Everyday Heroes

There's been strange goings-on in this little town of late.

I was out on a delivery, and came up out of the 10th Street viaduct towards the corner of 9th Avenue. Ahead of me, a car was sitting, burning, in the middle of the street. Not, like, overheating, or burning oil, but actually on fire. Not wishing to pass too close to a burning car (which, after all, is full of substances that are likely to go BOOOOM), I ducked into the Family Dollar lot and prepared to turn onto 9th.

Just then the light at the intersection changed, and the burning car started moving. I hadn't realized there was someone in it; I couldn't see well enough through all the smoke. But yes, there was, and the mad motherfucker was still driving it. Me, I would have abandoned the silly thing. I watched him out of sight, shaking my head and saying, “Whoa...dude's hard-core.” 'Cause, really, what else can you say? Folks think they're tough 'cause they get tattoos and body piercings, but to hell with that. Buckle up and lemme set you on fire; we'll see how tough you are.

A fella came into the store today and placed an order, but then asked to have his pizza delivered. He had no phone, he explained, so he couldn't call it in. We assumed that he was having the pizza delivered to his kids or something, and paying for it while he was away. That happens sometimes. Didn't matter to us; we'd gotten our money. So we made it, and I drove it to the address he'd given.

The address is actually right here on my block, just around the corner from my apartment, but it's an abandoned building. At least I've always assumed it was abandoned; the ground-floor windows are all boarded up and there are “No Trespassing” signs everywhere, and as far as I can tell the power's shut off to it.

I didn't see how he could possibly live here, and I checked the address twice before going in...4** Fourteenth Street, #4. I considered calling the store to make sure there hadn't been a mistake on the ticket, but my curiosity was piqued. Who doesn't love exploring?

Bemused, I entered and found an extremely steep and evil-looking staircase in my path. I followed it up to a door with a big 4 drawn carefully on in magic marker. I had to knock several times, but the door finally opened, and there was the guy who had placed the order, the guy who had been in the store thirty minutes earlier. I guess he had wanted pizza but hadn't wanted to carry it home on a hot day, so he'd coughed up a couple of extra bucks to have me bring it for him.

I was curious about the apartment, of course. What sort of crackhouse is he setting up, forty yards from my own apartment? He didn't open the door very wide, but I could see past him into the place, and actually he'd done it up pretty nice. It was furnished, and although it appeared that I'd been right about the absence of electricity there were lots of windows, so the place was airy and well-lit. I could see a sofa and coffee table, and in the small section of kitchen visible to me there was a nice, old-fashioned table, and the counters sparkled. It looked very comfortable and neat, inexpensive but really quite homey. I was impressed.

As he took the pizza, breadsticks, and soda from me, a very lovely young woman walked into my view. She saw me and smiled. She was slender, black, and probably about twenty. And let me explain what I mean by lovely. She was not pretty, like girl-next-door pretty, but beautiful, like she belonged on the cover of a magazine, except that no magazine could possibly be classy enough for her, and no photographer talented enough to do her justice.

I looked from her to the old man and tried to judge: Daughter? Granddaughter, even? May-December romance, possibly? I returned the smile, shyly and awkwardly, and she passed out of my view into the kitchen in search of plates.

He gave me a small tip and asked me to lock the downstairs door when I left, which I did, thinking to myself, “Living in an abandoned building is only a half-step up from homelessness, but in this case, that's a serious goddamned half-step.” I haven't walked a mile in his shoes or anything, but that seems like a nice little world he's made, basically from nothing.

I'm fascinated by these two guys. The first guy, the guy driving the burning car, you've got to admire his courage, if not his intelligence. And the second guy, carving a comfortable existence out of the wreckage of the city, you've got love his resourcefulness. Everyday heroes, I'm calling 'em, and I like this town a lot more than usual today.