Charles Mellon Hocksworth - Part Two

He walked briskly across the snow covered parking lot, trying to keep his head turned away from the wind. The small, icy, snowflakes stung has they pelted his face. He hurried into the store and used the facilities, making sure none of the cashiers saw him. He didn’t want to take a chance on having his bathroom privileges curtailed.

Once out of the store, Charles hurried to the leeward side of the building, looking for a relief from the relentless wind. As he leaned against the building, he heard voices from around the corner, near the back of the store.

"You need to get this truck unloaded as soon as possible. I don’t care if it is cold and snowy, just get it done, now!" the husky voice bellowed.

Charles walked to the rear of the store and stuck his head around the corner to see a small, black man standing inside a semi trailer, struggling with trying to lift heavy boxes onto a conveyor belt. The wheels whirred as the boxes flew down the conveyor belt. The small man would grunt each time he struggled to lift one of the heavy boxes. Charles watched for a few minutes, then made a decision. He walked up to the back of the trailer and hollered in.

"Could you use some help?"

The man looked up, sweat dripping from his face despite the bitter cold. "Yeah, sure," he replied.
Charles climbed up into the trailer and started sending the boxes down the belt. The boxes didn’t seem that heavy to Charles, but then he was a big man, well built and considerably stronger than the small man struggling with the boxes.

They didn’t speak much as they worked to empty the trailer, just working, each alone in his thoughts. Charles was surprised that he was actually enjoying the chance to work again, even if he wasn’t getting paid. He found a rhythm that wasn’t too fast or too slow but was getting a lot of the boxes off the truck. He was loading three or four to the small man’s one box. Before long, they had the truck emptied.

"Thanks, man," the small man said, pulling off his well worn gloves.

"Sure, no problem, man," Charles answered. He started to jump down off the truck when the manager, who had been yelling earlier at the small man, came out of the back door of the store.

"You get it done?" he asked, looking at the small man. The manager glanced at Charles, but didn’t say anything to him.

"Yes sir, it’s all done.....all empty," the small man answered.

"Who are you?" the manager asked, looking at Charles.

"Nobody," Charles answered. "Just hangin’ around."

"Did you help?" the manager asked Charles.

"Yeah, I helped," Charles answered, almost with an air of contempt for the manager. He wanted to add, ‘what’s it to you’, but decided against it.

"I suppose you want to get paid for it?" the manager asked.

"Nah, just helpin’ out." Charles answered, throwing on his coat. "I’ll be going."

"Hold on a minute," the manager said, as Charles started to walk off. "Haven’t I seen you around the store a lot?"

Charles turned and faced the manager. "Maybe" he said. "Could be."

"Are you a friend of his," he asked, tossing his head in the direction of the small man.

"Nah, like I said, just helpin’ out." Charles replied.

"You lookin’ for a job?"

"A job?" Charles hadn’t been asked that very often and was surprised by the question.

"He can have mine," the small man said, stepping up between the two men. "I quit this stinkin’ work!" He walked past Charles and into the store. Charles watched as the door closed behind the man, then he turned toward the manger. The manager had stuck his hands into his coat pockets in a vain attempt to keep them warm.

" It looks like we have two openings now. What do you say?"

Charles thought for a moment, kicking at the snow that was piling up around the two men. He didn’t answer.

"It pays ten bucks an hour. It’s five days a week, Saturdays and Sundays off. You get a two weeks paid vacation after the first year. Interested?"

Charles looked at the man’s eyes. He seemed like a hard man, but there seemed to be a fairness to him and Charles figured he could use the money. "Uh......, I don’t know......maybe."

Charles was reluctant to take the work since having money always represented difficult decisions for him. Whenever he had money, his demons reared their ugly heads and tempted him beyond his capacity to resist. At least, that was the pattern in the past. Charles had been somewhat successful the last time he had worked and had a bit of money, only using his ‘helpers’ as he called them, for a short time and then using the rest of the money for useful items instead of fun juice for his veins. Yet, he realized he couldn’t avoid life forever, that at some point, he would have to step back in to it, with all its cruel temptations, and demonstrate that he could resist the siren call of illicit drugs. Overcoming his need for the feelings the drugs brought to him, had been Charles’s downfall in the past, but, he was determined to overcome this nasty habit and get off the streets. The only question in Charles’s head was if he was up to the challenge. If the past was any indication, he wasn’t. But people change, he thought, and maybe he could as well.

"Well, if you decide you want the work, come in to the store tomorrow at eight and ask for me, I’m Rusty Barnes."

Charles nodded, turned and started walking toward the corner of the store. Just as he was about to turn the corner, the manager called to him.

"Hey, what’s your name?"

Charles turned and yelled against the wind. "Charles Hocksworth."

"All right, Charles, I’ll see you tomorrow at eight."

"I guess," Charles muttered under his breath.

The next morning, about 9:30, Charles lay on his cot, staring at the snowy ceiling and watched the candle light dance around the ice crystals. The candle had started to take the edge off the cold, but Charles wasn’t too keen on getting out of his sleeping bag and facing the cold. His belly was complaining about the lack of food and his bladder was about to convince him he had to get up, even if he didn’t want to. He made a mental note to dig a small bathroom off the main room so that he didn’t have to walk all the way to the Walmart bathroom. The notion of going to work was far from his mind by this time. He had thought about it for a bit, but decided that unloading trucks wasn’t what he wanted to do then. Maybe later...much later, after the fear subsided.

As he crawled out of the entrance, the wind whipped ice and snow down his collar. He pulled his hood over his ball cap, stuck his hands into the coat pockets, and walked over to use the bathroom. He had slept too long to make it to the soup kitchen for breakfast, so he would have to wait for lunch to satisfy his stomach. After using the Walmart facilities, he returned to the pile to dig his bathroom.

He grabbed the small shovel, and started digging off the back of the main room. He had decided to make the bathroom just big enough that he could crawl into for those night emergencies or when the weather was to inclement in the mornings. He would dig some snow out, then push it out the front entrance, return and repeat until he had the new room almost completed. He was near finishing when he spotted a small, black handle sticking out of the snow. He pushed the snow away from it so that he could examine it. It appeared to be a handle like that on a brief case or small suit case. He dug around it with his shovel until he could pull it out from under the snow.

He sat down on his cot, placed the brief case on his lap and looked it over. It was black leather, very expensive looking, and locked. He worked on the locks with no success. Finally, in exasperation, he sat it on the ground and, using the blade of his shovel, levered it open. It fell open, scattering its contents all over the tarp in front of Charles. He sat and stared at the hundred dollar bills littering the ground in front of him. The case held hundreds more. He gathered up the loose money, stuck it back in the brief case and closed it on his lap. He sat there on his cot, the brief case on his lap, thinking. The only people he knew that carried money like that were drug dealers, and he didn’t think they would just let it be lost. Judging from where he found the case, at the bottom of the pile, it must have been lost for a few weeks, or even months. Never the less, those guys, whoever they were, wouldn’t just give up trying to find it. But, they don’t usually just lose money like that. Something must have happened to make them leave it after they lost it.

Another scenario that flew through his head is that someone could have stolen the money from the bad guys and then ditched it when they got too close. Whatever the reason for the money being there on his lap, he knew he would have to do something fast if he was going to .......to what? He didn’t have a plan. Call the police? Not even, he thought! But, if word got out that he had the money, he’d be dead meat within a few days. He grabbed the money and stuffed it in his back pack, an idea forming as he moved. He was about to crawl out, when he stopped. He pulled out eight of the bills and buried them in the snow above the candle. They would be revealed from the heat of the candle, after about an hour or so. He returned the case where he had found it, pushed some loose snow around it to cover it, then crawled out of the entrance.

He hurried to the soup kitchen, hoping to be in time for lunch. As he walked in, the room was mostly clear, except for a few men. He looked around, finally finding what he was looking for. He walked across the room and stood in front of the small, Hispanic man.

"Hey, Victor, what’s up?" he said, an unusual smile on his face.

"Hey, Charles, whatcha doin’, buddy?" Victor replied.

"I"m getting out of this miserable state," Charles stated.

"No way!" Victor said, standing. "Where you goin’?"

"Just away....I don’t really know, .....just outta here."

"Cool." Victor nodded, not knowing what else to say.

"Do you remember that place I mentioned to you the other day?" Charles asked. "You know, my own place?"

"Oh, yeah, man, what ya got goin’" Victor asked.

"I don’t need it no more, so I’m givin’ it to you. You want it?"

"Uh....yeah, sure, where is it?"

Charles thought for a moment. How could he explain that it was a pile of snow in the Walmart parking lot. Suddenly, after his windfall, that pile didn’t seem so cool. But, maybe Victor would. "It is in the parking lot of Walmart,"

"Where?" Victor asked, scrunching up his face. "You joking me, Charles?"

"There is a pile of snow on the Northeast corner of the Walmart parking lot. I made a snow cave in it and stuck a cot and sleeping bag in it. There’s a candle for light, a shovel to dig it bigger if you want. Go around to the back side of it, by the berm with the trees on it and, if you dig in the snow pile a little, you’ll find a blue tarp covering the entrance. It is warm ,out of the wind and it is safe. It is yours if you want it....doesn’t matter to me either way," Charles explained.

"A snow pile? Hey,...ya know, cool, I’ll check it out," Victor said, a note of hesitancy in his voice.

"Run the candle a lot, it helps to keep it warm," Charles added, with a smile.

"Yeah, ok," Victor said, not sure of the, so called, gift he’d been given. " Uh....thanks, man."

Charles shouldered his back pack and walked out of the soup kitchen. He pulled his hood up over his ball cap and leaned into the wind. That was the last time anyone ever saw him.

The End