further adventures of the amateur detective

On Thursday morning, after dropping the boy off at the high school, Zenny and I parked by the library and walked down to the elementary school. We said hello to the family of yellow finches we see every morning, looked for snails in the wet grass by the fence, and waved at the pickle ball ladies at the tennis court. At the gate Zenny gave me a kiss and ran to class, and I walked back up to the library. By the gym I stopped to look at Ward, one of our homeless guys who collects cans to recycle. He was sleeping in his usual spot, lying on his back with a hand on his chest, and he looked like an accidental renaissance painting. I wanted to take a picture of him, but that would be rude. Also, he swears a lot when he's grumpy, and he wouldn't be happy if I woke him up. I might have risked it anyway, but some kids were passing by, so I kept walking, thinking that I should keep cash in my pocket to pay people to take pictures of them. And maybe to bribe them not to call the police for propositioning them for photos like a fuckin weirdo. How do street photographers get people to pose for them? Do they even ask, or do they lurk around with telescopic lenses and pretend to be journalists? I walked up the hill, turned off the exercise tracker on my watch (damned if I'll walk 10 minutes and not get credit for it), got my lunch out of the car, put my badge on, and unlocked the library for another long day of helping people print shit and then get their money out of the copy machine after they ignore all the signs telling them it's not the printer. 

After school, Zenny walked up to do her homework. "Someone died at the park," she said. "There were police, and a sheet or something covering something on the ground, and an ambulance, and they were all just standing around talking. Maybe whoever was lighting the trash cans on fire finally lit themself on fire and died."

"Huh, I don't think so, the guy who was burning the trash cans is still in jail for robbing 7-11 with a fake gun. I wonder who... OH NO."

Yeah, it was Ward. He was dead. I stopped and stared at him and thought about taking a picture, then just walked away and let him lie there for another 6 hours. You know, just like Nancy Drew.

Hark! A Vagrant

After walking by that other dead guy a few years ago, I started nudging people with my foot and asking them if they're alive when I see them passed out in the middle of the day. Dead people tend to look pretty dead - they kind of sink flatter, and your brain picks up on them not breathing, which gives you the creeps. But it was 7:45am and he was in his normal sleeping spot, and the last guy I tried to wake up went on a screaming rampage, so I just didn't bother. I feel bad about it.

Ward was 57, a skinny guy who always wore a baseball cap and cargo shorts. He joined the military as a young man and came back from deployment with some pretty serious trauma that went untreated. He stopped talking and started pacing everywhere. He tried to self medicate with drugs at some point, and wouldn't accept help. For the 11 years I knew him, he speed-walked back and forth from our town to the recycling station a few miles away, pushing an old baby stroller full of bagged aluminum cans. He'd buy lunch with the recycling money and sit behind the library eating out of take-away boxes with chopsticks. He never spoke except to swear to himself if he was having a bad day, and always accepted the bags of recycling we saved up for him. Never saw him smile, but he wasn't a scary or dangerous person, and he didn't cause any problems. I'm sorry he died. He looked peaceful, at least.