Shinbone Sam
Shinbone Sam had collected nearly six dollars that day. Ever since he had moved to a spot near the courthouse, his average daily receipts had gone up, even though he was but a small pile of rags with a bobbing head and a cloth hat for a collection plate. His technique was unusual. He briefly and humbly smiled at the passersby who looked at him and said, “God bless you.” After being blessed so sweetly a few times, it was hard not to give in.
He was tired now. It was close to the time of day when foot traffic thinned out and motor traffic picked up, and all the noise confused and frightened him. It didn’t help that everything more than a few feet away looked kind of fuzzy, which included the cars, so he gathered his cushion, rolled up and pocketed his money hat, and wobbled three blocks before turning onto West Foundry Street. He soon turned into an alley between a used bookstore and Iron City Eats and sat on a stoop by the back door of the restaurant. The sun had warmed him on the sidewalk, but it was cool in the shady alley, and he wrapped his coat around him tightly before leaning against the brick wall and dozing off.
He didn’t know how long he had been there when the door opened and Tara Gaines came out with a plate of meat and vegetables, gently shaking his shoulder to awaken him. She gave him the plate and sat on the stoop, evaluating him as he chewed slowly with his few teeth. It was going to be a hard winter on Sam. She wondered how many more cold winters and hot summers he could take.
She said, “How was your day, Sam?”
He pulled his rolled-up hat from his pocket and handed it to her. She counted up the change, added a half-dollar to it, and gave him four dollars back. The rest she would put in a shoe box in her closet. Sam would spend every penny he had on booze every night, but she had talked him into a savings plan.
She said, “This is very good. You’ll have enough money saved to buy a better coat soon.”
“Can’t I have more?” he asked gently.
“No, we agreed. Remember why you opened your savings account, Sam? You got rolled twice, they beat you up and took all your money. Now they can’t get more than four dollars. And you get things you need, like your shoes.” His first managed purchase had been new tennis shoes.
He turned his head slightly and gazed at the brick wall across the alley. His eyes began to lose all focus and she knew she was losing him. She said, “It’s going to be cool tonight, Sam. Will you sleep in the shelter for me?”
But it was too late, his breakers had tripped. After a while he said to nobody, “Pay your paper bill.” Then his eyes got wider, and he said, “Vulcan!” Vulcan, the mythical god of fire and forge, overlooked the city in the form of a giant cast iron statue on the side of Red Mountain. Tara had moved to Birmingham because she hated the humidity in Baton Rouge. She had moved to Baton Rouge from Chattanooga after stopping off there in flight from Georgia, where she had been wanted for vehicular homicide for over four years now. She was twenty-one and still waiting tables in restaurants that would pay her in cash and ask no questions.
She watched Sam get up and wobble off without another word. She took the plate back into the restaurant, and when it closed for the night, she took off her apron, put on a sweater, and caught the bus for the four-block trip home. She normally walked but, like Sam, she had done pretty well on tips that day. She had to walk the last block from the bus stop anyway, though, and once in the building, she climbed two stories because the elevator had been busted for years.
Tara had been Betty in Chattanooga, Jane in Baton Rouge, and now she was Sharon. She turned down her hallway and saw Dwayne. He was a gangly fourteen-year-old kid who had a crush on her, and if he wasn’t playing basketball, he waited for her outside his door at this time of the evening. His parents didn’t like it because she was white, but she flirted with him a little, and it made his day.
She had painted her apartment a sunny yellow and furnished it with things she found at thrift shops, a sofa with a bright floral slipcover, a television, an end table, and a lamp. She had started out with a mattress on the floor until she woke up one night with a roach on her face, so she bought a single bedframe with a headboard made for a kid. When she could afford it, she would buy something with drawers.
She washed the smell of the restaurant away in the shower, put on an oversized tee-shirt, and half-filled a plastic cup with the world’s cheapest wine. She settled on the sofa and turned on the television with a remote held together by scotch tape. Boy George was a guest on a talk show, and she marveled at his makeup, but she settled on a movie starring Katherine Hepburn and a leopard. After her wine she fell asleep, and when King Kong and Godzilla got into a loud fight and woke her up, she found the remote, turned off the TV, pulled a blanket over her, and went back to sleep. The bed didn’t sleep any better than the sofa anyway.
The next day a law student came in for lunch and hit on her. He clerked for a downtown law firm and had found Iron City Eats walking to and from the courthouse. She had seen him there before, checking her out, and this time, he got up his nerve and asked her for a date. So, that weekend she put on a dress, caught the bus, and met him at an Italian chain restaurant out on the edge of town. He talked about how he was going to take the bar exam early and try to land a job in Houston. Houston was the hot spot for new lawyers, he said. She listened to his nervous chatter, knowing he wanted to take her home, but her building was too appalling. She thought about going back to his place, so she turned the conversation toward his living arrangements. He shared an apartment with another guy, he said. A cop.
She let him drive her to her bus stop in his little blue Toyota, gave him a peck on the lips, and said, “This isn’t going to work. But thank you for a nice dinner.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“We’re from two different worlds, and the bridge is down,” she said as she got out of the car.
It was that time of night when her neighbors were watching loud TV, or banging pots and pans, or engaged in domestic violence, and she could hear it all behind the thin doors as she walked down the poorly lit hallway. After getting her hopes up she slept alone after all, and she spent Sunday curled up on the sofa reading a romance novel from the used bookstore.
Monday evening she was back on foot, foregoing the bus because the fares added up and the walk did her good. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the cool weather had passed, for it was that time of year when fall was just teasing. She had broken a sweat by the time she reached Maggie’s corner, and Maggie was definitely dressed for the heat, with her breasts about to spill out, her mini skirt barely there, and her long legs perched acrobatically on red spikes. She was just getting back to work after a customer had beaten her badly. Tara could still see bruises under the makeup, and she could see Maggie wasn’t getting any younger.
She stopped and said, “Hi, Mags, how are you feeling?”
“Better and broker,” said Maggie. “How ‘bout you, girl? You gettin’ any?”
“Of course not, you’re luring all the men away. You still have bruises, Mags, you’ve got to be more careful.”
“Come on, kid,” said Maggie. “I was walking these streets when you were still on the tit. It’s a professional hazard.” Tara gave her a warm smile and moved on.
In a couple of weeks, the late night and early morning air began to take on a different feel, and if you caught it before traffic got heavy, a different smell. Tara found Sam a big, heavy, barely used coat with a warm hood on it. She swapped him for his old coat, which went in the dumpster, and she tried time and again to get him to go to the shelter on cold nights. But he didn’t like the shelter. It was too busy, too close, and sometimes he ran into mean people he avoided on the streets. So, he slept under a bridge with an assortment of other oddballs, and she vowed to find him a little tent or something when there was enough money. The coat had taken all of Sam’s money and a some of hers, too.
Sam made it through the winter, but in the spring, he didn’t show up for supper two days in a row, so after work she bought a half-pint and caught a bus out to the underpass. Many homeless people were sheltering there, some for the night and some permanently, and the place was littered with rusty grocery carts, moldy blankets, and makeshift housing made of whatever could be found. She milled among them, looking for Sam or at least someone she knew. Zeke watched her suspiciously from a dark spot under the bridge, but she never talked to him because he was hostile. She finally spotted Ima, wearing a coat that practically swallowed her whole. It was over seventy degrees. Tara went over and sat down beside her.
She took out the liquor and gave it to Ima, who snatched it up greedily and chugged it until Tara made her stop. She said, “Ima, have you seen Sam?”
“Died,” said Ima, moving to tip the bottle again. Tara intercepted her and took it away.
“You can have it back when you tell me about Sam. Why did he die, Ima?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged under the coat. “He slept over there,” she pointed. “Woke up dead.”
“Was he hurt?” asked Tara. “Did he get beat up again?”
Ima shook her head vigorously. “Died a-sleeping.” She reached for the bottle and Tara let her have it.
Tara said, “That’s a familiar looking coat you’re wearing, Ima. It looks good on you.”
“It’s my coat,” Ima said, pulling it close around her.
“Yes, it is,” said Tara. “Sleep good, Ima.”
Dwayne wasn’t in the hallway when she came home. She went through her routine, shower, wine, sofa, but no TV this time. Slumped against an oversized pillow, she sipped her wine and contemplated how foolish she had been to come to Alabama after she had gotten all the way to Louisiana. She had gone to the bus station in Baton Rouge not sure where she was headed and saw the bus for Birmingham was loading. The fare was affordable, the climate was more to her liking, and it had been years since her picture had been published. Nobody from the general public would recognize her now. Those were the things she had told herself at the time.
Now, just a hundred miles from the Georgia line, she wondered if she wanted to be caught. There had been a moment back in Chattanooga when she had been seconds from arrest, or so she had thought, and an odd, consuming relief had washed over her. Maybe on some level she wanted that feeling back. Maybe she wanted the peace of knowing it was all over, out of her hands, beyond her control.
Or maybe she had merely been hasty in choosing a bus.
Copyright Walker Bramblett 2022
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