Life Stories
An old reporter burns his clippings to stay warm but then he has nothing left.
“Whachoo got there, ol’ man?”
He raised his head and met the bloodshot eyes of the skinny guy on the neighboring cot who had just spoken. Another junkie. Or tweaker. Or crackhead. Same difference. Like all the young ones in the shelter. He looked back down at the tattered newspaper clippings he had spilled from an envelope onto the cot.
“Hey. Didnchoo hear me, ol’ man?”
He kept his head down this time and concentrated on sifting through the pieces of paper, brittle and jaundiced with age.
“Donchoo got no manners?”
He peered at the newsprint. The headlines and the masthead were easy to read: “The News, Paterson, N.J.” “Arson blaze kills three.” “Mayor faces corruption scandal.”
But the smaller font of the text was fuzzy. He strained to discern the byline that he knew was there, that was him before his hair and whiskers had turned into feathers of snow. No matter. He knew what it said anyway. Of course, he did. By Mario O’ Grady. Puckering his bristled brow, he reached into his memory for the who, what, when, where, how and why of the stories, but those details were far out of his grasp now.
