Evans

First thing he does is sing at the top of his lungs while wearing headphones. Next, he takes off the headphones and asks me, "Hey man, you smoke?"
"No, man. Sorry."
"Well, I'm gonna have a smoke, and I don't plan on going outside to do it neither. Too fucking cold for that shit today."
He is right. Outside it's thirty degrees and wet. Not so much in here with eight dryers running. Nevertheless, he makes no motion to take out a cigarette. His face darkens.
"My daddy beat me. He's a railroad man, come home every now and then. Kick me in the head when I was nine. Kick me everywhere. I'm talking BEAT THE SHIT OUTTA ME. One time I spent twenty dollars on a haircut, and that was a lot in those days, like a hundred dollar EXPENSIVE haircut and he come and see it and sneak up behind me with scissors and cut part of my hair off. Mom had to split us up with a gun."

A woman looks over from across the folding tables. She is the only other person here, and she gives us both a generous look.

"I'm sorry to hear all that," I say.
"Don't be! Sorry?! It made me HARD. I been hard since I was born. Come from a hard family."
He's wearing overalls and a baseball cap, and his gray beard and everything else is dotted with flecks of white paint. Skin like iron. His legs are up on a filled shopping cart. It doesn't appear as if he's doing any laundry.

"My family's from up in Virginia. Way up in the mountains. Tough ass country. We got a lineage. Stephen F. Austin, Davy Crockett, and... what's that other motherfucker's name?"
"Travis?" I say.
"No! No, the other guy. All that Alamo shit."
"Sam Houston," the woman says.
"Yeah, that's it, Houston. They all from up there. We breed em hard... I was bred hard. How many kids you got?"
He's talking to me when he asks this and I answer, "None. Yet."
"None?! How old you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"God damn, get on it already. I got five kids of my own and I'm only forty-nine. And I want more. I want every motherfucker in the world to have my last name!"
With this he roots a half-burned cigarette from his shirt pocket and puts it into his mouth.
"What name is that?" I ask.
"Evans," he says. "You got a light?"
"Sorry."
"That's alright, I got a fucking hundred lighters in here."
He digs through his shopping cart and takes out a book of matches but doesn't light his cigarette.

"So you on pills? Everyone's on some pill. They tell me take some pill and I say shove it up your ass. Ain't nothing gonna make nothing better. Where you from?"
"Phoenix," I say.
This answer displeases him immensely.
"Shit. I know that place. Friend of mine from there got hit, right out here on 29th. He's in a fucking wheelchair and they hit him and never did find the driver. All his shit and him, right there in the crosswalk."
He lights his cigarette and inhales. Bad vibes abound.
"I'ma smoke this right here. I don't give a fuck what you think."
"No worries here."
"Fuck, I'll fight you over it. I don't care."
He looks at me as if this is a request, so I stand up and go check on my dryer.

He puts his headphones back on and continues smoking. The woman finishes her folding and removes a t-shirt from the pile. She walks it over to Evans and he pulls off his headphones.
"This shrank on me and I'm not going to take it. You need a t-shirt?" The woman offers.
"Thank you, babe," he says, "That's all right right there."

The woman loads up her basket and I hold open the door for her.
As she exits, she leans across me and says, "God bless you."
"You have a nice night ma'am," Evans answers.
When the door closes he says, "That's a gentleman right there... holding the door for a lady. She's a nice sweet lady. Gave me four dollars. All I wanted was one."

My cycle finishes and I load my clothes into a bag. Evans ceases to acknowledge my presence. He is entirely within himself. As I open the door to leave, I say, "Adios."
"Peace out," he says, without looking up.

Outside I sit in my car and watch the laundromat. Another man enters and sets down his clothes on a washer and Evans removes his headphones. The man looks taken aback at the words he hears. And so go the revelations of Evans, a hard man from a lineage of kings.

posted by ZHorton at 4:31 PM | 3 comment(s)