chapter twelve

chase

By that afternoon, Meghan had more homework for me to do. She spent the rest of her morning researching homeless people, and she wanted me to read all these articles and watch a bunch of videos about how to talk to them. How to talk about them.

Meghan: He’s unhoused, not homeless. He has a home. It just doesn’t look like yours or mine.

Chase: probably more like mine though

Meghan: Probably.

She suggested I talk to Lenny sans-camera first to gauge how he felt about being interviewed. That evening, before sunset, I drove around town scoping out his usual spots, hoping to find him riding his bike rather than having to encroach on his personal space at the old orphanage. Thankfully, I spotted him just down the road from the scrapyard where he sold his cans. He was glad to have someone to talk to, and even more happy to see the ham sandwich from the deli I had for him. I bought one for myself, too, and I ate with him in the parking lot of a Dollar General to make him feel less like a charity case. “Listen, Lenny. There’s something I need your help with.”

“Me?” He blinked at me in surprise, raising his graying, bushy eyebrows. He was wearing a sock cap even though it was a relatively warm day. “How can I help you, son?”

“Well,” I said, tossing a piece of crust toward one of the geese waddling nearby in a ditch. “It’s actually for my friend, Meghan. She’s a writer for the newspaper, but people just aren’t reading it that much anymore. She needs–”

“I read it all the time!” he expressed with a little chuckle. “Every issue. Circle-K gives me all their leftover papers. Kroger, too. Stacks and stacks of newspapers that don’t sell, you wouldn’t believe how many.” Actually, I could believe it, and I was glad Meghan wasn’t around to hear that comment. “Anyway, I bet you’re talking about Meghan Dobson.”

I smiled. “I am. You’ve read her articles, huh?”

“She writes about dead people a lot.” Lenny’s eyes widened.

“That she does.” I clicked my tongue. “Well, Lenny, you know how you said there’s a lot of leftover papers? That’s the problem. Other people aren’t reading the Woodvale Times that much anymore, and it’s bumming her out. She thought—she and I thought—maybe people would like to read about you.”

He contorted his face into a doubtful grimace. “Me? What would they want to read about me for?”

“Everyone knows who you are, but I bet you’ve got some interesting stories to tell. Would you be comfortable talking about how you came to be—I mean, live up at the old orphanage?”

Lenny’s brows furrowed, and he gave this some thought for a while. I stared at his hands, rough and weathered, holding what was left of his sandwich. “Well,” he said, his voice sounding like his throat might be full of phlegm. “People don’t really want to hear what I have to say. She might want to write about someone better.”

I looked at Lenny’s face, wondering what this man might look like if he’d been dealt a better hand in life. There was an almost youthful spark in his eyes, but years of exposure to the elements made his face look worn and tired. With a sigh, I put my half-eaten sandwich back in its clamshell box and said, “Well, the truth is, interviewing you was my idea. Meghan and I are sort of partnering to do the news together, and I was really hoping you’d talk to me, too. We both want to hear what you have to say—and I know the people of Woodvale do, too.”

He looked me in the eyes. “You’ll be there, too?”

I nodded. “Yeah, the whole time.”

Lenny stared at his hands for a moment. “You’re easy to talk to, so that might be okay.” I couldn’t recall my first interaction with Lenny, but we’d spoken more times than I could count. Anytime he saw me with my camera set up somewhere, he’d stand beside me to watch my screen. Sometimes he rode his bike back and forth behind the people I interviewed, making me wonder if he had a place to watch the evening news to spot himself on it.

“You’ll do it?”

Lenny gave a small nod after a moment of contemplation “Alright,” he said, “I’ll talk to you both. I’ll be up at my place on the hill all afternoon tomorrow. You can come by then.” I assumed his place up on the hill meant the orphanage. He stared at the ground for a second longer before adding, “But I don’t want you showing where I sleep, where I live. I don’t need people seeing that. It might seem… strange.”

“Gotcha,” I said. “We can talk outside, then.”

A flicker of relief flashed across his face. He thanked me for the sandwich and got on his bike, stopping at the edge of the lot to pick up a discarded can. And then he was on his way.

**

“Let me preface what I’m about to ask you by saying I’m not trying to stereotype, and I hope it doesn’t make you think less of me,” Meghan said as she buckled her seatbelt in my passenger seat the next day. Her car was back from the shop, but she suggested we continue riding together for our assignments—it made more sense that way.

“I already think you're the spawn of Satan, so I couldn’t possibly think less of you.” I tilted my head to the side and gave her the most obnoxiously smug grin I could muster.

And I was lying through my teeth.

“Whatever,” she said with a dismissive roll of her eyes. “I was just going to ask... do you think Lenny might get, you know, defensive or aggressive when we start asking him about his past? I mean, statistically, a lot of unhoused people have been through some serious trauma, and I don’t want to push him into a bad place or make him mad. And for what it’s worth, this is more about him being a strange man than an unhoused person. This is just something women have to think about, you know?”

“Right,” I said. I glanced at her, catching a flicker of apprehension in her eyes. “You’re worried he’s going to get aggressive?”

“I’m saying we don’t know anything about this man. I mean, I don’t even know Lenny’s real name, so that limited my research on him. I’m just a little concerned he might be dangerous.”

“Dangerous? No,” I said, pausing for a deep inhale because I knew I was about to impress her. Like her, I’d spent the previous day gathering all the info I could. My contact at the police department opened up about her various run-ins with Lenny over the years, and once I had his last name, most of what I found was public record. “Leonard Eugene Carr, age sixty-four, robbed a gas station in Indianapolis in 2005. Had a couple of DUIs before that. And, more recently, he was picked up for loitering here in Woodvale. Does he have a criminal record? Yes. But he’s not dangerous.”

“Oh.” She reached up to adjust her bangs, perhaps a little embarrassed she wasn’t able to obtain this information herself. “Okay, I guess none of those crimes make him unsafe to be around.”

I shook my head. “Lenny’s a character, maybe a little rough around the edges. But you don’t need to be afraid of him. Besides, I’ll keep you safe.”

Shit. I’d just said the quiet part out loud, and I was too terrified of her reaction to even turn my head. I could feel the heat rising in my neck. Why did I have to say that last part? I gripped the steering wheel tight, bracing myself for her inevitable remark about my supposed “hero complex.” She loved throwing that in my face.

But instead of a snarky comment, she simply said, “Thank you.”

I glanced over, my heart beating faster when I saw her looking right back at me. Was she actually being… sincere? Our eyes locked a couple seconds longer than they should have, and her gaze slowly softened into an expression I hadn’t seen from her in a long, long time—like she might not hate me very much. My eyes flitted down to her slowly opening mouth, the soft peaks of her berry-tinted upper lip reminding me of the way I’d sometimes trace them with my thumb before kissing her.

It wasn’t until the car drifted into the gravel at the side of the road that we tore our eyes off of each other. I swerved back toward the center with an overcorrecting jerk, steering to the right just in time to avoid an oncoming FedEx truck. It blared its horn at us as we passed, just missing it by inches. “Fuck!”

Meghan gripped the edges of her seat, her breaths fast and shallow. “You’re really off to a great start at keeping me safe,” she muttered.

Well. That moment was fun while it lasted.