” She wanted to laugh but her side hurt, and she felt queasy.
The next day her side hurt even more, and her head hurt too. She lay on her good side enduring. Bandit lay on her feet. She hadn’t bothered with the rope. Bandit didn’t go far, just a little way away to do his business and then come back.
She might have stayed like that for days. Alynne lost track of time, dozing and waking and hurting and trying to doze again.
Bandit growled low in his voice. Alynne lifted her head. It wasn’t like back in the camp with Gaitor, but she could tell someone was getting close to her.
It was a man with hardly any hair, and clothes too big for him, like he had shrunk, or maybe he just liked baggy clothes. She blinked and tried to focus on him better, at the same time reaching out for Bandit’s collar.
“I got something can help you out,” the man said. He was still ten feet away from her, eyeing Bandit, leaning over a little, as if to make himself smaller or to seem less threatening.
“What do you have?” Alynne said, pulling herself up. She slowly stood up and put her hand on Bandit’s head.
“Tie your dog up so I can show you.” His hands were in his pockets. He didn’t look too frightened of Bandit, but he wasn’t moving either. Alynne tied the rope onto Bandit’s collar, clenching against the pain in her side.
“Tie him to that tree there and come a little closer. I ain’t gonna get dog bit. But I can help you out. I can see you’re hurting.”
Alynne tied Bandit’s rope to the tree. Maybe the man had antibiotics or some of that wound cream.
She approached the man warily, only going to the end of Bandit’s rope. “I’m not going any further,” she said. “You can meet me here.”
“I ain’t going to hurt you,” the man said. “I want to help you.” He came closer so he was a few feet from the end of Bandit’s rope. Bandit was on guard, but quiet, watching.
The man took his hand out of his pocket. Bandit barked. The man didn’t flinch but opened his palm to reveal a tattered scrap of white that looked like a used gauze bandage.
“I get it legal on account of a war injury. I can share some with you. It will make things hurt less,” he said.
“I know what fentanyl is,” Alynne said.
“I got pills if you rather do that,” he said. “Either way, it will help with the pain.”
She was staring at the dirty patch. It looked like he just pulled it off his arm, but maybe it still had some fentanyl left on it. If she could make the pain go away for a few days, her head would clear and she would figure out where she should go, how she should make a new life with Bandit. Or maybe things would calm down at the camp and she could get back in. In the meantime, she had to survive. She had to get the pain to go away, or at least go down some so she could go out the next day and get some food.
“I’ll share,” the man said again. “You know how to share, right?”
Alynne nodded.
The man turned and headed into the thin woods next to the bridge underpass.
Alynne stepped forward to follow him, a little wobbly against the pain in her side., She steadied herself and took another step.
Bandit whined softly, pulling against his rope. Alynne turned back to pat his head.
“It’s okay, buddy,” she said. “It’s okay.”
