"I don't want to scare you away.. [he stutters the 's']..some people see it from the outside and don't even bother to come in and look around. [a long pause] I won't give you an address unless you meet me there, but I can tell you its near Georgia Tech off of Marietta street."
I thank him and replace the headset on the receiver, my pencil sings in muted chalky hymns, spelling out "M-a-r-i-e-t-t-a" on scrap. Meet him? Not yet. Frost on the window reminds me that this April morning might take the prize of coldest on record. I bundle up and begin my swift march across the quadrangle, from the library to the gray, monolithic, parking deck hidden among the oaks on the west side of Emory's campus. Another year end search for a new place to sleep. I haven't lived at home in years. I'm never in the same place for more than one, and this time around I am going it alone. No roommates.
Edgewood Avenue—gray, scarred, a fading blemish on Atlanta's weathered face—connects downtown grit with antebellum luxury. It docks with Euclid in Inman Park, once home to the wealthiest and most influential Atlantans. This intersection is the imaginary line where the homes end and warehouses multiply in magnitudes of machine shops, madness, and mini-marts. Liquor outnumbers luxury ten to one. Endless signatures of local graffiti icons canvas the decay. Ghosts sing quiet songs urging casual commuters to stay away.
On my way into town, a light stops me. My engine idles, passive and constant. Jimmy's Quik Stop is bustling. Outside among the faded ads for Kool and Schlitz, faces turn left, turn right, then left. Never looking ahead, seldom staring at one thing for too long. To me their wild wandering eyes search, but don't have the first idea idea for what, where, or why. I wonder if their tattered coats and short breaths are indicative of mileage? How are there so many people older than they who don't appear destroyed by their journey? I ponder my destination. Is it intellect? Wealth, fortune? I am naive enough to still equivocate success with intelligence—intellect with money. A foolish trap. I don't know any better.
The light snaps to green without warning. I pass under the darkness of sixteen lanes of Interstates 85/75 and officially enter downtown. Ahead, orange cones barricade the road like sentinels protecting a hidden treasure. A detour. Shit. Banking left onto one side street, then right onto Marietta, my mind wanders toward food, things to do, etc... I could get a burger in little five points; I should double check my assignments for the week; check my account balances; I'm hungry; maybe I can swing by...
The car lurches forward, exhaling, sighing defiantly. In perfect stop motion, my eyes lock on him. The photo. Summer. Him. My shame. One frame at a time. He sits at the mouth of an alley. I read the sign above, waving gently as if to get my full attention. His head is up. His body sits still in the wheelchair, bundled in blankets, a small dark knit cap holds his white hair down over his ears. His bushy beard bends in the breeze. He looks left. Then right. Then left.
Frame by frame, I pass him. I keep going.
Brakes! My tires awaken with a squeal. I spin the wheel cutting a semi-circle in the road. Disregarding the no parking signs, I pull into the alley. Fairlie St NW dances on green paint in white letters overhead. He sits just around the corner from where I've stopped.
What do I say? This is awkward. Keys rattle nervously as I remove my camera from the center console in my car and check that there's film inside. My red filter—used to block blue light—gets a quick field cleaning with the cloth over my elbow. I pull the door latch, inviting the city's symphony into my mind. Minutes pass, nervous and startled I retrace my steps I'd taken months before.
The pale brown brick on the corner pulls back like a stage curtain. The tension I feel increases proportionally as the totality of the seated figure reveals itself from behind the brick. I draw closer, approaching from his left side. Now, standing almost directly in front of him, I'm frozen solid and the world has continued on with out me. The Sun sets instantly and the light around us narrows, blanketing our surroundings in shadow. He sits before me, in the gray light next to a blue mail box, his eyes and face facing the earth. Just as I begin to think he is asleep, his thick beard rises slowly and his eyes meet mine. Don't look away. Don't. move. Beneath the aged, tired grime of the street, his bushy white eyebrows defend the mountains of sorrow visible in two brilliant beautiful blue spheres. Inside, their azure water churns with radiance and introspection. A glimmer of brilliance, their youth pierces through to the back of my skull. I am completely lost.
"Who the hell are you?" His voice is gruff, filled with the phlegmy rasp of cigarettes and old age, greets me without hesitation. I hear the world around us. They light is forever gray.
"Hi. My name is Bartosz... [I stutter] Bartosz Solowiej. Would you mind if I take a photograph of you?" I couldn't think of anything else to say. The only thing available to me, a selfish, belittling introduction.
"No. Get the hell out of here." He said it waving his hand, now exposed from under his thick felt blanket. Fine spider veins cover the skin between his thumb and index finger like confetti. "Go on!" I was already taking a step back, pivoting toward the car. "Wait! ... wait, I need gloves. Someone stole my gloves." I stop in my tracks, the camera tempting me to shoot quickly, leap into the car, and leave. To my better judgment, I don't.
"Ok. What kind of gloves?"
"Go down the alley. Make a right. There's a store there. They sell cotton knit work gloves. Get me a pair and I get you a picture."
"Ok. I'll be right back. Do you want anything else?"
"Whatever... No." Just as he says, the market down the alley and to the right I has gloves on the wall next to other low budget winter items I can imagine construction workers wearing and losing without any guilt. The round trip takes me ten minutes, my car still safely blinking its hazards at the mouth of the alley. The nameless man waits around the corner, disinterested and apathetic.
The gloves give me the confidence I need to walk up to him again. He purposefully doesn't look up at me, no doubt expecting some trite excuse about how the store ran out but I'd still like a photo.
I drop the gloves on his lap. He looks up, his squinting, suspicious eyes open wide, a radiant blue. "Two pairs. You got me two pairs. Thanks mister. I... I really appreciate... Hey, what's your name, what'd you say it was?" I tell him again. "My name is Ted. That's all you need to know about my name. It's Ted." My finger, already pressed lightly on the shutter release, fulfills its duty with a full squeeze of the cold chrome button. The film winds and Ted's eyes dart to the lens. Another snap. Then another.
"How long have you been out here, Ted?"
"Long time, Bart. ... Can I call you Bart?"
"Sure, how long is a long time?"
"You going to keep asking me dumb questions, Bart?" He grins, his tone one of sarcasm, "Who wants to know? It's been a long enough time for me to stop countin'. I used to stay up in midtown but they chased me out of there so I came down here. And I been here ever since. Years.
I got a question. Where is your last name from? Is it Polish?"
"Yeah, it's Polish. My family is Polish. I am polish... born there."
"My best friend growin' up was Polish. Knew him from kindergarten on up. Can I tell you a story about him?"
"Sure." I nod to reinforce my interest.
"His name was Fili . That's not his real name but that's what I called him.
...After we finished high school together, we enlisted and went off to fight in Vietnam. Together.
...You couldn't separate us, we were thick as thieves. We got assigned to the same platoon...
I remember this one sunny day we were walking together. Sun shining, the jungle all around us makin' noise, birds and stuff. We're walking together...just another day under the sun and I hear a metallic thump and pop off in the distance... a mortar... an ambush..." [He stops, breathing heavily, choking on his words.]
The piercing silence hits me when he pauses. Atlanta disappears. There isn't even a sidewalk beneath me. His eyes grow dark, pupils dilating madly, unevenly, as I realize what is happening. Paralyzed. Frozen. Cold electric arcs blast in succession down the length of my spine and the hair on my neck stands in a frightening, arctic, anxious wave that spreads over my body. His eyes fill my entire mind—hundreds of them all at once. I see, no, I feel his every thought channeling through me. My God, he is reliving this. The world within him is enraged and sickened. The infinite blackness of pain devours his brilliant blue irises from within. I am crushed, falling into them with the weight of his horrors around my throat. I can't breath.
The mortar explodes and he returns to me. The blue returns to his eyes as bloody tears gather in his platinum blonde eyelashes.
"We were so young, Bart. Fili didn't... I was on the ground. My ears were ringing, I was deaf.
There was a smell...metallic, cut grass, burning flesh, moist fresh dirt. The trees were gray, smokey. There was no up or down. ... Silence
... I saw everything. Fili got hit. I was wearing pieces of him. Pieces. He was nowhere...everywhere...all over me. All over the jungle. And the smell. Terrible, the smell. I tried to stand up and I felt a million razor blades digging into my ankles.
Fili was Polish. I knew him all my life. We were nineteen. ...And I lost most of my feet. He's dead and I only lost all my toes."
He lights a cigarette. I put my hand in his knee. He pulls the cotton knit work gloves over his hands. "I'm sorry." Choking on my emotions, there's nothing else I can say. My camera snaps repeatedly; the only sound I hear over the frenetic heartbeat in my ears.
A long pause.
"The gloves, Bart. Thanks."
"Ted, take care of these. Hide the other pair. Keep them in case someone takes the first."
"I will. These photos you're taking...you work for the paper? I get reporters coming over here to take pictures of me for the paper. I never see 'em you know. Dunno where I been published. Hell, they'll pay me five or ten bucks. Easy money."
"No, it's nothing like that, Ted. I just go around town taking photos. I don't give them to anyone. I don't sell 'em. I just see things a little differently so I shoot these photos...they're like a catalog for me. They help me remember. I even develop them in my closet and bathroom."
"Could I see 'em when you print 'em? No one's ever brought any of 'em back for me to see. You know, if you're passing through?"
"Listen, definitely, I'll be back. I'm going to give you these photos. I'll bring them back. How will I find you?"
"I'm always here. This is my corner. That's my alley. Sometimes if it's cold I stay in a shelter. If you don't find me, there's a man that runs a newsstand named Ed Lilly, right over there." He motions with his hand to a storefront a dozen yards from us on Marietta Street, "Give them to Ed but don't tell him I told you his last name. He's a little sensitive about it sometimes."
"It's a promise, Ted."
I stand up, never realizing when I'd kneeled before him. I thank him and walk back to my car; to my life; to my perceptively invulnerable future. I don't go any farther on my search for a home that day. I go home. I leave Ted sitting at the mouth of his alley, his home—his hands wrapped in knit cotton.
