Lou

    “Look at this! Someone must have lost a bag of clothes or just got tired of haulin them around. Clothes all over the street. Look here! A shirt with a name printed on the inside of the collar, Lou. People still write their names on their clothes?  Why? Someone runnin around stealin clothes off the line or out of your closet when you ain’t lookin? Do you put your name on things? Whatcha think, someone goin to find something with the name Abe on it and know who Abe is? Man, I tell you, I just don’t get some people.”

    He would have gone on all day if I hadn’t just walked away. He has a tendency to go off on these tangents that lead no where you’d reasonably expect. I think it has something to do with some syndrome I’ve heard about where your mind gets out ahead of your ability to talk, and things get all jumbled and come out like they shouldn’t.

    Of course he missed the connected reality of a communal system where multiple people of varying names share a common facility, sometimes ending up attempting to decipher who owns what; thus the names imply ownership. 

    My name is Lou. Don’t use it much, don’t drop clothes on the street, but it got me to wonderin what kind of person does. I’m sure it was an accident, or someone just didn’t want to bother throwin the clothes in a trash can; either way there’s a shirt with a name similar to mine lyin in the middle of the street. Because it don’t belong to me don’t mean nothin to someone who comes along and sees it, and happens to know someone like me, named Lou.

    You can see where this was leavin me. I could either pick up the mess of the street so I wouldn’t be mistakenly taken for the litterer, or hope who ever came along didn’t know a Lou, or change my name. Now I don’t use Lou much. Truth be told I hate the name, don’t use it at all. Named after an uncle who supposedly did something important at one time or another, and I guess that was the hope for me. Didn’t work out, but then the thought was there. Not their fault, not mine either. Just how it works out sometimes. Your name ends up on the street attached to an old shirt, or rumor, or misdeed of some kind, and you ain’t had nothin to do with it. I guess a lot of life is like that when you get right down to it.

    I didn’t get more than a hundred feet down the walk and I hear him yelling behind me. “Hey Bart, found another one. Pair of shorts with the name Bart, written on the waist band. Suppose these don’t belong to you too?”

    I’ve heard there is really no such thing as coincidence, and I was beginning to believe it. I turned around and could see him holding them up like he was a walkin clothes line. I recognized them, or thought I did. There must be millions of shorts that look like the ones he was holdin up, but there probably aren’t millions with the name Bart printed on the band. I was beginning to get worried. Someone trying to send a message of sorts to me? There would be better, more accurate ways of doin that; Post Office comes to mind.

   “Look here,” he says, holdin up a sock which I recognized right off. There just can’t be that many Porky Pig socks walkin around out there. It got me to thinkin. 

    I tried to recall when I’d seen them socks last. In the time I was thinkin he holds up a pair of pants. They got a stripe, metallic blue, down the leg. My old River Dance pants. I used to wear them when we played down at the river for special occasions or sometimes just for the hell of it. Then it dawned on me; Rutha!

    My landlady, alias friend, partner, co-conspirator; I had left my travelin bag at her place. Ain’t been back in a few days. Nothin out of the usual though. Sometimes the River thing turns into a day-night-day thing that can stretch into a week if the weather holds. I don’t think it’s been more than a few days, but then the river tends to warp your sense of time. I think the music and free drinks has something to do with that, but I ain’t certain.

   “You wear pajamas with little horses on them?” He seems to be enjoyin goin through and hangin my laundry out in public. I guess I got nothin to do but pick up the stuff; don’t see the night bag though. Why would someone throw my stuff in the street? I know at times I’m not the most considerate, forget to call and stuff like that, but I wouldn’t throw my worst enemies clothes in the street. Hell no, I’d burn them.

    “These bunny slipper lookin things yours?” Now I know I ain’t never had no Bunny slippers. She must have put them in there to cast aspirations on my character. Some people seem to lose all sense of propriety when they feel they have been rebuked in some way, even when unintentional.

    She started one time about me havin a girls name, like Louise. It ain’t my fault, I told her that my mother couldn’t spell. I know it should have been spelled Lewis, but it wasn’t. Thought about changing it when I got older, but have you ever seen how much paper work is involved in changing your name. Got to go to court, have a reason, not one that looks like you is tryin to outrun a past you ain’t proud of either. Decided to leave well enough alone, and just use my middle name instead. That might not be the reason a lot of people do that, but I can see where it is the cheapest way out of bad situation that wasn’t your fault in the first place.

    Just as I thought I had figured out what and why I was stuck in the mess of strewn contempt for not only me, but more importantly my clothes, I look and he’s just standin there lookin up like we was about to see an eclipse or a nuclear explosion. I look up to see what he’s lookin for or at, and then I sees it. Clothes like dead albatrosses floatin down from the heavens; really, more like the roof top of fifth and Amsterdam. 

     Once I got over my initial shock of unbelievability, I found the vision, regardless of intent, quite beautiful. If I had to say, I’d admit my clothes never looked so good. I realized someone might be tryin to tell me somethin. I would have used a more direct approach myself, like the telephone, but then we all traverse our emotional hurdles in our own way.

    I realized I’d better apologize and promise to turn over a new leaf before I not only had no place to live, no partner, but nothing but what I had on my back, and after a few days of River Dance, they ain’t all that much to be proud of.

    “You ever seen anything as beautiful?” he says.

    Most days I’m glad I don’t have a gun, but today don’t happen to be one of them.