The Hobo’s Pencil

An old bum set up a homestead behind one of the old disused railroad bridge pillars in a scruffy area of my town. He has a tent, a shopping cart, and a large assortment of shit he has scavenged during his shopping cart peregrinations through town. You can’t see his encampment from the street, because the crumbling concrete pillars are down a little hill, and the hill is covered with vegetation.

He’s essentially a homeless bum, but we call him a hobo because it sounds cooler, and because of his proximity to the working railroad line next to his ruined bridge. However, we’re pretty sure he doesn’t ride the rails – unless he has figured out how to hop a freight that’s moving at 50mph as it rolls through that part of town.

One day we were checking up on his camp, and as we walked away through the weedy lot, I spied a clean, freshly sharpened pencil on the ground. It looked like it had just been dropped. I knew right away that it was the hobo’s pencil. While me and my friends wouldn’t actively steal from this guy, I pocketed the pencil absentmindedly.

Later I realized it was a magic pencil. I wrote a check to the porn shop for DVDs and the fucking thing bounced. I had written the check with the hobo’s pencil. I was sure there was enough money in the account, and I confirmed with the bank that the porn king hadn’t added a few zeros to my check or rewritten it (after all, I wrote it in pencil, which in hindsight was pretty stupid). There just wasn’t any money in the account anymore. None of the bank bozos could explain it; just gone.

And when I deposited my paycheck, I endorsed it with – you guessed it – that pencil. I was at the ATM, and I couldn’t find a pen to save my life. This douchebag behind me started honking, and frankly, I really had to get home to take a crap. So I wrote my account number and put my Adolf Hitler on the endorsement line with that pencil.

Two days later I checked online to see that the check had cleared, and that my employer hadn’t decided to stop payment as he always threatens to do. No deposited money. The check had cleared, but the money didn’t go into my account.

Oh yeah, and another day I went to the deli and placed some bets on the fake video horse races. I used the hobo’s pencil to fill out the cards. Unbelievably, 3 of my 7 computerized nags actually won their “races.” But when I got to the counter, the Korean said someone had already collected on those bets – that person had the matching tickets. I showed him my penciled-in cards, he said fuck you. I was so mad and violent, it took all eight Koreans, including the grandmother, to throw me out of the place.

Everything I put that hobo’s pencil to, it all turned to shit. And where was all this money going, anyway?

The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed to me that the pencil hadn’t been accidentally lost. It was as if the pencil had been deliberately placed there in plain view on a clear spot on the ground. I decided to confront the hobo about this apparently cursed pencil of his.

So I went down there, but as in the past, I stopped short about 30 feet from his tent. First of all, Camp Hobo smells none too good. Second, his tent’s always closed so you don’t know if he’s in there or not. You feel a little funny walking through and around all this stuff he’s got spread around. Plus who wants some sterno-crazed bum emerging with a bicycle chain or mirror shard or whatever he might be packing. But I wanted to get to the bottom of this. So I cleared my throat and yelled “yo!” a few times. Not home. I turned to go, secretly relieved, when I noticed something a ways off under a big polyethylene sheet. That had not been here the last time. And none of his other stuff was ever covered - sofas, charcoal grills, old TVs, a busted up piano - en plein air, all the time. My curiosity prevailed, and I lifted the sheet. It was a factory fresh Chrysler LeBaron. Leather seats. Custom rims. Vanity tags: SUPRTRAMP. I was astounded. Where had he gotten the cash for this? How the hell had he driven it down there?

I went home. There was a yellow foreclosure notice on the front door. I thought about the checks I had written to the mortgage company with the hobo’s pencil.

So this time I actually marched into his pied a terre, ripped open the tent flap, and found him in there. He had piles of gold jewelry on a card table. I jabbed the pencil in his eye and left him for dead. Now when you go walking, you can’t get anywhere near that bridge – not even the lot, that’s how bad it smells. People must figure a car hit a deer and it’s in the weeds by the side of the road. Actually they must figure it was a whole herd of dead deer. Fucking hobo.