Days 129 and 130 – Writing Exercise

…

The thing about being no one and wanting to be someone is that you have to learn to be someone first.

My father had always been a con man.

It was odd to me that he would put in so much work in becoming that person to run the con; he never once realised he could be that person with a little extra effort.

All it took was the same amount of time he took to learn the role. 

He had been an Accountant, a Doctor, an Engineer, a prospector, and a Chief Executive Officer, and performed it so accurately that he could have been a real one.

I asked him once why he just didn’t knuckle down and do the work.

No thrill in doing the same thing day in and day out.

That he was a con man meant that I would always be a con man too.  I didn’t know any different.  I didn’t know who my mother was; she had left a long time ago, when she discovered who my father was.

It must have hurt him because he would never talk about her, good or bad, just that it was a special time, and that he had me to remind him of her.

It was an interesting life, continually living a lie or sometimes a lot of lies.  I got good at it, so good, I forgot who I really was.

Then, just before I turned eighteen, my father was killed by a nervous policeman.  Of course, pretending he had a gun and that he would shoot didn’t help his cause.  Or save him from dying from a fatal gunshot wound.

I was arrested.  No one witnessed us together as I had been hiding, waiting to spring the trap.  My father always said one day the cops would catch up with him.

Today was that day.

…

Getting arrested wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me that day.

Watching my father die was. 

Had I not broken cover, I would have got away.  Somehow it seemed wrong to leave him there, bleeding out on the cold, wet cobblestones alone.

It was also the second time I had cried.  The first was when my mother left.

I stayed until they dragged me away, too me to the police station and locked me in a small, windowless room.  The chair was hard, the table solid, and I was handcuffed to the table.

It was my first time in the interview room.

Next would be a cell, perhaps with a few gardened criminals, who would not treat me well. At least my father had taught me to defend myself.

I couldn’t get the start image of my father lying dead on the cobblestones.  He hadn’t stood a chance.

Just when I was beginning to think they had forgotten me, the door opened, and a lady detective came in.  She seemed surprised to see a boy.

My father said I had to grow up quickly, but I hadn’t.  I read somewhere that teenagers should try to enjoy their youth because once it was gone, it was gone.

I didn’t feel as though I had anything.  School had been little more than a detention centre, and books were stories of someone else’s life.

I felt sorry for the kids who wanted to be rocket scientists. 

“James Pontville?”  It was asked politely as if I didn’t look like that hardened criminal I was supposed to be.

Perhaps when I spoke…

“It is my name today.”

Her expression changed.  Another smart-ass to deal with in a day filled with smart-asses.

She sat.  A thin folder she was carrying landed on the desk.  “Then enlighten me.  What is the name you were originally given?”

Good question.  “I have no idea.  My father kept changing it so often, I have no idea.”

“How can you not know your real name?  Are you trying to annoy me?  If you are, this is not the time to do it.”

I thought about it, trying to remember what he used to call me, what my mother called me, but nothing was there.  I couldn’t even remember what my mother looked like any more.

That hurt more than anything else.

“I’m not trying to annoy you.  I just don’t know any more.”

“Where do you live?”

“Anywhere and everywhere.  We had no house.”  Not after the landlord tossed us out of the apartment, my father said rats wouldn’t live in it. That was a year back.

“Most recent place?”

“The old telephone exchange down on Bloom Street.”

“Where the junkies get off?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.  It was dry and warm enough.  They don’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

She opened the folder and looked at a sheet of paper.  Arrest report?

“The dead guy, your father or someone else?”

The way she said it made my skin crawl.  She was not the first to imply he was one of ‘them types’. “He was my father.”

“Not much of one getting himself killed.”

It would be useless to say he was protecting me.  “He didn’t have a gun.”

“Unfortunate, but he had a choice.”

“Like we all have choices?”  I hated the smugness in her tone.  It was the same for anyone who had a place to go and knew where their next meal was coming from.

She gave me a look of pity.  Or maybe it was just contempt.

“What were you doing there?”

“He was waiting for someone.  He never really tells me what he’s doing.  I just hide until it’s done.”

Best not to tell the truth.  I needed less trouble, not more.  I could see where this was going.  I was going to end up in the System.  It was, he had said, if I got a choice, better than jail.

“What did he usually do?”

“Sell stuff he stole.”  I knew they’d find a watch on him.  It was his.  They didn’t need to know that.

“For what?”

“Food.  Never enough for a room, or clean sheets, even a blanket.”

She made a note on the sheet.  “Do you have any relatives?  Somewhere you can go?”

I had a name and an address.  A woman I had stayed with before, when he got taken away by the police.  I didn’t know if she was an aunt or just a friend, but she was nice to me.

I dragged a piece of crumpled paper out of my pocket and gave it to her.

She wrote the details on her sheet and gave it back to me.

“Is this person your mother?”

“No.  She lit out a long time ago.”

“Who is she?”

“A friend of my father’s.  Stayed there the last time he was in jail.  Been there a few times.”

“So if we take you there, she’ll know who you are?”

I hoped so.  “Yes.”

She closed the file.  “I’m giving you one chance.  I see you again, it’s jail.  OK?”

“OK.  Thanks.”

…

A policeman took me in his car to the address on the piece of paper.  It was an apartment on the third floor of a run-down apartment building with a nasty superintendent. 

Maybe he was gone this time.

The policeman knocked on the door, and after a minute, Elsie, the lady’s name, opened the door, still on the latch.

It was that kind of neighbourhood.

“Yeah?”  She had a raspy voice from an old, smoking habit.  She had to give it up when cancer struck.

“You know this little scruff?”

She peered through the crack as the policeman dragged me into her view.  “James?”

I nodded.

“Where’s your Dad?”

“Shot and killed.”

“You want him?” the policeman asked.

She opened the door.  “Of course.”  She stood to one side and let me pass.

“Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

He stomped off down the passage.  She looked up and down, then came in and closed the door.

“What happened?”

“Picked the wrong mark.  It was a cop.  Dad pretended he had a gun, and the cop shot him dead.”

Her face softened.  “You poor dear.  I’m sorry for your loss.  What are you going to do?”

“I can’t stay here.  Dad said you were struggling too.”

“We all are dearie.  But you’re welcome to stay until you get sorted.  We’ll manage.  Your Dad left some money in case you came.”

Money.  He gave me what we had for me to carry in a special pocket in my jacket.  He said some of it was for her to look after me, if it came to that.  I would give it to her later.

“Have you eaten?”

“Not today.”

“Then give me a few minutes, and I’ll make us some dinner.  Have a chat.  Tell me what you’ve been up to since the last time.”

…

My father may have been a con man, but I like to think he was a philosopher.  He had a wide range of views on everything.  He read a lot, magazines, newspapers and books

He said knowledge was everything, and had made sure I could read.  The trouble was, I didn’t understand a lot of it.

That was the memory of him I had the next morning when I woke, in a small room, on a mattress that had a clean sheet and a blanket.  I felt warm, warmer than I had for a while.

Sleeping in a derelict building wasn’t the best place to be when winter was coming.

A head came through the crack between the door and the wall.  “Morning, sleepyhead. Coffee is on.”

Elise, Elsie’s daughter of about my age, had just got home from her job, working the graveyard shift at the hospital.  Elsie would be gone, a cleaner at the same place.

The work was steady, they had uniforms and got meals while working during their shifts.

I dragged myself out of bed and out into the small dining area next to a smaller kitchen.  The smell of coffee was amazing.  It was, for me, a luxury.

She gave me a hug, affection I had not been given since my mother left.  She was like the sister I never had.
“Mum told me about your Dad.  I’m so sorry.  It must have been terrible.”

I still hadn’t processed it, and it was just another bad thing among a hundred more, all piled on top of each other.

I shrugged.  “It was inevitable.  He had been lucky, if it could be said someone like him, or us for that matter, could be.”

“What are you going to do?”

She pottered about, making toast.  The aromas from that kitchen were making me hungry.  Any other day, I would have to put those pains aside.

“Don’t know.  Get a job, I guess.  Watching him die like that, I think it’s time I found a new way to live my life.  Trouble is, I’ve got no education and no skills.  My father often said I should go back to school, but it takes money, money we didn’t have.”

“Well, the only way that can happen is if you decide to make it happen.  I remember your father telling me, back when I got busted for shoplifting, that I was the mistress of my own destiny.  I thought he was a pompous ass, but he was right.  You are the master of your own destiny.  No one is going to pave the path in front of you.  That’s your job.”

She put coffee and toast in front of me, and smiled.  “I’m glad you came.  It’s very nice to have a man about the house.  The landlord and his creepy super have been hassling Mom.”

Elise needed to get some sleep.  She was on the graveyard shift as a kitchen hand.  Elsie was a cleaner.  Before she disappeared into the small room, the one with the mattress on the floor for visitors and a bed for the daughter, she told me to go see Vinnie at the hospital.  He would find me a job, no questions asked, and help with the paperwork.

My father said paperwork was the same for every businessman, and that he liked to work in a paperless office.  He said it in a way that made me think he knew everything about running a business.  Believable, sincere, and lies.

But the paperless meant I had no birth certificate or a thing called a SSN number, and without one if those, I didn’t exist.

Bonnie wasn’t surprised.  He had forms.  Lots of forms with long names and mysterious codes.  He said often it was hard for people like me who didn’t have an address.  Itinerant.

But he didn’t look down his nose at me.  He knew Elsie and Elise.  I think he liked Elise a lot.  He said there was work if I wasn’t fussy.  I said I wasn’t, so he gave me a uniform and told me to come back at 6am the next morning.  Then he gave me twenty dollars and said it was for food and whatever else I might need.

…

Something else my father told me, among many that as he often said went in one ear and came out the other, people would often surprise you, but in a bad way, not a good.

If he were here now, I would tell him he was wrong.

Until one morning, Elsie and I got home from a graveyard shift, tired and cold.  The snow had arrived, and the streets, early morning before the sun came up, were at their coldest; the building super was lurking.

Elise was right.  He was creepy.

Elsie had no desire to talk to him, but he blocked her way.

I stayed back.  I had met people like him.  In a position of power, he was not afraid to use it.  He had a son, a mirror image of his father, and I didn’t like the way he looked at Elise.

“Who’s your boyfriend.  Bit young for you.”  It was a sneer.

“My sister’s kid.  She died and left me a child, not the fortune I was hoping for, so I could get out of this dump.”

“You can always leave.”

She laughed in a way that made my skin crawl.  “Of course I can.  I’m secretly a billionaire researching how the other half live.”

“Extra body staying, a hundred bucks a month rent increase.”

I knew enough to know that rents could only be fixed by the landlord, and in accordance with city regulations in places like this.  This man was extorting her.

“You can’t do that,” she said.

“I can do anything I like.  Of course, there are other ways to pay.”

I knew what he was intimating.  Elsie was angry, but riling him wasn’t going to help.

“You got to the end of the week.”  He leered at her as she went past, but put his hand back to block me.

“This is my domain, sonny.  Don’t get any fancy ideas.”

My father said showing fear was a weakness that could be exploited.  He had taught me this thing called the poker face, and one other, an expression that could cause fear.

I put it on and looked straight into his eyes.

“They should have told that to the last person who said that to me.  You’ve got a boy, I’ve seen him skulking around like a rat looking for a pathetic human to bite.  It’s your domain, sir, until it isn’t.”

Those eyes went from arrogant to fearful.

“Y-You threatening me?”  Fear betrayed by the slight stutter.

“No.”  I looked at his arm blocking my way.  “Do you know what a dislocation feels like?  I got one once, and it hurt like hell.  Weakens the joint forever after, and one day, when you’re walking, or maybe pushed, down the stairs, you lose your grip.  In a death trap like this place, that could be fatal.  Just a friendly reminder, something you should be taking care of, as a Super.

“I can have you lot kicked out.”

“You could.  But as I’m new at work they won’t give me the time off to come to your funerals.  So, let’s agree to disagree and leave things where they are.  We’ll talk to the landlord about the increase.”

He lost the staring match.  My father said it was never about the loudest voice in the room, that I could be far scarier speaking just above a whisper and through clenched teeth as an effect.

Men like the super had the power if you gave it to them.  I wasn’t going to.  But he was going to be trouble.

“This isn’t over.”  He moved his arm.

“No.  But it will be.  Sooner than you think.”

Then I smiled, that evil smile my father taught me, and patted him on the shoulder.  “You’ve got a nice gig here.  Don’t screw it up.”

I followed Elsie up the stairs, and she had the door open when I got there.

Once inside, she leaned against the door and sighed.  “You shouldn’t have done that.  Now it’s just going to bring trouble to our doorstep.”

“I’m sorry, but he was out of line.  He had no right to demand money that isn’t his to demand.  And that disgusting threat…”

“It’s not the worst.”

“Elise?”

“That kid of his.  Calling him a rat is insulting to rats.”

“I’ll pay the extra if it comes to that.  I owe you everything.  But I will fix it.  You don’t have to live in fear of people like him.”

…

A week later, there was a knock on the door, and I saw Elsie cringe.  It was what she had been waiting for.  Retribution.

She opened the door, and the landlord, in his five-hundred-dollar suit and Italian shoes, looked every bit the Lothario Elsie had described him.

The aftershave brought tears to my eyes, and I was ten feet away.

“Mrs Blake.”

Behind him was an enforcer.  He was here to collect the monthly rent.

He looked past her at me, standing like a PFC on parade, waiting for the Master Sergeant to bark orders.

My father taught me the soldier’s stance.  Attention, and at ease.  To swell the chest out, to look like you’ve done ten tours of Afghanistan or Iraq and killed a million of the enemy single-handedly.

I saw the expression change.  He had come here to lay down the law.  Perhaps he might have revised that.

“May I come in?”

Elsie said he usually barged his way in.

She stood to one side.

I said, “Leave the goon outside.”

He was going to say something, the mouth opened and then closed.  A nod in the goon’s direction, then he came in.  Elsie closed the door.

“You serve?” He asked.

“I’ve done a lot of things I didn’t like.”

Never admit to anything, but out of respect to those who had, never take credit for something you didn’t do.  My father had the utmost respect for those who lay down their life in the service of their country.  That rubbed off on me.

“You staying long?” he asked me.

“As long as it is necessary.  My aunt is a kind lady who helps even when it is difficult.”

He looked at her.  “Greyson has apologised for causing you some distress.  I believe he said there would be a rent increase.  I think in this case it’s not necessary.  You are an exemplary tenant, not like some in the building.”

She counted out the notes, a collection of worn notes, a bit like we all felt.  He recounted them, thanked her, gave me a last look, and left.

She waited a minute, leaned against the door, then asked, “What did you do?”

I wanted to tell her I took the Super out the back and ripped his arm out of its socket, and if he approached Elsie again in such a manner, I would do something to him far worse, but that would sound brutal.  I thought I might tell her that I found the son and told him that if Elise said she had been assaulted, I would come find him and cut his manhood off with a blunt knife, but that might offend her.

I went with a simpler explanation.  “We had a friendly chat over a bottle of beer.  I paid.  I explained my circumstances, that the good Lord uplifted those who helped the helpers, and he understood.  All men can be reasonable when they see the light.”

“How do you explain his visit to the hospital emergency department with a mangled shoulder?”

I forgot she worked in the hospital, and her reach might be in places like the Emergency room. I shrugged.  “A man like that, I’m sure, has managed to upset people less understanding than we are.”

The crossed arms and the frown told me I was skating on very thin ice.

“Your dad said you did training for the National Guard.”

“That or juvenile detention.  Might as well be the same thing.  The instructor was bullying.  Learned to defend myself against IEDs, though.”

She shook her head.  “Thanks.  I’ll leave it to the Good lord to decide whether you deserve to go to heaven or hell.  Elise and I have Italian food on Thursdays once a month.  You’re welcome to join us.”

“That would be greatly appreciated.”

…

Several months later, I dreamed of my mother.  I was not sure how old I had been when she left, but it must have been before cognitive memories kicked in.

But even so, there were memories, like her perfume, her laugh, her smile, and the look in her eyes when she held me in her arms.

I wanted to think it had been very difficult for her to leave me behind, but I guess the horror of living with a liar and cheat like my father was far worse.  But I never quite understood why she had kept me behind.

When I woke, there was an image of her, clear as day, in my mind, and the ache of missing her was very painful.  It was like she was there, almost within reach.

Something had prompted these memories.

Elise had come home after the graveyard shift and made toast and coffee.  She was humming to herself, a sign she was happy.  I wondered if she had struck up a friendship with a nice boy; she had mentioned a few in the past, but we both knew our prospects were low.

Still, as Elsie would say, hope springs eternal.

And the frost and snow would soon abate into spring, and everything would come back to life.  I was looking forward to the warmth.

My shift was going to start in the cancer ward, where I had spent the last week cleaning the floors until they gleamed.  Of course, the tiles were tired and scuffed, but I did my best.

The head nurse in Ward A was a dragon, and she was always complaining that the cleaning should be at night.  I actually agreed with her, given the daytime foot traffic.  Patients, nurses, doctors, auxiliary staff, visitors. It was like rush hour on the subway.

But I had my instructions.

Nurse Bleeth, perpetually angry, came out of the elevator and sighed.  She was not the dragon; she was an hour away from ending her early morning shift.

“Your boss is trying to irritate us; isn’t he?”

He had complained to the Superintendent that his workers were being impeded, and that it was not his fault that the management had decided to implement twice-daily cleaning.

His attitude was to make it fast; I maintained we had to do it properly.  No one was going to win this battle.

Did I simply do the job, work around the obstacles, and couldn’t wait for breaks? Yes.

“I don’t make the rules.”

“No, but the people that do often forget it’s the small things that make this all work, and at the moment it’s not working.  But it’s not my problem, I’m told.  That’s a matter for Nurse Andrews.”

She was the dragon. It was amazing how little things suddenly turned into big problems.

“Make it quick as you can.”  She smiled and carried on that harried sort of way, like she was expecting the sky would fall in.

If it had been the dragon, it probably would.

I’d just about finished the passageway and was about to go around the corner when a woman’s voice yelled out, “Don’t you dare speak to your father like that,” followed by a retort, “He’s not my father,” in that stricken tone that people used when the truth landed on them like a brick.

A youngish boy came bemusing out of the room not ten feet from me, and in such a blind hurry to escape, crashed into me, sending us both sprawling.

Two things I noticed in that split second before the crash: he had the look of a spoiled rich brat, and the second was that he looked exactly like me.

Only healthier and stronger.

While we tried to get off the floor, a woman came out of the room, saw the two of us and went over to him.

The other boy was on his feet. I used the rail to pull myself up.  My arm hurt where I landed on it, totally unprepared. I turned to look at the woman, to admonish her over her child.

One look and I nearly fell down again.  The nurse who had come from the station came over to see if we needed help.  A doctor passing had stopped, seeing me almost faint.

It was not from the crash.

The perfume, the expression, the eyes.

And the boy.  He was looking at me, then her, then back at me.  “David?”

David?  Was that my name from a very distant past?  My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, what I was feeling, like there was a connection between us, which was impossible.

Then I passed out.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026