Someone's Father or Uncle

Amy stepped of the train as the Broad Street Subway let her off at Philadelphia's City Hall stop and mixed her way into the more than 100 other people who were all moving like a flood to the steps. While most moved down the interchange concourse that lead to the “L” train, she moved towards the escalator in the other direction, along with a small handful of other people that took her out into the City Hall courtyard.

It had rained the night before, so several of the homeless population took refuge in the long concourse. By this time of day, most of them had headed back outside to their usual meandering, panhandling or playing street corner preacher. However; there were a few who remained in the concourse, and it was one of these that she took a bit of pity on.

Besides, he looked just a little bit like her uncle Bob, although she knew couldn't be, as he worked in one of those towering buildings just a few blocks away and wore fresh $1,000 suits and was always clean shaven. Granted, this guy wore a suit, if you wanted to call it that, as it was layered in dirt and grease and had an unkempt beard that jetted out in all directions. He was in a sitting position wrapped up in an old Army blanket holding a sign written out in black crayon: “Hungry. Please help.”

All amounts of change were scattered without care around a small box, Amy gathered up the coins, put them in the box, while the bills, she folded up and put into the chest pocket of his greasy suit.

“There you go, don't want anybody taking all that money, right?” Amy looked at the man who didn't respond in any way good, bad or indifferent. “Right?”

“Out of the way!” Someone said angrily as they pushed past Amy, even though there was plenty of room to pass by. “Just some useless homeless dude anyway.”

“Hey!” Amy let out a yell. “This man could easily be someone's father or uncle!”

“I don't think so,” at that the passerby turned their nose up and moved towards the escalator and ascended into the courtyard above.

“Are you?” Amy looked the man in the eyes. “Are you someone's father or uncle?”

The man gave Amy a dead stare.

“Someone you want me to contact?”

Again, with the dead stare.

“Listen, I need to go. I'm going to be late for an important appointment.” All she got in response was the same dead stare. “If you want, I have to come back this way, I can pick up a cheesesteak and fries for you. It might not be for a couple of hours though. OK. I'm going.”

---

Amy stood behind the receptionist's desk at the office where her uncle Bob worked, talking with the receptionist.

“I'm trying to locate my uncle,” Amy said, “I haven't seen him for a few months, and I came into town for an appointment somewhere else and decided to stop in and say hello.”

“What's your uncle's name?”

“Robert Vance,”

The receptionist scrolled through the employee list on her computer. “We have nobody working here by that name.”

“You must,” Amy insisted, “he's worked here for at least 20 years!”

“Well, he doesn't work here now,” the receptionist scrolled through the employee list just to be sure.

“He must.”

A man barely in his mid-twenties stepped out of what seemed be an executive's office dressed in a suit and tie and walked up to the receptionist's desk. “What seems to be the problem?”

“She's claiming she wants to see someone who doesn't even work here.”

“What's the name?”

“Robert Vance.”

“Oh,” the executive sighed, “that guy.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Amy asked

“After 20 years of loyalty to our firm, he just up and quit.”

“Why?” Amy asked.

“That's all I can say.”

“When?”

“That's all I can say.”

“A guy gives you 20 years of his life loyally, and you don't investigate why he just up and leaves?”

“Oh,” the executive let out a sigh, “we know why.”

“So, tell me?”

“I can't.”

“Yeah,” Amy said, “probably because it will make you look bad. And you don't want that, now do you?”

“No. We. Don't.”

“Of course not,” Amy was getting weary of the game she was being made to play, a game that was getting her nowhere fast.

“When he left, he left a whole office full of personal items,” he looked up to see an intern passing by, he grabbed the intern by the arm despite the intern being in a hurry to rush some much-needed legal papers to one of the offices. “I want you to drop whatever foolishness you are doing--.”

“Foolishness?” the intern held the papers that were marked as urgent up so the executive could see what they were. “I need to get these to Mr. Ashford right away!”

“I don't care about that,” the executive took the legal papers and shredded them in the shredder, down the hall, Mr. Ashford looked on in disbelief as he watched the legal documents he was waiting on being shredded like some unwanted scrap of paper. “I'm more interested in you getting the box of personal effects for employee number 2222 out of the storage closet.”

“Employee number 2222?” Amy barked out. “Is that all my uncle was to you after 20 years of service, a mere employee number?”

“I'm sure Mr. Ashford will have something to say about you shredding those legal documents!” the intern whined.

“I don't care!” the executive barked at the intern, then turned to Amy. “2222 was his employee number.”

It took the intern a few minutes to locate the box and come out of the storage closet. The box was full of trophies, awards and a picture that was of Amy and Robert. She stare at Robert's image specifically. “What happened to you?”

“That's what we would like to know,” the executive began to usher Amy towards the main door, “what happened to our so-called star employee?”

Amy knew that her uncle was up for a promotion to executive level a few months back, just before she lost contact with him, did the young executive have anything to do with that? Why did she never see him before and why were things so different than she remembers?

“Aren't you going to take this box of junk out of here?”

Amy looked at the achievement awards. She left the box sitting there but took the picture of her and her uncle out. “I wouldn't call any of this junk. I'll have my uncle come by and pick it up.”

“We tried to contact him to come in to pick it up in many ways.”

Amy had a view of City Hall, under which the sprawling maze of the subway station lay in which sat the single homeless man sat along one of the corridor walls. “Maybe you didn't try hard enough. Or maybe you didn't even want him to come back to begin with.”

---

Amy made her way back down to the long corridor where the homeless man was still sitting. As promised, she brought him back a cheesesteak and fries. It didn't seem like he moved much, if at all.

“Hey, are you OK?” Amy asked, she decided it was time to check for a pulse, there was one, but it wasn't as strong as it should be.

The man stare back at her, but this time it wasn't a dead stare, but a look of recognition. He spoke in a low whisper, but that little whisper rang out louder than the voices that echoed up and down the halls. “I know you!”

“How? How do you know me?” Amy tested.

“You were here earlier,”

“Yes,” Amy said softly, “I was here.”

“But that's not how I know you is it?”

“It's not?”

“You're...,” it was on the tip of his tongue, he knew it was, “you're my sister's daughter... Amy. Your name is Amy.”

“But I need to be sure of who you are.”

“I'm your uncle Bob.” The man looked at the picture in Amy's hand. “That's you and I from... from....”

“From when?”

“From a better time for me. From before they took my job from me.”

“They fired you?”

“It's not as simple that,” Bob said, “I was looking forward to getting promoted to an executive position. But this fresh out of college brat came in and settled into the position without even having the proper qualifications to even be an intern.”

Amy looked at her uncle. “Would you know him if you saw him?”

“I only dealt with him once, but I would know him if I saw him again.”

Amy pulled out her cellphone, on which she clandestinely took a picture of the 20something executive that she was talking to during their not so private meeting. As there were several people in the picture, she intentionally pointed to the wrong guy. “Is this him?”

“No, the other one. He should be nothing more than an intern. But because he was the son the president of the corporation and was promised any position he wanted; he targeted the one I was up for. Despite my working for 20 years to get the position; he got it in 20 seconds.”

“So, he had you fired.”

“Worse. He had me knocked all the way down to the intern position that he was supposed to take.”

“Why didn't you try to fight it?”

“How do you fight the son of the company president, even though you know he's in the wrong?”

“So... you just quit?”

“Technically I didn't quit, I stepped out to think up a strategy on how to deal with him for what was to be an hour. That hour turned into a day, the day a week... and so on.”

“I see. But what if you went back?”

“Looking like this?” Robert barked, as he looked at the suit, it was greasier than he could ever imagine.

“Not looking like that, no. Is there a place around here where you can go to wash up?”

“I know of a place,” Robert led the way.

---

Within a little over 2 hours, Robert had taken a proper shower and had the three months' worth of facial hair scraped off. During, which time, Amy had gotten him properly fitting clothes. Granted, it wasn't a $1,000 suit, but it wasn't that greasy old rag that he was made to wear either. Rather, it was a decent pair of slacks and a golf shirt with a nice pair of shoes.

Robert and Amy stood outside of Mr. Ashford's office where he and the “executive” were having a rather heated conversation concerning what went on earlier. Robert hid behind the wall and listened in quietly.

“You do realize that legal document you so proudly shredded cost us a 60-million-dollar contract?” Mr. Ashford barked out.

The executive let out a laugh. “Who are you to yell at me? I hold a position over even you!”

“The only reason we tolerate your presence is because we need your signature on various documents.”

“So, I'm someone you seriously can't do without! Isn't that a crying shame?”

“We need your signature, not you. If Robert Vance were to come walking through that door right this second, I would welcome him back with open arms, put him in the position that is rightfully his and demote you all the way down to first day trainee where you belong!”

The executive let out a smirk. “Judging by the last time I saw him, I doubt if he's in any position to come back.”

“Wait. You know where he is?” Ashford asked.

“Oh,” the executive smirked, “I've always known where he is.”

“Do you now?” Robert's voice rang out from behind the executive as he leaned into his ear.

“What the--?” The executive began to tremble. “How...how long have you been there?”

“Long enough to know that I'll be put back into the position that is rightfully mine,”

“We'll see what my father has to say about this,” the executive whined.

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” Robert smiled at the executive, “I already had a talk with your father about what you did to me.”

“Really?”

“He asked me to personally deliver a certain paper to you as my first duty back under his employment,” Robert held out a pink colored paper, “I want you to clear your stuff out of my office by the end of the hour.”

The executive looked at the clock. “That only gives me 5 minutes!”

“Then you'd better get started.” Robert pushed the 20something guy out the door towards his corner office that looked out over the city.

Ashford put his arm over Robert's shoulder, “I had a feeling earlier today you would be coming back.”

“But how? Even I didn't know I even had a job to come back to until a while ago.”

Ashford looked over to Amy. “I knew that when I saw Amy here earlier and take only the picture and leave all of your awards and trophies, that you'd be back for them sooner or later.

“Listen,” Amy said, “I need to get on home. But I'll be back in town next week, if you want me to visit you under better circumstances I can.”

“But dad!” the 20something guy barked into his phone. “If you kick me out of the house, I'll have no place to go!”

“You should have thought of that before you tried to screw over one of my top employees. It's a shame I just now learned about it.” At that the line between the 20something guy and his father was cut both figurative and literally.

“Where am I to go?”

“In the subway entrance by the escalator that leads to the City Hall Courtyard there is an old Army blanket you can have,” Robert smiled, “I won't be needing it anymore. Goodbye.”