THE BUM WHO SMELLED LIKE A SANDWICH

by

Jonathan Carroll

There was a dancing bum at the bus stop who smelled like a sandwich. It was raining and snowing and no one else was around but the two of us. I didn’t know if he was waiting for the bus but sure as hell hoped not. I’d just missed the last one and had a bad feeling the next wouldn’t be arriving for a while. Which meant this Mr. Bojangles ten feet away would be the entertainment until then. Unless he was just resting here a moment before continuing on his world tour.

Even five feet away in the cold wet winter outdoors, I could smell him. He oozed the foul perfume of eight million cigarettes and a cheap meat sandwich. Hot old grease on a roll.

Dancing by himself, he was having a great time. His eyes were closed but he looked happy, relaxed and completely unselfconscious.

I didn’t know where to look. It was kind of cool watching him dance but I was afraid that as soon as he opened his eyes and saw me, he’d come over and ask for money, or make some kind of weird-leer or crazy-bum conversation that would give the rest of the morning a bad taste.

Suddenly he started singing The Dixie Cups’ song, “The Chapel of Love.” And he knew all the lyrics. Still dancing, eyes closed, he began singing and he knew all the lyrics to that great 60’s song. Most people know some lyrics to a song, usually the chorus. They’ll sing a line or two but invariably their voices fall off into hum or mumble and then they go silent. But not this guy.

I knew all the words to “The Chapel of Love” too because it was one of the benchmark songs of my Wonder Years. I think I first heard it while riding around in Richard Bucci’s new red and white Chevrolet Malibu convertible, and then a few hundred more times at significant events—during make out sessions at parties, on a portable transistor radio the color and size of a piece of toast while smoking Marlboros behind the school at night, and occasionally over the following years. Each time it played I stopped and blinked and drew a long measured breath. Even when your youth sucks, hearing the soundtrack from it down the years almost always cripples or caresses you. You can never tell which it’ll be until you hear it.

So here was this sandwich smelling, dancing bum singing a song that was a lot more mine than his. It made me sort of angry.

“Do you want it back?”

I’d been looking at the ground, thinking about all of my memories associated with that song. When he spoke, I raised my head and saw that he was looking right at me. “Excuse me?”

“I asked if you want your song back?”

”You know what I was thinking?”

“Richard Bucci. Chevrolet Malibu, Patrizia Carella-“

I hadn’t even thought about her name, but Patrizia was the girl I was kissing with when I heard the song for the first time.

“How do you know these things?”

“Don’t fuck around. Do you want your song back or not?”

“Well yes, I guess. I-”

“All right then, here’s the deal: When the bus gets here, you have to get on and sing that song with me. But every important person from your childhood will be on that bus: Richard Bucci, Patrizia Carella, Mr. Danahar—“

“Mr. Danahar? I thought he died.”

“He did, but he’s on there too. You and I are going to stand in front of them and sing this song. There’ll be four others too who were just as most important to you back when you were a kid.”

“Which ones?” I asked, my throat tightening at the thought.

“I’m not telling. They’re all adults now so you won’t recognize some of them. But they’ll recognize you. They’ll think ‘My God, what happened to him? Look at that bum he’s hanging around with now.” The bum smiled and his teeth were the color of old buttons.

I was dressed in a ski jacket, khakis, and boots. I didn’t look like anybody. I looked like everybody.

As if having read my mind he said, “That’s the point—Everybody has the soundtrack of their life in their head. Even the dead have a soundtrack. Even the dead remember their favorite songs.”

“But why me? Why did you choose me?”

“You should be thrilled. It’s the only time in your life that you’ve ever been specially chosen to do anything. You’re the guy they always ignore. This time you’ve been chosen. Hooray for you.”

“But the people on the bus will think I’m like you and I’m not.”

“No, you’re worse—you’re a ghost with a heartbeat. At least people remember bums who dance.” He smiled again and it was an insult without words. “If you sing, you’ll get your song back. You’ll have Patrizia and her 7th grade kisses again.

“Hey, we want only pure memories hung in the Museum of Me, right? What do you care what these people think of you? You haven’t seen them in forty years.

“But if you don’t do it, then every time you hear this song from now on, it’ll smell like a bad meat sandwich.”

“But they’ll think-“

“That you’re a loser. Correct. Even worse—They’ll see you and me together and think you’ve sunk below sea level. They’ll see you singing with the stinking bum and shudder. You can count on it.

“Anyway, which will it be: keep your memories pure or keep your image safe?”

I could hear the bus coming.

THE END