I once hired Aldo, an interesting man who had been stabbed, had served with a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver with Doctors Without Borders, until his physician brother was killed in Central America, and who later edited a counter-culture print zine.

At 9:52, last night, as I began pulling my hoodrat crunching boots on Aldo called:

“Jimmy, its Aldo. Remember, you hired me to clean the registers. I need to speak with you. I know its about something you would be interested in writing—something that should be written. Could you come down for a cookout this weekend, burger on the grill, drinks? Some of the guys you fired will be there. They love you, want your advice on things, because you know how it is—you’re their window on the workings of the world. It’s time I speak with you about this—I need to speak with you, for me. Hopefully it is something you’ll find worth writing.”

I had to cut him off or possibly miss my bus:

“Aldo, I’ll come see you. I’m headed to work right now. I’ll save your number and call you back.”

“Okay, Jimmy…” and his voice drifted off into nothing.

The last time I got a call like this and cut it short to get to work, it was Shoey and he died within an hour or two of our conversation.

Between being the boss of about 300 lost souls—the only boss that ever explained anything to them or taught them a skill—along with coaching and interviewing, I am often sought as a half-baked counselor by a number of very damaged people. I will contact Aldo this week. I owe him. He and Andre saved my fat ass last September as two prime bucks tracked me out of Cedonia after failing to run me down in an intersection.

I have been increasingly jealous of my writing time, not answering calls, passing up babe-time, cutting my hours of money-scraping. I have cut contact with a half dozen friends who might occupy my writing time. I walked to work last night remembering the times in Aldo’s yard, sitting on the church pew, drinking beer and eating burgers served by a man I fired, a decent man from Texas who held no hard feelings. I sat next to Little Joe, another man who was fired as part of the fallout from me abruptly resigning, leaving him and other handicapped folks whose jobs I had been protecting in the line of capitalist fire. Good times, talking and laughing with men who somehow failed to hate me as Aldo stood on the sidewalk hailing passers bye from the bus stop, topping off their soda bottles from his half gallon of Country Club vodka, saying “God Bless” as he leaned on the stolen holy furniture five feet from a secondary street in a most violent place.

I have often wondered about my connection to this little corner of the world and the voices that keep rising up from it. Big Sam was another man I fired many years ago for being drunk on the job. He had a lot of sorrow to drown, had fled the black ghetto and was living here amongst the whites back then, before the racial tide turned. He used to shake my hand lazily, apologize for letting me down and bless me before stumbling on. Once, while walking through the alley behind what is now Aldo’s house, he was beaten to death by three or more white men who had threatened me, encouraged by a man I had lived with. That senseless act did nothing to stem the tide that Big Sam was fleeing and within ten years his sissy killers fled the same thing he had.

I think of Big Sam every time I here ‘Papa was a Rolling Stone’ and remember him dancing to it in the aisle as he stocked the paper towels.

I think of him every time I make tea, something I never believed I would drink, a magical substance he called “brain juice,” and I must concur as it raised my face off the keyboard this morning.

I owe Aldo.

The visit will make a worthy article.

But I’ll really be visiting Big Sam in the alley, an alley we both walked by night during those years when the weakest of my people were sullenly surrendering the neighborhood to the worst of his people.