The Pocket Watch

THE POCKET WATCH 

     Darrel didn't know if it was a peculiarly recent phenomenon, brought on by the current economy, or some bizarre reflection of the present level of society, but ever since he began searching the woods for recyclable aluminum cans, he was constantly surprised at how many he was able to find. Almost all the cans were at, or near, deserted, homeless camps, some of which may have been several years old, while still, many of the camps were fairly new, but abandoned with almost everything left behind, which gave Darrel the creeps as he picked his way through them.

     Not only did Darrel begin to think of himself as an entrepreneur, as he was homeless himself and therefore had no bills to shackle him, enabling him to live on the meager income recycling afforded him, but also, he felt that he was almost an explorer, maybe even an archaeolist, pushing his way through the jungles of Jacksonville Beach, Florida, searching for lost and hidden trails where people, except people like him, no longer ventured.

     Following an ancient path to it's culmination was always a vague sort of thrill for Darrel. Indeed, finding a camp may also, sometimes, mean inadvertently finding homeless people "at home," at which point, for fear of invading someone's privacy, he would discreetly back away, if he could. Otherwise, he would diplomatically apologize for his intrusion, and ask if he, she, or they had any aluminum cans to dispose of.

     Finding a truly abandoned camp, however, and sifting through the remains, also made Darrel feel as if he were something of a voyeur, as if he were unabashedly spying into, if not the present lives of people unknown to him, at least into their past.

     He never failed to wonder what made these people, like himself, so unworthy, or undesiring, of normal social life. He always found so much that they must have had in common with "normal" people: besides the ubiquitous beer cans, on which Darrel depended, there was always the more mundane and humbling similarities, such as discarded shoes, empty cigerette boxes, batteries, clothes, hair brushes, and, sometimes, deteriorated tents and blankets. Once, heart-breakingly, he even found a deserted family photo album, complete with baby pictures.

     What made these people such monsters that they felt compelled to hide in the dense Floridian woods of oaks, pines, and palmetto bushes, that despite all they had in common, they felt themselves to be so different? They never appeared to have more than two feet, because Darrel never found anything other than shoes in pairs, and the jackets and pants he found, never had more than two sleeves, or two pants legs. Any glasses he found, usually only an occasional pair of sunglasses, never had more than two lenses, yet these unknown people, of however long ago, either felt shunned by contemporary society, or, voluntarily, chose to shun society.

     Of course, Darrel acknowledged the bottom line was always financial. For some reason or another, alcoholism, drug addiction, lack of education, accidents, or whatever, those people, including himself, had lost the ability to compete for money. Losing their homes without sufficient income to aquire another, living and hiding in the woods was the only viable option, short of suicide.

     Darrel suspected that the "normal" people resented the existance of the homeless because the homeless were no longer trapped by the almost limitless expense with which the normal people were burdened. Also, the homeless were deemed to be noncontributory to society. Unemcumbered by rent, morgages, car payments, insurance, and usually, even jobs, the homeless attempted to survive in a seemingly carefree life style, but without the advantage or security of shelter. The homeless were at the mercy of the weather, theft by other homeless people, and frequently, by the ever-vigilent police.

     Actually, if truth be told, Darrel knew very few of the homeless who wouldn't trade places with any of the normal people. In fact, he didn't think that any of them had ever given up on having normal lives again.

     He, Darrel, had merely lost the will to live, due to both social and financial problems. One of his so-called friends introduced him, without warning, to two of the local queens of the "crack cocaine harpies," and, in time, they stripped him clean, one of whom even succeeding in gaining access to his checking account.

     At any rate, after a cursory, but albeit guilty, search of the camp, he would collect every aluminum can that he could find, crushing them first and then tossing them into a plastic bag, and then stalk his way back out.

     More frequently, however, some of the apparently, more recently deserted camps had the appearance of having been vandalized: tents shredded with clothes and personal items scattered throughout. It was a well known fact that the Jacksonville Beach police were prone to acts of vengeful desecration, but that knowledge could not dispell Darrel of the acute, palpable sense of foreboding, as if he were being watched, or allay him of the barely audible whispering and rattling noises that seemed to generate from everywhere, and nowhere. He had the definite, but undefinable feeling that something "evil" had been there; something more evil than even the Jacksonville Beach police.

     In those "haunted camps," he did not linger long, taking only the cans that were immediately accessible, and fleeing as rapidly as possible, his skin crawling and the hair on the back of his head quivering.

     Darrel would search for cans until, consulting his pocket watch, he saw that he had to quit or be too late to get to the recycling center, which closed at 4:30, or when he estimated that he had enough bounty for a profitable trip. Depending on which woods he was exploring determined how long by bicycle it would take to get his loot to Atlantic Beach, depending also on how much automobile traffic he had to contend with, and whether he felt that he had enough time to stop and continue to pick up littered cans along his route.

     He usually tried to pick up additional cans, unless he was too over-burdened, but it always made him feel embarrassed when he stopped for stray cans, because he always imagined that the very people who swarmed past him in their deadly, four-wheeled noise machines, where the same people who declined to trouble themselves with finding trash cans, and yet were the same people who were sniggering at him for his humility in picking up their litter.

     'I'm not as humble as I seem!' Darrel would think, as he inwardly bristled.

     When he was not successful in finding deserted camps, Darrel would fall back on making the rounds of the popular party sites used by the homeless, as yet undiscovered by the police. Many is the nightmarish story of his brethren being captured by the Evil Ones for drinking in public, and even he, himself, had fallen prey to their merciless diligence, but, Darrel conceded, it was own fault.

     Nevertheless, with the tips from his colleagues, making the rounds of hidden, sacred drinking locations, and further explorations into the deep woods, Darrel usually succeeded in making at least one can run a day.

*                           *                             *

     One day, while doubling back from a dead-end, he discovered the faint evidence of a path that he had missed earlier, which was strange, because now it was so obvious to him, it almost seemed familiar. Pushing his way past the underbrush, and walking cautiously forward, he rounded several curves through palmetto fronds and pine tree branches, until, at last, he found a small, man-made clearing.

     Almost immediately, his apprehension returned as he felt the all too familiar alarm of menace and evil sounding somewhere within his psyche.Trying to ignore his incomprehensible sense of fear and dread, he pushed his way inside.

     To one side of the clearing, the collapsed ruins of a small, dome tent lay, as if huddled in upon itself.

     There were no signs of any occupancy, or of any discernable trash, even of beer cans, but usually, the camp dwellers would discard of their debris in a separate location, if they were too lazy or indifferent to carry their trash out of the camp. Darrel could find no other paths leading out of the clearing, which indicated that there was no adjacent trash dump.

     His insatiable curiosity began surfacing again, and he approached the tent. It was pretty typical; indeed, he owned one just like it that he had bought from a Target store. Raising the front of the tent, he saw the uninhabited shell of a sleeping bag, again typical, with a few scattered paperback books laying about the floor of the tent, and a battery operated lamp, all still typical.

     Now something beyond his curiosity was being aroused, because as he peered closer into the gloom of the fallen tent, Darrel was able to make out the titles of some of the discarded books, titles of books that he, himself, had been reading just the night before, with the light of a lamp just like the one near the sleeping bag.

     Tossed about the tent were various articles of clothing, and as an icy chill began gathering at the back of his neck, Darrel reluctantly picked up the nearest. It was a shredded, black T-shirt, and as he smoothed it out on the sleeping bag, his eyes involuntarily bulged in incredulity. Beyond coincidence, the front of the ripped T-shirt was of the outline, whiskers, and golden eyes of a black cat--and Darrel owned one just like it that he had ordered by mail from an obscure catalog! In fact, he knew of no one else who even owned a T-shirt like it, which he whimsically referred to as his "lucky black cat shirt," and, even more incredible, he was wearing his lucky black cat T-shirt even now!

     With shaking hands, he picked up one of the other tattered rags, and discovered the remains of a pair of black, denim pants, like the ones he was now wearing. As his trembling hands held the coarse material, he had only then become aware of a dark, wet stickiness on his fingers, when a bright, shiny object fell from the front, left-hand pants pocket, and dangled from a gold chain. It was a pocket watch, identical to the pocket watch he now wore, except that this watch's crystal was shattered, and it had stopped at 11:30, its second hand motionless. Inanely attempting to reset it, Darrel pulled his own watch out of his left front pants pocket, and found that it also read 11:30.

     Hearing now, for the first time, the rustling of leaves and bushes behind him, Darrel dropped the broken watch and hurriedly backed out of the crumpled tent, but he was too late. Not only could he no longer find the exit from the clearing, but the trees and bushes, with writhing, clutching branches, together with the rapidly slithering thorny vines, were already closing in on him. . . .

THE END