Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [102]
I was pulling for BG, but I couldn’t be certain what the future held for him. Fifty dollars at a time, he had nearly emptied the account he had been keeping with Derrick and was back to squeaking by, paycheck-to-paycheck. If nothing else, his expenses were declining, though, since he was filling my vacant spot with two other guys. After hearing that I was leaving, he had put the word out among his cronies that he needed a new roommate until our lease was up in December, and in just a short time he had received a huge response from people that wanted to move in. So, he picked the two closest to him (Vurt and Jaime) to move in and split all of the expenses three ways instead of two. Vurt would sleep on the couch and Jaime would sleep in my old room. Jaime had been living at a hotel, so I sold all of my furniture to him for $80, which turned out to be a sweet deal for both of us. I didn’t have to haul it home, and he would have a little something to begin his own new life, a jump start, just like Crisis Ministries had given me at the beginning of my journey.
On that final Sunday, though, before I hit the road with everything I owned riding along with me, I had one last stop to make: Mama D’s Dirty South Barbecue. I couldn’t resist one final trip there, but I also wanted to take BG out to lunch and tell him who I really was. My “outing” to Derrick three days prior had been met with unemotional indifference. After all, I was modeling my project after a lifestyle in which he had already proven successful, so, if anything, I had been learning from him.
Unfortunately, after BG and I packed the truck, there was no room in the front seat for him to fit, so we exchanged our last good-byes outside in the driveway. Leaning on the bed of my truck, I took the time to explain to BG how I had come to arrive in Charleston, what my project had been all about. I explained that I had started with virtually nothing and was now heading back to Raleigh with, well, something. We discussed how I had done it—with thrifty spending and aggressive saving—and I told him that he was ahead of where I was when I started. With a little patience and discipline, he could accomplish the same things that I had. I told him that if he wanted out of this lifestyle, he could get there; it all started with a little goal setting and a few budgeting techniques and then it would sprout from there. I told him that it would be a shame for him to be scraping by for the rest of his life when he had the potential—I know it—to do so much better.
His reaction, similar to Derrick’s, was anticlimactic, since, again, I was living a story based on a lifestyle that he had been living since birth.
“Wait. So, you ’bout to put me in a book?” he asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“You gonna write ’bout how I whooped yo ass?”
The conversation was two-sided and never uncomfortable either way. He admitted that he had made some questionable decisions with his social life and that he could probably tighten up in some areas. He told me that he knew what he had been doing was wrong, and he knew what he had to do to change direction. He loved his friends, he said, but he knew that their up-to-no-good influence was wearing on him.
I told him I believed in him and that I was going to miss him and his exciting, mischievous behavior. I told him to be good to all of his girls.
And then I shook his hand, hopped in my truck, stuck the screwdriver in the ignition, and drove toward the next step in my life.
EPILOGUE
A YEAR LATER:
A Didactic Look at What I Learned and
Where I Go from Here
So there it is. My 365-day climb from nothing