dinner, late 1986

It's in the third person, but it's about me, late 1986, I believe. Pretty dismal but such was my life.

HARD TIMES

You step out the door into the early evening cool, hungry. You haven't eaten in twenty-three hours. There may have been a time when such a situation as this would cause extreme discomfort but you've grown accustomed to the feeling.

Every night it's the same as it has been for the last month, give or take a few days. You point your nose to the west and follow it, walking. A nice, steady, even pace because you're not in a big hurry. You've timed the excursion beforehand, you've got plenty of time.

You don't look up. Nothing to look for. Only watch your feet, one in front of the other, it would be a chore to count the steps so you've never tried. You check the litter on the side of the road on the off chance that someone may have lost a dollar bill and today is your lucky day. You can't forget the day you found a twenty just outside of the house you grew up in. What luck that was. It's been a long, long time since you've found any cash in the ditch but the fact that you HAVE found a dollar here, a dollar there since then encourages you to continue. Besides, what else have you got to look at?

You find an empty can...Dr. Pepper or Budweiser beer it seems are the main kinds you've happened upon...and you kick it so that it travels a decent distance but remains on the hard asphalt, doesn't fly off the side of the road. You lose the game if that happens. And you lose the game if the can gets crushed too much to roll. How do you win the game? You don't know because you've never won it.

A mile and a half makes up three quarters of the trip and that's where you'll stop at the grocery store. You know the place has no security cameras so you don't worry about getting caught. You saunter back to the meat section and grab a pound of sausage or a pepperoni stick, tucking it into the inner pocket of the coat you wear and readjusting the lapels so that the weight doesn't give away what you've done. A quick walk to the soda aisle and you pick a fruit flavored soda, the store brand, something like twenty cents a can, and take it to the check-out counter.

The lady at the counter is always very nice although your paranoia has prevented any kind of normal rapport with her. You wonder if she thinks it's suspicious to come into the store every day and buy nothing but a can of soda. In actuality she thinks you're just that funny turned guy who comes into the store and buys a can of pop every night. No big deal. An endearing ritual, even. All the while the guy who does the meat department's inventory is scratching his head at all the shrinkage.

Walking out of the store you pop the top on the soda can and down the twelve ounces of grape soda in a few greedy, thirsty gulps. A free can to kick, you drop it to the ground and begin the game. It doesn't last very long because the el cheapo aluminum cans the store brand uses are chincy and thin, you've practically smashed it before the third kick. You walk on, leaving it where it stopped rolling, someone would eventually come along and whisk it away to the recycling station. Money in the bank.

The final one third of the walk is downhill all the way and the thought of something to eat when you get where you're going makes it even easier.

Where you're going is your parents house. The house you grew up in. The one where you found the twenty dollar bill on the side of the road just outside the yard. Only one of your parents still lives here, accompanied by his third wife who you are convinced is evil incarnate. She's the reason you had to make this long walk. She's the reason you only get to eat once a day and even that you have to steal. It's a wonder you can still talk to her, let alone be civil. But she's in charge of this show now and it's her cook stove and skillet you're needing.

You cut and cook up the sausage in one big pan full of sizzling meat and it smells like breakfast at a diner in heaven. If there is bread on hand you'll make up a few sandwiches slathered in mustard and seasoned with entirely too much salt. The witch who lives with your father may likely be miffed at you using her bread but you don't even think about that. She's never said anything about it if she does. As for the mustard, you think even less about using as much of that as you want.

They are delicious. You never realized you liked pork sausage so much until you started bringing it home from the store. Why pork sausage? It fit so well in the coat pocket, mainly. It was easy to slip in and didn't bulge. Your father asked you once why you ate so much pork sausage. "You must really like that stuff", he said. He was right. It never seemed to get old and it filled you up to stuffed.

You deign the sea hag a kind word and a "thank you", the effort being difficult but deemed necessary to stay on her good side (as far into her "good side" as you were ever able to be, that is), and with a fond farewell to your father you step out their back door and head east. The journey back is a bit more trying than the one that led to your destination because there's not break, no stop off at the grocery store. But it's all okay because you've got a belly full of grub, you're good to go for another twenty three hours.

No cans this time, seeing as how you've crushed them all on the way up and no one has been inconsiderate enough to toss one out between then and now. Instead you occupy your mind by recalling words and music to the songs that have been stuck there for the last couple of days. You have a talent of hearing them note-for-note pitch perfect in your imagination, no need for a music player which is just as well because you don't have one. If you did you might have brought it along, but on the other hand probably not because the only place you could have kept it was in that inner coat pocket and you needed that space for the pork.

It takes less than two hours you make it back to the house you're staying in. It's a nice place the Methodist minister arranged for you to stay at with the youth minister. You're pretty sure he doesn't like you and for what it's worth you don't think too awful highly of him, either. But it doesn't really matter because the interaction is kept to a minimum.

You're not much of a social person. All this house is to you is a room for your bed and that's where you stay almost all of the time, waking and waiting to go to bed. Listening to NPR on a Sony Dream Machine clock radio which is, face it, all you've got to keep you entertained.

Hard times for sausage thieves.