How about a story this time?

From that great Canadian magazine, event: journal of the contemporary arts, volume 14, number 2, 1985.

The setting is Old Town Pasadena before, a real place, but it could be anywhere. The Notes on Contributors in the magazine say: Gary Sterling teaches in Pasadena, California where he “has survived the gray days of abstraction.” If only!

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Three Times Walter Lee

The first time I met Walter Lee, I could almost see something behind him pressing down his shoulders. He had the smell of tragedy on his breath. Fear floated in his quick unfocused eyes, sliding around in his head as if to wash against the reason life had shut him out and refused to let him ever in again.

I was down in Old Town. I had my own reasons. Always the same ones. This is the backwater of the city; progress has passed it by, sweeping along those slick featureless structures two blocks away. Here the buildings rise as artifacts out of the actual and substantive earth. Here cornices overtop frescoes, doorways are delineated, every window preserves identity. And though the dirt is undeniable, urine frequent, and vomit an occasional treat for the oversize cockroaches which gather nightly in the corner gutter, everything is more real. Wherever you step, life sticks to your feet. The sadness is unbearable, nostalgia clings and you cannot wash it off.

The Re-Development Agency which otherwise is pocketing up the city has allowed a token adventure in reconstruction and some few shops bravely cling to the ragged attempted arcade and struggle with the fluctuating notions of kitsch. Such permissiveness attests the nearness of the end, and when a small ad loc. branch bank appeared, like a fillip of those economic fingers caressing the city’s gullible throat, kneading its open heart, the ambivalent feelings rushed and penetrated bitter and deep. Days burned, the sidewalks breathed in open-mouthed cement, the garish nights waited for the wrecking ball to strike.

I had parked in the only lot, pitted, adjacent to the once removed Occult Accessories, above the now closed lower level where one boutique resisted with hand-crafted quality until its hands were tied. I turned from the Scottish pub to the Play It Again used record shop across the street, my destination, when an old and stagnant man humbled up to me.

“That’ll be a quarter for parking,” he said, limping rejection with his failure at an official tone.

“Oh, really?” I smiled, surprised. A polemic beginning.

“I’m the lot sweeper, see, I got three lots, this’n here, there’n ‘cross street on Raymond one block. I sweep out the lots you know, look after things, hell it’s worth a quarter just for the insurance to your tires, no nails, no glass or crap…”

I had a quarter and I gave it to him. He was pleased and talkative, and wanted to give me back something of himself. I stayed a moment. We shook hands.

“Name’s Walter Lee. I thank you kindly. You see that brick work, that brick wall all around there? I did that, I put that up. Don’t have time to repair it they break it down, they pigs, them people now days. They don’t like me around, there at the pub there, say I bother the customers, treat me bad, police always try’n hassle me, I don’t take none of that crap, told ‘em off. I got three lots they give me, can’t get around to three. My health, poorly, goin’ in hospital two weeks, don’t matter anyway. Ought to fix that brick work.”

* * *

The second time I saw Walter Lee he’d moved three blocks over in front of the City Hall. He was down on the ground with a brush and a paper bag sweeping. Cop told him to move along. He saw me watching, said, “Name’s Walter Lee. I’m sweeping up a footsteps those big men in there, they feet they steppin’ on people, all they leave me that little bit dirt.”

He looked into the bag, shook it around. “Don’t know whose, can’t tell. They’s no place for folk like me they’s no place.”

“Move along Walter Lee,” Cop said. “You crazy old man.”

“You crazy old man,” laughed Walter Lee and sat down on the sidewalk and cried into his paper bag a while. He shuffled himself up and stumbled away.

Kids riding skateboards through the City Hall arches.

“Hey you kids,” Cop yelled.

Walter Lee laughed.

* * *

Last time I saw Walter Lee. Old Town. By the railing going down stairs to the lower level where the clock shop used to be and the vegetable restaurant and then the midnight mission, closed down. The cops had him chained, animal, looking dead like he had no blood left in him, just laughing a little, afraid because all of a sudden the world had big hands on him and bright lights flashing and down below his feet lying horrible dead a body, someone.

I didn’t want to look anywhere. “You do that, Walter Lee?” I hoped no.

“What if I didn’ what if I did? They take care me now. I got bad lungs. It’s always cold. Got no place nothin’. They take care me now.”

Cop said, “Don’t talk to him.”