Tales From The Street

Moonlight bathes the alley. A dumpster obscures a gaping hole in the wall of the condemned building. Beyond the hole is darkness, a quiet, uninviting stillness.

From the street, piercing the silence, a squeaking sound so consistent it could be set to a metronome. It gets louder and louder, until a man enters the alley pushing a shopping cart. He enters the hole in the wall, pulling his cart with him.

The Chesterfield Apartments.

Six stories tall and over 100 years old, the once illustrious brick and mortar residence now stands empty, cracked, and crumbling. Most people would never consider going inside, but Albert Grimwald isn’t most people.

Mentally challenged, socially rejected, and known only as ‘Grim’, he is one of several homeless people who reside in the area. Most of his home-challenged acquaintances are willing to live in cardboard boxes in the alley, but not him. He likes real walls, brick walls that create a feeling of safety.

Apartment 9 is on the main floor. It doesn't function, but it has a ceiling and walls ...and that’s enough. In the kitchenette, empty wine bottles cover the countertops. In the bathroom sits a claw-footed cast-iron tub that houses a solitary goldfish. Grim shakes fish food into the tub. “Are you hungry?” He smiles at his fish. “I love you, Mike.”

The sun is up. Grim and his cart emerge from the gaping hole. His cart holds most of his belongings, including blankets and other useful items, but there is one belonging that never goes in the cart. It’s the urn containing his mother’s ashes. The ‘courtesy’ urn provided by the crematorium is nothing more than a tin can with a screw-on lid. Kept in a make-shift cloth purse, attached to a long twine strap, Grim wears the urn like a necklace, never taking it off.

Every morning, Grim leaves through the alley, passing the other homeless folk in their boxes. Most of them leave him be, but there’s always one person who insists on saying hello. He calls himself Sacramento Sam. Grim doesn’t understand him and would rather he keep to himself.

Sam calls out from his box. “Hey Grim!” Grim ignores him and picks up his pace. Sam calls out again, “Have a good damn day!”

Anxiety mounting, Grim escapes the alley to embrace the sunny warmth of the open sidewalk. This is where he likes to be, out and about. He’s a man of the town.

Maria Lopez, owner of Main Street Confections, is outside her shop giving a patio table a wipe-down. She notices Grim is approaching and gives him a cheerful wave. “Good morning, Grim!”

He parks his cart along the building wall, pulls out his broom and dons a tattered, black top hat. “Good morning Miss Lopez. May I sweep for you today?” She looks on him with compassion. “Of course you can. Will you be having the usual, sir?” He smiles, “Yes please. I will. Thank you.” He proceeds to sweep the storefront’s sidewalk, meticulously. Afterward, Maria returns. “Would you like to wash your hands?” He's bashful. “Yes please.”

Maria offers a compassionate hand on his shoulder. “You know you can take all the time you need.” He understands what she means.

By the time he leaves the bathroom, his face is clean and his hair is combed. Maria shows him to a table where a donut and a cup of coffee are waiting for him. He sits down eagerly, proclaiming loudly, “Maple bar with bacon crumbles and coffee, black!” Maria walks behind the counter to the wall-mounted TV and changes the channel from the news to cartoons.

As Grim enjoys his breakfast, he pulls a small black book and a pencil from his inside jacket pocket, smiling thoughtfully as he writes in it.

Knowing full well he can’t sing, Grim stands at a public fountain with his top hat on the ground ready to receive tips. Who will be the first to pay him to stop singing?

Sure enough, two bars into Doris Day’s ‘Que Sera Sera’, an irritated man walks up and throws his pocket change into the top hat. “Please stop!”

Grim stops and looks around to see if anyone is watching. He sees a young woman with her young daughter. They’re looking right at him. He’s sure to make it look like the man really hurt his feelings.

The young woman sends her daughter over to drop some cash in his hat. He offers the girl a kind smile and breaks back into song.

Later, at the end of the day, Grim is all smiles at the grocery check out. A plastic wrapped sandwich and two tall bottles of wine sit on the counter. He’s earned it. Tonight, he’ll enjoy his dinner in the park.

The river flows through his park. It’s what makes it his favorite one in town. It’s a little further from home, but the walk is worth it. His preferred bench sits on a hilltop next to the river bank. He sits peacefully, turning a small plastic sharpener over his pencil’s tip. It’s somehow cathartic, the splintering sound, the falling of the shavings.

He writes in his book: Today was a good day. In celebration he takes a drink from his bottle.

In the alley behind the apartment building, a team of Hard Hats are rousting the Box-Dwellers. Sam is up in arms with a Worker. “What do you think you’re doing? We live here man!”

The Worker doesn’t care. “Not my problem gramps. It’s my job to clear you out.” He pushes Sam out of his way. “Clear out people! It’s time for your degenerate asses to relocate!”

Sam is incensed, but packs his box anyway.

The sun is going down over the park, and Grim finishes off bottle number one. He’s thinking about cracking into bottle number two when a group of college ‘bros’ walk up. It’s clear they’ve been drinking.

One of them, in particular, looks like he’s ready to pick a fight. He grabs Grim’s cart. “Hey, old timer! What’s going on in here?” He starts rifling through Grim’s stuff while his friends cheer him on.

Grim stands in protest. “That’s mine! Stop!”

The man reacts in mock surprise. “You stepping up to me?” The man knocks Grim down. “That’s what I thought.” He pushes Grim’s cart down the hill.

The young men rejoice while Grim watches his belongings roll away and crash into the rocky river bank below.

Grim turns to the man, his eyes alight with anger and sadness. The man just laughs …until he notices the urn hanging on Grim’s neck. “What’s that?” Grim knows right away what the man is referring to. He clutches his mother in his hands.

“Aw. Is it something special?” The bros erupt with laughter and egg him on. “Go get it!” “Yeah! What is it?”

Grim is terrified and pleads with them. “No! Please don’t!” The man tries to wrestle the urn from Grim’s grasp. In the scuffle, Grim’s small black book falls from his pocket. The man sees it and picks it up. Grim is mortified as the man begins reading from its pages.

“Today was a good day.” The bros laugh as the man selects another page. “Page one! ’Today mother died’. Aw.”

Instinctively, Grim responds by punching the man in the face.

The man laughs and throws the book on the ground. “Oh! What have we here? A fighter?” He mocks Grim. “You want to go MMA, old man?”

Grim retreats. “No.”

The man attacks Grim, beating him without mercy. The beating lasts so long, the man’s friends start to feel uncomfortable. “Kyle! Let’s go man! You’re gonna kill him!” Kyle stops. “So.”

Exhausted, bloodied, and in pain, Grim pulls himself up onto his knees. Kyle kicks him, sending him tumbling down the hill. “Pathetic.”

In the alley, the cardboard boxes and their residents are gone. Yellow caution tape surrounds the perimeter of the building. A Hard Hat is on the phone with his boss. “Building is all clear. We’re headed home for the night. We’ll get it done first thing in the morning.” He ends the call.

From out of nowhere, Sam runs up to him and yells, “Hey!”

The worker is irritated. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah man. I have a friend who lives in there.”

The Hard Hat is stern. “I’m sorry. You can’t go in there.”

“Yeah I get that.” Sam persists, “But did your guys check for people inside before you taped it off ?”

The worker assures him. “Yes. The building’s been cleared. There’s no one inside.”

Grim is laying in the rocks amidst the spilled contents of his cart. He wakes with a rattled gasp of air. With great effort he gets to his feet, refills his cart, and drags it up the hill. Stopping for a breather at the top, he finds his black book on the ground, as well as bottle number two, waiting for him on the bench.

The bottle is almost empty by the time Grim reaches the alley. He mumbles in drunken aggravation, tearing through caution tape. He doesn’t notice the emptiness, not even the lack of a greeting from Sacramento Sam. He pulls his cart through the wall and makes his way in the darkness, passing by mounted explosive charges.

Entering his apartment, he puts the empty bottle on the countertop, lays on the floor and falls asleep.

The ringing of a back-up-beeper wakes Grim from his deep, drooling sleep. Outside, construction and fire safety crews are moving into place. A tired looking foreman stands with a cup of coffee, right next to a technician with a detonation plunger. A TV news crew is positioned nearby. The foreman looks to the detonation tech. “Go ahead, son.”

The man presses the plunger. The charges go off and the building comes down in an explosive cloud of dust, concrete, and steel. The gathered crowd cheers.

As the dust settles, a muffled voice is heard coming from the rubble. “Help! Help!” The news person hears it. “Do you hear that? Is there someone in there?”

The foreman drops his coffee. “What?!”

At Main Street Confections, a news anchor speaks on the TV. “Last night …a car crash took four lives. Twenty-three-year-old Kyle Watson -(An image of the man who beat Grim flashes on the screen) drove himself and his friends over a mountain pass, rolling the vehicle, killing all inside. Alcohol is believed to have been involved.”

The newscast continues. “In other news, an unbelievable rescue after a homeless man was nearly killed in a building demolition.” Helicopter footage shows Grim being extracted. With her hands on her face, Maria is astonished. “Oh, my God! Grim!”

The anchor continues. “According to the crew on site, - fifty-year-old Albert Grimwald was saved by a hundred-year-old cast-iron bathtub. Although Grimwald’s injuries were minor, the contractor, Davis Demolition Services are not only covering his medical expenses, but they are also offering him a compensatory inconvenience package totaling twenty-thousand dollars.”

It’s been three months since the accident and the sun is going down over Pinewood Cemetery. Finally free of the urn around his neck, Grim is smiling broadly at the brand new marble headstone. It’s engraved: Judith Grimwald—Beloved Mother—Born 1936, Deceased 1981. Next to the headstone is another plot marked with a simple plaque that reads: Albert “Grim” Grimwald—Loving Son—Born 1971.

A cemetery worker walks up to Grim. “I’m sorry, sir, but the cemetery is closing for the day.” Grim acknowledges the man with a nod, takes one more drink from his bottle, and writes in his small black book. Today, I gave mother a new home!

He turns to leave. A solitary goldfish swims in a small fishbowl resting on a blanket inside his shiny new shopping cart. Grim smiles and pushes the cart toward the setting sun. “Today was a good day.”