paper,' he mumbled in little more than a whimper.
'Paper? What paper?'
'With the…numbers on it. Bus numbers. So I can…find the right…bus. I never missed…work before. I go there every day.'
Uninvited, I sat down on the porch next to him. 'What kind of work do you do, Jimmy?' I asked.
He straightened his shoulders proudly. 'Micrographics,' he said. Surprisingly enough, the syllables of the long word rolled unimpeded off his tongue. 'I take pictures. Important stuff. I put it on…fiche.' He paused.
'You know about fiche?'
I nodded. 'And where do you do this?'
'At the center.'
'Is it far from here?'
'Too far to walk,' he said glumly. He moved his foot slightly and bumped it against the lunch pail. He studied it for a long time as though he hadn't seen it before. 'It isn't break,' he said. 'I'm hungry. Can I eat now?'
A golf-ball-sized lump bottled up my throat. Jimmy Rising was someone who was lost without his crib sheet to decode the bus system and without someone to tell him whether or not it was okay to eat his lunch. He needed permission from someone else. I swallowed hard before I could answer. 'I'm sure it would be fine,' I told him.
He quickly opened the lunch pail, pulled out a sandwich, unwrapped it, and ate it noisily with total self- absorption. When he finished the sandwich, he brought out an apple and poured some orange juice from the thermos. He bit off a huge hunk of apple. 'Lindy gave me this,' he said proudly, patting the top of the thermos. 'It keeps hot…things hot and cold things cold. Did you know that?' he asked.
'Yes,' I answered.
He reached over and touched the lunch pail, running a finger lovingly across the folded metal handle. 'I bought this all by myself. With my own…money.' He was speaking less hesitantly now. The nervousness of being with a stranger was gradually wearing off.
'Money you earned from work?' I asked.
He nodded smugly. 'It cost…ten dollars and forty-seven cents. I bought it at Kmart. It's got some…scratches now. Lindy says that…happens to lunch pails. Everybody's lunch pails. They get scratched.'
'You must love Lindy very much,' I suggested quietly.
He looked past me and stared off into the vacant blue sky. When he finally spoke, his voice was full of hurt. Again he was close to tears. 'She was going…to take…me with her. She promised. But now she can't.'
'Why not?'
'She lost her job. It was a…good job. Building great big buildings. She's got another one…now. Not as good.'
'You told me you know where she is?'
He nodded, slyly, ducking his head.
'Would you tell me? I need to find her.'
There was only the slightest pause before he began rummaging in his shirt pocket. Eventually he dragged out a rumpled wad of paper and handed it to me.
'Her…phone number's there,' he said. 'She told me I could call. Anytime I want to.'
I unfolded the scrap of paper. It turned out to be two pieces, actually, one with a telephone number scrawled across it, and the other, neatly typed, saying '210 Downtown Seattle and 15 Ballard.' Upset as he was, Jimmy had evidently crumpled his bus-schedule crib sheet in with his sister's telephone number.
I jotted the telephone number into my notebook then straightened the typed piece of paper on my knee and handed it back to him. 'Is this the paper you lost?'
His eyes brightened when he saw it, then his shoulders slumped again. 'This's it. But it's…too late to go now.'
'I could give you a ride,' I offered tentatively.
There was a sudden transformation on his face. Just as quickly, it was replaced with a kind of desperate wariness. 'You're…making fun of me,' he said accusingly. 'I'm retarded. Not stupid. You don't…have a car. You can't give…me a ride. I'm too big to carry.'
'My car's just up the street,' I told him. 'It's a red Porsche. We can walk up and get it and have you to work in half an hour.'
Still he hesitated.
'What's wrong?' I asked.
'I'm not supposed to…ride with strangers. Lindy said.'
Lindy had given him good advice, advice I wanted him to disregard. 'Am I still a stranger, Jimmy?' I asked. 'We've been talking a long time. And I really do have a red Porsche.'
'Like on TV?' Jimmy asked.
I nodded. He struggled through a moment's hesitation before leaping off the porch like a gamboling puppy. 'Really? You…mean it? You'd take…me all the way there?'
'I'd be happy to.'
As quickly as it appeared, the animation went out of his face. 'But I don't know…the way,' he said hopelessly. 'Do you? Have you been there?'
The bus directions had given me a clue. Dimly I remembered back in the sixties how the U.S. Navy had surplussed its Elliott Bay site, turning it over to a group of can-do mothers who had transformed it into a model center for the developmentally disabled.
I had gone to the center once on a mission to deliver a batch of free tickets for the Bacon Bowl, a Seattle- area police officer fund-raiser. It's an annual exhibition game between Seattle P.D. personnel and a team made up of police officers from Tacoma P.D. and the Pierce County Sheriff's Department. It gives a bunch of frustrated ex- jocks a once-a-year chance to get down on a football field and strut their stuff. Looking at Jimmy Rising, I wondered if he had been the recipient of one of those tickets, and if he had, did he like football.
Quickly, Jimmy Rising began gathering his belongings, his lunch pail and his thermos. 'Can we go now?' he asked. His eagerness was almost painful to see. I don't think I've ever headed for work with that degree of unbridled enthusiasm.
'Sure,' I said. 'Let's get going.'
We set off walking at a pretty good clip, but I had trouble keeping up. Jimmy kept bounding ahead, then he'd rush back to hurry me along. Watching him, I had an attack of guilty conscience, but I pushed it out of my mind. He was such a guileless innocent-it had been all too easy to con Linda Decker's phone number out of him. Anybody could have gotten it from him, if they'd only bothered to ask.
Of course, my guilty conscience wasn't so serious that I pulled the notation with Linda's phone number on it out of my notebook and threw it away. After all, as long as I had the information, I could just as well use it.
'Is Linda in…trouble?' he asked suddenly.
The question caught me off guard. I didn't know if he was asking me if she was pregnant or if he meant something else.
'What makes you say that?' I asked.
'Because those men were detectives. Just like on ‘Miami Vice.' That's my favorite. What's yours?'
I don't watch television, but I didn't want to explain that to Jimmy Rising. 'Mine, too,' I answered.
'Who do you like the most?'
That was a stumper. He had me dead to rights. 'I like 'em all,' I waffled.
'Oh,' he said, and we continued walking in silence.
When I unlocked the car door and let him into the Porsche, he was ecstatic. 'I've…never been in a car this… nice,' he said. 'Are you sure you don't…mind?'
'I don't mind,' I said.
'But doesn't it…cost a lot of money? Mama's always…saying that. Cars cost…money.' Reverently he touched the smooth leather seat. 'Is this brand-new?' he asked.
'No,' I answered.
We headed back down toward I-90. Jimmy was fascinated by the buttons and knobs. He turned the radio on full blast, moved the seat back and forth, rolled his window up and down. He had a great time.
It was well after two when we turned off 15th onto Armory Way and stopped in the parking lot of the
