Chapter 2

Dante headed over to the fire pit and started to sit down on a cinder block. One of the other men said, “Don’t sit there. If Jewels sees you on his chair, he’ll hurt you.”

“Oh.” Dante moved to a different spot and started to sit down.

“Don’t sit there. You don’t sit on other peoples places,” the same man said.

Looking around at the collection of cinderblocks and egg crates placed haphazardly around the area, Dante asked, “So where can I sit?”

“Over on one of the railroad ties. That’s the public seating.”

Dante sat down on one of the railroad ties while wondering what kind of world he had entered. He went over everything that had happened since that first afternoon in his studio and tried to make sense of it. He was lost in his thoughts went someone nudged him and said, “Hungry Man, he’s talking to you.”

“Hungry Man?” Dante asked looking at a homeless man he didn’t recognize.

“That’s your name,” the man said.

“I’m Dante.”

“You’re Hungry Man, the starvin’ artist.”

When William had said that he’d get a new name, he hadn’t realized that the young man was serious about it. Deciding that this was a battle he couldn’t win, he accepted the new name. Trying to look a lot more confident than he felt, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Okay, I’m Hungry Man. What do you want?”

From across the circle, Boy Scout asked, “So what are you doing here?”

“William hired me to make a statue of Happy Harry,” Dante answered.

“So you are a real artist. That’s interesting. I wonder if Harry knows why you are here.”

Starting to wonder the same thing, Dante said, “I assume he does.”

The crowd of men chuckled at his statement. He said, “When it comes to Happy Harry and Half Feather, don’t assume anything.”

“So who is Happy Harry?”

“You met him,” Boy Scout answered looking across the circle at Dante with amusement. He figured out that William hadn’t told Hungry Man anything about Harry and hadn’t told Harry anything about Hungry Man. Things were going to get interesting around camp the next morning. Smiling, he added, “Well, you better get busy earning your dinner. How are you at peeling potatoes?”

“Okay, I guess,” Dante answered wondering why he needed to peel potatoes to earn his dinner. He was supposed to be creating a statue of Happy Harry.

“Well, come along with me and I’ll show you to the kitchen.”

Dante followed the man to the food shack. It was a small place and crowded, but everything necessary to a kitchen was in there. Pointing to an egg crate, Boy Scout said, “You can sit there while you’re peeling the potatoes. You look like you’re a little shocked by everything. The chance to sit here and think while you’re peeling potatoes will do you a world of good.”

“Thanks. I’m kind of confused. This isn’t what I expected,” Dante said.

Boy Scout handed him a potato peeler. Noticing the man’s hands were all scarred up with huge calluses, he asked, “What happened to your hands?”

“I’ve been working in stone. It tends to eat up the hands a bit. You bust loose little chips and sometimes they cut you. Holding the hammer and chisel all day tends to produce calluses,” Dante said looking down at his hands. He was worried that he’d lost too much sensitivity in his hands and wouldn’t be able to feel the clay under his fingers. He wondered if it was too late to back out of the commission.

“Oh. Better get to work on those potatoes. I hate undercooked potatoes in my stew,” Boy Scout said as he stepped out of the shack. He turned back and watched as Dante picked up a potato and started to peel it. He wondered why William had chosen him to make a statue of Harry. A second thought occurred to him. He wondered why William wanted a statue of Harry.

While he worked, Dante decided that Boy Scout had been correct about one thing. The chance to work on something as simple as peeling potatoes was a good way to get his thoughts in order. He considered his life. Since the day his girlfriend had announced that she was moving in with his best friend, Dante had been alone. Hiding in his studio, he had thrown himself into his work. The problem was that his work had been uninspired. The pieces he had produced were junk. Something essential was missing in his work and he didn’t know what it was.

One morning he had woken up and looked at a misshapen hunk of clay. He had been preparing to make a mold of it in order to cast it. It was trash and he knew it. He had realized that he had lost it. Searching for some other direction to pursue in his artistic quest, he had selected stone. After two years of effort, he hadn’t created a single piece that he was willing to show anyone. Frowning, he decided that he had learned one important fact. He wasn’t any good in stone.

When he reached the last potato, he didn’t want to leave the privacy of the food shack. After peeling it, he started to carve it with the potato peeler. The only face that came to mind was that of Boy Scout. Idly, he worked over the potato while his thoughts were still on his life’s situation. He decided that he was a fraud and that he should give the check back to William. For him to waste such an opportunity while another artist could do a better job just didn’t seem right to him.

Finished with the carving, he looked at it. The features of the homeless man had been captured in the potato, but something was missing. It was a representation of the man, but it was lifeless. Even worse, it was ugly. Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “It’s just a potato.”

Boy Scout came into the food shack and said, “I hope you’re done. Jester Bob here needs to peel some carrots for the stew.”

Dante stood and put the last potato in the pot of water. Boy Scout noticed the unusually shaped potato. He picked it out of the water and looked at it. After a minute, he said, “Nice likeness of me. Of course the expression looks like someone just stuck a carrot up my ass.”

Jester Bob grinned and said, “Now you did it. I’m going to be sitting here peeling carrots, with a hard-on, while imagining a carrot stuck up my ass.”

“Jester Bob, you are almost as bad as Merv the Perv,” Boy Scout said with a chuckle.

Dante looked over at the potato and considered the comment about it. The criticism had an element of truth about it. He had caught the wrong moment of time in it. Thinking further, he realized that he hadn’t caught a single moment of time, but a series of moments for different parts of it. The result had been a hodge-podge of different expressions shoved together.

Shaking his head, he left the shack and returned to the railroad tie. He sat down and looked at the men around him. He realized that he wasn’t seeing with his artist’s eye. He’d been seeing the superficial features of the people around him. It was as if he was shying away from seeing too deeply into the world around him. Had the loss of his girlfriend and best friend stolen his ability to look beyond the surface? Was he afraid of what he’d learn if he looked too deeply into the soul of his subject? The questions sent chills down his spine.

He tried to remember the features of Lady Lucy. To his shock and dismay, he realized that he just had a general impression of her. All he’d noticed was her skin, her hair, her eyes, and the scars on her face. He couldn’t recall the shape of her face, the line of her nose, or her lips. He knew she had ears, but couldn’t recall even looking at them. He couldn’t say what kind of smile she had or how she looked when laughing. He did recall that she had laughed a lot.

He looked at the men and women moving around the homeless hotel. Each was unique in appearance. Some were tall and lanky. Others were short and squatty. A few were fat, but even they were different in how they were fat. There were people who were large all over while others had pot bellies. Some moved with grace while one fellow with a twisted spine moved in a rough rolling gait that was painful to watch.

There were all different kinds of noses; some were bulbous while others were thin. The faces were fat, thin, square, and round. Sprinkled onto the canvas of the face were moles, freckles, wrinkles, scars, and defects. Together, all of those things gave each person a unique face.

He tried to remember the Walt Whitman poem, but all he could remember was the first line, “I sing the body electric.” He recalled that it was a celebration of the human body, but couldn’t remember the details. He remembered studying anatomy in art school. It had been a dry subject without the kind of passion expressed in the Whitman poem. He wondered if he had ever had that kind of passion about his subjects.

It was hours later when Boy Scout announced, “Come and get it.”

Dante stood in line behind a dozen other men. More men lined up behind him. One at a time they received a bowl of stew, a slice of bread, and an apple. The portions were generous. The stew was good, but the bread was a little stale. Turning to a guy seated next to him, he asked, “Why’s the bread stale?”

“We get two day old bread here. In some of the richer areas, they get day old bread. This is a poor neighborhood. The folks will buy day old bread to save a little money so we get the two day old bread. We really can’t complain, much. At least we get bread,” the man answered. He went back to eating his stew.

“You mean we buy two day old bread?”

“Buy? No, the stores donate it to us,” another man said. He pointed into the stew with his spoon and said, “They give us the meat on the day it expires. If they didn’t give it to us, they’d have to throw it out the next day. Of course, it’s still good. We even get stew made with steak rather than stew meat.”

Dante stared at the bowl of stew trying to decide what that meant in terms of freshness. Since he never checked the expiration dates on the food he bought, he decided that he’d probably been eating lots of meat that he had purchased on the day it expired. He dug in and ate the rest of the stew. It tasted good.

He asked, “What’s for breakfast?”

“Day old donuts, bagels, or fruits. It’ll be your choice which one you get,” the man said. He turned to study Dante for a minute before he said, “I’m Rocket Man. What’s your handle?”

“They’ve been calling me Hungry Man,” Dante answered with a shrug.

“Ah, you’re the starving artist. I heard this is your first day on the streets,” Rocket Man said.

“Why are you called Rocket Man?” Dante asked.

“I was a janitor at NASA before the booze cost me my job. It was a pity too. It was the best job I ever had.”

“So who are the rest of these guys?”

Pointing to the food shack, Rocket Man answered, “You’ve met Boy Scout. He was an Eagle Scout before he discovered crack back in the day when it was common. I imagine that he’ll be moving back into society before long. The Fusion Foundation will help him get a management position in some small company somewhere.

“No one has ever seen Grumpy over there smile despite the fact that he travels around with Jester Bob. I’ve never understood why they travel together. Why would a man travel with one of the funniest guys in the world if he doesn’t know how to laugh?”