Harry and Dante
Chapter 2
By
Lazlo Zalezac
Copyright (C) Lazlo Zalezac, 2006

Dante headed over to the fire pit and started to sit down on a cinder 
block. One of the other men said, “Don’t sit there. If Jewels sees 
you on his chair, he’ll hurt you.”

“Oh.” Dante moved to a different spot and started to sit down.

“Don’t sit there. You don’t sit on other peoples places,” the same 
man said.

Looking around at the collection of cinderblocks and egg crates 
placed haphazardly around the area, Dante asked, “So where can I 
sit?”

“Over on one of the railroad ties. That’s the public seating.”

Dante sat down on one of the railroad ties while wondering what 
kind of world he had entered. He went over everything that had 
happened since that first afternoon in his studio and tried to make 
sense of it. He was lost in his thoughts went someone nudged him 
and said, “Hungry Man, he’s talking to you.”

“Hungry Man?” Dante asked looking at a homeless man he didn’t 
recognize.

“That’s your name,” the man said. 

“I’m Dante.”

“You’re Hungry Man, the starvin’ artist.”

When William had said that he’d get a new name, he hadn’t 
realized that the young man was serious about it. Deciding that this 
was a battle he couldn’t win, he accepted the new name. Trying to 
look a lot more confident than he felt, he shrugged his shoulders 
and said, “Okay, I’m Hungry Man. What do you want?”

From across the circle, Boy Scout asked, “So what are you doing 
here?”

“William hired me to make a statue of Happy Harry,” Dante 
answered. 

“So you are a real artist. That’s interesting. I wonder if Harry 
knows why you are here.”

Starting to wonder the same thing, Dante said, “I assume he does.”

The crowd of men chuckled at his statement. He said, “When it 
comes to Happy Harry and Half Feather, don’t assume anything.”

“So who is Happy Harry?”

“You met him,” Boy Scout answered looking across the circle at 
Dante with amusement. He figured out that William hadn’t told 
Hungry Man anything about Harry and hadn’t told Harry anything 
about Hungry Man. Things were going to get interesting around 
camp the next morning. Smiling, he said, “Well, you better get 
busy earning your dinner. How are you at peeling potatoes?”

“Okay, I guess,” Dante answered wondering why he needed to peel 
potatoes to earn his dinner. He was supposed to be creating a statue 
of Happy Harry.

“Well, come along with me and I’ll show you to the kitchen.”

Dante followed the man to the food shack. It was a small place and 
crowded, but everything necessary in a kitchen was there. Pointing 
to an egg crate, Boy Scout said, “You can sit there while you’re 
peeling the potatoes. You look like you’re a little shocked by 
everything. The chance to sit here and think while you’re peeling 
potatoes will do you a world of good.”

“Thanks. I’m kind of confused. This isn’t what I expected,” Dante 
said.

Boy Scout handed him a potato peeler. Noticing the man’s hands 
were all scarred up with huge calluses, he asked, “What happened 
to your hands?”

“I’ve been working in stone. It tends to eat up the hands a bit. You 
bust loose little chips and sometimes they cut you. Holding the 
hammer and chisel all day tends to produce calluses,” Dante said 
looking down at his hands. He was worried that he’d lost too much 
sensitivity in his hands and wouldn’t be able to feel the clay under 
his fingers. He wondered if it was too late to back out of the 
commission.

“Oh. Better get to work on those potatoes. I hate undercooked 
potatoes in my stew,” Boy Scout said as he stepped out of the 
shack. He turned back and watched as Dante picked up a potato 
and started to peel it. He wondered why William had chosen him 
to make a statue of Harry. A second thought occurred to him. He 
wondered why William wanted a statue of Harry.  

While he worked, Dante decided that Boy Scout had been correct 
about one thing. The chance to work on something as simple as 
peeling potatoes was a good way to get his thoughts in order. He 
considered his life. Since the day his girlfriend had announced that 
she was moving in with his best friend, Dante had been alone. 
Hiding in his studio, he had thrown himself into his work. The 
problem was that his work had been uninspired. The pieces he 
produced were junk. Something essential was missing in his work 
and he didn’t know what it was.

One morning he had woken up and looked at a misshapen hunk of 
clay. He had been preparing to make a mold of it in order to cast it. 
It was trash and he knew it. He had realized that he had lost it. 
Searching for some other direction to pursue in his artistic quest, 
he had selected stone. After two years of effort, he hadn’t created a 
single piece that he was willing to show anyone. Frowning, he 
decided that he had learned one important fact. He wasn’t any 
good in stone. 

When he reached the last potato, he didn’t want to leave the 
privacy of the food shack. After peeling it, he started to carve it 
with the potato peeler. The only face that came to mind was that of 
Boy Scout. Idly, he worked over the potato while his thoughts 
were still on his life situation. He decided that he was a fraud and 
that he should give the check back to William. For him to waste 
such an opportunity while another artist could do a better job just 
didn’t seem right to him.

Finished with the carving, he looked at it. The features of the 
homeless man had been captured in the potato, but something was 
missing. It was a representation of the man, but it was lifeless. 
Even worse, it was ugly. Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “It’s 
just a potato.”

Boy Scout came into the food shack and said, “I hope you’re done. 
Jester Bob here needs to peel some carrots for the stew.”

Dante stood and put the last potato in the pot of water. Boy Scout 
noticed the unusually shaped potato. He picked it out of the water 
and looked at it. After a minute, he said, “Nice likeness of me. Of 
course the expression looks like someone just stuck a carrot up my 
ass.”

Jester Bob grinned and said, “Now you did it. I’m going to be 
sitting here peeling carrots, with a hard-on, while imagining a 
carrot stuck up my ass.”

“Jester Bob, you are almost as bad as Merv the Perv,” Boy Scout 
said with a chuckle. 

Dante looked over at the potato and considered the comment about 
it. The criticism had an element of truth about it; he had caught the 
wrong moment of time in it. Thinking further, he realized that he 
hadn’t caught a single moment of time, but a series of moments for 
different parts of it. The result had been a hodge-podge of different 
expressions shoved together. 

Shaking his head, he left the shack and returned to the railroad tie. 
He sat down and looked at the men around him. He realized that he 
wasn’t seeing with his artist’s eye. He’d been seeing the superficial 
features of the people around him. It was as if he was shying away 
from seeing too deeply into the world around him. Had the loss of 
his girlfriend and best friend stolen his ability to look beyond the 
surface? Was he afraid of what he’d learn if he looked too deeply 
into the soul of his subject? The questions sent chills down his 
spine.

He tried to remember the features of Lady Lucy. To his shock and 
dismay, he realized that he just had a general impression of her. All 
he’d noticed was her skin, her hair, her eyes, and the scars on her 
face. He couldn’t recall the shape of her face, the line of her nose, 
or her lips. He knew she had ears, but couldn’t recall even looking 
at them. He couldn’t say what kind of smile she had or how she 
looked when laughing. He did recall that she had laughed a lot. 

He looked at the men and women moving around the homeless 
hotel. Each was unique in appearance. Some were tall and lanky. 
Others were short and squatty. A few were fat, but even they were 
different in how they were fat. There were people who were large 
all over while others had pot bellies. Some moved with grace while 
one fellow with a twisted spine moved in a rough rolling gait that 
was painful to watch. 

There were all different kinds of noses; some were bulbous while 
others were thin. The faces were fat, thin, square, and round. 
Sprinkled onto the canvas of the face were moles, freckles, 
wrinkles, scars, and defects. Together, all of those things gave each 
person a unique face.

He tried to remember the Walt Whitman poem, but all he could 
remember was the first line, “I sing the body electric.” He recalled 
that it was a celebration of the human body, but couldn’t remember 
the details. He remembered studying anatomy in art school. It had 
been a dry subject without the kind of passion expressed in the 
Whitman poem. He wondered if he had ever had that kind of 
passion about his subjects.

It was hours later when Boy Scout announced, “Come and get it.”

Dante stood in line behind a dozen other men. More men lined up 
behind him. One at a time they received a bowl of stew, a slice of 
bread, and an apple. The portions were generous. The stew was 
good, but the bread was a little stale. Turning to a guy seated next 
to him, he asked, “Why’s the bread stale?”

“We get two day old bread here. In some of the richer areas, they 
get day old bread. This is a poor neighborhood. The folks will buy 
day old bread to save a little money so we get the two day old 
bread. We really can’t complain, much. At least we get bread,” the 
man answered. He went back to eating his stew.

“You mean we buy two day old bread?”

“Buy? No, the stores donate it to us,” another man said. He pointed 
into the stew with his spoon and said, “They give us the meat on 
the day it expires. If they didn’t give it to us, they’d have to throw 
it out the next day. Of course, it’s still good. We even get stew 
made with steak rather than stew meat.”

Dante stared at the bowl of stew trying to decide what that meant 
in terms of freshness. Since he never checked the expiration dates 
on the food he bought, he decided that he’d probably been eating 
lots of meat that he had purchased on the day it expired. He dug in 
and ate the rest of the stew. It tasted good.

He asked, “What’s for breakfast?”

“Day old donuts, bagels, or fruits. It’ll be your choice which one 
you get,” the man said. He turned to study Dante for a minute 
before he said, “I’m Rocket Man. What’s your handle?”

“They’ve been calling me Hungry Man,” Dante answered with a 
shrug.

“Ah, you’re the starving artist. I heard this is your first day on the 
streets,” Rocket Man said. 

“Why are you called Rocket Man?” Dante asked. 

“I was a janitor at NASA before the booze cost me my job. It was a 
pity too. It was the best job I ever had.”

“So who are the rest of these guys?”

Pointing to the food shack, Rocket Man answered, “You’ve met 
Boy Scout. He was an Eagle Scout before he discovered crack 
back in the day when it was common. I imagine that he’ll be 
moving back into society before long. The Fusion Foundation will 
help him get a management position in some small company 
somewhere.

“No one has ever seen Grumpy over there smile despite the fact 
that he travels around with Jester Bob. I’ve never understood why 
they travel together. Why would a man travel with one of the 
funniest guys in the world if he doesn’t know how to laugh?”

“Maybe it is to keep from crying,” Dante said wishing that he had 
a Jester Bob in his life.

“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Rocket Man said. He pointed 
to a man who was seated in a lawn chair and said, “That man 
nodding off over there is The Speedster. I swear he has to be the 
laziest man alive. You might have noticed that he didn’t even go 
over to get his own bowl of stew. He claims it is a medical 
condition. 

“The fellow sitting next to him is Cracker Jack; he was 
dishonorably discharged from the British Navy.”

At hearing that the man was dishonorably discharged, Dante asked, 
“What did he do?”

“Not sure what he did; he’s never told us his story. You’re lucky to 
meet him when he’s sober. When he drinks, he’s the meanest 
drunk I’ve ever encountered. When he gets drunk, we tie him up 
for the night for our own protection.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if he was sent to jail?” Dante asked. He 
didn’t like the idea of people tying up another person. There were 
laws about those kinds of things.

“Oh, he doesn’t drink all that often. Lock up isn’t really a solution. 
He’d just get out after a while and get in even worse trouble the 
next time. If we can keep him under control on those infrequent 
occasions when he drinks, then it is all for the best,” Rocket Man 
shrugged and added, “Harry thinks we should look out for each 
other. I guess that is all part of it.”

A well dressed young man sat down on the cinderblock Dante had 
attempted to sit on earlier. He had a bunch of gold chains around 
his neck, rings on his fingers, and earrings with semi-precious 
stones. Curious to see so many things of real dollar value on a 
person in the Homeless Hotel, he pointed in the direction of the 
guy and asked, “Is that Jewels?”

“Yeah. That’s Jewels. He sells blowjobs down on the strip to get 
money. He uses the money to buy gold chains and jewelry. He’ll 
get rolled by a group of faggot bashers and lose it all. After that 
happens, he’ll move to another town and start all over again. He’s 
a tough little bastard, though.”

“Faggot bashers?”

“Faggot bashers are a bunch of kids who think it is fun to go out 
and beat up boys who like boys. Half of the time, they are actually 
closet queens trying to show how manly they are. The closet 
queens are the ones that you have to worry about.”

“So Jewels is gay.”
“Gay doesn’t really describe Jewels. He’ll sleep with anything, boy 
or girl, young or old. Hell, I imagine he’d even have sex with a 
goat. I don’t think it is really a sexual thing at all.”

“Why does he do it?” Dante knew that a lot of individuals who 
hung around with artists were bisexual, but that it was often a 
lifestyle decision that had very little to do with real desire. 
Occasionally sleeping with someone of the same sex was one way 
that pseudo-artists tried to demonstrate their artistic nature. He 
always found those individuals rather shallow. There were some 
who definitely liked their own gender. He didn’t know what to 
think about it, though. 

“Hang around and you’ll hear the tale from his own lips,” Rocket 
Man said. He didn’t like to tell other people’s stories. Shaking his 
head, he said, “You stay around here long enough, you’ll hear 
enough stories to last a lifetime.”

It started to get dark and Boy Scout started a fire in the fire pit. 
More men wandered into the Homeless Hotel. Most sat down on 
the railroad ties while a few sat down on cinder blocks or egg 
crates. Once the fire was going, one of the men said, “Half Feather 
and Lucy Diamonds were here today.”

“You don’t say. What does she look like?” Jewels asked.

“She’s the cutest little lady you’d ever want to see. I got her a cup 
of coffee. Hard to imagine, but she said please and thank you. 
She’s a real lady,” the man answered. He was silent for a moment 
and then added, “She hugged me before they left.”

Dante turned to Rocket Man and asked, “What’s with how people 
talk about Happy Harry, Half Feather, and Lucy Diamonds? You’d 
think they are royalty or something.”

“Happy Harry says that everyone is as valuable as anyone else. 
That’s not exactly true though. Happy Harry is probably one of the 
most special people in the world. He’s the one who set up all of 
these Homeless Hotels. He helps us out when we need it. He’s a 
Druid and the Goddess has truly blessed him. She blessed us 
through him. We’re nothing compared to him.”

“Druids are important people, but what about Half Feather?”

“Half Feather was just eight years old when he started traveling 
around with Harry. The young man is special in the same way as 
Harry. He might not be a Druid, but the Gods and Goddesses have 
touched him. Most people flinch when one of us puts a hand on 
them. Half Feather has never had that problem. He accepts us, he 
helps us, and I really believe that he cares for us. You don’t know 
how important that is.

“We can’t do much for people like Harry and Half Feather, but we 
can try to protect them from folks who mean them harm. When 
Half Feather declared that Lucy Diamonds was his one true love, 
we pledged that we’d protect her so that Half Feather wouldn’t 
lose her. 

“Bottle Cap made that promise on our behalf, but that was before 
we got to know her. Even if she wasn’t the one true love of Half 
Feather, we’d have promised to protect her. She’s just as good of a 
person as Half Feather. She looks you in the eye like you are an 
equal. She’ll help clean you up when you’ve been sick from the 
drink. She’ll feed you and take care of you when you’ve got a real 
problem. She’s a saint.”

Dante had seen how Lucy treated Lady Lucy. There wasn’t even a 
hint of hesitation in talking to, touching, or hugging the bag lady. It 
sounded to him like the man knew Lucy Diamonds. He asked, “So 
you’ve met her before?”

“Never saw her, but I’ve heard all about her,” Rocket Man 
answered. With homeless men traveling around the country, stories 
about good and bad people traveled with them. The exceptional 
people became known across the entire country. The homeless 
person who hurt one of the special people could count their life 
span in minutes.

“So I guess Half Feather and Lucy Diamonds are unique.”

“No. There are others who are just as special. There’s the Chicago 
Angel, the Miami Knight, the Duke and Duchess of Dallas, and the 
Seattle Saint.”

“You’ve met them?”

“I went to the wedding of the Chicago Angel. She was really 
lovely that afternoon. I have to admit that I cried like a baby when 
she said, ‘I do.’ She’d just gotten her new knees and could actually 
walk up to where the ceremony was being held,” Rocket Man said 
shaking his head while losing himself in his memories. 

“There’s a whole world that I know nothing about,” Dante said. He 
listened to the men tell their stories. It didn’t take long for him to 
figure out that they were sharing news of things that were 
happening across the country. There were stories about events in 
Los Angeles and a gang that had been harassing the homeless. 
There was a story about a person who was killing prostitutes in 
Memphis. They hadn’t caught the man yet, but people were 
looking for him. 

Dante was learning more about what was happening across the 
country than he could learn by listening to the news on television. 
He was hearing eye witness accounts from folks the reporters 
would never put on television. A few accounts of events were first 
hand, but most were second hand. 

A man wandered over to the fire carrying an egg crate. Putting it 
down on the ground near the fire, he sat down and looked around 
at the faces. He cleared his throat and said, “Hello everyone. I’m 
Lucky Eddie and I just got in from Dallas. I’ve got news.”

The announcement caused a bit of a stir. Jewels asked, “How’s the 
Duke?”

The man said, “He’s doing fine. His wife, the Duchess, had a baby 
girl yesterday morning. I heard about it just as I was leaving town.”

Dante watched in shock as men settled bets. He couldn’t believe 
they’d bet on the gender of baby born across the country. Boy 
Scout said, “I bet they named her Amy.”

“Amelia,” Lucky Eddie said.

“Makes sense,” Boy Scout said nodding his head. Everyone else 
nodded their heads in agreement. 

Dante leaned over to Rocket Man and asked, “Why does it make 
sense?”

“The Chicago Angel found the Duchess after she’d been raped. 
She took her in and helped her out. She actually kept the Duchess 
in her own home until she was strong enough to get around on her 
own. Harry introduced the Duke to the Duchess and the rest was 
history. They cleaned themselves up, got real jobs, and finally 
opened their own restaurant. They never forgot their origins. 
They’ve been taking care of the homeless in Dallas for five years 
now. They feed hundreds of us every holiday. They organize food 
drives. They give people who are ready to get back into society 
jobs and work experience.”

“So why did they name the girl Amelia?”

“Ah, the real name of the Chicago Angel is Amy,” Rocket Man 
answered.

“Oh,” Dante said. He was quiet for a minute and then asked, 
“Don’t you guys have anything better to do than gossip?”

Rocket Man laughed at the question. He answered, “What else do 
we have to do except gossip?”

The fire burned down and men wandered off to bed. Dante wasn’t 
tired, so he stayed where he was. When it was just him and Boy 
Scout around the fire, Boy Scout said, “You might want to head off 
to bed. Morning comes early around here.”

“Where’s Harry?”

“He’s off with Lady Lucy, but he’ll be back before breakfast time. 
What? Are you afraid that he went off without you?”

“Yes.”

“The Roach Coach is still here. Even if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t 
need to worry. If Half Feather asked Happy Harry to take you with 
him, then he won’t leave you behind.”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Telling me that I didn’t need to worry,” Dante said.

Boy Scout shrugged his shoulders and headed to the storage shack. 
He slept in it so that he could hand out blankets if anyone showed 
up late. It was also a lot more comfortable than a section of sewer 
pipe.

Dante got up and headed to the section of sewer pipe in which he 
was supposed to sleep that night. The sound of snores echoing 
through the night made it easy to find the bank of sewer pipes 
despite the dark. His bed was on the second row and third from the 
end. The blanket was where he had left it at the opening.

He climbed in, hitting his head in the process. The wooden 
platform was hard, but it kept his body off the cold cement. He 
covered his body with the woolen blanket, hitting his head a 
second time when he tried sitting up to adjust the blanket around 
his feet. He laid on his back staring at the concrete above him. He 
sighed and said, “It’s going to be a long night.”
