Sketches of Those We Have Known: BERKELEY PEOPLE

The Projects of Danielson

There was the circle of friends Danielson returned to after his failure in the east. It had been a year since his return. In the plane descending over the bay and city he had become nervous about his appearance. He felt himself old and weak and figured that the others he compared himself with saw him as old and weak. He knew it was vanity but it seemed real enough. Then he heard the decelerated fury of the turbines as the plane was ready to land and a shudder went through the fuselage so for a moment the dim light dimmed then grew light again over the quiet and quizzical faces of those riding in the air with him; against their will he had thought at one point. Perhaps it had been over Kansas where the land below opened into flat, cross-latched parcels of brown and green with thick black lines he imagined were fences.

After he had eaten, all previous thought disappeared. He sipped on a tiny bottle of liquor the stewardess had handed him. There had been utter silence as the huge ship turned in the air, nearly on its side so the wash of lights in the Bay Area were revealed to Danielson. He saw the chain of lights pulling across the Bridge like snakes illumined on all sides by arching lights. He saw the mechanical figure on Twin Peaks that stood as a great scourge to the fogless night; he always had a strange premonition of fear when he saw the tower because it reminded him of a movie he had seen when he'd been a boy; about space invaders with lasers for eyes who towered over the hills and moved inexorably toward the destruction of the city.

The plane now rolled furiously in a straight line to a stop amid the fury of turbines and quiet conversations, movements, and sighs.

He was met at the airport by his old friend Carl who shook his hand warily and then looked away nervously, took Danielson by the arm and led him through the airport and out into the dry cold night air which fell superbly warm after his experience in the east.

There was light, casual conversation on the freeway; it made a furrow through the peninsula and approached the city from the butt-end where the Bay Bridge loomed as a massive toy decorated by blue and green lights. The bridge ran away from the tight circle of half-lit buildings that, to Danielson, seemed so provincial after his experience in the east. It ran toward the East Bay, settled into the hills and looked like a Mediterranean city of old; that is, it seemed in the process of being built by a series of wandering tribes finally weary of their perignations. On seeing it Danielson felt a tinge of nostalgia. He asked Carl whether he had stayed in contact with Sharon. Yes, Carl said, she works in a large hospital in Berkeley, unmarried and unchanged but what do I know about these things?

Just tell me what she looks like, Danielson asked.

Carl laughed. That depends on the time of year. In the spring she begins to lose weight but now that it's winter she's beginning to gain it back.

I see.

Carl become serious. You've got to call her in a few days.

Danielson had become reflective as the car left the sloping ramp off the bridge. The Bay was pitch black. He could see the silhouettes of the wood sculptures along the Emeryville mudflats; he had known an artist who made several of the pieces. Now, because of the publicity they got the mudflats and driftwood had become an item and not worth attention but, in the beginning, the artist friend told him, "the work was covert, in the morning, at the crack of dawn so no damn authority could put a stop to it." Silhouette after silhouette passed them. They were poised against the dark brute faces of the factories and auto wrecking yard on the otherside of the freeway.

It was unforgivable he thought suddenly; an unforgivable sin to return home without bringing back some spoil of triumph to show his circle of friends and family. What is this reality he had told himself long ago, but a thing to bite into before holding the evidence in the palm of his hands as some kind of trophy. It was a sin, no question about it. No amount of knowledge was going to obviate the sin.

The truth of the matter was that Danielson had nothing, desired nothing, wanted to forgive no one, had no quarrel with anyone, wanted only to settle again in the wide dark nature of nothing which he had found easier than thinking about. If this is sin, he thought, then may as well make the best of it. And when he thought this his mind sprang into images of pleasure pressed pleasantly through the texture of his imagination without a single drop of desire. Only a vague desire to see the pleasure pass through others as though they now were the fallen ones he would secretly observe.

He had a peculiar habit of talking in clipped, inarticulate sentences that came before the formation of words; coming out of the wild sense beating out of his ears as he confronted someone who was exchanging facts of experience. Sometimes he would feel something robbing him of the ability to speak and this made him uneasy, not only of speaking but of everything he laid his hands on. All of this had a strange effect on the listener. He would influence the person toward serious conversation which, in reality, deserved laughter and, more peculiarly, instead of laughter as one would expect the conversation would degenerate into a kind of unstated anger.

In the first week of his return he rarely left his room. He had borrowed a tape recorder, an old machine that resembled the kind that his elementary teachers had used. For hours he would sit on the floor and read the newspaper into the tape machine; at first very slowly, enunciating every word patiently. It was painful to hear when he played it back to himself later in the evening. During these sessions he felt stronger in himself and was fully possessed with a new sense of spirit. But when he would go out into the street, to a store or to the restaurant, a sudden and familiar fear came over him that among all the anonymous eyes of the crowd there would be one who would see through him, reveal his plans and challenge him so he would be forced to answer and not being able to answer he would do something foolish or breakdown and weep.

It was this kind of irrational fear that disappeared before the little black and white television, especially if he watch a popular show or, surprisingly, the news.

He had borrowed a sum of money on condition that he would find employment for himself within the year. His benefactor believed it to be a very generous proposal. There was no great discussion about the circumstances of his failure in the east but his new patron believed that Danielson only needed another chance, in another set of clothes so to speak. After the year there would be no money or sympathy.

The year seemed, at the moment Danielson received his first check, long and round inside of which he could see all his activities and schemes playing themselves out. One year. There was no worry about that. He had always been fastidious about time, even to the point of one idle afternoon multiplying the number of seconds he had been given to live and then figuring the amount of minutes, hours, days, years left to him. But after he had finished he realized how absurd the effort had been. He could only make a vague kind of guess at best. He went back to the piece of paper blackened with his figures and after a period of reflection, after seeing all those digits swimming from margin to margin, he understood that if one could live out all the seconds allotted to him then life would indeed be quite long and fine.

It was in this state of satisfaction that he understood that fate may intercede at any time but then again, chances were just as good that fate would not intervene and if fate did not intervene he would live all those allotted seconds as in the beats of a tiny iron or metal-plated heart and though that was a compromise it was a privilege as well.

And it was an iron heart that beat outside of him; he heard it quite distinctly. It had startled him one cold afternoon as a matter fact. It animated all the moving things in front of him, even the people, and that had amazed him. Didn't it come from inside one after all? It all seemed under the suspicious eye of one who knew the advantage of time, and once one trust the multitude of pressures detailed by time, one could understand just about everything.

The thinking finally ended in the spring when his plan broke ground. Inevitably, fears of various re-adjustments left him like old leaves and that first day of spring when he woke in the cold room early in the morning, when traces of frost seemed burned into the windows that surrounded him, with mocking birds in the trees, a jet in the early blue morning sky now moved in an arc so the sound of the engines came down on him like fine parabolic ribs; all of this conspired to give him full possession of himself. He stood, straightened, naked in the small room; bent once, stretched, scratched himself, remembered his dream, had a faint stirring of his failure, grew confident and anxious, determined that morning that he would go to a fine restaurant for breakfast and order an expensive omelet with perhaps, champagne this time.

It had become a habit of his to eat his meals out. He had turned it into a kind of game; a game with two elements that consisted of the psychological aspect of the restaurant; ambience, the menu, the food, the waitresses and the element of people who never changed; who sat in the morning, afternoon, or evening without changing, without knowing of the possibility of change and he saw this as an advantage for if they didn't change they were certainly vulnerable to change.

His favorite was convivial and inexpensive and they let him sit for as long he pleased as he watched the activity around him, smiling but secretly brooding back way before his failure in the east and his comeback as he called it, though his friends would have been shocked to hear him call it such a thing. He believed that the circle of friends and family around him expected him not simply to return to his old vital self but to re-emerge from the horrible despair that had come over him and perhaps in so doing would demonstrate that all of life had to hope in the end. Ah, hope! It infiltrated the core of his imaginings.

There was nothing other than hope! He was acutely aware of this as he traveled through the city. He was a soul in love with the idea of the city, even if the one he traveled in was in ruins. The vision of a city in ruins seemed poignant to Danielson.

All of this love and death!

Exchange, hatred, beauty, ugliness, the flow of opposites mixed freely in most living things walking and swaying under the shadows of the buildings! His first memory was of the city. And that had been from twenty miles distance on a hill through an opening of eucalyptus trees and the unconscious vitality that sustained the scene and made it look febrile and jagged the way a boy did when he couldn't articulate himself and his deepest desires.

He had started from the restaurant but on impulse changed his mind and boarded a #42 bus for the Estuary. There were five people on the bus, imperial in their staring looks as they watched the broken houses, rubble, automobile traffic go by. A young, gaunt man was sitting in front of Danielson and began to sway back and forth as though some rhythm moved through him from the inside out; as though his ears were full of the unbounded mixtures of noise and music that came out of the automobiles and busses. The man turned once to the left, to look out the window and Danielson was suddenly taken back by the utter grey-white that had taken over the young man's skin and the look of insanity in the young man's eyes. As well, there were two large Spanish women speaking glibly in their native tongues. They sat way in front, next to the driver and looked at the young black men who boarded at 35th with suspicion but the black men broke through the force of suspicion held on either side of the aisle and bounded to the back.

On arriving at Jack London Square, Danielson took in a big breath of salt air and let his mind stretch over the pleasant scene of tugboats, sailboats, dinghies, boats at berth, swaying docks and gathering of people. Danielson had to remind himself that it wasn't a holiday; that it was a week-day, a work day, a sincere day.

There were no plans for himself. The fact that he was in the Square took him out of a feeling that it was impossible for him to be down by the water at this time of the day and yet there it was in front of him. Nothing else appeared to him but the water; boats, a few lazy clouds and occasional planes above.

He checked his pockets and discovered that he had a few dollars and felt immediately at ease. "What I need is a map," he thought to himself. And so he walked half a block parallel to the train tracks to a visitor bureau's booth. A young woman was inside looking abstracted and bored as she peered out toward the distant skyline of downtown Oakland. She was not smoking, although she appeared to be the type of woman who would smoke if the majority of people in her group smoked. She was certainly capable of it.

"I would like to buy a map," Danielson said bluntly.

The young woman did not answer him for a long time. She was looking abstractly out past Danielson as though she had seen something on the previous train that had bothered her.

"What kind of map?" she finally answered lazily.

"A map that tells me everything I need to know to get around here."

The young woman, who had a nametag that said "Jane," turned her back on Danielson and moved awkwardly in the little cubicle before coming out with a handful of small colorful maps.

"There is a map for every circumstance."

"I only wish to know where I can walk and where I can eat."

The young woman briefly smiled and thumbed through her stack of maps and handed it to Danielson who, in turn, offered her a dollar.

"Oh no, these maps are free. These maps are paid for by your taxes."

Danielson thanked her and moved away toward the boats in the harbor. He now felt a tinge of guilt for not paying taxes for these years; it had been a long-time and what taxes he had paid had been absorbed and used by some bureau by now.

On the map the girl had given him was a reference to the Hideaway Saloon, "as it was when patronized by Jack London." A beer, he thought, will lift the spirit.

He walked half a block and was startled to see the antique ramshackle that housed the infamous bar. A small wooden door led down to the dank and dark drinking establishment. The bartender hardly looked at him although no one else was in the bar.

A variety of photographs of Jack London lined the walls. There were several tables and Danielson took his beer to one and sat against the wall.

Well, I'll drink the beer and then watch the boats in the estuary and then head back home. I will walk and clear my brain so I can think more clearly about things; about the project and the organization of the project.

The project, the idea of it had taken possession of Danielson and he could almost visualize the completion and the success that it was going to bring him. And, when the project was complete and a success, he was going to move to a better location and begin looking for women once again. Now, women were not needed nor desired; their pettiness got in the way of the project and their demands were above and beyond anything he might be able to produce for them. Some women, without question, would be mesmerized by the project. Perhaps she would ever conspire to do Danielson in and take the reward of it herself. He was convinced that such women existed.

His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of bells above the door to the bar. A dilapidated fellow stood in the doorway and looked over the bar giving Danielson a riveting gaze before stepping slowly down the few steps to the bar. He had on a thick coat and sailor type pants. He ordered a glass of beer and then, startling Danielson, the man without hesitation walked directly to where Danielson sat and made himself comfortable opposite him. Danielson looked up quickly and noticed that the bartender had disappeared from behind the bar.

"You don't mind me sitting here do you." the man declared; it was not a question.

"I guess not."

"You guess not. Well. You look like an intelligent guy. Yeah, a college graduate. Someone who reads a lot in little rooms. Someone who has discovered the godless world as beneath contempt. Yes, well maybe I am a part of that godless world, who knows? But, being a smart guy you'll want to hear my story won't you?"

"Just so I don't have to pay you anything."

The man flashed an expression of hatred and then laughed long and loud. "A sense of humor. That is rare for the college graduate. I like it." And with that the fellow lifted his glass and held it out for Danielson to lift his glass and then clicked the glasses of beer together and then drank.

The man didn't have a hard face but it wasn't youthful either. He had not shaved that day and it gave him the look of a jobless guy. Danielson finally got the courage to tell the man that we wanted to be left alone now.

"Left alone? Oh--so the man with the great plans is bothered by the friendly tramp--is that so? If I leave here right now will you devise some plan to save the world? No- no, that definitely is not in your plans. I know. You are going to devise some new transportation system; perhaps a rail system down the center of the freeway."

When the stranger mentioned plans a chill went up and down Danielson's pine. How did the fellow know that he had plans? That, in fact, he had come down to Jack London Square in order to formulate his plans and solidify them?

"A fellow like you probably doesn't have any plans." Danielson's voice was weak and defensive.

The man held his palm out.

"Every morning I get up in my room, I piss and splash water on my face, I go to the kitchen and boil water, I eat a small piece of French bread, I stand in front of my bug splattered window and look at downtown Oakland and gear myself to go out there among the crazies and criminals to make my daily bread. If it is $5 I am happy. I have made as much as $500. That, in fact, was the most memorable day of my life. It occurred around Lake Merrit. The man was a young fellow. Ever since that time I have seen his face, in my imagination, at least once a day. I imagine that he was a rich kid's son who had his head effected by dope. I was standing looking over the Lake. I had come from the library to escape a rain and was standing with my hands in my pockets looking over the choppy waters of Lake Merrit. Perhaps you think I had ideas of jumping in. No- I have never considered the alternative to living. I am a man and I believe in life. So, the young fellow comes up to me. He looks me straight in the eye- a strange look- even I, who have seen so many deranged characters had never seen a look like that. He told me, 'I am going to give you money, my money. I can not control how you use the money. If you save it and you use it wisely you will emerge out of the mess you've fallen into. If you squander it you will be back here, with your hands in your pockets, weak, penniless and depressed.' With that, he took a fine and bulging wallet and peeled off five one-hundred dollar bills. I took the money in amazement and he left. Later I spotted him on the other side of the Lake talking to a black man. I did not know what to do with my good fortune. I immediately went back to the room and hid the money. Then I took one of the hundred dollar bills and went down to a restaurant that I had always wanted to eat at. It was an Italian restaurant with pretty flags hanging above the doorway. Well, I was stopped by an officious gentleman at the door. I took out the hundred dollar bill and he threatened to call the police, saying I was a counterfeiter. As I was beginning to explain to him about the incident around the Lake, he told someone to call the police. I skeddalled and went back to my room. To break a hundred dollar bill became the most important matter that I had faced in a long time. I was beside myself, then would break down in great laughter; just tremendous laughter that would cause tears to flow out. Finally, the hotel manager agreed to break the hundred dollar bill. He agreed to break all five of them as a matter of fact although he charged me for the privilege. So, you can see my days are varied. Anything may happen. In fact, on a good day, when I know I will have enough for several days, I count myself the happiest and luckiest creature alive and I walk through downtown Oakland looking at the businessmen and working women and laugh; literally laugh out loud at their foolish ways. If they only knew how to live!"

Danielson was not unmoved by the story. He was a bit startled by some of it. His mind was drawn into the world of the transient and the reality was too much. He got up to leave without saying anything and moved toward the door. He heard the tramp get up out of his chair and follow him to the door.

The daylight blinded Danielson for a moment. A few people strolled by the docks and some looked pensively toward the estuary. In the distance he could hear the reflected roar of traffic and people in downtown Oakland. The last place he wanted to go was downtown Oakland. He was not disorientated and wanted to find some peaceful cover and recollect himself. As he began to move toward the railroad tracks he heard the familiar voice from the bar.

"Where are you running off to? Here-let me take you back to my place and we can drink some wine."

A voice in Danielson shouted, "No!" and he continued to follow the tracks toward an industrial park. He was not running but walking in very precise, measured steps, not wanting to turn around to see if the man was following him. "If he is following me I am finished, I know it for certain. He will kill me or roll me. Ah- there was something definitely evil about this person."

Danielson now entered a quiet pause. The train tracks moved straight through empty fields that had real estate signs stuck in them. Off to his right he could see the sail of a boat as it moved through the estuary. It was a noiseless scene.

He had been blinded by the sunlight but he now worried that the sun would be setting soon. He turned around and assured himself that the man was no longer following him. Behind him he could see the artificial setting of Jack London Square. It looked like a children's park and off in the distance were the few skyscrapers of downtown Oakland. His mind was very confused at this moment since he had come down to the Square in order to clear himself of personal problems and think as acutely as he could in his plans, on the "project" as he called it. And now, for a brief moment, the project seemed ludicrous and out of place in the midst of everything he was forced to assume was reality. Even, he thought, at this moment there is a powerful and potentially lethal machine pulling down the tracks. What could my project possibly be next to the great railroad engine? To say nothing of all the people who are dependent on the engine for their livelihood and survival. The thought drove him into a state of depression. He began walking again in order to shake the depression.

Well, that fellow was certainly a bum of some sort, Danielson thought to himself. It is strange how people fall off the great ship and yet manage to founder in the ocean for years and years without drowning completely. It is more than menacing, it is a testament of some sort.

Danielson surveyed the bleak impression of empty fields and old broken boats laying in the mudflats and a dissolve of housing that repelled him. At the very least the sun is still in the sky, he thought. Yes, and the world is round and hopeful despite all of the pictures that make it look and feel shrunken.

He spotted a row of boats along the shore and made his way down an embankment to where they were lined up, one after the other, empty and broken, mute and despoiled. The Esprit was the name of one, the etching on the side fading away. There was an overwhelming feeling of ghosts contained within the row of boats; of memory still shuffling inside the rotting wood, of the lights of childhood and grizzled determination of the sailor and the absolute feeling of liberation in the breast of a young woman as the wind danced through her.

Danielson felt sadness. Then he felt stupid for such a feeling.

And too, he felt great sadness for himself because he knew that his projects were becoming a mere necessity; that it would one day resemble the boats; that he even had lost the original idea, the intention, that started him in the first place. He remembered the confidence as he sketched out the project, he remembered the first disillusionment and the shock of the first rejection and how the mind had to envelope itself so to protect itself against the wild claims of the world.

What was it then? He could no longer say what it was. It was nothing perhaps. Whatever it was it is no longer, he thought. It was never a thought but a feeling of remorse, a feeling of guilt and waste.

As he was about to leave he heard a voice.

"Ah ha! You are by the boats!"

Danielson looked up to see the stranger from the bar standing on the embankment. As he made his way down the embankment he was saying, "You are afraid of me- there is no need to be afraid. I can't hurt anyone. I want to spread pleasure- that is my role in this world."

Danielson laughed out loud for the first time. A prolonged and healthy sounding laugh.

"What pleasure can you bring to anyone? Why, you are nothing but a bum, a street tramp, a loser--what possible good are you to the world?"

"How do you know that I'm not a rich person who has assumed this role so that I can go around and give people pleasure?"

"I don't know anything about you."

"What are your plans?"

Oh, now you are poking into areas that no one can poke into."

"I will tell you my plans, then. I intend to drink several glasses of wine and then yell at people out my window." And he began laughing, laughing so hard that Danielson smiled at him.

"Sometimes I wish I could drink wine and yell at people myself."

The voice of the bum had become raspy for his laughter. "Come with me. I will tell you my remarkable existence. We will drink wine and yell at people."

Danielson was taken along the railroad tracks where they turned up Broadway and went to downtown Oakland. The crowds were out. The radios were blaring off the few, absurd tall buildings, there was running and yelling, horns and the consistent muffled rumble of motors under the hoods of the baking automobiles.

Danielson did not like the downtown area of any city. Oakland was mild compared to the monstrosities in the east but it was still, the energy; the incomprehensible power of things and the compulsion, even here, even in his obscure place, this miserable hell world of a city; it was even here; the compulsion and driven semi-madness of the crowd.

The bum was waving his arm about. "Don't worry, don't worry, my friend, soon we will be drunk and we will be yelling at these fools from the safety of my room window." And he continued to wave his arm about oblivious to the stares coming his way.

Danielson felt sudden shame. This is not what he wanted. He felt himself falling into a world he did not want to go.

The tramp literally pulled him through the crowds to a side street; a street that was a mixture of commercial and residential buildings. The area was run-down. There were suspicious looking characters lurking around; battered cars drove slowly up and down the street. Danielson could still see Broadway flowing past, its roar angled between the old hotel and clothing store on either side of the street.

"I've been living, in the past six months, by my wits," the tramp was saying. "I have done very little in the way of petty crime and attempt to avoid it all together. What I am interested in are the coins people leave behind in machines, in telephones and vending machines. It's a veritable goldmine! And then I save the coins and buy a hot dog or Kielbasa and then someone'll give me a cup of coffee or cigarette. Today I hit a goldmine. Tourists! They thought I was a homeless bum and gave me $10 so they could tell the folks back home they have been generous to the down and outers. They tried to make me feel horrible for it and I allowed them to humiliate me because I knew, in myself, that I am better than they are and that someday I might be in a position to give them $20. Such is the irony of things don't you think? So I come in here to celebrate. I won't have to go out for another several days and I luxuriate in this time I was able to steal from fate."

The stranger gave off the sense that he was not only a vagrant but crazy as well, perhaps dangerous. "I have no money," Danielson said.

The other fellow raised his eyebrow in laughter and then laughed outloud.

"Why I know that! We, my friend, are almost exactly the same. Except you have a father or uncle or a boss somewhere giving you the money that I have to beg for. Do not worry, do not worry, I feel no bitterness about it. Everyone has their run of luck. Tomorrow I may have hundreds of thousands of dollars. I may find a winning lottery ticket. So, life is full of ironies."

The bum's room was cluttered. Danielson couldn't help but notice the terrible smell that rose up. It was a transient's room. That is, it contained one bare bed, a scarred table, a thick rug that had been soiled, and a light switch pulled out from the wall. Various items of food and clothing were tossed around the room. There were paper bags torn apart.

As Danielson looked closer at the man he realized that the fellow wanted a friend of some sort. He had that lost lamb look that Danielson rarely saw in the east. A look that he told himself he would never have. No, if it was the last thing in the world he would not allow himself that look. And yet, he was touched. He was no longer afraid of the man even if he wished that he had never gone to Jack London Square.

"Well," Danielson said, "I must go now. I wish you well. I hope all your dreams come to pass."

"Where are you going?"

"Is it your business to know where I am going?"

"That does not answer the question; where are you going?"

"I am going home."

"And when you go home what are you going to do?"

"Hmm- I'll probably watch the news."

"Why would you watch the news?"

"What do you mean?"

What stake do you have in the world that makes you interested in the news?"

"Why, I analyze it and feel part of it later in the evening. When I am bored and looking out of the window down on the evening traffic."

"Wouldn't you rather drink some good wine in the company of a man who has experiences and stories?"

Danielson felt himself getting pulled in by the tramp. He was angry at himself for remaining civilized and rational with the vagabond. He was becoming irritated.

"Despite whatever experiences you may have, despite the fact that I appear foot loose, I am actually a very busy man. All of my time is taken; everything is scheduled out. I have no time to drink wine with the likes of you on a Friday afternoon. In fact, it is just the opposite of what you imagine. I came down here to meditate and to smooth out plans that I have carefully concocted for months. When these plans are enacted I will be successful and will live where I want to live and begin to live normally again. In fact, I was in that bar preparing to come to some resolution you when sat down."

With that the tramp bowed with great hyperbole in a sweeping gesture. "I apologize for interfering with the great man's plans. I have disturbed the universe. I will be punished for it."

"So, you will have to excuse me now..."

"Not so fast my friend." The bum had taken on a voice of near authority, as if Danielson was his employee. It felt that way and he relented and backed away from the door. "Before you leave may I entertain you with something. It will only take a moment. Please give me the opportunity to show you that I'm not a bad kind of guy."

Danielson heard that "no!" again rise up in him but decided that if he left on decent terms with the bum then he would be out of his life forever. 'No more with this fellow," he thought.

The bum led Danielson to a room and a dresser that had items jumbled up on it. He rustled through in a quasi-professional way, mixed with some anxiety. "This will blow your mind," he said once, over his shoulder.

Danielson wandered if he were getting too deep. The bum was some kind of nut and might spring anything at any moment. He may have shown promise at some point but was now a dangling dream, some character let loose from the plasma of the dream stuff and running around the real streets of the real city.

"What are you going to show me?"

"Don't worry, you won't get hurt. Nothing will happen. Nothing will occur but it may change you nonetheless."

The tramp by this time had found the object; an old box that reminded Danielson of something his aunt had put colorful buttons in. It was black and oblong with a kind of etching on the top of it that Danielson couldn't identify. The tramp held it out.

"Take it now!"

After a hesitating moment, Danielson snatched the box up to show the tramp he had no fear of it, opened it and was suddenly hit with a voracious light. Temporarily blind he heard the voice of the bum, "Keep looking with your eyes open."

Danielson stared into the box and then it appeared; as if he were looking at his own mind racing over the bottom of the lid, so many memories and thoughts and then an explosion into something he recognized at once. His plans! The project! And it was revealed completely to him in a matter of seconds, exactly as he knew it would be, with himself and the variables he knew would be involved with the plans. He looked in fascination because it was more than a dream. It was the real thing. It was structured so perfectly he wanted to cry out, he wanted to drop the box and run back to his home and start immediately. Something that can appear in a box must be real! How can it be anything else?

When he felt the bum trying to bend over his shoulder to look at what was going on Danielson blocked his view. "Ah, it's true I can't see it but I know what it is."

A strange thing then happened. The elation Danielson was feeling became very deflated and he wandered if seeing the plans enacted, even on an innocuous box, was not an omen. Maybe even a warning.

As though the bum knew what he was feeling he drew the box out of Danielson's hands and closed the lid. He then took him into the other room and opened a bottle of wine.

"So, did you see something interesting?" The tramp asked him after some silence.

"I've seen what I've always wanted to see."

"Ah, so what do you think of me now?"

"I have had several thoughts about you. For one thing, I think you might be a magician of some sort. I read about these wizards in the Druid tradition and thought you have been conjured up to taunt me for some reason. If not a magician then maybe you are a visiting god of some sort; one of those types of gods who disguises themselves in order to witness the piety of the people. You picked me out because you know of my plans and you understood that the plans are basically one of revenge and so you have gotten hold of me in order to persuade me not to go through with them. But now I realize that you are only a tramp, a poor hapless bum who is lonely and saw me as a mark. Someone with the mark of loneliness as well. But I am lonely only because I can not afford to let anyone know of my plans. You are lonely because life has been cruel to you."

"But you can't deny what you have seen...with your own eyes!"

"What am I supposed to say? Yes, I see it. What of it?"

"What of it? It contains what can only come from your mind; how do you figure that?"

"It's all a trick of some kind. It is time for me to go."

"No, no, please, I don't want you to go. We must figure this out, you and I. You think I'm some ancient magician or something but it's not true. I found that box under a tree by the lake. I had gone to the library to read and keep from the rain. Then I stepped out during a clear time to smoke and I sat by the lake looking out over the water and the people walking around the lake, lazing around the lake just as I was in a manner of speaking. And it got to me you know that they were doing the same thing I was but I was considered something terrible- a bum- and they lived good lives. That got to me, you know, so it gave me a headache and I laid up against this tree to sleep. Rain, rain come and drown me I said to myself. I laid back and my hand felt the wooden corner of the box and I pulled it out. Well, the rest is history. It amazed me to tell you the truth. It has allowed me to make a fairly good living too. Can I trust you?"

At that the tramp went back to a closet pulling Danielson with him. He opened the closet which was dark and terrible smelling. The tramp pulled a chain hanging from the closet and a dim light flashed over a bulk stacked from the floor up.

"Money! that's right- it's money, money, money."

Danielson couldn't believe his eyes. The money, some of it crisp, lay in even stacks across the whole length of the closet.

"How much is there?"

"Oh, I don't even dare to know. It'd jinx me you know."

Danielson went into the closet and knelt down feeling the money, mentally trying to count it up as much as possible; making a guess as his astonished eyes went from one stack to another. "Well, it's thousands no doubt, thousands! The stupid tramp has thousands of dollars! What a crazy world."

"The box shows me things, I do them and I always return with money. Except with you. It showed me you, where you'd be, and to get you and bring you back here. And I knew that would happen. I don't know what to do."

A year later the man, Danielson, was often seen around the Lake, disheveled and talking to a variety of people, across all racial lines and, even, class lines. It's true that only lately has he been talking to women but has shown more interest in them. He is often seen sitting upright against a tree in the greensward around the Lake, down from the traffic and weathered birds that seem so sad and filled with unrequited plans. Danielson dreams, yet, even though he doesn't need to. His plans run out along a thin black line, now, like a further horizon and have no structure that he can perceive.

He sleeps thinking about that thin black line. It never moves, yet runs on forever.

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