All About George

Audience, kidding, job, wonder, crabby, character - the random words on which to build the story

All About George

George was the town character. Everyone in our small town called him by name. When he was in a funk, he became so crabby he wouldn’t even acknowledge the “hello, George’s” he got from every person who passed him. When he was feeling tip top he was truly a wonder. The entire town became his audience and entertaining us became his job. And, he was good at it.

I guess you’d have to call George a street person. I never met anyone who knew where he lived. Different friends and acquaintances of mine had theories about where he spent his nights but none of us knew for sure. Face it, George was an enigma. To be an enigma in a tiny Southern town is not easy.

A man of average height and weight with a full head of too-long hair, a moustache and a beard, George was so ‘hairy’ it was difficult to know if he was handsome or not. His general dress bordered on slovenly, as did his typical hygiene. Then, just when you assumed that was his normal way of being, he’d spruce up and look almost good. He would have trimmed his moustache and beard, and washed himself and his hair. At such times his brilliant blue eyes would arrest you. They would gleam and shine from his clean face. Most of the time George’s eyes seemed lost in a sea of facial hair.

However, we never focused on how he looked. We were interested in him. He seemed to enjoy our kidding him – at least on his good days. He was naturally funny though I’m not sure he ever appreciated his gift. Even the little kids came to understand when to talk to George and when to leave him alone. For them it was easy - some kind of sixth sense I think. The rest of us took longer to discern when to address him and when to ignore him. We always wanted him to be ‘on’ and he just wasn’t.

We all looked out for George. Thankfully, in our Southern climate, it was never awfully cold at night. Nevertheless, each fall kind families would hand George bags of clothes when they met him on the streets. Usually such clothes were pre-worn but occasionally he’d be given a brand new jacket or winter coat. One older teen even gave George the sleeping bag he’d not be using since he was going into the Army. In spite of his mood, George would always nod his head graciously, clutch his gifts in his arms, and mutter a barely audible, “thank you.” On his good days he’d been known to smile through his thick moustache and unkempt beard in acknowledging his gratitude.

George was interwoven into the fabric of our lives. He was as much a part of our days as was the sun’s rising and falling over our small town. He was, simply stated, a given.

One crisp fall day, my neighbor suddenly realized she had not seen George in several days. She brought that to my attention. I thought about it and had to agree that George seemed to be among the missing. Together, we hypothesized that perhaps he’d gone on vacation even though we’d never known him to do that. Or perhaps he’d gone to visit relatives though he had never mentioned any family in the past. We tried to brush off the awareness of his absence. That worked for most of one day.

The next day when George still did not appear, we became first worried, then alarmed. Together my neighbor and I walked to the Town Offices and into the local Sheriff’s space there. The balding, rotund Sheriff sat in his desk chair with his feet on the desk and his fingers laced behind his head. We explained our realization of George’s absence and expressed our worries about him.

The Sheriff initially brushed us off, or at least tried to. We are not easy women to brush off. We left his office the first time but returned the next day when George did not show up. After this second visit, I guess the Sheriff began to worry too. He must have climbed into his car to begin a systematic search for the missing man.

Later he told us that he went up and down each street in our town and then went out into the countryside around town. Previously the Sheriff had noticed a worn foot path out into the woods near the main road but had no reason to check it out. On the day of his search, he had a strong ‘pulling’ to walk down that path. When he did he was surprised to find a roughly-constructed one-room hut among the trees. Sheriff had never seen it before. When he pushed open the rough-hewn door, an unpleasant odor overpowered him. In the scantily furnished hut on a wooden platform bed lay George tucked into the old sleeping bag. Sheriff knew George was dead. He made the necessary calls and the Town covered the cost of George’s final ceremony. Everyone in town attended. We were all sad that our George was gone. Later, when talking of his discovery of the hut and George, Sheriff reported that the dead man had a smile on his face.

We still talk about George and marvel at how little we really knew about him. We can only acknowledge that we cared for him and about him. Also, we miss his keen wit and the entertainment he gifted to us on his good days. George has become our town’s unforgettable character.