by Ron Hall
In the end, I saw the artist only twice, once in California and once in New York, then confessed to Deborah—with a little help from my friends. I confided my conquest to a friend, who confided my confidence to his wife, who “encouraged” me to tell Deborah. If I didn’t, she said, she would.
Calculating that it was better to rat myself out than look like a weasel, I called the artist from the office one day and told her I couldn’t see her anymore. Then I went home and confessed to Deborah. My spin: Her disinterest had driven me into the arms of another woman, one who wanted me just the way I was—money and all.
“What!” she screamed, flying into a rage. “Nineteen years! Nineteen years! What were you thinking? How could you do this?”
Shoes, vases, and figurines flew through the air, some a direct hit. When nothing else presented itself as a weapon, Deborah pounded me with her bare fists until her arms wore out and hung limp at her sides.
The night spun by in a whirl of sleepless anger. The next morning we phoned our pastor, then drove to his office where we spent most of the day airing our garbage. In the end, we discovered that neither of us was quite ready to give up. We did still love each other, though in that vestigial way of couples who’ve worn each other out. We agreed to try to work things out.
Back at the house that night, we were sitting in our bedroom retreat, talking, when Deborah asked me something that nearly made me faint. “I want to talk to her. Will you give me her phone number?”
Deborah’s resolve at that moment was like a student skydiver who, once at altitude, strides straight to the plane’s open door and leaps without pausing to bat down the butterflies. She picked up the bedroom phone and punched each number as I recited it.
“This is Deborah Hall, Ron’s wife,” she said calmly into the phone.
I tried to imagine the shocked face on the other end of the line.
“I want you to know that I don’t blame you for the affair with my husband,” Deborah went on. “I know that I’ve not been the kind of wife Ron needed, and I take responsibility for that.”
She paused, listening.
Then: “I want you to know that I forgive you,” Deborah said. “I hope you find someone who will not only truly love you but honor you.”
Her grace stunned me. But not nearly so much as what she said next: “I intend to work on being the best wife Ron could ever want, and if I do my job right, you will not be hearing from my husband again.”
Deborah quietly placed the phone in its cradle, sighed with relief, and locked her eyes on mine. “You and I are now going to rewrite the future history of our marriage.”
She wanted to spend a couple of months in counseling, she said, so we could figure out what was broken, how it got that way, and how to fix it. “If you’ll do that,” she said, “I’ll forgive you. And I promise I will never bring this up, ever again.”
It was a gracious offer, considering that I, and not Deborah, had been the traitor. Faster than you can say “divorce court,” I said yes.
15
First time the train stopped, we was in Dallas. I’d never even been outside Red River Parish; now here I was in a whole other state. The city was big and close. Intimidatin. Then the railroad police started messin with us, so me and that hobo fella hopped another boxcar outta there and rode the rails for a while. He showed me the ropes. After a while, I decided to see how I’d make out in Fort Worth. Stayed there a coupla years, then finally made it out to Los Angeles and stayed there another coupla years. Met a woman, stayed with her for a while. Me and the law didn’t get along too well out there, though. Seemed like I was always in trouble for somethin or other, so I went on back to Fort Worth.
I tried to find work here and there, odd jobs, that kinda thing, but I learned purty quick there wadn’t much call for cotton farmers in the city. Only reason I made out was ’cause Fort Worth was what the rail tramps called “hobo heaven.” Said anybody that was passin through could always get “three hots and a cot” from some different outfits that was tryin to help. And there was plenty a’ real nice Christian folks, too, who was willin to give you somethin when you ain’t even askin, maybe a cup a’ coffee or a dollar.
Now if you think the only way homeless folks gets money is by standin on the corner lookin pitiful, that ain’t true. Me and my partner met another fella that taught us how to turn nothin into somethin. First thing we was taught was the “hamburger drop,” a purty good trick for keepin a li’l money in our pockets.
First thing you had to do was get you a little grubstake, which usually meant scrapin up about a dollar. That don’t take long if you go to the part of downtown where the smart people work, the kind that wear a coat and tie. Some of them gentlemen’d give you a whole dollar right outta the gate if you just make like you hungry enough. Some of em’d give it to you quick, too, so you’d hurry up and get outta their face so they wouldn’t have to smell you too long. But other folks seemed like they really wanted to help—they’d look you in your eye and maybe even smile. I felt kinda bad hustlin a dollar off a person like that just so I could pull off the hamburger drop.
Anyhow, here’s how it worked. After I’d get my dollar for that day, I’d go on down to the McDonald’s and buy me a hamburger, take a coupla bites out of it, and wrap it back up. Then I’d pick me out one of them big, tall office buildins that’s got a trash can on the sidewalk out front. When nobody was lookin, I’d stick that wrapped-up burger down in the can and wait.
Soon as I saw somebody comin, I’d pretend like I was diggin in the trash. Then I’d come up with that hamburger and commence to eatin it. For sure somebody always gon’ stop and say, “Hey, don’t eat that!”—and they gon’ give you some money ’cause they think you eatin outta the garbage can. They feel real sorry for you, but they don’t know it’s your garbage that you done put in the can in the first place!
You can’t fool all the same people all the time, so you got to change locations. And you got to be on the lookout for folks you done fooled already and let em get on down the road ’fore you start hustlin some other fella.
At the end of the day, me and my partner’d put our hamburger-drop money together and go to some joint and eat us a decent meal. And if we done real good that day, we might have enough money left over for a half-pint a’ Jim Beam, what we called “antifreeze for the homeless.”
Next time you walkin around in Fort Worth and you see some homeless folks, you might notice that some of em’s filthy dirty and some of em ain’t. That’s ’cause some street people have done figured out ways to stay clean. Just ’cause you homeless don’t mean you got to live like a pig. Me and my partner kept on the same clothes all the time, just wore em till they wore out. But we figured out how to keep from smellin. That same fella that taught us the hamburger drop also taught us how we could get a good bath: at the Fort Worth Water Gardens.
The Water Gardens is a city park with a big ole fountain in it look kinda like a little stadium with walls made like steps or seats. The water flows down the sides of the fountain and makes a great big pool at the bottom, almost like a swimmin pool, ’cept it ain’t blue or nothin. There’s lots a’ trees all around it and back then, the workin folks would take their lunch and go down and sit in the shade around the edges, and listen to the water rush and sing.
There was lots of tourists, too, ’cause folks from outta town just loved to sit and watch that water dance down the walls. Me and my partner learned how to act like tourists. We’d wait till afternoon when there wadn’t too many folks around, and we’d walk up to the Water Gardens with our shirts unbuttoned halfway, and some soap and a towel in our pockets. Then, when the coast was mostly clear, one of us would act like the other one was pushin him in the water. Then the one in the water pulled the other one in, laughin and jokin like we was just friends horsin around on vacation.
We wadn’t supposed to be in that water, and we sure wadn’t supposed to take our clothes off. So we soaped up under the water where nobody could see, soapin our clothes and our
socks just like you would your body. When we’d get through washin up and rinsin off, we’d climb up on a high wall that was part of the park and sleep till the sun baked us dry. We’d laugh and laugh while we was in that water, but it wadn’t no fun. We was like animals livin in the woods, just tryin to survive.
Over the years, I got a few jobs through something called the Labor Force. You ever go down to the city and seen a buncha raggedy-lookin men crowded on the sidewalk in the early mornin, then you mighta seen a place like the Labor Force. I was one of them men, showin up in the mornin hopin to get a job doin work nobody else want to do—like pickin up trash, cleanin out a ole warehouse, or sweepin up horse manure after a stock show.
I remember one time they took us way on over to Dallas to clean out the Cowboys stadium. They even let me look at the game for a while.
I wanted to work a regular job, but I couldn’t read and couldn’t write. I didn’t look right neither ’cause I only had one set of clothes that was wore out all the time. And even if somebody was to look past all that, I didn’t have no paperwork like a Social Security card or a birth certificate.
At the Labor Force, you didn’t even have to tell em your name. Somebody just pull around in a truck and holler out somethin like, “We need ten men. Construction site needs cleanin.” And the first ten fellas to climb on the truck got the job.
At the end of the day, we’d get $25 cash money, minus the $3 the Labor Force done advanced you for your lunch. Then they charge you $2 for drivin you to your job. So at the end of the day, you’d get maybe $20, not even enough to rent a room. Now let me ask you somethin. What you gon’ do with $20 ’cept buy yourself somethin to eat and maybe a six-pack a’ some-thin to help you forget you gon’ sleep in a cardboard box again that night?
Sometimes it’s drinkin or druggin that lands a man on the streets. And if he ain’t drinkin or druggin already, most fellas like me start in once we get there. It ain’t to have fun. It’s to have less misery. To try and forget that no matter how many “partners in crime” we might hook up with on the street, we is still alone.
16
I ended my affair with the Beverly Hills painter only to begin a new one—this one with my wife. With counseling behind us, each of us moved several giant steps in the other’s direction. I kept both hands in the art business but traveled less and spent more time with Deborah, Carson, and Regan. I also began to take spiritual matters more seriously. Deborah, meanwhile, continued her volunteer work and her pursuit of God, but committed time to the things that interested me.
Chief among those became Rocky Top, the 350-acre ranch we bought in 1990. Perched on a three-hundred-foot mesa overlooking a shimmering arc of the Brazos River, the ranch house became a refuge for our family. We decorated it cowboy-style, from the buffalo head over the stone fireplace to the autographed his-and-hers boots from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans to the herd-sized trestle table we parked in the kitchen, big enough to seat fifteen hungry hands. So authentic and picturesque were the architecture and decor that style magazines photographed the house for feature stories, movie directors paid to use it as a set, and Neiman Marcus began shooting its Christmas catalogs there.
But for Deborah, the kids, and I, Rocky Top was a place to escape the clamor of the city. Bald eagles soared and dived above the Brazos, their high keen startling the deer that frequented the river’s edge. In a verdant pasture below the house, we kept twenty-eight longhorn cattle. (Every year, Deborah gave their babies terribly un-cowboyish names like Sophie and Sissy, and I let her.) And during the spring, lush thickets of bluebonnets covered the rolling chaparral like a violet quilt.
Carson and Regan were teenagers when we settled in at Rocky Top, and they spent their last few years before college importing carloads of friends, hunting, fishing, and exploring miles of winding trails on horseback.
At the ranch, Deborah and I cemented our relationship as best friends and ardent lovers, growing so close that we began to joke that we felt “velcroed at the hearts.” The ranch also became our geographical anchor, a place that, wherever else we might move, we knew we would always call home.
As it turned out, we did move. In 1998, tired of the Park Cities, the Dallas rat race, and what Deborah would later describe as “twelve years of exile in the ‘far east,’” we returned to Fort Worth. We moved into a French mansard-roofed rental home on a golf course and began building our new home on a secluded lot near a nature preserve on the Trinity River. Then we began to plan what we thought would be the last half of our lives.
We hadn’t been in Fort Worth for more than a few days when Deborah spied an item in the Star-Telegram about homelessness in the city. The piece mentioned a place called the Union Gospel Mission. At the time, an insistent voice in Deborah’s heart told her it was a place she might fit. Not long afterward, a letter arrived from Debbie Brown, an old friend, inviting us to join “Friends of the Union Gospel Mission,” a circle of philanthropic donors. Deborah immediately told me that not only did she want to join, she also intended to inquire about volunteering at the mission itself.
“I was hoping you’d go with me,” she said, smiling and tilting her head in a way so irresistible I sometimes thought she should register it for a patent.
The mission, on East Lancaster Street, was tucked deep in a nasty part of town. While it was true that the murder rate in Texas had been falling, I was sure that anyone still doing any murdering probably lived right around there.
I smiled back. “Sure I’ll go.”
But secretly, I hoped that once she actually rubbed shoulders with the kind of scuzzy derelicts that had robbed my gallery, Deborah would find it too scary, too real, to volunteer on East Lancaster. Then we could revert to doing our part by dropping off some old clothes or furniture—or, if she really found it tough to tear herself away, more money.
I should’ve known better, for other than yellow jackets and black-diamond ski slopes, Deborah feared only one thing.
17
Now, believe it or not, there used to be what you might call a “code of honor,” or unity, in the hobo jungle. Down there, if one fella got hisself a can of Vienna Sausages and there was five other fellas around, then he gon’ give each one of em a sausage. The same goes for his six-pack and his half-pint and his dope. ’Cause who knows whether somebody else might have somethin he wants a piece of the very next day?
One of the fellas in my circle had him a car he was livin in, a gold Ford Galaxy 500. Me and him got to be purty tight, so one time when he was runnin from the law and he had to get outta town for a spell, he asked me to watch out for his car. It sure wadn’t no new car, but I liked it and it run purty good. I didn’t drive it around much ’cause I never had drove nothin but a tractor. But he’d been stayin in it, so I figured I would, too.
That’s when I got me an idea: There was enough room in there for more than just one fella to sleep. So I started rentin out two sleepin’ spots in the backseat—$3 a night. Fellas said it beat sleepin on the sidewalk. I had me a regular Galaxy Hilton there for a while till the police showed up and hauled it off, said my little hotel had unpaid tickets and no insurance.
Regular folks that live in neighborhoods and go to work every day don’t know nothin about no life like that. If you took a normal fella and dropped him off in the hobo jungle or under the bridge, he wouldn’t know what to do. You got to be taught to live homeless. You ain’t gon’ put on no suit and no tie and think you gon’ be pullin off the hamburger drop.
So I had me some partners for a while. But after a few winters went by, I began to pull away from the folks I’d been runnin with. Kinda slipped off into silence. I don’t know why. Some kinda “mental adjustment,” maybe. Or maybe I was just goin a little bit crazy. For a real long time, I didn’t speak to nobody and didn’t want nobody speakin to me. Got to where if I felt threatened, I’d attack. I took some money from a hamburger drop and bought me a .22 pistol. Thought I might need it for protection.
You get a spirit in you, a s
pirit makes you feel like nobody in the world cares nothin about you. Don’t matter if you live or die. People with that spirit get mean, dangerous. They play by the rules of the jungle.
I earned respect with my fists. One time I was talkin on a public telephone, and this fella that was waitin to use it come up and hung up the phone while I was still talkin. I took that telephone and broke it on his head. He fell on the ground, hollerin and holdin his head, blood gushin out between his fingers. I just walked away.
Another time, while I was sleepin under the tracks, some gangstas from the projects crept up in the hobo jungle and started stealin what little bit the homeless folks had. They was young black fellas—actin the way some young fellas act, like can’t nothin touch em long as they stick together and cuss you loud enough. It was dark and I was lyin inside my cardboard box awake when I heard em slither up, whisperin.
Now I can’t use the kinda language I used that night, so let’s just say I called em some names. I busted outta that box with a sawed-off piece a’ steel pipe in my hand and started swingin: “You done tried to jack the wrong man! I’ll kill you! You think I won’t? I’ll kill you!”
There was three of em. But when a crazy-lookin homeless man is swingin a pipe at ever head in sight and threatenin murder, three against one ain’t no good gamble. They took off runnin and so did I: straight to the gold Ford Galaxy that my friend had done got back from the police. I jumped in and dug the key outta the seat cushion where I knowed he stashed it. Then I cranked up the Galaxy and headed for the projects to get me some revenge.
I couldn’t see the thieves no more, but I knowed where they come from and the projects was just a few blocks away. I was drivin fast and purty soon I could see the brick buildings peekin up over the long, low dirt pile some-body’d put up along the street to keep cars from drivin up where the folks stayed. When I got to that dirt pile, I never even slowed down, just jumped the curb and punched the gas. That Galaxy zoomed up that dirt hill and went airborne just like you see them daredevils do on TV. I landed smack in the middle of the projects with the car smokin like a coal train.
