Fightinville Journal

 Walking the dogs today I saw a densely printed piece of paper on the ground with something handwritten in purple marker atop it. It looked like maybe a Bible page.  When I picked it up, I saw Personalities of the South on both sides of the page. It was an encyclopedia of southern notable people from decades ago. Dysart, Elwin Leroy. Born April 7th, 1912. Seabee. Guadalcanal and Adak Island; President of Texas Co of Agricultural Agents 1968. The purple writing was indecipherable to me.  This is common here, finding pieces of paper with cryptic messages. One I still keep reads "See me outside. Say nothing" I've found letters from prison, letters to prison. Eviction notices. Shutoff notices. Medical records. Bills. Bills. Bills.  Later this morning I cleaned up the sleeping bag and clothes from our lot down the street. There's a man working across the street from the lot who told me I could use their dumpster. After dragging the sleeping bag full of clothes to the dump...

 "Magoo's in jail", Mark told me, as I was mowing the lot down the street where Magoo had been staying.  Something about a car. The next day Jerry told me the police were looking for several others as well.  We had been letting Magoo stay on the lot. Magoo had left a collapsed tent, a pair of unlaced shoes, a plastic chair, a shopping cart, a collection of light bulbs, assorted nails and screws on the ground around the tent, a small tape measure, a mattress, and some items of clothing strewn in the trees and bushes. There had been a man coming down and handing out budget tents, back when the tent city sprang up. Either he was still coming, or people were handing down the tents.  The shoes were white sneakers, fairly clean, with the tongues hanging.  The plastic chair resembled a middle school chair. The shopping cart was on its side, of unknown origin. The light bulbs and nails deserve a little explanation. The light bulbs were commonly used to smoke drugs. The ...

 "You gave that guy his gun back, and now my cousin is dead because of it." We had walked down to a lot we owned to ask any people camping on it to leave. The other tent city had been broken up that morning, and it looked like a few had moved onto our lot. The neighbors around the lot were extremely intolerant of any campers and would tell us in no uncertain terms to move them on or they would report us to the city. There were some campers. I had stopped to talk to Puddin, who said he had passed by and seen the tent city had been removed. It had been on his property, but he said he didn't know who had given the order.  My wife walked ahead, and by the time I caught up, she had talked to a woman who was sleeping on the ground.  There was a guy there we had seen before, and when he came into view, he told me the man who had been shot two days before had died. His cousin. He was angry. We had run into each other before, when he was throwing trash in my dumpster. I'd aske...

 "It was crazy all night," my neighbor texted. "I had to call the cops twice. Around 4 am I woke up from two women fighting." My neighbor lives down the street, on the next corner. Opposite the club. There's a shady spot on the corner diagonally across from her, and the homeless have started to gather there since tent city got broken up. I was a block away watching the police cuff and stuff a guy for something. He protested his innocence, or at least his innocence of some aspect of the things he was being arrested for. "There is one rolling on the ground right now looks like he is on something," my neighbor wrote. "This is ridiculous." I told the police there was someone potentially overdosing on the next block. "He's going to have to wait," the officer said.  I walked back over there.  When I got there, one guy was standing, but folded over with his arms hanging down and his fingers touching the ground. Another was on his side,...

 I stepped out of my front door and looked down the street. There was a man in the middle of the road, rolling on the ground and shouting. Because his feet were moving slower than his upper body, with each roll he curved in a short arc. While I watched he rolled enough to make a complete loop in the street.  A truck drove past him.  As I walked down there, there was a man sitting in a chair across from the club watching him.  "What's up with this guy," I asked him. "I don't know," he replied. "I saw him the same time you did." By the time I reached him, he had stopped rolling and was unconscious but breathing. His hand was bloody. I looked at the guy in the chair.  "Do you have a phone?" No. I went back to the house to get my phone, some paper towels, and a bottle of water. By the time I got back, one of the homeless guys was there, along with man in chair. They were getting the now conscious but agitated man up on his feet and out of the...