I met Willy when I became a volunteer for meals on wheels in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was a paid part-time worker who trained me on delivering to the various routes around the city. He had been born and raised in Chattanooga and was looking forward to his 62nd birthday when he could start collecting social security.
I’ll still get my part time money from meals on wheels but I’ll get about $900 a month from social security he said excitedly. He was also looking forward to when his girlfriend would get out of jail in about six months.
She jumped bail, they picked her up last Saturday night. She was at my apartment so they took me in too, overnight. Now I find out they’re evicting me because of that, harboring a fugitive, he said with a laugh.
I’d never known anyone like Willie. I had worked with a number of borderline criminals with substance abuse problems but none with such charm.
One time the supervisor was talking about people on parole wearing ankle bracelets for electronic tracking and Willie spoke up to say he knew all about that, that he had worn one once himself.
Willie that’s nothing to really brag about she said.
Willie was divorced, and had to move back in with his mother and uncle after being evicted in the arrest incident. I suppose the DUIs didn’t help my case with the rental board, he later told me, not at all perturbed, saying he was happy to be able to help out his elderly mother and ailing uncle.
The only time I really saw him angry was when a convenience store clerk told him to take off his hoodie on a cold day when he came in the store. He went on and on about that. But when we delivered meals together, he was always a beacon of good cheer to the people.
People from circumstances much like his and worse. Through him I came to understand them in a way I would otherwise never have.
Willie told me he grew up thinking money just grew on trees, metaphorically speaking of course, as we rode together delivering meals and discoursing on finance. I had grown up in New England in a well to do family. I, too, thought money grew on trees, and those trees were casinos and lotteries and if I planned it just right, I could shake them enough to not have to be just another worker-bee.
So, you got the gambling fever, Willie said when I told him this. I guess I did, I said. I guess you still do, he said, when he saw how much I played the lottery. I knew lots of people got the gambling fever he said, shaking his head, Thank the Lord I never did.
Willie asked me to borrow some money for gas once and I took out two twenties to give to him. His eyes lit up like I was giving him a winning lottery ticket. Oh man, I can get gas and groceries and pay my mom back a little, thank you, thank you, thank you I’m gonna make this right with you.
Another co-worker said not to do that, that Willie would just spend it on beer. It took a while, but he paid it all back.
After a year in town my wife and I bought a house in an upscale part of town called Missionary Ridge. We hired Willy and two friends to move us from our apartment.
I never had any friends that lived up on the ridge he told me. When I was a teenager, we’d come up here and drink and make out with our dates, you know, yeah man, the ridge was something because at night, the lights of the city down below, man…
Willie would come over the house and help me mow the lawn and take trash out of the basement as we started remodeling.
Then we got a new supervisor at work.
Willie and the new supervisor did not hit it off and it wasn’t long before he quit. Around the same time my mother-in-law in New England took ill and my wife’s employment ended. We rented the house and went back north for two years.
When we came back and I went to see if I could get my job back, they said sure they could use me right away. When I asked about Willie, they gave me the bad news.
He had run out of gas. He was always running out of gas, a co-worker said. It was dusk and he was filling the car from a can on a blind corner. A corner on a road we’d driven together delivering many times. He got hit, and was in a coma for four days. He died just a few months before I got back.
In Chattanooga, I’d encountered this curious custom of traffic stopping in the opposing lane when a funeral was proceeding. Respect for the dead, Willie explained, but I don’t go along with it. What they care if traffic coming the other way stops when their funeral comes down the street? They dead.
One time when we were delivering together, he told me about a dream his mother had about a relative that had died. They were sitting together talking just like we are now, she said. And her brother told her, Myra, don’t worry about me, I’m just fine, it’s just fine here, really it is, I’m not hurting a bit.
So that’s how I think about it, Willie said, here, there, doesn’t matter, the good Lord will see to it that we’re fine wherever we are. Even if I don’t go to church, and I have been in prison, and I do drink too much sometimes, I know I’ll be fine.