Fragmented Tales from a Roadside Storyteller

The Sunday weather was just cool enough to make us crave hot drinks. A friend and I ditched our textbooks, but before we made it inside our favorite coffee shop we saw a man sitting across the street on the grass with a camouflage backpack on his lap and all his other earthly possessions assembled at his feet in an assortment of plastic bags. He wore several t-shirts under a denim jacket and stared at us as we approached. When he smiled, his face was almost as wrinkled as his clothes. This is his story.

“William Grant. Leas’ that’s the name they traded minen fer at the hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. I bought this pack. It’s a nice pack. I don’t need much. I jes’ want what I’m entitled to. I jes' tell people I’m an ex-convict then they leave me alone. It doesn’t matter, lose either way. I went into that government office building and raised hell. Somebody else gets my check and spends my money. I don’t get my money, I just get jail time. Either way I lose.

I visited the nuns there. I liked the nuns, but they switched my films with somebehdy else and somebehdy else is banking on my check, what I’m entitled to. I have a bullit in my back. Makes my arm not work sometimes. And when they pulled out my films, they said that they ain’t a blasted thing wrong with me. Even sent me a letter from the government. I was supposed to get 488 dollars a month after going to West Point hospital. After the in-between conflict. The one after Korea, before Vietnam. Hit from behind. The bullits ricocheted. West Point Hospital people, they saved my life. The place in Washington D.C. couldn’t do a thing for me. Nearly died. Couldn’t get the bullit out though. Now all’s I got is the state disability. One hundred eighty-eight dollars a month. People try to give me money. But I don’t want anything from nobody. I got money.

I go to the donut shop every morning. Can’t taste anything anymore, but I go. Can’t remember much anymore, but I remember the one lady thah’ serves me every morning. Thah’s good.

Couldn’t stay with my daughter. She and my wife left for New Orleans. My daughter’s husband hit her. I saw her face all black on the side. He stopped when he saw me watching in the window, but he knew I saw. She didn’t want me to leave, but I left in the night. Years ago. I don’t remember when.

That Missouri check. Cleveland, Ohio. Them nuns. I still visit them. Used to. Those religious people never help. That priest jes' thinks I’m crazy. I take that thormine in the liquid form at the drug store. It’s for crazy people. Those religious people jes' pass me off to the next person. Don’t need money. I’ve got money. That Missouri check…Tennessee isn’t what it used to be.” He paused and looked at us from under the heavy folds of his eyelids. “I might not remember you, you know.” He lifted the brown cowboy hat to scratch his creased forehead. “Maybe I’ll remember, but…prob’ly not.”

After forty-five minutes, he still held the same cigarette butt in his left hand without having taken a single drag. On his knuckles ran letters in faded blue ink: H-A-T-E. He laughed in bitter tones above the traffic looking over the fields toward the local veterans’ memorial. I knew none of the statues there looked like William Grant.

___________________________________________

A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of William Grant.

I wrote this piece of short-form nonfiction several years ago, and thought I would share it since I don't think it's ever been posted here before. 

God bless the outcasts and may we have the tenacious love to be his hands and feet.