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I was broke. Not a penny to my name. I guess I could have hocked my wee pen knife. I might have gotten a dollar for it. That is why I didn't give it up. After all, a man has his limits.
This wasn't a good situation for a 22 year old man, but that is where I found myself. Yes, I could blame my ex-wife, who had raked me over the proverbial divorce coals. But we had been married barely a month! Then I found myself assailed by an upscale law firm in a manner that left me bereft of my few assets. All the time I was absent from work, answering absurd charges by her attorneys, cost me my job. Let me tell you now, friends, don't marry while you are in college!
That is how I wound up sleeping in the park of a large Midwestern city as I was hitchhiking across the country to Arizona. I had a high school friend who had moved there a couple of years before and he told me there were plenty of jobs and the state was beautiful. I was young and brash, leaving with just a few dollars in my pocket, hoping I could pick up a few odd jobs here and there in order to eat. But things hadn't worked out as well as I'd hoped. After two weeks, I hadn't eaten in two days and I was still 1500 miles from Arizona.
That morning, as I awoke in the park, it was filled with people as the bell tower tolled twelve times. If I had still owned a watch, I might have realized it was Saturday. But the watch was long gone, taken by my ex and her greedy lawyers. Embarrassed at being so tousled and grubby, I marched off to the restroom, where I brushed my teeth with my worn out toothbrush. I had no toothpaste. I then washed in the sink, using my washrag to both wash and dry myself, after I wrung it as near dry as possible. After running my comb through my hair, which still functioned despite several missing teeth, I felt halfway human again, though I was hungrier than I had ever been in my life. I wondered if I might try to panhandle. It could be risky. I didn't know the laws in this city and I might wind up in jail, but at least there I would get fed, so I took the risk.
I didn't even have the materials to make a sign, so I tried a purely verbal approach. The first few people, met with my "I'm hungry, but will work for food", looked at me with either fear or disdain, moving to the other side of the path. About that time a pair of women, perhaps 25 years old, came jogging down the path.
They were quite beautiful, and dressed in the latest, expensive, designer jogging suits which clung to them like a second skin. I couldn't help but feel my penis stir; after all, I was young and hungry, not dead. As I stepped out to intercept their course, they slowed. I noticed one put her hand into her pink fanny pack, probably reaching for pepper spray, or worse. I quickly blurted out my plea and they stopped entirely, looking meaningfully at one another.
The blonde one asked, "Where are you from?" I told her where I had lived in South Carolina. The redhead leaned in close and whispered to the blonde, then the blonde asked, "Can you do yard work?"
I nodded my head eagerly, "Oh, yes ma'am! I can run lawnmowers, edgers, weed eaters, fertilizer spreaders, you name it. I did a lot of that when I was a kid."
They conferred and the blonde, apparently the spokeswoman for the pair, said, "Ok, meet us at the east entrance to the park in an hour. We'll pick you up there."
I blurted out a, "Yes, Ma'am! I'll be there. Thank you!" And then they jogged on off out of site.
Looking around I was trying to decide which direction was east, then gave myself a slap in the head. It was early morning. All I had to do was walk into the sun. As I walked along, I saw a family sitting at a park bench rise and leave the remnants of a fast food breakfast behind. I eased over, making sure that they were leaving. They didn't look back. There was a muffin stuffed with egg and bacon with one tiny bite out of it. I overcame my revulsion and snatched it up. It was gone almost before I could get it into my mouth. I noted a half full cup of orange juice and sucked it up as if it were manna from heaven. And to me, at that moment, it was.
Being a good citizen, I picked up the remaining garbage to put it into the nearby trash can which the family had ignored. During my clean up, I found a pristine triangle of hash browns! After gobbling that down, I felt almost human again. It is amazing how little it can take to make a person happy.
I took my time getting to the east gate to the park. After all, life suddenly seemed much better. The park was beautiful and somehow I felt as if I belonged there just as much as the other citizens enjoying the beautiful spring day. So my path meandered a bit. Just as I arrived at the exit, the tower bell rang. It was one o'clock! At almost the beginning of the bell stroke, a huge BMW pulled up at the curb where I stood searching for the two women.
A darkly tinted passenger window slide silently and quickly downward, as the car stopped next to me. The blonde said, "Get in the back." I heard the electric lock click, and I climbed into the back seat. The blonde said, "Buckle up." Then we joined the traffic and were soon on the interstate.
We drove for nearly an hour. I just sat there, fielding an occasional question. The blonde wanted to know about my family, and I told her that I was alone in the world. My only known relative, my mother, had died just before I got married. I probably responded too much about my ex-wife, because she interrupted me, "So, when are you expected in Arizona?"
"Well, James isn't actually expecting me. I bumped into him at sports bar just before I got evicted from my apartment and he gave me his address, but no phone number. When things got really bad a couple of weeks later, I figured I'd take him up on his offer to visit and look for a job. That's how I wound up trying to hitchhike across the country. Hitchhiking isn't as easy as it looks in the movies."
The redhead exited the interstate and we wove through some mountainous terrain for another half hour, as the blonde continued to question me. She even asked about my sexual experience! That surprised me, but I thought she wanted to make sure I wasn't some disease ridden home or worse. I did admit to her that I had used some pot a couple of times in high school, but had quit after I graduated. She seemed satisfied with my life history and said not one more word for the next half hour.
The redhead had turned onto a side road that twisted so sharply in the mountains that sometimes it seemed as if we were passing ourselves going the other way. It was deeply wooded, very isolated country. I found myself wondering why they would drive two hours, or more, to take a jog in a park. I blew of that thought, thinking they probably had other business in the city and just took advantage of the beautiful day to get in some exercise.
Our last turn was into a huge wrought iron gate, flanked by massive stone bulwarks. The big BMW idled up a drive that was easily two miles long! Suddenly, with the last twist in the drive, we were pulling up before a palatial home that looked like a medieval castle. There were hints, here and there, that it was modern construction.
At that point, I had a puzzling thought. The native woodland rolled right up the walls of the huge home. There was no lawn, just trees with deep humus covering the shade beneath them. The forest looked totally undisturbed, broken limbs, ancient moss covered stumps, and other detritus made me wonder what sort of yard work would be needed here.
As the BMW rocked to a halt, a very tall, very statuesque woman that looked like she stepped right out of an ancient castle in Scandinavia appeared from the gigantic pair of oak doors that defined the entrance to the home. She was dressed in a leather halter and quite short leather skirt, with sandals that laced up her legs, As the trunk of the BMW rose as if by magic, she grabbed two expensive looking leather bags in one large hand and led the three of us into the house.
Inside the entrance, the blonde said, "Helga, find some clean clothes for this young man and make sure he is cleaned up. I don't want any parasites in our home." With that insulting command, she and the redhead strode off down a long hallway.