Getting Burgers

Shannon and I watched as the tribe of hobos filled their car with containers of loose change. 

There were four of them working together, unburying holes in the ground or moving makeshift covers made out of wooden pallets to the side, exposing crates full of bottles, sacks, bags and jars full of coins of all sorts. 

One by one they'd extract these containers and move them to the trunk of the car. It wasn't a make or a model I recognized, the name long faded from the car's rear end. It looked old, though. Something from the early 90s, perhaps. 

But it ran. It was maintained, even if it wasn't luxurious. 

Occasionally the four hobos, led by the main figure who we quickly identified as answering to the name "Virgil", would mutter incoherencies to themselves. 

"Those who know nothing know something about things that those who know something know nothing about," they repeated off and on, with other similar-sounding but equally cryptic credos mixed in. 

From time to time, two would step aside and check with each other, working out some quick calculations to estimate a total figure they were building toward, double-checking little hand-written notes that they pulled out of the individual containers with an approximate value listed.

$12.32. 

$16.15. 

$9.07.

$33.89. 

Shannon and I observed, largely ignored by the four; allowed to watch. There was a feeling that we were intruding on something—not exactly sacred—but ritualized, certainly.

I could tell Shannon was anxious. We had followed the trail here, to this spot, and encountered this night-crew of sorts. But neither of us were sure what came after. 

"Where are we going?" Shannon asked, in a whisper after a time. 

I shrugged. I really didn't know what to expect. 

"Do you think we should go with them?"

She wavered. 

"I don't think it's a good idea. Where do they live?"

"I think they're homeless," I offered, sincerely.

"I get that," The whisper verging into the broadly audible, Shannon quieted down again so as not to be rude. "It's just—where is this leading?"

"They have to live somewhere," I said. Pure speculation on my part. As soon as I said it, I immediately recognized that didn't necessarily need to be true.

One of the hobos spoke up, addressing the leader. 

"That's a'hundred—or abouts." 

One of the four silently crawled into the back and calmly laid down beside the various containers of coins, docile and serene, before Virgil slammed the trunk down, shutting him in. The entire vehicle jostled rustily on its shock absorbers. He then tossed the key—just one, without a ring or chain—to one of the other two. 

"Dieter."

The one called Dieter caught the key and opened the driver door. The one called Virgil looked at Shannon and I and asked gruffly:

"You like burgers?"

--

Dieter drove, Virgil in the front passenger seat. I sat in the middle-back, Shannon behind the driver, and another unnamed hobo to my right. 

There was a smell—I was sensitive to it—but it wasn't arresting in the same way that the odor of some homeless can be, where you have to hold your breath. It was an earthiness—sweat and grime—but not outright filth or decay. 

As far as hobos went, they were strangely normal—like it was a uniform they wore, or a costume they put on. To blend in.

They talked it out and decided that Jack in the Box was their target. The decision seemed hinged on something noticeably other than the quality of the food, but I couldn't work out what. Instead, they seemed to talk strategically about why the Jack in the Box location on Lowell Street was preferable to the Burger King on Ullman.

"The drive-thru is a straight shot," Virgil said of Jack in the Box. "Burger King's, there's that turn around the corner of the building." 

"Burger King will be busier at this time," mused Dieter. "Find a car with a lot of heads in it. Big bag full of burgers."

"How many people we feeding?" Virgil asked. 

Dieter tallied it up. "We got two more with us. You two are eating, right?"

Shannon and I looked at each other. "Uh, yeah," she said. We were both hungry.

Dieter tallied. "We should get a dozen or so." 

Virgil, "That's not enough. We're going to have to hit multiple places." 

Dieter. "So, Jack and King?"

Virgil grunted. "That corner, though."

"Jack's drive thru is narrow, too, by the way. It's straight but if they pull in close to the window it's hell to squeak through." 

Virgil decided. "Jack first. We're going to have to make at least two stops, maybe more, anyway. We'll figure out how many more we need after that."

The fellow to my right never said anything, but seemed to chuckle or giggle intermittently, based on his two compatriots' orchestrations. He seemed nice enough, though.

Soon we arrived at the Jack in the Box on Lowell Street, but we didn't pull into the queue. Dieter stopped the car in a space in front of the building, careful to align the car so that it was a straight shot behind them to the drive thru window. 

"Busy night," Virgil said, appreciating the long line. Turning in his seat to look at the fellow beside me in the back seat, Virgil said—"Go get 'em, Johan." 

With that, Johan was gone. Shannon and I looked at each other again, and then craned our heads back to peer out through the rear windshield to see Johan's shadowy figure slip stealthily across the parking lot, clever to avoid passing directly underneath the parking lot's towering lamps.

We all sat and watched in silence for a moment.

"You ever done this?" Virgil asked suddenly.

I turned and found him looking at me. 

"Burgers?" I asked, unsure what he meant. "Sure. Lots of times." 

He tilted his head back, pointing his chin in the direction Johan dashed.

"Watch," he recommended. I turned and looked. 

"Johan's good. Long legs. Skinny. Can really fit between the car and the window."

"Tanya's going to blow a fucking gasket," Dieter said, holding back laughter. Virgil didn't hold back, he guffawed in a quacking cackle.

Intrigued, Shannon and I both sat with our heads turned nearly 180-degrees back to look out the rear of the car. We felt the slight movement of the tires beneath us as all of us shifted inside to look. We weren't parked, the car was idling in anticipation.

Some time passed. Some cars in the queue pulled forward, paid and left. You could see some of the silhouettes of the people ordering their burgers inside the cars, back-lit by the headlamps of the car behind them. Some cars had only one person. Some cars had two. Then, one larger vehicle pulled forward—an SUV—with the outlines of many heads inside. 

"That's the one," Virgil said, excitement in his voice. "At least seven burgers in that van," he said. 

"Eight," said Dieter. 

"Maybe fucking twelve if someone's really hungry in there."

"One stop?"

Virgil shook his head. "Na. Maybe." 

We watched as the car pulled up to the drive thru window. 

"The fuck's Johan?" Dieter asked.

"You don't run on the first pass," advised Virg, calm and confident in Johan's skill. "That's when they give 'em the money."

"Right," Dieter said, remembering.

There was a pause. And then—the drive thru attendant's arm reached out holding drinks. 

"Wait," Virgil said, anticipation growing.

Squinting my eyes, I strained to see. Was I missing something? It seemed like an ordinary transaction. What did this have to do with Johan? 

The arm went back in. You could see the outlines of the people in the car moving the drinks around inside—passing them back and forth to each other. 

Then, the arm came back out of the drive thru window, holding two big brown bags. 

That's when I saw Johan, running up on the inside, between the row of cars and the building exterior wall, toward the window. As soon as the bags were held out, and the person inside the SUV reached out to grab them, Johan was there just in time to snatch both bags. Holding them against his chest like a running back, Johan ran out of the drive through lane and through the parking lot towards our car.

"Hah!" Squawked Virgil. "Fuckin' clean!" 

Seeing Johan's running figure approaching our idling car, I gleaned the shocked expression on the drive thru attendant's face, staring in our direction. This was Tanya, and she was screaming something with all her might, though I couldn't make it out. 

Whatever it was, it couldn't have been good.

In seconds, the car door was thrown open and Johan collapsed inside, tossing the bags of burgers into Shannon's and my laps. Hot. Greasy. Smelling of burgers and fries.

Without a word of command, Dieter was off, tires squealing.

Virgil howled triumphantly. Johan was giggling, a little more excitedly than he had been before. Jack in the Box dwindled in the rear window behind us as Dieter merged into traffic.

"That was clean, Johan. Show 'em."

Johan lifted his shirt, exposing his bare chest—dirty, but with three distinct, purple and yellow bruises on his right side in the perfect shapes of car side-mirrors. They looked like they had hurt, but Johan smiled proudly.

"Jack in the Box," Virgil reiterated conclusively. "You fucking wanted Burger King." 

"We might still have to," Dieter said, prophetically.

"How many are in there, kids?" Virgil asked. I opened one of the bags.

"I got—some fries. Looks like—four burgers?" 

Shannon blinked and hesitantly opened the bag in her lap. She looked up and said, "I have money." 

Virgil looked at her plainly in the rear view mirror. "So do we." 

"I can buy my own burger." 

"Why?" he asked, incredulous.

Shannon looked at me. I wavered. There was a thrill to it; albeit a juvenile one. 

"I get why you guys do it," I said. "But—y'know—we're not homeless." 

Virgil looked at me without a hint of offense and said, "Neither are we."

--

The car drove further away from town. The smell of burger hung thick in the car after making two additional stops for a grand-total of 16 burgers; 14 of which had been stolen, two (with soft drinks and fries) purchased by Shannon and I at a Wendy's on the way out of town.

We had the burgers, but no one ate. After what had been nearly two hours of driving and "hamburglarizing," we were all driving in silence, tortured by the odor of fast-cooling super. 

Shannon and I were reluctant to disrupt the odd tranquility that had descended upon us. Despite this reluctance, I was becoming concerned about how far away from town we were heading. 

If Shannon was nervous, she didn't let on.

No music. Just the sound of the four of us driving through the darkness.

I tried to hold it back as long as I could—waiting for any sign that we might be nearing some previously unspoken destination—until at last, after what felt like hours of internal debate on how to ask, I asked:

"Where we goin', guys?"

"Calm down," Virgil said, as if waiting for me to say anything. "It's right up here." 

Dieter didn't put on a blinker, but when the next exit came up, he veered, slowed and turned off his headlights. 

We were coasting in the dark, slowly. I don't know if Virgil thought this development would alleviate any growing concerns I was having, but it didn't. 

"What are we doing?" Shannon asked, sounding convincingly annoyed, but I could tell she was a little scared.

"You're hungry aren't ya? You could'aeaten." 

A few hundred feet rolled by before the road opened up into an expansive dilapidated parking lot. Dieter proceeded all the way to the forefront of the lot before stopping and turning off the engine.

"Here we are," Virgil said. "Be it ever so humble." 

Virgil, Dieter and Johan got out. Dieter quickly went to the trunk and opened it with his key to let the fourth hobo out, who had been lying patiently throughout the entire burger-thieving odyssey. 

I looked at Shannon, whose face was visible now in the subtle moonlight.

"We made it." 

"Whoopee," she said, and opened her side door, holding our bag of burgers and fries.

Dieter handed out jars of coins, but immediately, we noticed the number of hobos had suddenly grown. 

Silently, newcomers had welcomed their brethren home, arriving to help bring in the haul. They'd take one or two containers each, holding them in both hands or slinging grocery bags full of coins over their shoulders, and then turning to carry them into the entrance, passing through a wrought iron gate into an old abandoned water park, dark and shadowy and silent.

Shannon and I saw the silhouettes of teetering, spiraling water slides in the night sky, curving this way and that—each in varying degrees of decay, glinting dully along their edges with moonlight.

"It's a pool," Virgil said behind me. I turned and saw him holding two milk jugs, one in each hand. 

"Yeah," I said. "Some kind of old water park?" 

"Oh," he said, realizing what I meant. "No, we pool all the coins together. All of us."

"Oh," I echoed. "Can I help carry anything?"

"No," he said, appreciatively but firmly. "Wouldn't be a good look. You didn't earn any of it."

Nodding, Shannon and I followed him into the water park, behind the other hobos, carrying our bags of burgers and drinks that we had purchased. Johan had the other stolen bags of food, folding into the ranks of the solemn parade, a meditative druids' march through the abandoned water park. 

As we entered, we saw low light emanating from the empty, sunken pools, deep within the belly of the park. We followed Virgil as he made toward one of the pools—a concrete "lazy river" that meandered in curves, this way and that, in a great slithering loop. 

We descended into the concrete cavern, walls coming up to my shoulders on either side, where candles glowed every 10 to 15 feet on the pool bottom, lighting the way and casting flickering shadows against cans of food, plastic bottles and the still bodies of sleeping hoboes.

Shannon and I dared not speak. The only sound was that of a thousand rattling coins being dumped out and rummaged through on the concrete floor of the pools with factory efficiency, somewhere behind our sight. Thousands of coins sifted through like sand. Soft lips murmuring, counting. Golf pencils scraping on the pool walls, tallying.

Sometimes, coins would crunch under our stepping feet as we walked down the empty lazy river, some huddled hobos turning their gazes upward at Shannon and I as we passed by. Expressionless, their faces lit from below, half in shadow; little lights for eyes.

Eventually, the procession came to a halt at a bend in the river. Virgil stooped over a huddled form, enmeshed in sleeping bags on the floor, one or two candles near its feet. 

"Virgil. Guests," Virgil said. 

The second Virgil, lying in a heap on the ground, slowly roused—taking shape underneath the layers of blankets and jackets until it sat upright—a small, ancient hobo, all wrinkles and whiskers, without eyes: just narrow slits in the face, surrounded by a spider-web of crows-foot creases. 

The old Virgil's mouth opened, smacking his lips and bare gums as his neck and joints creaked. Perceiving Shannon and I, we briefly caught a glimpse of one of his eyes as it opened wide enough to spot our candle-lit bodies standing before him in the dark. He regarded us quickly, before his eye shut again, eager to turn his attention instead on the hot smell of burger that the younger Virgil was laying out before him on the concrete floor of the pool atop unwrapped, greasy paper.

The old man's gloved hands, with the finger tips snipped off, pawed at a sandwich, looking massive in his small arthritic hands. He peeled it open like a banana and buried his fingers under the bun. The wet sound of his digits mucking amid the vegetables and juices and sauces until he withdrew three thick pickle slices and let them drop with a splat into the wrapper. 

"Obliged," old Virgil said. He opened his toothless mouth and gummed a small bite of burger and bun into his mouth, chewing, chewing, chewing...

As he chewed, he talked. To us? I wasn't sure. No one else said a word, except the old man. Shannon and I cautiously sat down and unwrapped our own burgers and ate.

"Mm. Ham burger," he said—a little wet in the back of the throat. "Ya know, worked with cows. For a time. As a younger man. Mm. Onna ranch. 'N fact, ranch used to be right 'ere. On this spot!" 

Chewing. He nodded to himself. 

"'S-right. Same spot. Raised bulls. An' cows. I didn' know much 'bout live stock, but I thought they're ugly. Mangy cows n' bulls. Mm. Oft times, they took to fightin' each other. Yeah. Damned-est thing, no one right knew why they did that. Not jus' the bulls, neither, but the females, too—fightin' with each other, fightin' with the bulls. Not usual. Somethin' peculiar. Somethin' wrong! Never figgured what." 

Chewing. Slits for eyes. Candlelight, sheltered from the subtle night wind at the bottom of the empty pool.

"Time to time, fell on me to do a share of the slaughterin'. Didn't like doin' it, but, found a peculiar way of doin' it, a-s'ppose. Got me a mighty big heavy sledgehammer. Reared back. Big shoulders, then. Hit each one with a klunk in the head, b'tween the eyes. Knocked 'em dead. They'd give a good amount-a kickin', after I'd done it. Didn't matter how hard'ya hittem, neither. Big annimal. More muscle an' mange than meat!"

Cough. Other hobos hungrily eating their burgers and fries, listening. The old Virgil sucked in his lungs heavily and coughed hard again, bits of bun and meat spraying out like grey projectiles into the night air. Young Virgil reached forward with a napkin and dabbed the old man's chin. 

"Thankee," the old man said. Young Virgil opened a water bottle and gave the old man a sip. Long neck folds gulped in shadow.

"Thankee," he repeated, then kept going. "'Cept one cow. Ne'er forget 'er. Sickly lookin' thing. Hurt my heart t' look at 'er. Eyes cloudy from the cataracts. Scratched up. Blood all in 'er hair. Matted up. Stumpy hooves. Was tremblin' all over—but had a fierce look t'er all the same. Kept tryin' to like take a knee, 'cept there wasn't 'nuff slack n' the rope. She'd lower her big head down, toward the railing t'where she was tied up so's I could get a good swing at her. Resting it, like. Figured, time was to kill 'er. Big shoulders, then. Reared back. Took aim. Swung for 'er." 

A pause. Old Virgil took another bite as he looked back decades into the past, reliving the moment.

"But. But. She was crafty. Tricked me, see? Cow played 'possum, if ya can believe it. Cows ain't always a stupid annimal. Last second, she shifted 'er head, 'n my hammer happened to break the rope n'stead of 'er head. See? She knew. Charged me. Knocked the air straight outta me in one hit. Big annimal. Too big! Hammer fell. God damn thing happened so fast—but there she was, tryin' to pummel me. Trample me. Big nose-a hers, sniffin', snortin', growlin' like. Y'know what I was thinkin'?"

"What?" I asked.

"Not a god damn thing!" Chewing. Then, "Mind was blank. Couldn't e'en remember all what had happened after I got outta there, 'cept after some time passed. Though it couldn't-a lasted more than a minnute. But m'hands. They was thinkin'. The whole time on the floor of that kennel, my hands was thinkin'. Push the muzzle away. Kept thinkin' not to get caught up in those big flat scissor teeth-a 'ers. Thinkin' about them great big grey eyeballs-a 'ers. Big ones. Kept diggin' at em. Scratchin'. Tearin' at em. Finally, b'fore I knewed it, fingersnails' were caked with blood and like a jelly kinda. Its eyes were there, hangin' down 'gainst her cheeks kinda. That was all she had in 'er. I'd outlasted 'er. Weak, sick thing had one fight in her, and she held it for me."

He inhaled through his nose as he chewed the same small mouthful over and over, gumming it into paste. 

"Fight fell right outta 'er. Collapsed. All a'twonce. She coulda fell on toppa me. Maybe wanted to. Maybe tied to. But di'int. Missed. Fell to the side. Don't know why. Dead. Deader than if I'da hit her right in the middle of her head where I meant'ta. Yeah. Had no taste for the work after that."

Silence. Then, resuming again, unusually louder than before:

"Ranch went under, shortly after anyhow. Bulls wernt innerested in the cows no more. They kept fightin' em off anyhow. No calves."

A sigh. 

"They tore that ranch down and, some years on, constructed this here waterpark, seems. Cows don't like the desert. I don't know much about live stock, but, I never thought they did. Hot in the desert. Grass ain't green. I don't think they were outfitted much for it. All the heat. Did somethin' funny in their heads. Desert's a funny place, it." 

--

Shannon and I fell asleep there, hours later. We were tired. It wasn't really what we had in mind, but there was nowhere else to go. And, strangely, we didn't feel we were in danger. 

The next morning I woke up first. There was a chill in the air. I got up and stretched my legs, climbed out of the lazy river to look around a bit at the rest of the park in the growing light of dawn. I didn't go far, I wanted to be able to turn and see Shannon as she slept, but when I got out I saw only what I can describe as a Two-Headed Mime practicing its pantomime routine on the other side of the park. I'm the distance, sort of. I watched it for a long time. Two heads. Mime. Doing the whole thing; the invisible box, pulling on an invisible rope, all of it. With two heads. It didn't seem to notice me, and I didn't dare get any closer. It filled me with a weird terror I'd never really felt before. 

Eventually Shannon woke up and I jumped back down into the pool as quietly as I could, but when she asked me how I slept and how long I'd been up, I didn't know what to say. I don't think I ever told her about the mime I saw by myself that morning.

If I did, I forgot.