Chapter 2

Sally moved closer to Harry as they walked down the city street. He walked using his staff like a walking stick. A dog wandered down the street in front of them, stopping to mark its territory on signposts, fire hydrants, and corners of buildings. The people in the street looked even creepier to her than the people at the homeless hotel. They looked at her with suspicion.

She’d seen lots of movies that claimed to show the ugly side of life, but the picture they presented paled in comparison to the real thing. Ill fitting clothes, dirty looking people, the surrounding filth, and horrible language beat on her soul. The people were so hard that it was impossible to feel empathy for them.

Happy Harry moved through the people in a slow comfortable pace. His smile and kind words evoked smiles everywhere that he went. He flirted outrageously with old ladies, going so far as telling one that if she weren’t married he’d bed her in a minute. Sally had watched in shock as the woman preened and stood up straighter. Harry had winked and continued his way down the street.

Across the street were a couple of men pushing shopping carts filled with aluminum cans. One of the men stopped by a trashcan and dug through it, adding a couple of cans to his cart. When he was done, he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Sally shivered in disgust at the idea that he had just dug through a trash can and then touched his face with the same hand.

She had to hurry to catch up to Harry when he started to cross the street to where the men with the shopping carts were hard at work digging through trashcans. She frowned when she realized where he was heading.

One of the men looked up and shouted, “Hey, Happy Harry. How are you doing?”

“I’m doing fine. I see you’ve got quite a haul today,” remarked Harry as he glanced over at the cart.

“I’ll get enough for an all-you-can place,” replied the man as he scratched the back of his neck.

Sally looked at the man and saw that he had some kind of skin disease. Major areas of his arms had skin sloughing off. She wondered if he had leprosy. Seeing where Sally was looking, Harry asked, “Have you been to the Fusion Foundation Clinic?”

“Yeah, they gave me a tube of cream to put on my arms. I’ve been doing it for a week, but it doesn’t seem to be helping any,” answered the man. He rubbed his arms and flakes of skin drifted away in the breeze.

A shiver of disgust crept up her spine and Sally made sure that she was upwind of him. She didn’t know if what he had was contagious, but she wasn’t going to risk it. She watched as Harry talked to the men for a good ten minutes about the price of cans, where they were staying, and how others were doing.

When Harry finally left, she fell into step beside him. Looking back at the two men, she asked, “Why spend so much time with them?”

“They’re working rather than begging. I just check with them occasionally to make sure that everything is going okay in their lives,” he answered as he glanced over in her direction. He added, “Simple health problems turn deadly when you live out on the street. A simple bout of the flu can kill you. There are lots of things to make you sick out here. Skin diseases, hepatitis, pneumonia, and exposure to chemicals are everywhere.”

“His arms looked horrible,” remarked Sally.

“Princess, lots of things look horrible, but aren’t. That’s a simple psoriasis, looks ugly but it’s not dangerous. It’s the ones that don’t look that bad that are dangerous.”

She stopped to look at him while wondering what he meant by that comment. She raced to catch up hoping that he would explain his comment, but he was busy waving to other folks. She looked down the street and saw a woman pushing a shopping cart filled with clothes, bags, and other stuff that she couldn’t make out.

Harry stopped at an alley and, with a smile, said, “Come with me.”

She followed him down the alley amazed at how filthy it was. The buildings on each side of the alley seemed to reach up to the sky. They made it a dark forbidding place even in the afternoon. When they walked past a restaurant, her stomach threatened to lose the lunch that she had eaten an hour earlier. The odor was overpowering.

She screamed when a rat crossed the alley in front of them. In a tone meant to reassure her, Harry said, “Don’t worry. They won’t bite a person that is awake unless they are rabid. They do bite when you sleep though.”

“God, that’s gross!”

“If you ever just look at one, they are kind of cute. Of course, stay away from them. They have diseases and can be quite vicious.” Harry walked along ignoring the rat that had backed up against the wall and glared at them.

Sally moved even closer to Harry afraid of running across other rats in the alley. She screamed when a cat burst out from behind a dumpster and nearly climbed onto Harry. He laughed at her nervousness and said, “It’s just an alley cat.”

He led her to the rear of an abandoned warehouse. The red bricks were crumbling, windows were broken, and the cement steps up to the loading platform were cracked. The door, missing a hinge, was stuck open. They entered into a large room that must have been part of a storage area. Scattered across the floor were old clothes, newspapers, and blankets. Near the center of the room was a five- gallon metal paint can that was surrounded by milk crates and wood boxes. There was even a metal lawn chair that had seen better days. She asked, “What is this place?”

Harry didn’t answer immediately as he looked in one of the rooms off to the side. The wall of the room had glass windows overlooking the large area, but the windows were covered with newspapers rendering them useless. The room next to it had the windows broken out. He said, “Some street people have taken over the building. I’m here to see one of the residents, but she’s not here yet.”

He sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall, prepared to stay there for an hour. She looked over at the boxes in the center of the room and asked, “Why aren’t you sitting over there?”

“I don’t know who owns them. Some people react violently when you use their property,” replied Harry looking over at her hoping that she was smart enough to know better than try to convince him that they could use them anyway.

She looked at the boxes, crates, and chair wondering who would possibly react violently to someone sitting on them. She asked, “Why would they get upset?”

Harry laughed at the comment satisfied that she was at least curious about it rather than denying its existence. Shaking his head, he knew that she hadn’t yet come to grips with the world that she had entered. Taking a deep breath, he answered, “They’d get upset because that crate, box, or chair is all they have.”

Amazed that someone would consider a box taken out of the trash as a possession, she said, “That’s so sad.”

Trying to make a point, he replied, “You don’t even have that much.”

She was about to say that she had lots of stuff at home, but realized that she left home behind. What would she take from home if she could only have what she could carry? It was a sobering thought. She didn’t even have a purse, having lost it during her second day on the streets. Just thinking about its loss, brought back the memory of her anger on discovering that it had been stolen.

Sighing, she said, “You’re right.”

Leaning back so that the wall supported his back, Happy Harry started singing a song. Each line was delivered in the same rhythm punctuated by a heavy ‘huh.’ Sally listened to the song wondering when he was going to get to the end, but it just kept going. Curious, she asked, “What are you singing?”

Harry stopped singing and answered, “It’s an old Gandy Dancer work song.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

To while away the time, Harry talked about the days when men called Gandy Dancers performed maintenance of the railroad tracks. Their job was to straighten tracks, keep them the proper distance apart, and replace the railroad ties that were rotting. The men would sing songs to make the time go by faster and to coordinate their work. Eight to fourteen black men often made up a team and were watched over by a white foreman. One of the workers would take the position of caller and lead the others in song.

Harry told about how he had loved watching them at work when he was a kid. The huge strong men moving rails with long levers while singing was an amazing sight. Their movements gave the impression that the men were performing an intricate dance. As far as Harry was concerned, it was a sad day when the Gandy Dancers were replaced by machines in the 60s.

Harry said, “There used to be lots of work songs. Songs to straighten track, songs to break rock, and songs to drive steel. The Gandy Dancers were the last of the songsters.”

Sally thought about it, but didn’t understand the significance.

After a moment of silence, Harry said, “Something important died that day. That was the day when work and song became separated. Because of that separation, people working together became isolated from each other. Each person is working in his or her own little world. Life is a little sadder today than it was then.”

“Wow, I never thought of people working to music,” replied Sally. She tried to imagine people in an office working to music, but there wasn’t a song appropriate for an office place. She realized that there weren’t any jobs left today in which teamwork required such precise synchronization.

Harry sat back and started to sing another song. He taught her the words so that she could sing the counterpart. Together they sang the song through twice before there was the sound of someone moving up the stairs of the old building. The pair stopped singing waiting for the person to show up.

Harry stood when the bag lady came into the room. Surprised to see him standing, Sally stood as well wondering what was going on. She examined the woman, taking in the weathered face, worn clothes, and lack of makeup. There was a dull look to the skin that suggested dirt, but it wasn’t obvious. It was impossible to imagine the woman living in the suburbs.

The woman made her way over to Harry and said, “Well, Harry. It’s about time you came to visit me.”

“Lucy, wild horses couldn’t keep me away once I heard you were back,” replied the Druid with a smile as he hugged her.

The woman hugged Harry back and then broke away to glance in the direction of Sally. Her smile turned into a frown as she asked, “Who’s the girl?”

“Lucy, I’d like you to meet Sally. Sally, this is the Lady Lucy.”

Sally nodded her head wondering what the relationship was between Harry and Lucy. Lucy wasn’t satisfied with his answer and asked, “So who is she?”

“A runaway girl,” answered Harry. He looked over at Sally and then said, “I’m showing her the life of the homeless and then I’ll show her the life of a whore. She’ll have to decide which one she’ll follow, but at least she’ll have the facts.”

Smiling at Harry, Lucy shook her head and said, “You’ve become too serious since you became a Druid.”

Harry looked at Lucy and put an arm around her. With a smile, he said, “Not so serious that I won’t spend some time with the first lady of the streets.”

“You know what I like to hear,” Lucy said as she pushed her cart into the room and waited for Harry. Her hands moved up to remove a layer of clothes while waiting for Harry to join her in the room.

Harry turned to Sally and said, “Knock on the door if anyone comes in.”

She nodded, not understanding what was happening. Harry went into the room and closed the door behind him. She sat down on the floor, her back to the wall. Leaning her head back so that it was resting on the wall, she found that she could hear sounds inside the room.

Time passed slowly. After about a half an hour, she realized the noises coming through the wall were those of passion. Curious, she stood up and looked at the window. There was a small hole in the newspaper that she could see through. She put her eye to the hole and looked into the room. Light filtered through a window in that room so that she could see what was going on inside.

She gasped as she realized that Harry was having sex with Lucy. Sally stared at the sight feeling guilty at peeping, disgusted at the fact that they were engaging in that act in such horrid surroundings, and turned on at the same time.

Her hand snaked between her legs, without her conscious will directing it. She started to rub herself and then realized what she was doing. She pulled her hand away and sat down on the floor thinking about what she had seen. It had never occurred to her that homeless folks might have a sex life. Why had Harry insisted that she come with him? Was it so that she could see this? She didn’t know and that bothered her.

Staring at the empty room slowly got on her nerves. There was a thin layer of dirt on everything. A number of windows were broken and a few of those were covered with plywood. The intact windows were so dirty that it was impossible to make out what was on the other side of them. The odor of human waste hung in the air. It was hard to distinguish trash from prized possessions.

It seemed like forever before the door of the room opened. Harry stuck his head out of the door and called, “Come on in, Princess.”

Hating the fact that everyone called her Princess, she wanted to argue. Curiosity won out. Sally stood and entered the room finding Lucy sitting on the floor near where she had been when Harry had been having sex with her. Her face colored at the reminder of what she had seen. The scent of sex hung heavily in the air.

Lucy noticed the blush and said, “A woman has her needs, even a bag lady like myself.”

“I guess,” replied Sally. She waved a hand around to point out the surroundings and asked, “Here?”

“Did you expect us to rent a room at the Ritz?” asked Harry with a twinkle in his eye.

Laughing wildly, Lucy managed to say, “Like that’s ever gonna happen.”

“Did I say something stupid,” asked Sally wondering why they were laughing at her.

Harry sat down on the ground next to Lucy and placed an arm around her. Leaning against the Druid, Lucy said, “This is as nice a place for sex as anywhere else and better than most. We’ve got alleyways, but there just ain’t much privacy there. ‘Sides, they’re even dirtier than here.”

They had walked past cheap hotels that offered rooms for five dollars a day. It seemed to her that they could afford to spend five dollars on room. She asked, “What about the cheap hotels that we passed on the way here?”

Harry laughed and said, “Half of the rooms don’t even have doors. It’s too dangerous for women to go into them. Believe it or not, this is a palace compared to a lot of places where people live.”

It was a depressing thought. This place didn’t even seem as nice as the homeless hotel that Harry operated. She asked, “So why don’t people stay at your place? That seems a lot nicer than here.”

Lucy answered, “His place is nicer than here, but it doesn’t have the same kind of privacy. Besides, I couldn’t stay in one place all of the time. Most folks go to stay there when they really need a place to stay while recovering from an illness or if the weather is really bad. The comforts are minimal, but it is safe and warm. Everyone gets checked on, so if you’re sick that’s good.”

Harry said, “We have some people that come there to eat dinner. They work during the afternoon washing sleeping areas with bleach and water, eat dinner, and then leave to sleep elsewhere.”

“Why wouldn’t they sleep there, too?”

“We’re dealing with people that move outside the bounds of society. Some are mentally ill and others are just loners. Each one is an individual and proud of their individuality. If you take them out of the street and put them in a nice house in a good neighborhood with a paying job, they’ll end up on the street within a month.” Harry was quiet for a moment as he thought about it. Finally, he said, “Can’t force them to change and I wouldn’t do it if I could. We can only help people in a way that they can accept.”