A Vagrant Story Read Free Page A

real nice to hear. Village chief!? What the hell has that to do with anything? Forget it. You’re just a damn weirdo, always coming up with this shit. You’re only twenty-something and you act like some old man with his head half buried in books. The hell did you do before all this anyway? Bet you were crazy with the ladies.”
    In part he wasn’t sure if Rum intended to ask that as a real question, or if he was just spouting more random nonsense. Taking the latter option Alex put his head down and drifted back to silence.
    Rum snapped, “Hey weirdo, wake up, that was an actual question!”
    “What’s to know? I’ve told you before and you never believe me.”
    “Because it’s obvious as hell you made that story up.”
    “Well that’s the truth. If you don’t believe me then that’s your problem.”
    “Yeah sure, that’s all there is. It doesn’t add up.”
    Feeling out of the loop, Henry sat forward to say, “No one ever said anything to me about it.”
    “Nobody ever tells you anything. Period.”
    “Leave it out, Rum. Fine, I’ll go over it again. Maybe you can cross check it with what I’ve already told you before. I imagine you’ve some notebook for this stuff since you’re so interested.”
    “Don’t need one, got it all jogged down in my noggin,” Rum said. “Mister silent Al’ here says he was thinking about dropping out of college to work on his writing career-“ 
    “You were a writer?” Henry interrupted. “I love stuff like that, back before I was, y’know, not homeless, I always tried thinking up new stories for comic books. I even…”
    Rum’s knuckles tightened. His face reddened. “Why have I never hit you? I’m talking here so shut up. Anyway, so he finds this agent offering all these grand promises of fame.”
    “He charged me monthly. At that time I was living in a single room flat so it drained my pockets pretty bad. But after everything he promised … how could I not?”
    “And when the money ran dry the agent turned on him. Suddenly the masterpiece became second rate toilet paper.”
    “That might have been the case from the start. The worst part is I never found out.”
    “But the plot thickens … When our good friend Alex went to get his manuscripts back, the agent had cleared out – gone with the stories too.”
    “He could have left them for me at least. I don’t know what happened to them, or even why he took them. Maybe he did see something worth taking after all, or maybe he just wanted to give me one last dig in the stomach. It did it for me anyway. He took the money I needed to survive then stripped me of my life’s work. Things fell through from there.”  
    Sierra leaned forward with interest. “Makes sense, he got ripped off. It happens.”
    “That’s not what he has a problem with,” Alex stated, in an attempt to put Rum’s point to better focus.
    “You’re damn right it’s not. Listen, I lost my job and family in an accident at work, Blondie was abandoned, and the Dud-”
    “S-stop calling me that,” Henry pleaded.
    “-Hit low when his shop or something burned down last year, and most likely he didn’t have anyone to fall back on, being a loser and all.”
    Henry murmured on the side, “I had friends. I just … didn’t want to bother them. It’s just … at that stage I was too old to hang onto people. And my parents died … then my brother went to Africa.”
    Rum feigned a punch at Henry. “I thought I told you to shut up!” He focused back on Alex. “But you, you never smelt like no outcast and your family ain’t poor. I know that college you went to and it wasn’t no chump school, I know that for sure. Now I accept you’ve been a lazy bum since the day you were born so that means mommy and daddy must have foot the bill. Why not fall back on them?” 
    Alex sipped his soup. “Check it out, detective Rum leaps into action. Shame the drink rots his mind. I’ve told you before, I was an orphan most of my life – I