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The Secret Lives of Heroes



Starring Mickey Flaves as the man

who wished he’d never paid attention



“The reason animals never make eye contact is because they don’t want to know what’s coming.”

–Ted Nugent, Rockstar and Big Game Hunter



Filmed in Rotoscope



you who were a hero in some revolution

you who teach children

you who drink with calmness

you who own large homes

and walk in gardens

you tell me

why I am on fire like old dry garbage.

From the “Black Birds Are Rough Today”

by Charles Bukowski – 1988





Metal cranes broached the man-made horizon like the crooked vertebrae of dead giants, poised to topple into the Port of Los Angeles and swamp the great ships of the line transporting containers filled with the necessities of life. Here and there, these containers rose on taut lines. Semi-trucks, the life-blood of the port, hauled them from ship, to yard, their final destination to fuel the lives of the masses somewhere beyond the port sprawl.

Like herd dogs, tugs nudged great cargo ships into position as smaller, sleeker, racing boats dared fate, physics and the tidal swells. Helicopters hovered above suspect vessels. Blue green water met the battleship grays of the seemingly desultory landscape. Lines of smoke curled from a thousand smokestacks. Jets of flame shot from a hundred others, as oil refineries burned off excess fuel.

Mickey Flaves sat on the bus stop bench, reflecting on how much the Port of Los Angeles was a great beast that devoured, digested and disgorged. At times it seemed as if nothing went on in the port; the laconic periods a time of rest, as if the entire beast paused to burp, and perhaps scratch. Then seconds later, the greater machinations would resume and, Mickey would see the small things he’d missed by attempting to examine the whole.

Like now. A cruise ship hove into view as it rounded the mass of warehouses on the Western sea wall. The ship had always been moving, but because he’d been concentrating so totally on the beast itself, he’d missed the detail of two-thousand souls returning from three days of fun, sun and over-indulgence along the coast of Encinada, Mexico.

Mickey sighed. He detested the details of a life, the patterns in movement, even the impulses that carried most people through their day. He detested them, because he knew them. Each and every person’s decisions, comments, futures, and desires were broadcast and Mickey Flaves was tuned in. He liked the beast that was the port because he could watch, and not know. He embraced the inherent privacy, keen to allow his eyes to feast, while his mind found solace in the silence of machine and momentum.

City Bus 544 stopped in front of him. Rattling and squeaking, the door shooshed open. Three Hispanic women trudged off toward the Hotel Puerto where they’d spend the day washing linens and dreaming of a better life.

Mickey focused his gaze on the ground near his feet and concentrated on self-editing. He had enough problems with his own life. He didn’t need to re-live everyone else's. Still, he’d been caught off guard by the beast, and now knew of Consuela and how her husband had beaten her the night before. He’d returned drunk from papas and beer. When she’d cursed him for wasting the family’s money, he’d stolen her breath with three left hooks to her stomach, the bruising hidden beneath an extra layer of clothing.

There’d been a time in Mickey’s life when he’d cared about such things. Once he would have delivered justice with a two-by-four. Once he would have become invested in the woman’s life, a flesh and blood guardian angel to watch over and prevent abuse.

But humanity was a different beast.

"Are you coming hon?" asked the driver.

Mickey didn't even answer. Instead, he backed away and began walking. The woman shook her head, closed the door and eased the bus forward. Mickey watched it depart, then refocused his gaze on the sidewalk beneath him. He didn't see the bus suddenly turn, plow through a Honda sedan and a Ford pickup, finally coming to rest against a metal fence. He didn't see her heart rupture, but he'd known it would happen. Seeing was overrated when you already knew the future.

Mickey plodded on. He glanced once again at the port, and let his gaze be drawn to a blue and white warehouse with Chinese writing, hundreds of nondescript containers piled five-high. Thirty-nine Chinese were inside of one, their fears transcending their voluminous incomprehensible thoughts. Mickey didn't have to speak Chinese to understand. Starvation. A hell of a way to die. They'd been there for five days, and each day they'd lost one of their own. Mickey could probably do something. He could get involved and save them. But he didn't want to. They were none of his business, so he edited them from his thoughts.

Two hours later, he'd walked the thirty blocks to The Spot. Without looking up, he entered the open front door and sidled up to the bar. He grabbed a napkin from the neat stack by the martini straws and placed it in front of him. He heard activity around him, but didn't dare try and see what it was. He didn't need to. They were the usual crowd of disabled longshoremen, crack-whore housewives, biker roughnecks, truckers in-between jobs, a pusher, and whatever tourist decided to slide into a bar that was made famous by the late, great, alcoholic beat poet Charles Bukowski.

Bartender Bill slid a martini onto the napkin, knocked twice on the bar to indicate it was a double, then snatched up a pad to mark down the drink. Mickey would pay his tab at the end of the month by allowing Bill to cash his disability check— as did most of the nooners.

Mickey hurled the drink down his parched throat, and pushed the empty glass forward. This one returned with three knocks. He'd take his time and savor the triple.

The vodka was half-gone when Bill said, "Emmett was looking for you."

Mickey stilled for a moment, then answered, "I don't do that anymore."

"Just the same, he was here," was Bill's reply, before he moved away to drown another nooner's nightmares.

Just the same I don't care mumbled Mickey to himself. There'd been a time when he'd tried to use his curse for good. That's when he'd met Emmett. He'd once believed in his ability to be beneficial, something to be tendered in exchange for his humanity. But that was before he'd lived through a malignancy of tears and blood and sorrow. From gift to curse, his ability tumbled into a twisted stair of broken limbs and the ignorant dead.

Never again.

But a drunk crashed into him, sending his drink shattering across the bar. He couldn't help but turn, and in the turning heard everyone's thoughts—

Motherf*cker owes me money.

Please let her want me.

Please God let him give me a pass.

He's hiding money in his sock.

They scream better when I ventilate.

Mickey spun back to his isolation at the bar, his self-medicating alcoholic mind conjugating the verb to ventilate and wondering how that applied to people. Against his own wishes, he found himself spinning the stool slowly around, his eyes like a searchlight.

A desperate voice beamed.

Beating down dog.

Beating down dog and leave me alone.

As if in reply from the same mind.

Onetwothreefourfivezixseveneightnine...look at her over there in her pretty pink dress. Look at her in her f*ck-me pumps. Dog wants to eat. Dog wants to lick. Beat down. Beat down. Beat down dog! Skin can melt, you know? I like it when it melts. I like the taste. Like butter.

"Sorry about that, Mick," said the bartender as he placed another drink in front of him.

Mickey spun back around, attended his empty glass, and nodded. He hated these moments of broadcast dementia when he became privy to the inner workings of the insane. He could ignore someone's fate, he could ignore what was beyond his control like the fate of several dozen Chinese, but could he ignore a person whose entire reason to exist seemed to be to hunt and destroy another. The thoughts left him feeling stained and ugly, more accomplice than witness.

Mickey stared into the mirror and caught the monster in full glare.

Skin can drip if hot enough.

Mickey concentrated on his glass— eyeball to highball and tried to forget what he'd already witnessed. Along with the thoughts had come the recollection of the events that had fueled them.

A woman nailed to the wall.

Her gasoline drenched clothes in conflagration.

A metal pail waiting beneath to catch the solid made liquid.

Mickey recoiled at the scene, closed his eyes, and drowned what remained of his cognition with alcohol.

***

Mickey awoke from a nightmare. He sat upright. His anger soared. How dare they make him feel this way! How dare they dictate a behavior and preach its validity! What the f*ck was responsibility to him? Why was it that he was on the hook just for knowing that they were going to die? Did he owe them something? Just because he knew, was he supposed to stop him?

Three hours later he managed to fall asleep. Fitful and filled with dark brooding dreams, when he finally awoke again, he was far from rested.

Against his will, he found himself wanting to meet the Dog. Part of him wanted to tame the beast, while the other wanted to kill it. Another, more sane part of his mind wanted to run from it.

The next morning Mickey boarded the bus. He noticed the new bus driver. In twenty-seven years the man would die surrounded by his loved ones at a family celebration. His heart would explode— a bad diet as deadly as a pistol, albeit a slower, malingering killer.

As they pulled away he glanced at the warehouse. The container hadn't been moved. Five more people had died in the night. Why was he letting himself care?

Mickey hit The Spot at Noon.

As he leaned into the bar, a hunchbacked man with long curly hair grabbed him from behind. Mickey spun and met the man's wild blue eyes and was immediately assaulted by both the man's stench and his fear.

"Mickey, you gotta save me from the men in black hats. Where are they?" Gripping Mickey's collar, "Tell me where they are."

Emmett Morgan had been a successful financial consultant who'd awoken one morning only to discover that he was too afraid of the world to even leave his home.

"Let me go, Emmett," said Mickey, wrenching the man's hands free from his collar.

Back then Mickey had been a Fortune Teller. Emmett had hired him to help him cure his agoraphobia. After several months of Mickey's tutelage, Emmett had once again become a functioning part of society, his every movement foretold by Mickey. There'd been days when Emmett hadn't moved until Mickey had foretold the possibilities. Always calling. Always begging for the outcome. It had been too much. One too many nights staring into the loser's eyes had convinced Mickey that there were things he'd never be able to change.

And now it seemed as if Emmett called the city's alleys his home. His disheveled hair contained bits and pieces of trash. His clothes were a uniform gray, the result of worn-in dirt. "But they'll have me without your protection. The men in black hats will kill me."

As soon as Mickey saw the vision, he pushed the man away. "Just go home. Stay off the streets." Emmett liked to watch little boys and girls. He'd never touched, but he liked to watch.

"But you have to help me," screamed Emmett.

Customers spun in their seats. Several backed away, making the bartender snatch a bat from behind the bar.

"Enough of that. Either keep your voice down, or leave, Emmett."

Taking advantage of the moment, Mickey slid through the crowd, gazing down at people's feet. He found a place at the other end of the bar. He stared down at a napkin and knocked three times. His drink arrived and Mickey downed it quickly.

Only when he heard Emmett whine as he was pushed out the door, did Mickey relax and settle into a day of drinking. At half-past three, a thin man pushed into the bar. Mickey glanced to check and see if this was the one.

Beating down dog. Beating down dog. Beating down dog.

The words rang metronomic in Mickey's mind, almost as if they were a mantra meant to keep the rage at bay. The words were like a chain that kept the beast from leaping free.

The man glared at Mickey for a moment, then moved on to the bartender. And that moment was enough. Mickey saw it all. Insanity had the man in a permanent grip. Seventeen bodies lay strewn upon the man's past, each murder different, yet representational of an unrelenting unfulfillment. And the man was on the hunt for number eighteen.

Dogman ordered a beer and sipped. His eyes wandered across the lives of the patrons in the mirror behind the bar. Occasionally, he'd stare at a man or a woman. Based on his history, his Dog didn't have a preference.

I've never been in one of those things before, those triangles, came the slimy thought of Dog as he gazed towards the crotch of an old woman whose best years had been during Kennedy's reign in Camelot.

Mickey recognized the line from a Bukowski poem. Funny how the raunchy one-time-postman, alcoholic poet influenced both their lives. Not just the bar they were in that was the impetus for the movie Barfly, but the need to use mechanism to domesticate passion. For Mickey it was the averted gaze. For Bukowski it was drowning his need in alcohol. For Dogman it was the mantra- Beating Down Dog. And it was that epiphany that made Mickey finally show interest, the commonality of Bukowski. Dogman stood, pushed himself away from the bar, and headed towards the door. Mickey tossed back what remained of his drink, and hustled after.

Although the man's past was clear, the future remained a fractal distillation of the possible. More often than not, Mickey saw himself as a part of that future. What he couldn't divine was if the act of following the Dogman made Mickey part of that future, or if he'd always been a part of the future. Until he was sure, he'd bear witness to the man, and along the way try and keep from becoming accomplice.

They headed north up Pacific Avenue. Dogman wore a black Misfits T-shirt with a white maniacal mouse on the back. His jeans hung loose from narrow hips. Black steel-toed boots encased feet that seemed too heavy to propel him forward. Yet propel they did, Dogman down the center of the sidewalk. People stepped aside. Pets avoided him. The wind blew elsewhere.

Mickey followed from twenty feet back. He shuffled crab-like, his gaze to the ground, trying to avoid interaction with anyone else. He'd glance sideways every now and then to make sure he was still following. When he did, he'd receive snatches of future and thought. Nothing more than bothersome details of people's lives. Nothing at all like Dogman.

He almost lost Dogman in a crowd waiting at a light near Seventh Street. A wedding party was exiting the Croatian Friendship Hall at the same time that the light changed, congesting the street corner with nearly fifty people. Mickey stood tall and glared around him, bombarded by thoughts, desires, passions and possible futures as he swiveled around, trying to see his target through the crowd. The newly-married couple was bound for divorce within two years. The groom's father would die the following week in a traffic accident on the 405. The sixteen-year old flower girl was pregnant. What the young man with the dirty fingernails was thinking was unspeakable.

And there it was.

Beating down dog.

Beating down dog.

Dogman strode down Seventh Street, away from Pacific. In front of him hurried a man in his sixties, his arms loaded with two bags of groceries. When the man stopped to shift the load, Dogman stopped as well.

Mickey shut his eyes as a possible future played out involving a claw hammer and the old man's eyes. Dogman had found his prey and would soon release the beast. Mickey thought about leaving. He could return home, tap his personal collection of vodka, and watch one of his Three Stooges tapes. Somehow Moe, Larry and Curly calmed him, maybe because their brand of violence was friendly.

Mickey felt his legs make his decision for him as he began walking towards the still figure of Dogman. He certainly didn't want to interact with the Dogman. He didn't want to become the future. Mickey watched as his hand went out and prodded the Dogman's elbow.

Dogman spun, his gaunt face and hollow eyes appraising the intrusion. Mickey gritted his teeth as he watched his own demise beneath the steel toes of the creature's boots.

"F*ck do you want?" growled Dogman.

Mickey opened his mouth, but nothing came out. What would he say? Don't kill the old man? Not only was it an obvious thing to say, but Dogman would wonder how Mickey knew his intentions. He wanted to shout beat down dog, but the man wouldn't understand the words coming from him.

"F*ck you doing touching me," snarled Dogman. "Do you know who I am?"

Mickey nodded. His mouth finally worked. "Yes I do."

He watched as the man's eyes narrowed, a future shaping with jail and the electric chair as the end game. Then Dogman sneered.

"Sure you do little man. Now move along before you get hurt." Then Dogman turned and watched his target shuffle into his home, careful to lock the door behind him.

A firm future involving a triangle of broken glass from the back window and a table lamp through the old man's stomach premiered within Mickey's mind. Mickey backed away. What had he been thinking? This wasn't his business anyway. Just because he knew, didn't mean he needed to act. He reminded himself that he should be editing all of the input he received. He scolded himself for caring, but was reminded of the thirty-four Chinese still desperate in their container. How many people had Dogman killed? Sixteen? How many had Mickey let die? Ten. How many more would die before he did something about it?

Mickey stood riveted to the sidewalk as Dogman stalked around the side of the house, unable to run, scream or call for help. He heard a window breaking. One minute later he heard the first scream. He knew what was next. As he turned to leave, he heard a dozen gunshots from Pacific Avenue. He knew it all and hated himself for his self-editing. Numbly, he stumbled into the night.

At the corner of 21st Street and Pacific, he saw the reason for the shots. Emmett lay in a pool of expanding blood, the scene bathed in red and blue police lights.

"Homeless guy," said one policeman to the other. "Wonder what he did?"

"Don't have to do anything to die," said the other, kneeling and counting the bullet holes perforating the dead man's chest. "Wrong place. Wrong time."

Mickey allowed the past to replay, just as he'd seen it when he and Emmett had been together before.

A '73 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme convertible low-riding past Emmett standing on the sidewalk. The four gangbangers in the car wore wife-beaters and black stocking caps pulled low over their brows. The two on the passenger side pulled out nine-millimeter pistols. Sideways, they emptied their clips into Emmett's chest. The other two laughed. "Target Practice," mouthed one. As they sped away, Emmett fell.

The men in black hats had found him.

Mickey had tried to save him. He'd told the man to stay off the streets. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and trudged home. Even when he helped, he didn't help. Maybe it was best that he kept to himself.

Passing the port, he looked toward the warehouse. Two more had died, bringing their number down to thirty-two. Clearly something had gone wrong. Whatever arrangements they'd made were no good anymore. Without help, they'd all die soon. Their fear was so intense, he sobbed for a moment, their desperation washing over and through him. But then he reclaimed his composure and reminded himself that it was none of his business.

By the time he'd reached home, poured himself a tall vodka, and sat watching Moe poke Curly in the eye, he knew he'd made the right decision. Knowing had nothing to do with responsibility. He threw down his drink and poured himself another. He was just a part of the machine. Like Dogman. Like Bukowski. Mickey remembered how they'd bridged commonality earlier in the day. Each of them was part of the machine. Dogman did. Mickey saw. Bukowski told. If only Bukowski was here to tell someone about the Chinese. So sad. No tickee no laundry.

Mickey winced as Larry embraced a steam iron.

He didn't see that one coming.

***

Story Notes: Yet another L.A. story. This one was also set in San Pedro where I lived. One thing I tried to do here was to be true to a character. Let’s face it. Not everyone is capable of being a hero. Not everyone has what it takes, whatever that is. So what if you knew when someone was going to die? What if you could read the future? It’s a common plot in movies and television and it seems like everyone is capable of being heroic. I drop the bullshit flag on that. Very few people are and those that aren’t are usually as haunted as Mickey. So how do they live with it becomes my story.