I've met John several times over the years. He's lived on and off at the Shelter on Tennessee Street, but he moves around a lot. How he manages to keep himself relatively clean and tidy is a mystery to me, just as it's a mystery to me how a man can keep drinking the way John drinks. I'd last seen him just before Christmas, when he came in with a story about a job in Orlando and asked for a bus ticket. I remember standing in the bus bay with John, our heads bowed in supplication as passengers streamed passed.
Diesel exhaust makes a strange sort of incense.
He told me that, for the umpteenth time, he'd come to his senses and decided to get dried out. A half-way house in Pensacola had a place for him. A preacher in Orlando had bought him a ticket, and he'd made it as far as Tallahassee before getting off the bus. Judging from his slurred speech and glazed-over eyes, he'd found several. He talked for a while.