Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [68]
That’s right, at the end of the move. Man, I wish I hadn’t finished that move, but there really wasn’t much of a choice. I could have called for reinforcements, but that would have been so much of a hassle and, in the process, I would have been whisked to the wayside as just another regular mover.
Besides, when I came downstairs to tell Phillipe that I thought I had broken my toe, he just said, “Yeah, man, that sucks. Owwie. My toe hurts, too. Hey can you hand me that chair right there?”
So I hobbled around for the rest of the day, each step more painful than the last. I would have thought that I would eventually become desensitized to the pain, but that was not the case. It kept hurting, throbbing. We finished the move at 7:30 that evening, and Phillipe dropped me off at the hospital on his way back to the shop. I sat in the waiting room for three hours showing off my toe to the kids running around, and then the doctors took X-rays to determine that I had, in fact, broken my big toe. The doctor prescribed antibiotics and pain medication and explained that I would have to keep the toe elevated for five days. It was going to cost Fast Company $825 just for that feeble advice alone, forget the follow-up visits.
I had been so ready to move out of the shelter, to “move on up,” but instead I was destined to be stuck in there until I was back on my feet. I was banking all of my money (more than $1,500, in fact), so I felt I had a comfortable security net in the event that I was faced with any kind of hardship, like losing my job. I had been working with George every Sunday, and he mentioned that Mickey, his close friend who I had met briefly when I buried his dead dog as one of my chores, had a room in his house downtown that he would rent me for $100 a week. “The room is a bit less than exciting, but it’s a pretty nice house, and you’ll have the run of the kitchen,” he said. I was sold. I figured that I could live there for a couple of months while I looked for something more permanent. The monthly rent would be about the same, if not just a few bucks more expensive, than staying in the neighborhood by the shelter, so I reasoned that it was the best all-around deal that I was going to find.
But my financial stability was only one of the reasons that I was ready to get out of the shelter. As much as I knew I was going to miss the shelter—the camaraderie, the excitement, the bizarre conversations, and the food—it was such a drag to have to come back to the shelter to be around guys that didn’t share my same motivation. Several of them had done their part in telling me the direction I needed to be headed, and the time had come for me to hit the road.
On Friday, September 22, my sixtieth day at the shelter, I had given Harold, the front desk worker, my two-day notice.
“Two days? Super. Thanks for the notice, Shep.” He picked up a pen and pretended to write. “Shepard…two days…got it. You’re all set. Hopefully we can get somebody in here to fill your spot.”
As a practical matter, he didn’t care if I stayed for two more days or two hundred, but we had become friends over the previous couple of months, so I figured he’d like to know what I was up to.
“You’re gonna do a’ight, Shep,” he said. “Just stay out of trouble, and you’re gonna do a’ight.”
I was planning on it. Out of trouble and on course. That’s where I was, and in two more days I would have been living in Mickey’s attic-room downtown, free to come and go as I pleased and free to finally sleep without a chorus of snorers in the background.
But then I got hurt. Which was natural and expected, I suppose. Why should anything go as planned? And just like that, my daily routine had shifted from exciting to mundane. I would wake up in the morning, eat breakfast with everybody else, and then go back to bed until lunch. After lunch, I would go back to bed until dinner. After dinner, I would go back to bed until breakfast