I truly believe in the power of premonition and I always try to follow it through when I feel like something needs to be done. Usually it’s me feeling the need to take a thing with me when I leave the house. That is the case this morning. The baby and I are readying ourselves for our morning walk. Every time I walk past my camera bag hanging on the coat rack I have a wild compulsion to snatch the camera out and put it around my neck. I argue with myself, “you are going to look stupid and stalker-ish to the neighbors” vs. “shut your pie hole and stop worrying what everyone else is thinking; you enjoy taking photos!”
So, I take it. Lucky me. As baby and I are strolling down the street, I hear “ain’t this a wonderful day?” Across the street stands a man by his garage. He’s wearing white overalls with no shirt on underneath, sunglasses and a black bandanna with skulls on it. Not a positive first impression in terms of outerwear, but I like anyone who talks to strangers. “Sure is,” I reply. He walks across the street and asks if he can give my daughter a quarter. “Yeah, ok,” I say bemused, as if an 11-month-old can do anything with a quarter besides choke on it. “You like strawberries?” he asks. Well, who doesn’t like strawberries? Crazy people, that’s who.
I follow him to his backyard.
Wait, let me backup a little first. My husband and I go for walks all the time in the evening and we have always admired this house. It has a raised-bed farm in the back. We always talk about how we wish we could do that and how much it would cut down on the grocery bill if we had fresh produce. This guy is taking me to the very backyard my husband and I admire so much. I’m hoping to get gardening tips, plus I know the backyard is clearly visible from the street because of the catty-cornered way the house sits on its lot. Also, I leave the baby’s stroller out front thinking that maybe if he kills us someone will spot the stroller and our bodies can be found.
Once we take off toward the back I tell him how much my husband and I admire the vegetable beds and how we’d like to have some of our own, but we just don’t know how to do it. “What’s so hard about throwing some seeds in the ground and leaving them there?” he asks, looking at me as if I were from Mars. “Oh well, don’t you need to plant them at a certain time or something?” Already I feel like an idiot. “Hunh, I don’t know anything about that,” he replies. We weave around the side of the house on a raised wooden path to the backyard. The yard is filled with 8 raised beds in two neat lines, and has another four beds sectioned off by berry bushes.
He proudly points out his garlic plants, cherry bushes, strawberry shrubs, his failed blueberry experiment, squashes, tomatoes, unripened raspberries, eggplant and a host of other vegetables and fruits. His backyard is basically the Garden of Eden. He cuts several small strawberries off the plant for me and the baby. I brush the dirt away and took the tiniest of bites. I expect it to be tart because it was such a small berry (the size of the top knuckle of my thumb) but it is sweet and warm.
He tells me he spends all day tending to this garden. “This is what I grew up doing and I like it.” He also spends the day mowing the land behind a row of five or six houses. “I just do it; no one asks me to. Sometimes I mow the lawn across the street because no one else does.” I ask him what he does for money. “Nothing. I’m not scared of anything. I’ve chosen to be homeless before,” he ticks off the cities on his fingers “I was homeless in Denver, Miami and here in Kansas City for awhile.”
He talks a little about his roommate’s pets. I’m curious about what kind of roommate would let someone live in their house for free. “How did you meet your roommate? I mean, did you just meet him randomly and he let you live in his house?” The man pulls back his bandanna to reveal a giant dent in his skull. He asks amusedly, “do you think someone is going to rent a house to a person who has a dent like this in their head?”
Examining his head I ask how he got the dent. “With a .45,” he’s almost proud when he says this. “You lived through someone shooting you in the head?” I imagine his skull was grazed by a bullet and he’s just talking himself up. “I shot myself in the head,” he said. “A friend of mine told me the oriental mafia was after me, so I thought I’d get myself before they got me.” I shake my head in amazement at my ability to find people with such amazing stories. “So when did you … I mean, when was that?” He tells me 1987 and again I shake my head. This guy tried to commit suicide the same year I was born.
We walk around a little more and examine the hanging strawberry plants he has. I hem and haw about how the baby and I need to be finishing up our walk. As we walk around the front I tell him how nice it was to meet him and ask him his name. “I’m JR.” I stick out my right hand, “I’m Jessie, it’s nice to meet you JR.” He grasps only the tips of my fingers as if we’re Victorian dancing partners. “Oh wait! I like to write stories about people I think are interesting; can I take a picture of you?” Yes, I believe in the power of premonition. Amazing things happen when you believe.
We all have powers.
