SLINGER

Slinger is flush today.

He's got three quarters he just talked out of a passenger who was rushing across the bus terminal which serves as his home office.

He asked her for "57 cent."

That's Street puppy speak for "I'm going to ask you for an odd amount because you won't take the time to count it out, and you probably have quarters in hand anyway for change for the pop machine, and I won't ask for a whole dollar because that would sound like I'm extravagant with your money, which, when you see the smile on my baby face and my gentle voice, you will part with because it's hard to turn down somebody who says to you, "Please, ma'am', do ya have 57 cent for me to get something to eat, I'm real hungry."

With those three quarters he now has enough money to buy a pack of cigars both for his day's supply of smokes, and to sell for a quarter apiece, and that revenue, turned over several times as he acquires enough quarters to buy more cigars will feed the beast of his 3-pack a day habit he has had since he became homeless twelve years ago.

The rest of the quarters and dimes and nickels he will needle from bus passengers, neighborhood passers by and acquantances will be spent mostly on his crack head girlfriend who will sleep all day at their "spot" a couple of blocks away under a highway underpass, and then will rise mid-day and stumble down the short path to the bus station and demand her usual egg sandwich lunch, a soda, cigarettes and enough dough to buy a couple of vicodin to keep her nerves straight until she can score more rock tonight.

And at some later time in the day, which neither of them will know, she will make the excuse that she is going to the john, or to the corner for a paper, or across the street for a soda and then disappear, for hours, or days at a time, and spend all of  Slinger's money on her rock of crack.

All of the money for all of that will  have come from Slinger's day long entreaties for the loose and/or small change his 'customers' , these strangers,  give him as he snares them on their way through the bus terminal.

Slinger doesn't travel far during the day's trawling.  He doesn't fly a sign, or sell papers on the street.  He sticks to the area he knows best, the bus terminal, his "office,"  and the people who will give up their change.

People he can spot fifty yards off he knows he can hustle, sometimes just by the way they are staring at the ground, or straight ahead, or right at him. 

And he's no fool.  He knows he has to give something in return, so he has become a walking font of information regarding directions...so long as the information you want extends to a couple of square miles around the bus station.

That and the free newspaper he snaps up from boxes within the two square miles around the bus station, then piles next to him and hands them out to customers...many of who, for years, have thought the paper costs a quarter.

But, hes an honest man.  He wouldn't steal -except for the free papers - he's not an alcoholic, or a drug addict.  Once a year, on his birthday, he goes to a Karoke bar way up on Nebraska Avenue and sings songs in his beautiful and soft voice and drinks three beers.

And when his crack head girlfriend disappears for hours or days on end, he misses her, cries for her, and is always happy to see her return. 

You know this, because you can see the light in his eyes, and the tender smile that spreads across his face when he first sees her step off the bus upon her return.  No matter what shape she's in.

Slinger's life wasn't always this way.

He lived up North.  He had a family...parents, and siblings all part of a middle-class life he cherished and never thought would change.

He married.  A woman he loved so much he tried to commit suicide when she died suddenly on their 14th wedding anniversary of a disease neither of them even knew she had.

He loved her so much because she was a woman so worthy of love.  She was loved so much that the father of one of her students at a tony private school where she was a teacher, a father who was a famous movie star paid thousands and thousands of dollars for her funeral and a huge party afterward.

After the funeral, the party, and the suicide attempt, Slinger just simply closed the door to their home and walked away and never looked back.

He ended up in a deep Southern state, as far away as you can get away from Upstate New York. and survived on odd jobs and dishwashing gigs he could do even on days when he was terribly hung over or just plain blind drunk.

He ran out of odd jobs a long time ago, and settled for life at the bus terminal, where he knows everybody, and everybody knows him, and he gets all of their change and knows how to give them all directions to anyplace they need or want to go.

Anyplace that is, within a two mile radius of the seat he perches on at the bus stop.

Slinger has made a home in Homeless Nation, right there at the bus stop.  His bus stop.  Slinger's bus stop.

Slinger made a couple of attempts to leave his corner of Homeless Nation.

He scrabbled together enough money to buy a bus ticket to Texas to live with a woman he had met on the internet on a computer at the library.

He ended up walking most of  the way back from the little backwater Texas town  after two weeks with the woman in her little house in the middle of nowhere with her six dogs and five cats and a drinking problem and bottles and bottles of meds for the bi-polar affliction.

On the  1,600 mile way back,  to the bus stop, he slept where he dropped from exhaustion each night.  He woke up one morning in the middle of a bear habitat

The next time he walked all the way to another town a couple of  hundred miles away for the promise of a job that didn't work out.  On the walk back from that adventure, he lost his shirt and ended up with the worst sunburn he had ever had in his life.

He doesn't take trips anymore.

Time has no little  meaning to him now, except for one day at a time, and enough of that time to gather enough quarters to take care of the crack head girlfriend he loves with all his heart.

And, someday, he will die here, within a couple of square miles of a bus stop where he knows everybody and everybody knows him.

But for now, he will scramble around every morning and snatch the free papers, and hustle for the quarters from his customers and other strangers, and wait for his crack head girl friend to step off a bus so he can love her with all of his heart.....no matter what shape she is in.