'i'm gonna leave here rich'

"I'm going to make a quarter-million dollars before Christmas."

That's Stan, the homeless guy who for the last week or so has laid his pallet out on the sidewalk behind Tommy's van. He was sitting in a folding chair in the middle of the day on Saturday, still in the same spot behind Tommy's van. He rolled a cigarette himself, his fingers thick, calloused, but also nimble.

"Woodworking," he said. "Been doing it forty years. Everyone who sees my stuff says it's the best."

Tommy once said that the only reason he had so many friends on the boardwalk was that, for a lot of people, he was the only person who would really listen to them. They all had stories they wanted to tell to someone.

Stan had stories. Said he wanted to work triple-time for the next year. Had a friend looking for a studio for him--slow, but reliable, this friend. He'd start a small business, hiring sober people off the street to work for him. Even give them insurance, he said, what with the new Obama tax breaks.

He had other stories, too. He was living in the Virgin Islands last year, making money off a trading schooner he bought for $500 forty years earlier. He wanted to get to Honolulu eventually.

"I came here rich, and I'm gonna leave rich," he said. The American dream.

He talked and puffed on the cigarette without ever taking it from his mouth--a small white nub poking out from behind his dark beard.

Stan said he had a friend looking for supplies and studio for him. He'd stopped drinking this weekend, in anticipation of starting work. But it fell through. Now, he'd wait til after his birthday next week--he was turning 62--to get back to work.

Still, he had no desire to get back on the booze. "My lady friend offered me the other night, and I just said 'no'. Didn't want it anymore."

That's about as close as he got to an explanation of how he ended up on a folding chair behind Tommy's van. Drinking. his teeth told a little more of the story, perhaps--most of them blackened, or gone altogether. Kept saying he "messed his life up," or he was "trying to get his life together." But he never said what happened. And I never asked.

Only question I asked was where his ladyfriend was.

"No, just a friend," he said. he put his arms up. "How'm I gonna have a lady out here."

He pointed towards Shawn's van, which he'd recovered from the impound but, like Tommy's, won't drive. In its shade was Stan's friend, hunched over in her chair, asleep beside a pile of stuff, on top of which lay a jewelry box.

It was hand-carved, he said--laquered wood, with a mirror and a pink, furry padding inside. By the look of it, it had been done with a knife--a diamond pattern carved into the outside, very intricate, a little uneven. Took him more than two months to make. Said he sold it two years ago to a family for $1,500,  but now it'd be worth more like $4,500.

"Family I sold it to was in Nevada, but they moved back out this way into another million-dollar house. Asked me to fix it up for 'em when I get the time. I can make three-quarters of a million dollars a year doin this."

That was the last time I saw Stan. The next day, he was gone--off to a wordworking studio, or to Honolulu, or somewhere.