Journalism | Stream of Conscious | Life Story
We The People: Eddy Speed
I am starting on a new path in writing by gathering the stories of the unheard and bringing them here in a new style that I guess I’ll call stream-of-conscious journalism. This is the first story. I wish the world would meet Eddy Speed.
“The world doesn’t care about poor people.”
— Eddy Speed
Rain. In this part of the country, in this time of the year, it seems to be raining constantly. Even when it’s not, it’s like we’re all just caught in some blender of time, an echo chamber of perceived dryness. We often look out the window at the rain and never fully comprehend the necessity of the window itself. It’s always there in the background of our lives until it rains and then we see a ghostly reflection basking in the dryness.
Eddy Speed. He understands the rain. He understands it in the fleeting comfort of his blanket. Stained in the rain. Stained in the filth of the city. Stained in the byproduct of the city’s professionals. They had long been home and away from the rain. They had only to complain about the rain in the short walk from their car to their front door.
Eddy Speed had taken refuge in the limited cover of the trolley stop. Had I not borrowed an umbrella, after forgetting mine at home, I would have been complaining too. I would have longed for dryness as Eddy Speed did then.
So, who is Eddy Speed?
His eyes absorbed the few light bulbs above him. He greeted me with a friendly hello, a flash of some struggled smile, a shiver in his dampness.
I’m no saint, so please save the applause. I had leftovers. No silverware, but what is a utensil to a hungry man? He was surely thankful. Eddy Speed had many longings but none more than community. He spoke of the lost community he was once a part of in the form of some church that had long lost its idea of [what Christ would do]. The very idea that helping another should result in some profit incentive was fleeting from the minds of the righteous. Though in places such as this lost community, it is those minds that get rewritten the definition of such words as righteousness.
You aren’t fooling Eddy Speed. He knew of the worldly values placed highly upon the suits and ties of the world. Those values fell just before his hands on that cramped bench.
“The world doesn’t care about poor people.”
Those were the words that splashed back at us on that cramped bench. A car had flown by as those words left his mouth as if the world had to prove to him, or me, of the truth he spoke. Puddles seem to line the streets where they are most likely to remind people, like Eddy Speed, that it is the dryness to be sought and the wetness that will find you wherever you may hide.
Eddy Speed was from Charlotte, North Carolina. That was where we met. Where he was then and is now. The light belched from his eyes as he reminisced about a childhood filled with tragedy. Through the shootings, stabbings, and hit and runs, the only beacon of hope he held to was the light of the memory of his single mother.
“She was the best mom I could ever have.”
She had raised Eddy Speed and his seven siblings in a three room house some time ago. I had no indication of how old Eddy Speed was. Memory has no need for lengths of time as it only allows one to file away things such as loving mothers, a family home, or the memory of his dead best friend. Upon that memory he turned back to his meal and so I felt no need to inquire further.
Misery loves company. People do not love misery. Eddy Speed had knowledge and proof of this entity that can be experienced in the minds of man as misery. Misery has no solid form but takes many forms in the physical world. Eddy Speed had found misery on several occasions. One when he was robbed in his sleep. Some wave of misery had washed over his tired vessel and left nothing for him in return. This wave had taken one of the most valuable pieces of plastic we all own. We never think about it. We often leave it at bars or on a stranger's nightstand. Most times, in some exchange, we suppress our own misery. He had his ID stolen and so became a drifting soul in the eyes of bureaucracy.
It may seem like a menial item to most. But for a homeless man it is everything. Housing requires identification and identification requires housing. It seems no coincidence that the systems of governance in this country have created some infinite loop of misery for underprivileged communities. But I am no god. I am just an ear on some bench, in some city, under some rain cloud in the presence of misery.
Eddy Speed was no friend of misery nor its enemy. He looked to and spoke of a future in which he could help the world rather than the world helping him. The problem is that things without wings can not be taken to the sky. So, Eddy Speed finds himself stuck in this loop with aspirations of helping his fellow man out of the struggles that plague him.
He then reminisced on a time in which he had control of some power to help those around him in the form of social security checks.
“They saw me as a paycheck.”
Jealousy is one of the demons that prey on the narrow-minded and weakens the resolve of man. In the eyes of those that Eddy Speed wished to help. They saw nothing of a man but everything of some physical manifestation of their own inner hatred. This hatred boiled in one of his peers to the point where, as Eddy Speed says, he poisoned him. Eddy Speed had a discoloration in his hands, and the bags under his eyes were blackened. Eddy Speed did not attribute this plight of ignorance to the conditions of the man but to some unseen force that grabbed hold of the man’s spirit and commanded him to spread this misery onto Eddy Speed.
It takes a strong person to be beaten down by those around them and rise up, not in hatred of them, but in hatred of their ignorance. Eddy Speed is a man who knows this well.
Thanks for reading. Peace and love to you and yours.
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