Stories from a Sideways Glance

By Dennis Brown

Do you always believe what you see, or do you sometimes think it’s all part

of your imagination? If something is standing right in front of you, how do you know it is real? What if no one else sees it? Can you prove it?

“Stories from a Sideways Glance” is a series of wonderful and engaging

short stories about characters that might prove real to some readers and imaginary

to others. You will likely recognize some of these characters from your own life.

These gripping stories that will challenge your challenging our assumptions and

push pushing us you to think beyond the normal.

Does a ghost leave a footprint? How would you explain wild animals

gathering to protect a child from a deranged person, or a crowd sighting a being that left no footprints in the snow? What if someone you cannot prove is real had a

profound effect on changes in your life? This life is filled with contradictions. Most of the time, we rationalize these away, but some never go away. We believe what we need to, to get through the next day. One thing for sure, anything that we think is carved in stone often gets proved wrong. Better to keep an open mind, less

distance to fall.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662427930

Book preview

Flamboyant Eddy

Dressed in green pants, yellow silk shirt, and a green-and-yellow scarf wrapped around his neck, Eddy strutted down the street, his raspberry and black sport shoes tapping a beat on the blacktop. Every once in a while, he’d stop and look around to see who was watching him and then resume to the same pace that he started with. With gold around his neck and hanging on both arms, he was a sight. Truth be known, he had a lot of fans in the neighborhood. This day, he walked past me like I was standing still. When he stopped and I started to catch back up, I heard the faint hint of show tunes from West Side Story. As I got closer, I realized that the man that Eddy had stopped to listen to was singing to the tune of Maria… Sangria, I just met a wine named Sangria…and suddenly I found, it knocked me to the ground, and he and Eddy burst into laughter. I’d seen it before. People loved to perform for Eddy, but no one loved it more than Eddy.

I slowed as I was passing him, just to take a closer look. Eddy expected that of his surroundings like it was just part of the plan. He enjoyed the looks, the curiosity. Tough to figure out what made him tick, but you couldn’t argue with the fact that he was as comfortable with himself as he could be. He laugh-slapped his leg as the singing was done, put his hand on the man’s shoulder and praised him for his enjoyment of life. For a man who obviously expected so much to center on himself, he had a way of making people feel good about themselves. You couldn’t live in this neighborhood and not know about him. His outfits were legendary, and you wondered where he found clothes like that.

Saturday in the city was a special day, the rhythm changed. People were a little more casual, not worrying about running off to work or where they have to be in the next minute or two. If you were out on a Saturday, chances were you would run into Eddy at one corner or another. If there were a lot of people hanging around the fruit and vegetable carts that dotted the neighborhood, you were most likely going to see him in that area. He migrated toward the people who had to work the hardest to just get by. This day was no exception, and while doing my shopping, I spotted him coming up the street in a raspberry silk shirt, yellow pants, black-and-yellow leather shoes, and a porkpie hat. He walked up to a fruit cart that was close to where I was, and I watched him take off his hat with his right hand and hold it against his chest while he put his left hand on the shoulder of the cart vendor. He talked in low enough tones that I couldn’t make out what he was saying but seemed serious enough, and the vendor just nodded his head as Eddy spoke. When he was finished, he put his hat back on and shook the vendor’s hand while his left hand stayed on his shoulder.

My look must have been one that begged for explanations. The man whose cart I was at turned to me and said, That’s Sam, lost his wife earlier this week. Got three kids at home to feed. Things have been tough for him. I wondered how Eddy would know that this even happened. Too many people to keep track of in this city and tough enough to keep your own head above water. I can’t imagine that something like this would make the news, and if he was close with the family, he wouldn’t have waited until now to do this. The question nagged at me as I watched Eddy walk away. I continued my shopping and even made my way over to the cart where Sam was not because I was going to buy anything but just to see if I could hear anything. I didn’t.

I made my way to my regular coffee shop and set my bags down so I could relax with a cup. I wondered how Sam must have felt losing his wife and having three kids to raise on his own. I wondered what Eddy said to him. I couldn’t imagine it. I had enough trouble just getting through a divorce with no kids. Then I wondered how Eddy would have known that it happened at all. He did seem to know everybody, and we all knew of him, but actually, I didn’t really know anything about him. I got into conversations with the people around me at the coffee shop that I see on a regular basis. Everyone seemed to know Eddy, but no one knew about Eddy. No one knew where he lived, where he came from, where he worked, or what his story was. They all had a story about him though. Here was a man that begged to be noticed, and he was but apparently; being noticed and being known were two completely different things. Whether he chose not to be known or it just happened that way was the mystery, and I found that I couldn’t just let that question go. I knew that I had a project.

It wasn’t because I didn’t have enough to do. Work was a grind but very busy, and I had enough to do around my apartment. This just seemed to jump to the head of the list. I wondered if I was just being nosy or if this could be rationalized for any higher purpose. I couldn’t come to any conclusions on that question, but it didn’t move it from the list. I wasn’t sure how or where to start. I started on the phone to a couple of longtime friends of mine who lived in the neighborhood. We talked about Eddy, and, like everyone else up to now, they had stories of him but couldn’t fill in any of the blanks of who he was or where he lived. I asked them to keep an eye out for him so I could quench my curiosity. I wondered how many people in life were invisible to us. It was only because his clothes stood out that anyone saw him at all.

People that you work with or people that you socialize with become a part of your psyche. You have things to relate to them with and you build a profile based on those pieces. It wasn’t a perfect system, and you still find out that you don’t know someone that you’ve been around for a long time when they’ve done something wrong. We could rationalize that they didn’t seem to be like that at all, but the truth be told, we accepted the shallow side and didn’t dig any deeper. Even sports figures build a facade that we use to build our profile on. We then like them or dislike them based on things that we have no firsthand knowledge of. With people like Eddy, we notice him because he didn’t blend in, but we didn’t have anything specific to create a meaningful profile. It wasn’t until I learned from one street vendor the pain of another street vendor and saw Eddy reacting to that, that he ever actually made it on my radar. Up to then, it was one set of clothes moving to another and the joyful responses other people had with him that made him stand out. Visibility’s a curious thing, like a song matching to the way we feel when we hear it.

By the end of the first week of my project, I hadn’t learned very much but had a lot of eyes trained for him. I asked for places he went, streets that he was seen on, businesses that he frequented, or anything else that could get me a sense of who this guy was. I pulled in bits and pieces of information on the man but always got a full description of the outfit he was wearing. I wondered why he made himself so bright but remained so much in the shadows. My weekend was spent on the streets looking to spot and follow him, but I found that I wasn’t very good at that. I felt like a bumbling private eye. My information gathering was going on its fourth week before I got a break. I was out on the weekend, down by the vendors where this project had started, and there, coming down the street was Eddy in his best finery. Bright-blue shirt with yellow elbow covers, yellow pants, blue shoes, and a black porkpie hat.

I followed him down the street and around the corner onto Grayson Street where I watched him duck into a building midblock. I made my way down the block and headed into the same building without ever looking to see what building it was or who was in it. By the time I had walked in the building, I was committed. I stood in the middle of a room with perhaps thirty tables set up with chairs all around them. In those chairs were mostly men but some occupied by women, and each of them had a plate of food in front of them. I scanned the room and saw a serving line on one side and the tables on the other. What I did not see here was Eddy. Not a glimpse of that outfit anywhere. A man approached me and asked if he could help me and if I need a bite to eat. Being caught off guard, I said, No, thank you, I was just checking the place out.

Are you looking to volunteer? he asked. Because we desperately need volunteers.

Looking around, I said, I could be…I could be.

He introduced himself as William Tyson but said that most folks around here call him Billy. They call the place Main Street Soup Kitchen, and he laughed, even though we’re on Grayson. We used to be on Main Street a lot of years ago, but the landlord pushed us out, but the name still stuck. He was kind of a happy-go-lucky guy and obviously proud of his place. We’ve got a food pantry in the back for those families that are having some troubles feeding the family. We do what we can to keep the neighborhood covered.

Billy, I said, do you have someone that comes in here dressed in some really…well, loud clothes?

What do you mean?

Well, like yellow pants, bright-blue shirt, black porkpie hat?

Oh, he said, you mean Eddy?

That’s right, you know him.

Sure, without Eddy, this place wouldn’t be opened.

Do you know where he lives?

No, but he must be in the neighborhood because he’s here a lot.

He comes here to eat?

Oh, shoot no. He brings food and volunteers, and he talks to the people who come in here like they were his closest friends. Every time he’s here, something good happens.

Have you seen him today?

No, but he’ll be around sooner or later. Billy then went on about what the soup kitchen and food pantry needed and how it was only the kindness of those around the neighborhood that kept it going.

I signed up for a couple of open times during the week that needed some people to help fill in but knew that I would get more involved than that. The same people that I had out looking for Eddy were just waiting for me to call them up and recruit them for this project. It had all the ingredients, it’s local. You could see results immediately, and you could make a difference to those that were the closest around you. I came in here looking for Eddy and found another project for my list. Still, I hadn’t found much about Eddy. I didn’t know how Billy couldn’t have seen him, but I believed that he didn’t. I left the soup kitchen knowing that I was close to finding Eddy.

As midweek showed up and it was my first night to volunteer at the shelter, I closed my eyes and sighed. It was a hard day at work, and I was tired. I felt like plopping myself down in a heap, not working in a shelter kitchen. I had all my friends on alert, looking for Eddy, trying to find any of the places that he might frequent. I would be at the only place that I knew for sure that he did go to. I showed up and was taken into the kitchen to help with the preparations for dinner. With the chatter that accompanies any project, it seemed like we were done in the blink of an eye. The other volunteers were fun to be around. I moved to the serving station as dinner was about to be served, and a line was already formed when I got there. As we opened the line, people started making their way through it with their trays. Funny, this was the first time that I had really come face-to-face with those actually in need like this, and the things that you could read in those faces were quite amazing. A smile seemed to be more than a smile; it was charged somehow. I didn’t anticipate the amount of communication that was taking place.

As the line started to tail off, I took a break and went around to some of the tables. I talked to some of the folks and found opportunities to share stories, compare notes, find similarities. I sat down with a few of them and found ways to bring up Eddy. Amazingly, everyone seemed to have a great personal story about Eddy. They loved talking about him. How could so many people have these intimate stories of him when I couldn’t even seem to get close enough to find out about him? Nobody knew or would say where Eddy lived or any information about him except their connection to him. I didn’t understand how someone could be so loud on one side and so quiet on the other. This was a person who had no desire to blend into his surroundings. He stood out first then disappeared afterward. It didn’t make a lot of sense, at least in my world.

Over the next weeks, I heard story after story about Eddy, always joyous. I made a habit of going out on the floor and sitting and talking with the people. I found that they had stories of their own to tell, veterans, mothers, businessmen, women, disabled, disparaged, sad stories, happy stories, stories that started the downward spiral that landed them here. I learned that, for most of them, the only family that they considered was in this room with them and, of course, Eddy. I had not managed to see Eddy here on the days that I was here but had heard that he was in. I had taken to writing down the stories that I heard on the floor so I could get a sense