Money Well Spent

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.

We met a man who was an amazing juggler, often having ten itens in the air, talking all the way, telling jokes. "I got another talent I think you might enjoy. When I'm done here, ya'll give me your wallets, and watch me disappear." The crowd laughed at his jokes, and when he put everything down he did what he called challenge juggling. "Here's the deal. I'll take five items, any five you select, and juggle them for three minutes. Everybody that gives me something owes me a five at the end. If I drop anything, I get nothing. My lovely assistant(He pulled Linds to his side)will hold the money, and toss me the items one at a time. When I get the last one up in the air, somebody needs to start the clock." As always, when we appeared and set up our equipment, a crowd would gather. We always went fairly early in the evening, Shaggy said it was best, less dangerous, and we were more apt to catch whoever he wanted us to see fairly sober.

Lindsey quickly had the items for him to juggle thrust forward. I went first, grinning, and handed him my wallet, one of those thick biker types anchored with a chain. I did take the chain off. I played to the crowd when I asked him loudly, "This is for the juggling act, right?"

He just grinned and told the crowd that maybe the vanishing act would be his big finish. He ended up with my wallet, a cell phone, two purses, and a full baby bottle. "It needs to be shaken, so this works out really well for me." said the mother, grinning.

He started with the two purses, tossing them up in the air for thirty seconds before he called to Linsey to toss him the next item. She tossed him my wallet, then the cell phone, and finally the bottle. He kept his patter up the whole time. "Wow, this is a dream come true. Two purses, a wallet, and a bottle. I might just disappear after all."

Someone called time, but he kept them in the air for another couple of minutes, before tossing them one by one to Lindsey. She gave everything back, after collecting the money. The crowd showed their appreciation by tossing coins and dollars into a ball cap someone had put down. Shaggy told me later he got well over a hundred dollars. Juggler, his street name, didn't say much about himself, but I found out later that he'd lost his entire family in a car wreck, his wife, three daughters, and a son. It sent him into a deep depression that ended up leaving him homeless, jobless, and broke. When they evicted him he walked away with just the clothes on his back and never looked back.

The next time we went out, we found a guy Shaggy called Longfellow, who could recite whole epic poems from memory, and never miss a line. Somehow he'd come up with a dinged up top hat and a shabby tux coat, complete with tails. He didn't recite in monotone either, his voice rising to a shout and descending to a whisper, according to how the line needed to be done. Many would walk by, but just as many would stop, mesmerized by his voice. He was fairly street smart, and we caught him early on a Saturday afternoon, in a park, where there were a lot of children out with their mothers, and he delighted them by reciting the whole of "Green Eggs And Ham", and "The Cat In The Hat", and as the shadows grew longer he did Frost, a few more contemporary poets, before going into a whole litany of seventeenth century love poems. He declined to tell us his backstory, but I suspect from the way he talked when we interviewed him he had been some sort of teacher or professor in the past.

We did Tin Can and Boom Boom without their partner, raising a storm of percussionsitic expression on wooden boxes, tin cans, a ten quart metal bucket, a five gallon plastic bucket, and blocks of scrap wood. They were good enough to get the people watching them dancing, and another empty bucket soon filled with money. Tin Can had been a pretty successful sessions drummer before he lost a leg, and Boom Boom said he just like to pound on things. Some of the things he pounded on were people, and he had spent years in and out of the prison system because of it. I asked where their partner was and they looked sad.

"Some of her tribe showed up and took her with them. They've done it before. It might take a year, but she'll just show up one day, and we'll be back together." Surprisingly, they both consider her the closest thing to a wife they would ever get. I decided not to go down that path.

We came up on a nun, with a group from her church, out trying to minister to the street people, giving them blankets, toothbrushes, soap, that sort of thing. She recognized us immediately, and stopped to talk. She praised us, leaving us confused.

"This is a tourist spot now. People come down on Saturday afternoons to watch and hear the street people. They get quality entertainment for almost nothing, and the street people get to make a little money. A few of them, like Shaggy here, got enough inspiration to try to change their lives for the better. You all have street names, you know."

That surprised us no end and we had to ask what they were. She just grinned and told us to get Shaggy to tell us. Then she shocked us by belting out "Mercedes Benz", by Janis Joplin, and if you closed your eyes, you would easily think it was her. It stayed in the documentary.

Lindsey was on Shaggy immediately. He was with us every time we went out, and I paid him fifty bucks. He tried to refuse the money, but I shut him down. "You started this. You find the talent, get us the interviews, help with the back story. You're almost as good as Linds now in setting up the equipment. If this thing ever hits the light of day, I'm going to need your real name, so I can list you in the credits as an associate producer."

"So what do they call us? Is it cool?" Linds just wouldn't let it go, and I admit, we were all curious.

Chapter 10

Shaggy let her beg for awhile before breaking down. "All right, if you have to know." He looked down at Lindsey, the tiny frame, the blue eyes, the blonde hair, and told her she had two names. "Half of them call you Fairy, half call you Angel, because you look like both." Lindsey seemed pleased.

Jen looked at him and he smiled. "You, they call Madonna. Not for the singer, but for the religious one. You held a baby once for a mother, just as the sun was going down. You seemed to glow, and Preacher saw you. He declared you a modern Madonna, the symbol of hope and renewal. He even preaches sermons about you now and then, says you're proof saints still walk on earth."

Jen glowed with pleasure and embarrassment in equal measure. "And Dean?"

Shaggy seemed reticent, somehow. "Him, we call Warrior. The shelters have televisions, and a lot of us saw the VA series, and the public service announcements. Besides, one look from him when somebody gets too close to either of you makes them realize touching you might not be such a good idea."

They turned and looked at me and I shrugged. They just grinned and took my arms, leaving Shaggy to struggle with the equipment.

We filmed an old black guy who was an amazing guitarist, a magician with a slide bar. He could make his guitar laugh, cry, cluck like a chicken and bay like a hound. He sang old blues, and introduced himself, tongue in cheek, as Blind Melon Chitlin. He had a younger man with him he called Harp, who was really good on harmonica, and they harmonized together pretty well. They refused to tell us about themselves. I filmed them through several songs, and their patter in between to the audience, before we gave them a hundred bucks and left.

We filmed Preacher as he stood on a wooden box, a Bible in one hand, and preached the gospels, surprised at the gentleness of his sermons. "Anyone can preach hellsfire and brimstone, scare the shit..er crap out of people, but that's not how I see God. So I preach how I think He wants me to, and pray that I reach at least one person a week."

He was scruffy, his Bible falling apart. Apparently preaching the word of God on the streets doesn't pay as well as juggling. He was very frank when he talked about his life. "I was a fool, living in the corporate world and chasing money and success, placing it above everything, family, health, integrity. I'd cut the throat of the best friend I ever had if I thought it would help me achieve my goals. It caught up to me when the economy collapsed, and I lost it all, the cars, the houses, my family. I ended up addicted, wandering the streets, until I met a street preacher. He took me under his wing, nursed me back to health and sanity, before he passed. I took up his mantle, and I've been here every since. It's amazing how little you need, and I don't miss my old life, except for my family. I have a daughter I haven't seen since she was twelve. she would be twenty now. My wife remarried, a good man by all accounts, and he treats them well. I thought it best to leave them to their happy life."

When the interview was over, Linds and Jen took him into a thrift store, and bought him the three best suits they had in his size, along with half a dozen shirts and ties and four pair of wingtips. They insisted he look the part of a serious man of God, and he didn't argue. "Far be it from me to fight an Angel and a Madonna," he said, grinning. There was a bookstore across the street, and on impulse I walked in, and bought the best Bible they had. He came out of the dressing room just as I got back, and I handed it to him. "Here," I said, "this completes the outfit."

He looked at me, at the Bible, and huge tears appeared, sliding down his cheeks. When he could talk he said, "The word of God, delivered by a Warrior. Perhaps there's hope for this world after all. I would ask God to bless you, but He already has, when He led you to each other. Carry on in your good works." He walked out of the store, holding his Bible high, preaching before he had gone a dozen feet.

We ran up on a short, bald guy with a wispy beard, and was mesmerized by the quality of his voice as he sang bits of different operas, in the correct language every time. He told his street name was Caruso, and that's all he would share.

Chapre 11

Months had gone by. We were all dating, or so I thought. Lindsey found a guy she really liked. Jen spent the night in the house every once in a while, to give them alone time. She smiled for a few months, before he suddenly dumped her. She spent three days in the house, sleeping in the same bed with Jen, recovering. She didn't talk about it much, saying he wanted something she didn't want to give, so they went their separate ways.

I got tired of everyone going out in the hall to talk to Miss Agnes, so I put her in the living room, over the fireplace. We would all talk to her, and every once in a while the girls would ask me to leave, while they talked about 'girl stuff'. I didn't mind, because I would do the same, talking to her when the girls were in their apartment.

I started dating a new woman, a tall redhead I had met during an interview, and we seemed to hit it off. She and the girls had a mutual dislike of each other, and Miss Agnes expressed her opinion. Every time Simone was at the house, no matter what the thermostat was set at, she was either burning up or freezing cold, while the rest of us were comfortable. The girls would grin and look at the mantle, while she complained.

Jen became a little distant, not spending as much time in the house as before, as did Lindsey. I thought they were being kind and giving me space. Boy, did I get that wrong. I was talking about how high maintenance Simone was becoming with Lindsey when she hauled off and slapped me.

"What the hell was that for?"

"For being a screaming idiot. The bitch is a gold digger. She walks around your house looking like she's appraising everything she sees for an auction. Why the hell you bother with her when you have so much better waiting for you is beyond me."

Okay, I really am an idiot. I had no idea who she was talking about. "Just who would that be?"

She slapped me harder. "Miss Agnes, a little help here?"

A picture of Jen and I, dressed to the nines in tux and evening gown, accepting our Emmy, fell of the mantle. I picked it up, smiling at the image, before it hit me. "Jen? Really? I'm too old for..." I managed to avoid the slap this time, or so I thought. I moved quickly, only to have a book fly off a shelf and hit me square in the nose. And the book was moving pretty fast.

I rubbed my nose, watching Lindsey grin. "Thank you, Miss Agnes. Think if we half beat him to death, he'll catch on?" Another book flew off the shelf, stopped just short of my nose, and fell gently to the floor.

Lindsey grinned again. " I think we've got his attention. Now you listen to me, big brother. Jen loves you, and she has for a long time. She hides in her bedroom in our apartment and cries every time that redheaded slut comes over. She's a gold digger, Dean. She looks at this big house and sees money. She's tried to pump us about how much money you got, but she can't get anything from us because we don't know and don't care, but in her mind the figure grows every week. You need to show the skank the door, and start working on your true love. I would bet everything I have or ever will have in this life that it won't take long before wedding bells ring. Now get off your butt and do the right thing. Miss Agnes and I will be watching, so you better not screw up."

With that she stood on her tip toes and gave me a kiss on the cheek, turned and walked out the door. I picked the book up, idly reading the title. Without thinking I asked. "You really think Jen and I are a good match, Mom?"

I had been comparing my mother to Miss Agnes. My mom was a good woman, but she was never prone to show emotion. Oh, I was sure she loved me, but I later learned my parents had decided early on in their marriage not to have children, and I was a mistake. I look back now after I found that out, and wonder. It would explain the remoteness of their emotion, and had a lot to do with me joining the Army as soon as I graduated. I got exactly three letters the whole time I was in service. People would definitely think I was losing it if they knew I felt more connected to a woman who had passed over fifty years ago than anyone alive now, except of course, the girls.

No sooner had I said "Mom" when a warmth enveloped my whole being, it felt good, like...joy, maybe. I felt arms around me, and a scent I couldn't describe until later, when the girls found an old bottle of perfume that had to have belonged to Miss Agnes. Oddly, I wasn't the least bit surprised when I looked down and saw I was dangling several feet off the ground. I laughed.