Waiting with Elmer. Deanna K. Klingel

hope my readers will discover this time, between the Great Depression and World War II is interesting because of its simplicity. Life lessons learned then are still apropos for today.

      Deanna K. Klingel

      May 2019

      Acknowledgement

      Small town middle America is the soil of my own roots. As a child I learned, as Willy does, that a community is embedded in the soul and has an effect on what the child becomes, whether for good or not.

      There are many bits and pieces of my own home town sprinkled liberally throughout this story, and I'm sure readers will discover parts of their own community. Sometimes it takes a lifetime of looking back to recognize the important role that the community had in getting one to his destiny.

      I'd like to thank the community of my childhood, extended family, teachers, and strangers who all put this story in place. I also want to thank my editor Lisa Nicholas, my publisher Amanda Thrasher at Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, and her wonderful staff for taking on this project with faith and courage.

      I dedicate this book to my parents

      who taught me to wait and see.

      Chapter One

      Midwest, late 1930s

      This was the hardest part about a new place; he was always waiting. Would this be like the last place? Better? Worse?

      The sun was nearly directly overhead. Willy’s shadow lingered in his lap. The sidewalk steamed in the late summer heat, but there wasn’t anywhere else to sit, so Willy sat there cross-legged, fingering his bag of marbles, surveying the dusty little town, and he waited.

      The last place was hot like this one. He’d sat in a shady park under a big tree and swatted mosquitoes while he waited. The town before that was next to the ocean, and Willy had sat in the sand and watched the people across the street holding parasols, moving through the seaside town, and he’d waited, while the ocean breeze spit sand into his eyes. How long would he wait today? In the last town, he had waited until after dark. In the town before that, he’d waited until morning.

      He leaned his back against the rough bricks of the building. The sign on the door read:

      Savings and Loan

      Closed on Saturday

      He watched a family walk past licking ice cream cones, going north. They looked at him, but Willy knew they hadn’t seen him. Boys like Willy could be looked at and never seen.

      I sure don’t look like no ghost. But I am invisible to some folks.

      Two businessmen in deep discussion hurried past him, not noticing anything other than themselves. He ducked away from a swinging briefcase, and he watched as they moved toward a law office at the end of the sidewalk. He stretched his legs out in front of him just as a lady hurried down the sidewalk. She pushed a baby carriage. She stopped and stared at Willy.

      “Excuse me, boy. You trying to trip me?”

      “No, ma’am. I didn’t see you coming.”

      “Then move,” she said. She wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something bad in the air. She parked the carriage and rushed into the bakery. In a few seconds she came back, shot Willy a disgusted look, and headed back north, the way she’d come, mumbling, “If it weren’t for this bakery, I’d never step foot in this disgusting Southside.”

      Willy drew his feet under him, scraping his bare leg on the sidewalk. His feet were sweaty and blistered inside his ragged Converse sneakers. He fingered the assortment of knots in the laces and watched a grocer stacking his oranges and apples on the display stand. Willy licked his lips. His stomach growled.

      A man wearing a leather apron walked out of the hardware store across the street and unwound his awning to shade the window.

      Willy turned his attention to the newspaper box clanking in front of the pharmacy. A man put in his change, tucked a newspaper under his arm, and hurried up the sidewalk, heading north. In another town, another time, Willie had watched two kids jiggle money out of a newspaper box just like this one.

      Grandma said it’s just not right to do. Don’t matter if nobody sees you. It’s ‘tween you and God, Grandma said. What you do when no one sees you do it is what really matters, she said.

      His heart tumbled in a sack of sadness at the thought of his Grandma.

      He heard the rollers and felt their vibration before he saw the contraption rumbling down the sidewalk, coming toward him. He figured it was a kid on a scooter until he saw the square wooden platform with four rollers, one on each corner, propelled by a man’s gloved hands pushing along the sidewalk, like rowing a boat. The man looked like he was sitting cross-legged, but there were no legs tucked under him, only empty pant legs. He rolled swiftly and noisily up and over the hollow-sounding cracks in the sidewalk and stopped in front of Willy. A few dried brown leaves fluttered across the sidewalk. The man’s gray hood dropped to his shoulders. He studied Willy, then smiled.

      “What you lookin’ at,” said Willy, already on the defensive.

      “You. I’m looking at you. Does that bother you?”

      Willy shrugged and looked away. It was better to be invisible.

      “You’re new here,” the man stated.

      “I ain’t s’posed to talk to strange folks.”

      “Oh, I see. Well, I’m likely the strangest folk you’ll ever see.” The man chuckled at his own joke. “Okay if I sit with you?”

      Willy shrugged and fingered his marble bag. He could be good at not seeing, too.

      The man backed his platform up against the building and sat looking out at the street with Willy, looking straight ahead. But Willy studied the man out the corners of his eyes. His gray coat, whose hood now hung over his shoulder, was tied with a rope around his middle. The coat was cut off at the platform.

      Like a half a person.

      After a while, Willy spoke. “I didn’t mean you was strange. I meant you was a stranger.”

      “Uh-huh.” The man’s beard moved up and down. “If you knew my name, would I be a stranger?”

      Willy shrugged.

      “How do you do,” the man said. He pulled off a glove and extended his wide callused hand to Willy. His hand was whiter than his sun-tanned arm. “My name’s Elmer. What’s yours?”

      Willy hesitated, then spoke. “Willy. Willy Sykes.” They shook hands. Willy was surprised at the strength in the crippled man’s hand.

      “Staying long?” Elmer asked.

      “I don’t know. D’pends.”

      “Where do you live? You got a house? Folks?”

      “I guess I’ll stay right here ‘til I know where to go.”

      “A wise answer,” the man said, nodding his head, scratching his whiskered chin.

      They sat a long time.

      ***

      The sun was all the way to one side now, making Willy’s shadow stretch out on the sidewalk, inching, claiming more space. Willy sat up straighter and tilted his head to see his nappy hair stand up in his shadow. Noisy starlings chattered overhead, dropping white poop on the sidewalk. Willy smeared it with his Converse.

      “Don’t you have anything to do?” Willy asked.

      “You