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The twin boys walked through one of the back alleys in the heart of Virgil, the part of the city that was nothing but narrow spaces turning into smaller alleys and walkways you had to squeeze through, even if you were a boy. The city had never been planned out very well. There were ninety-nine dead ends for every way out, and each one was bordered by closed doors and broken windows. Locked eyes and shattered teeth.

But the two boys didn’t seem to mind. They walked slowly, kicking at rocks and jumping with two firm feet into every puddle they could find. And there were many puddles, because the tiny alleyways were littered with potholes, and the storm had lasted for days.

The two boys each had hair as dark as the rooms behind the windows and fair skin that had been slightly burnt a summer red. They both wore the same tan shorts, the same dirty sneakers, and old socks, wet and muddy water brown, pulled up to just below their knees. But one wore a gray t-shirt and the other wore a blue button-up shirt that he had ripped the sleeves off of. The collar was still on it, and he wore it flipped up, like a 60s gang member. They were around ten years old. Everyone in the city recognized them. No one knew where they lived or who their parents were.

“I’m bored, Bird.”

The boy reached up and nervously itched around the top of his gray t-shirt. He didn’t like when his brother called him Bird, and it made him anxious when his brother got bored. It meant they were going to do scary things. He shook his head, but he didn’t say anything, he just jumped two feet into the next puddle, hard, as if trying to jump into the earth.

“C’mon, Bird, let’s do something fun.”

“I don’t want to. Let’s play a game.”

“Okay, but if I win then we have to do something fun,” the boy spat.

“Okay,” Bird shouted back, “but if I win you have to give me that picture of the girl. You know, the one that lady on Genna Street gave you.”

Both boys stared at each other.

“Fine,” said the boy with the cutoff sleeves. “Fine. But I pick the game.”

“No way, Ike. We both decide.”

“Fine,” Ike said again. “Fine. The rock closest to the wall game.”

“No, you always win. Riddles.”

“Yeah, right,” Ike said. The two boys stood there silently. The sky was blue, but the alley was narrow and the buildings on either side tall, so you had to look straight up to see it.

Ike jogged ahead to where a broken pallet had been left to rot. He bent back two loose pieces and charged back towards Bird with one in each hand. He raised one of the clubs over his head and shouted a warrior cry. The look on his face was terrifying, and Bird thought for sure he was going to hit him. But Ike froze in place, like a painting, then laughed.

“Catch a rat,” he said, handing over one of the wooden sticks.

Bird sighed and itched his collar bone again.

“Okay. Sure.”

Ike smiled and ran off, trying one door after another until he found one that wasn’t locked, then he disappeared inside. Bird ran after him but tried the next door. Locked. The next door. Locked. He skipped a bunch of doors and tried the one at the end of the alley that faced the way they had come from. It clicked open and he walked into the darkness.

“This isn’t a game,” he shouted back into the alley. “This is your idea of doing something fun.”

But Ike had already been consumed by the building, so Bird stood there and let his eyes adjust. Dirty furniture. A fridge leaning forward with its door stuck in the floor. A rusty oven. Abandoned, but not too nasty. He wondered if it might be a good place for him and Ike to stay for a while.

Then he saw it, a twitching movement by the stairs. The rat was half the size of a full-grown cat. He clenched the stick and took a few very slow steps in the rat’s direction. It stood up on its back feet. Bird froze. The rat held something between its paws, something it was eating. Then it turned and scampered lightly up the steps. Bird followed.

The rat kept going up, up, and at each landing Bird followed the rat to the next stairway. He went up four or five floors, to the very top, wielding his stick and waiting for a chance to bean that rat and win the game. But when he got to the top floor, it wasn’t there anymore. There was a door at the end of the hall, and it was cracked open.

Bird crept over the wooden floor, grimacing as each board groaned under his weight. He clutched the stick, no longer in attack mode. No, this was for defensive purposes only. There were no windows on that floor, only closed doors and the one barely opened at the end, the one letting through a beam of dim light. He looked around for a light switch but couldn’t see anything.

He got to the door and peeked inside. What he saw surprised him.

It was a spacious apartment, and light streamed through the windows. He could see the blue sky above all the surrounding buildings. The apartment was immaculate with shining hardwood floors, exposed brick walls and wooden beams in the ceiling. He crept just inside. He didn’t hear anyone. He turned on the light.

All around the entire apartment were rows and rows of paintings. Some were strange, with battle scenes involving mythical creatures eating the heads off of one another. Others were peaceful landscapes. But as he looked down the row, one caught him as a little strange. He walked closer.

It was a painting of his brother. His face was shouting a warrior cry, and over his head he held a wooden club, ready to bring it down. It was the exact image that Bird had just seen down on the street before they had agreed to play Catch a Rat.

“I’ve gotta show Ike,” he muttered, but when he turned to leave, the door was closed.

If you’d like to find out more about the importance of paintings in Virgil, check out the first installment HERE.

The old man stopped in front of Don, but he didn’t face him. He just stood there for a moment, staring straight ahead down Genna Street. When he finally spoke, anyone passing by would have thought he was speaking to the air and that Don was only an innocent bystander.

“They tell me there’s a man on this street who can get things done,” the old man said in a hoarse whisper.

Don chewed on his mustache and itched the point of his chin bone beneath his long, wiry beard. If Don could have done anything different, he would have chosen a house in Virgil that had a front porch. That was pretty much all he would have changed. He liked sitting outside, watching the traffic go by, checking out the girls. He never said anything to them, nothing like that, but he watched them closely as they passed, and they felt it, his gaze, louder than a lewd shout. Women in the area even started avoiding Genna Street. They didn’t know his name. They didn’t know one single, solitary thing about him. They just didn’t like how it felt to walk past that fifty-year-old man with the beard, always bending the brim of his low-lying ball cap and chewing on the sparse hairs of his mustache.

There was plenty Don didn’t mind about his place in Virgil. He didn’t mind the cats, even though they made the breezeway between his house and the next one smell like a litter box. He didn’t mind the honeycomb maze of alleys behind his house. Don didn’t even mind listening to Sheryl and Slim screaming at each other in the apartment above his, something he could hear with digital clarity when he was out front. Slim was the local pot dealer, and Sheryl was known to do a thing or two to make an extra buck. He didn’t mind hearing them shout. Sometimes it made him feel powerful, like he knew something about them that could be used at a later date. In Virgil you never knew what you needed or when you might need it.

But it was the lack of a porch that got him, because that meant if he wanted to sit outside he had to take out his blue lawn chair and sit it on the sidewalk, in the heat of the day, or the snow, or the rain. He didn’t like the weather, and he didn’t like how close everyone came to him when they walked by on the narrow sidewalk.

Don acted like he didn’t hear the old man, so the man cleared his throat and spoke again.

“That’s what they tell me,” the old man said when he didn’t get a response, still looking straight ahead. A few cars went by in the late morning heat, but the street was pretty quiet. It was going to be a hot day.

“People say a lot of things about this city,” Don muttered. His teeth were yellow with large gaps in between them. “I’d only believe about half of what I hear.”

The old man nodded and shuffled his cane as if he was going to walk on. But he didn’t.

“So which half are you?” the old man asked. “The half I should believe in or the half that’s make believe?”

“Depends,” Don said, leaning back in his blue chair.

“On what?”

“Depends on who you’ve been listening to,” Don said, but there was an edge to his voice now, and the phrase somehow turned into a question, as in, Who have you been listening to?

The old man turned and looked at Don for the first time.

“I’m looking for a man named Saul,” the old man said. “You know him?”

Don sighed, then reached up and put his hand over his mouth as if he was thinking real hard. He scratched his beard and he stared across the street to where the huge willow tree grew up out of the sidewalk. It was the only tree left on the block. He liked that tree. It reminded him of himself.

Don looked up at the old man.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Manny,” he said quietly, looking around. “Manny Maude.”

Don sighed, then, as if a switch had been flipped, and he gave Manny a large smile. A rush of nicotine-stained teeth appeared when his lips peeled back. He pulled a pack of Marlboro’s from his pocket, shook it, and slipped a cigarette out. He held it between his lips while rustling a small book of matches from the same pocket. The match popped to life, then sizzled, finally flamed, and he held it against the tip of the cigarette, taking a deep draw.

“Well, here’s the thing,” he said in the tight-lipped manner of someone speaking and smoking. Then he exhaled, and the smoke was a mirage, a cloud, an image inside a dream. There were epic tales in there, and the long lives of kings and the short lives of heroes. The city of Virgil was in there, for a moment, heavy and dark, but then the wind blew it away, and there was nothing but two men in a quiet street, and the heat that gathered, and the willow tree saying “Shhh” in the breeze.

Don started again.

“The thing is, yes, I’m Saul,” Don said, and Manny wasn’t surprised, although he was rather taken aback by the clammy feel of the man’s skin and how the clouds seemed to gather when they shook hands.

This story is part of a series of stories that have to do with the city of Virgil. If you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on, you can start with the first installment, titled “Shhh”. Check it out HERE.