Chapter 9

We worked for a couple of months before we had another encounter with a homeless person. Out of the blue, Shaggy came up to us, smiling. We were two blocks from where we had first encountered him. He looked different, somehow. He noticed me looking him over and grinned. “Meeting you, talking about my mother, it gave me a wakeup call. Believe it or not, Mom is still alive. She’s eighty-four and resides in an assisted living complex, in her own small apartment. It took me three hours by bus, but I went to see her, the first time we had laid eyes on each other in sixteen years. She cried so hard the attendants wanted me to leave, but she stopped them.

“I thought you were dead,” were the first words out of her mouth. We talked for three hours, and enjoyed a meal together. She begged me to call her and asked me to give her my phone, so she could put the number in. I hadn’t had a phone in ten years, so I lied, and told her I’d left it home, and wrote her number down. I came back here, cleaned up a little, ended up working as a day laborer about three days a week, more when I can get it. I took my first day’s pay and got a cheap cell phone. She was the only one I’ve called. We talk every other day. Her attendant told me one day it had taken years off her, that now she’s animated and takes an interest in things. She told me Mom bragged on me! Me!

I’ve been living on the streets most of the last twenty years. When I heard what she said, I cut my hair, enrolled in AA classes, and thanks to my AA contacts, found a rooming house geared towards people like me. I have a real address for the first time in years. My boss said if I kept up the job I was doing, he would put me on full time when he had an opening.”

He still had the long hair, and beard, but they were neatly trimmed, and his clothes, though worn, were clean, and he had on brand new boots. I shook his hand, and Jen hugged him. He wanted to show us something, so we followed him, Jen walking ahead. I asked him in a low voice if the sobriety was sticking. He blushed. “I’ve slipped, twice. My sponsor got me the first time, my boss the next. He put me in the construction office and made me work the next day. I was hung over, and it was hot, but I would have died before I quit. I threw up three times and drank a gallon of water, but I made it. That was six weeks ago. The pull is still there, but It’s getting easier to control.”

We reached the destination, 9th Street, the street where we first met him. He went to an old woman sitting on the curb by a shopping cart full of clothes and junk, and pulled her up. She had two mostly gray braids going down her back, wearing an old dress with tattered tails. She was tiny, I bet she didn’t weigh seventy-five pounds, but she walked with her shoulders back, and looked you in the eye.

“This is Pocohantas. She’s a full blood Indian, and a good person. When you got me to sing it set me to thinking. I want you to listen, and if you like what she does, I want you to give her what you gave me. It will be worth it.”

She hadn’t said a word, but when he finished she stood as tall as her four foot ten inch frame would let her, and started chanting, in her native tongue. Some homeless guys had a few trash can fires going, so she was bathed in fickering light, making her shadow grow and shrink as people moved around. The song was rythmic, reaching cresendoes of high, quavering notes, before sinking back to the chant. It sent chills up my spine, and I fought to hold the camera still as I filmed her. Two guys came up, sat on the curb beside her, and started thumping a cardboard box and a metal bucket it time. It added to the mysticism of the moment. She pulled a tin can out of her cart, one she had filled with pebbles and scrap metal. It made a very effective rattle. She was still shaking it seven minutes later as the last notes faded.

We didn’t look behind us, and when I heard clapping I looked back in surprise. There must have been three dozen people standing there. One woman held her three year old child up, and the girl dropped a five in her rattle. Her can was full of bills and change in no time. The guys on the ground shared in their bounty, the money going into the large bucket. Jen was so impressed she hugged her, giving her a twenty. I added another. It had been worth it. She walked back to her cart, stately and proud, and sat down on the curb again, pulling the money out and counting it.

“Is that safe?”

Shaggy shook his head no. “If the two guys who played percussion for her weren’t here, someone would take it away from her. Boom Boom is too old to scuffle, but he carries a really big knife. Tin Can is just bat shit crazy. he won’t stop swinging until he’s knocked out, and he starts back up as soon as he wakes up. They’re like their own little village, even got a little shack built back behind that empty lot. Nobody, and I mean nobody, messes with their things.”

We walked away, in deep thought. We were pretty quiet on the way home, and Linds picked up on it quickly. “What happened?”

I set up the camera, patching it into my 50 inch television. First, we showed her Shaggy, singing the nursery rhyme, then Pocohantas and her drummers. She sat quiet when it ended, moisture leaking out of her eyes. When she recovered, she grinned and hugged Jen. “When are you going to finish it?”

“Finish what?”

“This ... documentary? On homeless people with hidden talents, you know it makes a great visual. If you could get them to say a few words about their lives, do a little background, people would eat it up.”

Jen and I just looked at each other, before bursting into grins and grabbing Lindsey and doing a little circle dance. When we calmed down I shocked her.

“It’s a great idea, Linds, but we can’t do it by ourselves. We need someone to run sound while I film, for more depth. Know anyone, say for instance a Girl Friday at a corporation who is in charge of the audio/visual section, who would like to help?. You’ve been balancing mikes and correcting camera angles for a couple of years now, you would be perfect. Plus, this way we keep it in the family.”

She was all over it. We even kicked names around for fun. The most popular was Family Films, but we found out later someone already owned the name, so we registered it as My Family Films, which we liked better anyway. So it became a habit for us to take one weekend a month and scout for talent. We often used Shaggy as a guide, so far he had remained sober, and he knew almost everyone on the street, at least that part of town, anyway.