Chapter 3

Happy Harry stood outside the section of sewer pipe and looked at the pair of feet hanging out the end. Using his shepherd’s staff, he nudged the man on his side. The man rolled over and sat up with the result that he hit his head. Dante swore, “Damn! That hurts.”

“Got to be careful in there,” Harry said with a grin.

Dante rubbed his head where he had hit it. He groaned and asked, “What time is it?”

“Sunrise. Breakfast will be in ten minutes. We’ll leave after breakfast.”

“How do I get out of here?”

Harry shook his head while wondering what kind of problem William had given him. There had been no hints about the need to learn respect for the homeless or social responsibility. William had said nothing, but it was clear the guy was going to be a problem. Until he knew more, he’d let it ride. He answered, “You’ll figure it out.”

Feeling like a worm, Dante inched his way down the length of the pipe. When his legs hung over the edge, he rolled over on his stomach and inched back more until he could lower his feet to the ground. When he straightened out, he hit the back of his head on the edge of the pipe.

He swore and said, “That hurts.”

Looking around, he didn’t find Harry. Other men were climbing out their beds. They handled the exit with much greater ease than he had. None of them had hit their heads. He folded the blanket to return it to Boy Scout since he was leaving after breakfast.

He wandered in the general direction of the food shack. A number of men were already standing around drinking coffee and waiting for the food to become available. A couple of men were walking off with trash sacks. He wondered what they were doing.

His curiosity was satisfied when he heard Boy Scout tell another man, “You know the rules. Earn the food first and then you can get the food. Take this sack and fill it with trash.”

He went over to get a sack figuring that he had to earn his breakfast. Boy Scout looked at him and asked, “What do you want?”

“Aren’t I supposed to pick up trash to get breakfast?” Dante asked.

“You earned it yesterday peeling those potatoes. Don’t you remember that?”

“Oh. I’m still waking up,” Dante said in a lame attempt to hide his ignorance. “Here’s my blanket.”

Boy Scout looked at him for a good ten seconds and then said, “I don’t want your dirty blanket back. For all I know, you pissed on it in your sleep. It’s yours to keep.”

“Oh. So what am I supposed to do until breakfast?”

Pointing to a coffee urn, Boy Scout said, “There’s coffee over there.”

Dante went over and got a cup of coffee. He stood in front of the urn and took a sip of out of the cup. He was savoring the rush of caffeine when Jewels growled, “Move out of the way, Hungry Man.”

Dante stepped over to the side. “Sorry.”

Harry walked over to Dante and stood with crossed arms staring at him with a frown on his face. Boy Scout had told him a strange tale about an artist who was going to create a statue of him. He exhaled loudly through his nose. It was close to a snort, but it was not quite short enough to qualify as one.

He said, “Hungry Man, William put you up to this, didn’t he?”

“He hired me to do this,” Dante answered realizing that Happy Harry had not known he was there to create a statue of the man.

“He hired you?”

“Oh, yes. He’s paying me a lot of money to make a statue of you,” Dante said. He wondered if that information would free him from having to work around the Homeless Hotel for dinner.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Harry said while turning away. He started fishing through his pockets trying to find his cell phone. He had just pulled it out when it rang. Surprised he looked at the caller id and answered it, “What are you trying to pull?”

“Hi, Harry,” William said. The young man’s voice was entirely too cheerful for the time of day.

“Don’t ‘hi Harry’ me. What’s this about a statue?” Happy Harry asked.

“Eight hundred castings of a statue and two castings of a bust,” William corrected.

“I’ll bust you.”

“I’m sure you will. Have a good breakfast,” William said just before hanging up. Harry could hear the young man’s laughter before the call cut off.

Thirty minutes after breakfast, Dante climbed into the Roach Coach and closed the door. He’d just finished the most miserable shower of his life. He wondered what kind of person would have designed the Homeless Hotel with unheated outdoor showers. His balls had tried to climb into his body. He was sure that his scream of shock was loud enough to wake the dead.

Harry climbed into the wagon and said, “Only thirty minutes late and we’re about to shuffle off to Buffalo. Hang on because this here beast has more sway in it than a tree in a hurricane.”

The rocking motion started as soon as Harry pulled out of the Homeless Hotel. Looking out the window, Dante could see the ground rise up towards him. Panicked, Dante shouted, “We’re going to fall over!”

“Bosh! It just has a little sway to it. That’s all.”

“It should be sent to a junk yard!”

Ignoring the comment about his wagon, Harry said, “Now tell me about this statue you’re supposed to do of me. Did William tell you why he wanted it?”

Dante shook his head and said, “Nope. He just said that castings were going to be placed in Fusion Foundation sites.”

“Did he say locations supported by the Fusion Foundation or Fusion Foundation Buildings?”

“Locations supported by the Fusion Foundation,” Dante answered trying to recall William’s words exactly. He thought they meant the same thing.

“That sneaky brat,” Harry said when he realized what William was doing. Looking over at Dante, he said, “William wants to immortalize me by turning this fine figure of a man into a repository for bird shit.”

“That’s disgusting. A statue is not a repository for bird shit. It’s art.”

Nothing would be worse than having ugly statues of himself scattered around the country. Harry asked, “So are you any good?”

Dante pretended not to hear the question and looked out the window as the city of Cleveland rolled past. He didn’t know how to answer that question. Three years ago he would have answered in the affirmative. Sitting in the Roach Coach and watching run down buildings pass by, he didn’t know.

Harry repeated his question in a louder voice. Dante answered, “William paid a lot of money for it. Figure it out for yourself.”

Although Dante didn’t realize it at the time, Happy Harry figured it out before Dante had even finished speaking. The old man didn’t even glance over at his passenger. There was time enough to deal with him later. For now, he was traveling and it was time to appreciate the movement. He started singing the song about being a born under a wandering star from the movie, Paint Your Wagon. It was his favorite song to sing while driving across the country.

Dante looked out the window, but didn’t see the landscape pass by. His thoughts were turned inward. Harry’s questions had reawakened all of his self-doubts. He was on the verge of quitting the commission when he fell asleep. Harry didn’t wake him until they had reached a restaurant for lunch.

It was a typical roadside family dining place that was part of a national chain. Dante sat across from Harry and studied the menu. He had just decided that he’d get the Chef Salad when Harry asked, “What are you getting?”

“Chef Salad.”

Harry frowned and said, “You might want to get something with a little more fat in it. You’re going to need it since the nights are still cold. Once the temperature starts dropping below forty, you need every calorie you can burn.”

“Why don’t we sleep in a regular hotel?”

“Hungry Man, you are going to become one with the environment. Air conditioning and heating is part of a false world that isolates you from the change of seasons. You are going to find out what it means to be alive in the physical world,” Harry said. He also thought to himself that he was about to rediscover what it meant to live in the world of men and women.

“There’s a reason air conditioning and heating was invented,” Dante countered feeling a little intimidated by the fact that Harry was a Druid. Despite that, he felt a need to argue and Harry was the only one available to satisfy that need.

“That’s true. It doesn’t change the fact that people lost something as a result of it,” Harry agreed amiably.

Wanting to make a point, Dante said, “I’m still going to get a Chef’s Salad.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

A tense half hour passed during which the order was taken and the food delivered. Harry enjoyed his meal, waxing poetic about the fine qualities of Chicken Fried Steak. Dante ate his salad quietly. About the time Dante was halfway through his salad, Harry said, “Hungry Man, my people named you correctly. You are a starving artist. The problem is that what you are hungry for doesn’t fill the stomach. That’s not a good thing in an artist.”

Dante looked up from his salad and stared at Harry. The old man looked him directly in the eye with an unwavering gaze. He wondered what it was that the Druid saw in him. A shiver went through Dante and he bent down to finish his lunch. His appetite was gone.

Harry and Dante stayed for three days in Buffalo. Dante had become accustomed to the flow of life in a Homeless Hotel. Although the bed had never become comfortable, he had become used to sleeping on the hard surface. The meals were nutritious, but not always tasty. The nights were cold and he found that he was loosing weight since his body was trying to accommodate the changes in weather.

Dante hadn’t tried to fit in with the men and women in the Homeless Hotel. Most of the time was spent sitting on a railroad tie thinking about his commission, but he didn’t do anything about it. The only time he wasn’t on the railroad tie was when he was doing some odd job around the Homeless Hotel to earn his food for the day. Not once did he pick up his sketch book to draw Harry. He didn’t even consider attempting to draw Harry.

Even worse than not doing anything, Dante had ignored everyone around him. In the entire three days, he hadn’t said one word more than was necessary to get food. He ignored the conversations that took place around him even when those conversations concerned him. When someone said something really outrageous, all he did was look in their direction for a moment and then look away.

On the morning of the fourth day, Harry found Dante standing by the coffee urn drinking a cup of coffee. Harry said, “We leave in half an hour. You’ll need to take a shower before we go. You stink and I don’t want to smell you all the way to New York City.”

Dante stared at the Druid angered by his blunt talk. Wanting to get back at the Druid, he said, “You’re a mean bastard. If you’re so good, aren’t you supposed to be nice?”

“What’s being nice got to do with being good?” Harry asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“You know what I mean; helping people by giving them a kind word and all of that.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The only way to help people is to tell them the truth. The truth is a harsh mistress,” Harry said with a sad shake of his head. He felt that anyone who didn’t believe that truth was harsh should spend a day with Ed Biggers.