Excerpt from The Path -visit https://www.hastingsbooks.net
The Vagrant Chapter 1
The rain intensifies steadily. A middle-age, crusty and thin man stumbles around on the waterfront of Jackson Square. This is no place for a vagrant on a Monday afternoon. However, the rain will hopefully keep the officers in their cruisers and away from the hospitable banks of the Mississippi River. The vagrant’s thoughts are muted by a veil of cheap alcohol. He hobbles over to the sultry wet grass next to the edge of the sidewalk and clumsily sits on the soggy ground. The boardwalk is a busy place considering the weather. He stares blankly at the patina bronze statue of a seated man and child that appear to be chatting. After briefly joining their conversation, the vagrant abruptly abandons his efforts. Apparently yielding to the solid arguments of the other two, he diverts his attention elsewhere. The vagrant’s sullen and drawn out facial expression adds to the gray sadness of the entire scene. The rain continues.
The vagrant teeters near the brink of sobriety. He devises a way to get more alcohol. The sooner he can return to his drunken stupor and his bottle of lies, the better. Keeping constantly inebriated is a deliberate departure from his present existence. Since he didn’t have a friend or a relative to call a few year ago, his intoxication has helped him hang on. He remembers that he planned to leave the streets of New Orleans and the year-round tourist snobbery. At this moment he can’t think of any reason to stay beside the comfort of the location’s familiarity.
With difficulty, the tall man uprights himself and waits out the predicted dizziness with his eyes closed. It's a long walk to the trains at the rail yard; he thinks to himself as he peers around. "Fa Fuck it," he slurs sloppily towards the statue. With his head down, committed, he begins his agonizing hike towards the rail yard to find his way out of town. Hope and time, two things that he has lived on the past few years. Drunkenness from the former never failed in being followed by the sobering slap of the latter.
Finally finding the freight yard, the faltering casing of a man wildly guesses as to which train to hop. Woozy, he haphazardly decides to travel north. He focuses on the Burlington-Northern freight line with several comfortable-looking cargo trains. He momentarily stumbles over the rails as he fights a dizzy spin and grabs a nearby wet safety rail. The sight of the rails immediately draws back a memory from a year ago. There’re something’s a person can’t unsee. Last summer, the vagrant saw a well-dressed young man place his head face down on the inside of the tracks with only his neck resting on the rail, the rest of the young man’s body laid on the ground. An oncoming train quickly continued its route without a glitch. What the Vagrant saw, was the remains of a limp, lifeless body of an unhappy man. No matter how drunk, a surprising, horrific, and disturbing sight like that is a memory one doesn’t forget. He shakes his head, “what a waste”, he mutters.
The rain subsided a few minutes prior to his bought. The sky has subsequently brightened and speeds up his recovery. Trying to avoid the peering eyes of ‘the man’, the vagrant makes his way for his chosen train. He steps carefully over the gleaming silver track towards a large space across the train yard. Amazingly enough, the vagrant escapes the watchman's gaze. Reaching the parked trains and finding an appropriate car for his Northern journey, the vagrant climbs awkwardly up into a trailer of a cargo car is of an unidentifiable age. Although, well used, the exterior is well-kept, clean, and tidy-looking. The inside, however, is a mess. There are old newspapers, empty plastic water bottles, crushed soda cans, candy wrappers, and dried leaves cluttering the flat surface of the interior. A few used prophylactics are glued and hardened on the wooden planked floors which reeks of stale urine. Seemingly oblivious to the filth, the vagrant sits in a convenient corner and is only bothered by his memories.
The vagrant looks in his front, baggy, dirty jean pocket - sure enough, more alcohol. He doesn’t remember how or where he got it. It’s not a necessary thing for him to remember right now. The only point of any interest is the fact that the alcohol is now is his possession. The part he can’t remember is he’d safely entered a grocery store that would supply him with more liquid courage. He lifted a cheap bottle of whisky quickly then completed his trek to the train-yard. On his way to the trains, he paused outside of a shop window momentarily and watched the news that was playing on the television set. The news anchor was discussing new photographs from a super powerful government-funded telescope. The reporter explained that the photographs solidify the theory that our universe will collide with the Andromeda universe in five billion years. “When the universes collide, it will cause such extreme heat from the friction the new mass will burn for thousands of years”, the reporter commented. For a brief moment, the vagrant was sure he knew what the broadcast was all about. He asked himself, why should we care about life if we know the world was definitely ending, why continue? He mumbles out loud to no one, “If it’s all going to end, why bother with politics, cultural wars, religious wars, bickering over rights…why care?” He concludes that we’re just passing time to ensure the continuation of life while there is a planet to occupy? He couldn’t remember the entire broadcast. However, even if he had, his argument would still be the same.
The vagrant continues his argument with himself. His thoughts wander off topic and he continues his rant, “Out of balance then out of control.” With difficulty, he thinks, ‘It’s the government that should support the community? If a village raised me then, well…the government should pay for my state college tuition’. The vagrant surmises the news’ prediction of a collision in space billions of years from now is a better and more humane way to end civilization. “Communists,” he says out loud to no one. Realizing that he has a headache, he decides, of course, that he needs more alcohol. He retrieved the whisky bottle from his dirty jean pocket.
Waiting patiently in his corner, a rhetorical question flies through the vagrant’s head, ‘Am I finally moving?’ "To me," the vagrant holds up his bottle and toasts to the jingle of railroad ties. His body thrashes as the train moves forward. His left arm acts like a painter’s easel, helping him to brace himself as he takes a few healthy swigs from the small, green, glass bottle of spirits with his right hand. The bottle’s contents cause an approving sensation that passes through his blood stream immediately. The vagrant is barely able to hold bodily attention with the amount of alcohol currently permeating his veins. He shuts his eyes after draining the remaining whisky. After he sits down and leans back, he enters into an alcohol-induced sleep immediately. The vagrant is now a Traveler.