As with so many homeless youth, no one noticed Aria or guessed that she was homeless. Being so young, she did not look homeless even though she was. Though unnaturally skinny, she was not weathered like the people who had been on the streets for years. So as long as she made sure not to be seen by police after curfew, or go to certain places when she should have been in school, she blended in to society. She blended in to the background of people’s various assumptions about her, all of which were wrong.
Aria walked over to Robert’s tent, hoping that he might know of a place with a television nearby that she hadn’t tried yet. His bike was leaned against one of the broken-down cars, indicating that he was most likely inside his tent instead of out on the town. Getting closer, she saw his shadow inside the tent, echoing his movements. “Bob!” she called to announce herself tentatively so he wouldn’t be startled by her sudden approach.
“Yep?” he said, ceasing his task to see who was calling his name. Seeing Aria’s face peek in through the door of the tent, he looked unsure about her visit.
“Do you know of anywhere close to here that I could watch some TV?” Aria asked.
“Hm, not off the top of my head,” he said. “Let me think.”
Aria loved to hear him talk. The fact that his mouth was almost entirely toothless gave him a lisp that made him sound harmless. Coupled with his disarming personality and forgetfulness, he reminded her a bit of Winnie the Pooh.
“Why don’tcha come in here for a minute and let me think?” he said, still straining to search the outer reaches of his memory to come up with a suitable answer for her.
Aria sat down on a camping mat that was covered in little wood shavings. “I’m makin’ a donkey for Darren, cause he’s stubborn as a horse’s ass,” he explained, erupting into wheezing laughter that forced Aria to laugh too.
“I didn’t know you were a carver,” Aria said when their laughter had subsided.
“Oh yeah, been doin’ it all my life actually. You wanna see some of my other pieces?” he asked, immediately charged with the idea of someone appreciating his craft.
“Yeah, I’d love to,” Aria said.
Robert convinced his aging body to cooperate with his enthusiasm and contorted himself, reaching for a giant canvas duffle bag that was leaning against the corner of the tent. Without getting up, he dumped its contents out onto the mat beside her, an assembly of little wooden sculptures. “I know a guy that lets me sell ’em over on Grand Avenue and I done a couple of art fairs.”
Aria lifted them up one by one to examine them.
Robert went back to whittling, the sound of his knife gnawing into the piece of butternut wood in his hand. She ran her fingers across the satin smoothness of their contours, admiring the curves and lines of the little details he had added to them. Except for a few naked women, children’s movie characters and trees, most of them were carvings of animals of various sizes. Animals like big-horn sheep and bears and fish and horses and snakes and birds. “They’re beautiful,” Aria said, feeling like her rather clichéd sentiment didn’t do justice to the way she felt about them.
“Thank ya,” Robert replied, keeping his focus on his carving.
Having realized that their conversation about the carvings had erased Robert’s memory of her original question about TV, Aria thought about asking him again, but quickly decided against it. Instead, she began putting the sculptures back into the duffle bag for him. “You can pick one if you’d like,” he said.
Aria was taken aback. “But you have to sell them,” she retorted.
“Eh, I’m so old you never know if I’m gonna sell em’ or die tryin’.” Robert erupted into laughter again, the sheer size of his smile taking over the expanse of his face.
“I really do like them, but it makes me feel guilty,” Aria protested.
Robert countered it: “OK, well, if you won’t just pick one, I’m gonna have to come over there and pick one for ya.”
Aria abruptly became aware of the opportunity to have something special, inherent in his jest. “Actually, I’d love it if you’d pick one for me,” she said, staring up at him, the open bid for his affection now in plain sight between them.
“You sure?” he said, assessing her level of certainty and getting up from his seat before she answered, “Yeah.”
Robert picked through the wooden figures, occasionally stopping to scrutinize one of them, and muttering little sounds to himself as he did it. Eventually, he handed her a little carving of a beaver that he had made out of black walnut wood.
Aria ran her fingers up and down against the texture of its ligneous fur. She didn’t immediately understand why he had chosen a beaver for her. It seemed a strange pick to Aria. It was not an animal that she had a relationship to already, nor was it an animal that she felt any personal connection to.
Robert maneuvered himself stiffly back to his station and resumed whittling. To Aria’s relief, he began to explain himself. “The most important thing to the beaver is his home. It seems to me
