Lost December by Richard Paul Evans

Author:Richard Paul Evans [Evans, Richard Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781451628005
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

Twenty-Five

Under the Las Vegas streets resides a silent,

subterranean village of the city’s homeless.

“It’s not a bad life,” one of the tunnel dwellers said to me.

“Two walls and a roof overhead. Beats sleeping in the park.”

Luke Crisp’s Diary

Living in the park was getting more untenable. One night I heard a drug deal going down just on the other side of the bush. Fortunately for me they didn’t know I was there. Another night, I woke to the sound of a police radio. I peeked out of my space to see three patrol cars parked on the near side of the park. Someone had been stabbed to death. That’s when I decided to move.

The next morning I went into a thrift store and bought a flashlight with batteries, a sleeping bag, an inflatable cushion, a package of toilet paper and a bowie knife. I strapped the knife to my leg and fastened the sleeping bag and cushion to my pack. In my walking I had passed the opening to one of the flood tunnels about a mile from the park. As I walked toward the tunnel, I felt like I was walking into the mouth of a beast—one that might swallow me forever.

I turned on my flashlight and went inside. I passed two people—one drunk, the other passed out—about twenty yards from the entry. I kept on walking through the darkness. Not counting the rats, I didn’t see anyone else, though I passed several places that stank of urine or feces. About a hundred yards from the tunnel’s entrance I found a place where someone had spray-painted HOME SWEET HOME.

I laid my flashlight against the concrete wall, then made a nest of some scraps lying around, cardboard and newspapers, inflated my pad and rolled out my sleeping bag. I turned off the flashlight, and lay back. Before I fell asleep, a thought went through my mind—the same thing I had thought in Saint-Tropez: If only Dad could see me now.

During the time I spent underground, I met scores of people, including a couple who had brought in a bed with a headboard. They also had Ansel Adams prints leaning against the tunnel’s concrete wall—all the comforts of home. I don’t know if the tunnels ever flooded, they didn’t while I was there, but most of the time a small stream of runoff ran through the center, which we used to bathe.

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