Suzie’s House 420 : How Did You End Up Here, Ethan?

“How did I get where I am?” Ethan looked up and down the grassy strip separating the WalMart parking lot from the main thoroughfare. He eyed the old bum next to him. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yeah. I do,” Dan said. “How did you end up here? If you aren’t drinking, and you didn’t do anything else wrong, then how’d you end up like this? You don’t look like the sort that would do anything else wrong.”

“Well,” Ethan said. “I guess I made the fatal mistake of thinking I could step out of my life for a little while and expect it to still be there when I got back.”

“Ho, hoh, hoh. That was a bad idea.” Dan slapped a knee.

“Yeah, it was indeed a bad idea. You see, I have an alcoholic son.”

“I got one of those, myself. Runs in the family.”

Ethan let that one pass. “For a long time I turned a blind eye to him, letting all sorts of misbehavior slide. I told myself I had no proof, but I knew. I knew he was the one behind everything.

“Proof? You don’t need any proof. Talking about your kid here, right? Kids only need discipline.” If Dan had been amused before, he looked deeply concerned now. What and elastic personality.

“Mine certainly does. I didn’t provide it, and now it’s too late. He’s an adult. But he was still living at home and showed no sign of looking for work.”

“Only think you can do is kick ‘em out.” Dan nodded sagely.

“That’s what I did.. I gave him a ride from Madison Wisconsin to Des Moines.”

“Here? Where we are right now? Why there? Aint nothing there for anybody. Not even that good for spanging.” He jiggled his religious tract on a piece of cardboard hopefully at a stream of cars that chose that moment to leave the lot.

“It was on the way.”

“Wait. I thought you said before that you were trying to get back home. So how could this be along the way?”

“I was going home. Or, I guess it hasn’t been home in a long time. I decided I needed to talk to my father. Something similar happened with my older brother. I thought I’d get a suggestion or two on how to deal with my son.”

“And did you?”

“It’s hard to make suggestions from the grave.”

“Oh, yeah. Yep, the dead don’t tell tales.” Dan’s expression became morose. Or at least as morose as his beard and wrinkles would allow. “What about your mom?”

“Died long before.” Ethan crossed his legs. His stomach growled, but he ignored it. Lately it had never stopped growling. “Not that I expected much from my father anyway. He didn’t believe in direct parenting. I suppose it’s a sign of my desperation that I felt the need to reconnect with him.”

The two of them sat in less than comfortable silence for a while, without even the benefit of passing traffic. Dan seemed lost in thought. Ethan wasn’t sure what to make of that. He had never really considered the inner workings of a bum before.

“So, what about your job. You do have one, don’t you?” Dan gave Ethan a narrow eyed look. “Most folks don’t lose their jobs that easily.”

“I didn’t give notice.”

Dan raised his shaggy gray eyebrows in disbelief.

“The trip was a spur of the moment thing. My thoughts were filled with… too much. It slipped my mind. When I called to explain, my boss fired me. I wasn’t concerned. I had enough savings to carry my family and I for three or four months. More if we were frugal. But my credit card stopped working.”

“Over your limit?”

“Shouldn’t be. I’m not sure what happened.” Actually, Ethan strongly suspected that his wife had closed the account as an act of revenge for his trip. No doubt she thought he’d gone to see his high school sweet heart, rather than his father. She had cause.

“Far be it for me to say,” Dan pulled back and put his hand on his chest. “But why don’t you just get another job?”

Ethan flinched. Discovering that his skill set was of no interest to a burger joint had proven a devastating blow to his sense of self worth. No one needed a pencil pusher behind a grill. No one would hire someone to push a pencil on a short term and instant bases. For once he wished he was a house painter. He’d stand a better chance of getting a job now.

He managed to shrug in a way he hoped would come across as nonchalant. “So far no one has been willing to hire me.”

“Well, I guess in this economic climate.” Dan put on airs, then just dropped it. “Hey, I noticed for a while now your stomach has been growling.”

“Yeah?” It was Ethan’s turn to raise an eyebrow. His hunger was not something he cared to dwell on.

“I know this great dumpster. There’s always food there, and it doesn’t have one of those security lids to make it so an honest bum can’t get in.”

A dumpster?! Did this man think he had fallen so low that he would eat out of a dumpster?!

The next wave of hunger didn’t simply make his stomach hurt. It made him light headed.

He watched another set of cars drive by with all occupants carefully not looking at him, as if desperately trying to pretend he didn’t exist. He’d been like that once. He knew what they were doing. His chances of getting a ride to Madison, or a place to sleep, or anything to eat seemed more remote than ever.

“When in Rome,” he muttered. Then, louder, he asked, “Where’s the dumpster?”

As he left he saw that Dan had gone into high gear, waving his sign and clowning around. He hoped the tip about the dumpster was more than a way to get rid of the competition.

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