The Potty Mouth at the Table (3 page)

You know what I did? Nothing. I left the stuff there. I figured that if the hobo needed a place to store his stuff, I was okay with it. However, I did feel a bit unsettled after I informed my neighbors of the discovery and learned that one of them had found used hypodermic needles in her kid’s
playhouse, and the other had suspicions that the temporary required-by-construction port-o-potty in her backyard might have been an attraction of sorts.

But I still let my hobo use my bushes as a master bedroom closet.

Then came the day a year later when I noticed something odd in my garlic bed. There were “deposits” in uncouth places. True, I have a little dog. She is a very weird, particular sort of creature that has meticulous habits, and that includes where she conducts private time. To tell the truth, she takes her private time so seriously that I have no idea where she goes unless we’re on a walk, and then she’ll go in front of people who are standing in their front yard. I know she wasn’t the one who made dirty in the garlic bed. In a self-defense mechanism, I cleaned up the deposits and convinced myself that my dog was simply acting out of character, even though I found the curiosities in the exact spot where a full-size human would squat over the garden border.

My neighbor’s port-o-potty, by the way, had been removed when construction on her house had been completed a month before. Regardless, I put a lock on the back gate and I moved on.

The following week, after seven days of rain and freezing temperatures, I discovered a structure of sorts under my back gate, bridging the muddy span between the alley and
the backyard for easy, unencumbered passage, consisting of boards probably ripped off my neighbor’s fence. It was work unfettered by details and constructed by someone who subsisted on a strict diet of soup. I looked at my dog. I knew she didn’t build it. Her eyes told me she wasn’t the garlic pooper, either.

The week after that, my little dog woke me up at 6:30 a.m. to alert me that something was amiss at our front door. After I stumbled down the stairs, I found a man I had never seen before standing in front of my neighbor’s house, who turned and ambled across the street with the speed of a threatened silverback as soon as I opened the door. Within three seconds, he was quickly on my porch as clouds of frost shot out of his mouth and he waved his arms boldly about.

“I need gas!” he demanded, his eyes bulging. “I need lawn mower gas right now! How much do you have? I’m going to the Four Corners!”

“We don’t have a lawn mower!” I replied quickly, which was equally insane because he should have known that. There was no doubt in my mind that he’d been in our backyard. Plus, a hobo doesn’t go very far without his stuff, maybe a block or two, so that meant that his base camp was nearby. Very nearby.

Aside from that, I would never give a hobo gas, even if I did want him to relocate to another state. In Phoenix, a
hobo arsonist tried to set our backyard on fire in the middle of the night and there I was when the fire department arrived, holding a hose and wearing just a tank top and a pair of Fruit of the Loom white cotton briefs. You only need to make that mistake once.

I shut the door quickly and couldn’t help being disappointed. He didn’t have a bandana on a stick, he wasn’t humming, and he did not seem jolly in the least. My hobo was mean. And high. He was just a crackhead, one who’d become unaccustomed to using toilet paper and really would drive a lawn mower to the border of Arizona and Utah if the voices demanded it.

That was the last time I encountered the hobo or any sign of him, except when I saw him at Safeway several months later, pushing a stolen grocery cart full of stuff, including a lampshade I thought I could really do something with. Clearly, his dreams of reaching the Four Corners on a lawn mower had not been realized, and he had replaced that reverie with spitting at traffic instead.

Then the complaint letter arrived, giving us ten days to maintain the bushes in the alley or face a fine from the city. We bought a pole trimmer, unlocked the back gate, noticed the bridge was gone—clearly if you lock out a hobo, he takes back his gifts—and crossed the border into hobo Narnia.

We were halfway done when my husband shut off the trimmer.

“What’s in there?” he asked, pointing hesitantly to the portion of the bushes he had just cut.

There was a large mass of something blue, several bags of empty soda cans, and a pair of jeans.

“That’s the hobo’s apartment,” I said nervously, shooting a glance down the alley in case he was on his way home, even though I knew I’d hear the clatter of beer bottles long before he rounded the corner and the spitting started.

“There’s something in there,” my husband said, leaning in closer. “Holy shit! There’s a body in there!”

Now, I suppose it would be different if this were the first body my husband had suddenly found this year, but it wasn’t (although I’m not allowed to write about it because it’s “still not funny, Laurie”; I just checked). The thought of a deceased free-range hobo filled me with dread, fear, and, most of all, anger. I couldn’t believe this was about to happen again. After the last body (still not funny; I checked again) it took two weeks of watching the entire catalog of Pixar movies and eating Domino’s Pizza every night before my husband had calmed down enough to resist poking me every time I closed my eyes.

This was really unfair. I didn’t want him to go through the trauma of finding a second dead person within a square
mile, and personally, I can only watch
Cars 2
once a year. If the yoga people didn’t insist on using the alley as their own personal street and then feel they had the right to complain to the city that our bushes were scratching their cars, we wouldn’t be back here in the first place. The last thing I ever want to do on any day is find a dead hobo, because once you discover one, you can’t undiscover it.

I felt terrible that I did not give him gas that day. And I’m sorry he died alone. But at least he made it back to his apartment. Clearly, he went peacefully in the comfort of his own nest, resting on a bed of leaves and surrounded by the roughly thirty-eight balls he had likely stolen from my dog.

I obviously couldn’t live with the thought of a dying hobo haunting my backyard. I had predecided the minute I spotted him lying there that our house would be up for sale by sundown.

My anger turned to rage when I heard the crunch of gravel under tires and I knew there was a yoga person turning into the parking lot. I wouldn’t be out here if it weren’t for them and their complaining. If it weren’t for them, the hobo could have been found by a subsequent homeowner who thought that grooming the back of his house was just as important as grooming the front, or by some little kids poking around in places they shouldn’t have been poking.

“You know what?” I yelled loud enough for all of our neighbors to hear me. “
I hate the yoga people!
I hate them! This is all their fault!”

“I agree. I hate them, too. Now help me,” my husband said as he reached toward the mound, and with gloved hands, we each pulled the bundle of blue out. It wasn’t heavy, but then again, it’s not like you can’t stick a mummy in a backpack and hike out of a tomb with it.

I shuddered. The wave of anxiety swallowing my insides grew larger when we pulled what turned out to be a filthy blue comforter out of the bushes. Under it, I saw the outline of a body on its side, bent at the knees and one arm under the head.

I took a deep breath. “How do we do this?” I asked my husband, since he was the one with the experience. We pulled the comforter back at the same time, expecting to see our hobo, now done in leather.

But there was nothing. Just leaves. Lots of leaves and dirt. The comforter was empty. No body. No dead hobo. No
Ratatouille
and a large Meat Lovers on the menu for tonight. The tragedy that was getting ready to swallow our lives or at least the rest of the afternoon had been undone.

The hobo lived. Probably, maybe. Well, perhaps the hobo lived, and that was good enough for me as long as he wasn’t dead within my property lines.

We simply looked at each other as we dropped our respective corners and exhaled huge sighs of relief. From behind me, I heard another set of tires on gravel, then a short honk of a car horn. I turned to see a Volvo, a nice, new, shiny Volvo, stopped and waiting for us to get out of the way. I waved slightly, and as the driver drove slowly past toward the parking lot of the yoga studio, she waved back.

“Sor-ree!” She grinned with a huge white smile. “I need to get to class.”

“No problem,” I said as I smiled back. “We were completely and utterly in your way as a driver who has co-opted our alley.”

“Is that your house right there?” the yoga person said as she pointed to my backyard, and I got ready for a lecture about how errant laurel branches can decimate the Blue Book value of a Volvo that she just drove off a car lot yesterday.

“Yep,” I said, getting my pointer finger ready for an alley screaming match. It was all about to go down, hobo style.

“I don’t want you to think that I’m spying,” she said with a laugh, which disarmed me. “But as I drive by I can see your yard through the bushes, and your garden looks so beautiful. Everything is so green and healthy!”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it was organic, but we did have a special kind of fertilizer,” I said as I smiled back, then quickly added, “Hey! Would you like some homegrown garlic?”

I
couldn’t believe it. I had just been bitch slapped.

I sat there stunned for seconds afterward in the eerie quiet that followed. I looked out at the lecture hall filled with students as sixty pairs of eyes turned toward me, the silence invading the room like barefooted Huns. As soon as I recovered my senses, I looked down the table of panelists and at the tiny man in the stupid fedora who had just insulted me publicly and continued right on with his nasal diatribe.

I had never met this man before; our first meeting had been fifteen minutes earlier when we were introduced by the moderator of a writing panel, Humor in Literature. We’d both been invited to speak at this writing conference, and while I am not a scholar of poetry, I am a pretty good
judge of character when it comes to tiny, assholian men who fancy fedora hats. And when I read his bio in the conference booklet—all instructors were asked to write their own bios—my suspicions were confirmed. He wrote that he considered himself to be one of the most admired, acknowledged, and humorous poets of this day and age. And by age, I mean the age of bipedal mankind.

He was cordial but abrupt when we were introduced; not friendly, not rude, just curt, which was fine by me—I certainly wasn’t expecting a hug. Some people don’t do well in social situations; writers are notorious for this, and I wasn’t going on a date with the guy, nor were we scheduled to cage fight, so why the attitude, Mr. Poet? Hey, it’s fine by me: Don’t say anything back or look me in the eye when I said it was nice to meet you. Especially when we will be doing a reading together on the last night of the conference and will have to see each other again—that won’t be awkward at all.

I had no further contact with Mr. Poet after that crusty exchange. When the panel began, we were asked to introduce ourselves and say a little something about our background to the class, which was so full that there were people standing in the back, leaning against the walls. The first writer on the dais talked about the memoir she wrote and how she prepared for it. Everyone was very responsive, and
when it came my turn to speak I said that I loved writing humor because every time I showed my underwear to a stranger by accident, or tossed a naked tampon out of my purse at a bag boy, talking and laughing about it made it feel less shitty.

The audience laughed and I settled into my seat, a little more comfortable now that introductions had been made. Except for Mr. Poet, who stood up, introduced himself, mentioned the award that his latest poem had won, and proceeded to say, “You can tell when a person truly understands what humor is when they do not have to resort to profanity, unlike the potty mouth at the table.” With that, he threw me a look of disdain so pure and disgusted, it was followed by the exclamation point of snotty expressions, the exaggerated eye roll.

The room flatlined as every eye in it immediately glided down the table to me, the offender—the Potty Mouth. I’m sure my jaw was caught in a free fall before I pretended it was funny, but it was no use. It was out there; the diss was as blatant and direct as one baby mama to another with kids the exact same age—and with the exact same noses—standing in line at the Dollar Store, buying diapers.

I decided not to respond to Mr. Poet’s comment, even though I was so embarrassed that I don’t know how my ears didn’t light my neighbors on fire. I was stunned, and the
embarrassment was so overwhelming that for a moment I felt dizzy.

Would I have liked to reach over and give him one of my mother’s “I don’t think you’ll be doing that again” pinches, flesh vise-gripped so effectively that it would leave physical and emotional scars for decades? Yes, yes, I would have liked that very much. But there was no way I was going to stoop to his level. People had attended this panel to hear writers talk about humor, not to watch a slap fight between two assholes, one in a hat (and it’s definitely an Asshole Fight if any participant is wearing a hat).

Let it be known, however, that due to the fact that I have two younger sisters close in age, I am
very
versed in the art of parking lot fights, especially the kicking aspect, and I am more than willing to bring those skills indoors,
my friend.

He, however, went on to recite his entire poem word for word, and I happen to know this for a fact because he printed out five pages of it and handed them out to everyone who passed by one of the classroom windows.

My outward politeness, however, did not stop me from thinking of a thousand retorts in my head:

“Who are you, Columbo? Take off your friggin’ hat already; it’s a hundred and fifteen degrees outside and the runway at the airport just melted. Get an all-season identifier, like a birthmark or a monocle.”