I walked toward the river, counting the wrecked buses, and stopped at the fourteenth. The double-doors protested when I folded them in. Joseph walked by the tail of the bus and paused at the steps as though considering turning back.
“This is the entrance,” I said. “Be certain you want to come in.”
“Why?”
“Getting on the bus has a special meaning here. This bus ride takes you out of the world.”
He followed me aboard without pause.
The seats had all been ripped out of the bus. I opened the emergency door on the other side and jumped, ahead of Joseph so I could see his reaction. I’d forgotten my injury, again, and the pain sent me to my knees. I knelt there, holding my side, cursing my stupidity, but still wanting to see Joseph Simon’s face. I turned just as he appeared in the doorway. Unfortunately, he was looking down at me and not at the landscape.
“What happened to you?”
“A minor injury Leland left me with last night.”
I struggled to my feet, still watching him. He needed to discover this place on his own. Darkness was ten minutes away and the lack of light only enhanced the strangeness of the landscape.
When he looked up, his expression didn’t disappoint.
Walls of junked cars and rusted metal reached the horizon, most stacked four to six high, some ten high and more. Unlike Savannah’s squares, the metal walls were not arranged in any discernible order. Some extended hundreds of yards, while others were thirty feet long or less. The walls were jagged unstable heaps of metal, forming filthy alleys that twisted back on themselves with no direction or purpose. The result was a decaying maze, a city of rust with streets of dirt.
From Joseph’s perspective, the rusted city of Nowhere stretched a half-mile in three directions, east, west, and south. It was bordered on three sides by a scabbed wall of buses. The northern border was the Savannah River. The Talmadge Bridge stood watch over it all, a route to anywhere in the world, lording over the makeshift homeless community. I’d spent hours studying this view, stricken by its tragic irony. Society’s discards, in a city of waste, locked in by shattered memories of mobility and lorded over by a river-spanning pathway to freedom. I don’t think Joseph breathed as he studied it.
By now, my injured ribs made every breath painful. I needed to get settled soon.
“Let’s keep moving,” I said. “We still have a ways to go.”
He stayed in the doorway several more seconds before dropping to the ground. No tourist ever looked more awestruck.
We walked west.
Nowhere’s inhabitants live inside the junk-car walls or in makeshift lean-tos, though the best spots were claimed long ago. Newcomers search for an uncrushed car in a wall that looks stable and load in their bedrolls, seeking a dry place where sleep may be possible. They acquire a few items, maybe a flashlight or a cooler. The wreck becomes a dwelling. Then, one night, there’s a creaking, then a grinding, and finally a crash of rust and steel slamming to the ground. A cloud of dust heralds the collapse. Sometimes there are screams, sometimes there aren’t.
Some newcomers enjoy the luxury of store-bought, stolen, or crafted tents. Whatever walls surround them, none who live in Nowhere are solitary. There is no privacy, yet everyone lives alone.
As Joseph and I walked, little fires sprang to life, dotting the junk-scape, one fifty yards away, another a hundred yards further and still another thirty yards to the left. Car headlights appeared on the Talmadge above us, lighting their way and mocking the maggots who lived in their rusted ancestors below.
Slowly, those around the closest fires turned, seeking to categorize us as either threat or non-entity.
Joseph stared back and beyond.
The sun died, and fires appeared by the dozens. The lights of the Talmadge mingled with the stars.
In the dark, the rust walls were black monuments against a blue-black sky.
“This is Leland’s Kingdom,” I said. “This is Nowhere.”
***
In Nowhere, campfires are the only light against the darkness. The emotional confusion of those existing there is palpable. Joseph’s face reflected the hostility he felt as we walked.
Hatred radiated from a tent as we passed, carried from inside on threats and flat-handed smacks. Next to it, three winos surrounded a fire, passed a bottle and laughed hysterically amid back-slaps and toothless grins.
“I feel filthy,” Joseph said. Forty minutes had passed since we’d come through the bus.
“You are filthy. The breeze from the river stirs the dust and the rust. It settles into everything.”
He rubbed the back of his hand and exercised grit between his fingers.
“It’s a hell of a place to live,” I said. “Tommy’s been here eighteen years.”
I stopped in front of a ’54 Chevy with a coat of turquoise spray-paint that distinguished it from the surrounding decay. It backed up to a 3-high stack of rusted sedans. The driver’s door was draped in faded print curtains that I parted and crawled through before switching on a 9-volt flashlight that I found by feel. Joseph poked his head through the curtain.
“This is Tommy’s place,” I told him. “He’ll be back later.” I grabbed a sack and kindling that lay by the door, went outside and set about starting a fire in a pit dug out for the purpose. Once I had it smoldering, I returned inside, found two folding chairs, and set them up far enough from the fire to enjoy the light without suffering the heat.
Tommy’s squat was on the western edge of Nowhere, far enough from the main pathways to avoid Leland most of the time.
Joseph took the chair next to me. “What is this place?”
“I told you. Nowhere. The homeless live here. Most of them, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Why not? The police don’t come here. I’m not certain they know it exists. It can’t fill up like the shelters and missions. There aren’t any rules, except Leland’s, and it’s big enough that you can probably avoid him if he’s not looking for you.”
“It looks like an old junkyard.”
“It was a salvage yard until about fifty years ago. The owner lived in a small house on the western boundary, not far from here. He died without an heir and the county took it. They junked their old buses and county vehicles here until the environmental movement got loud. Rather than face that, the county stacked buses around the perimeter, let the greenery grow up to hide it, fenced it and forgot about it. Leland found it about twenty years ago. Word got around and street people started making their way in.”
“A sanctuary?”
“Of a kind. It exacts a cost. But for some, it’s the only place left.”
“Like us?”
“Like us.”
I wasn’t sure if Joseph was baiting me, or if my anger made me think he was. He looked around, taking it all in. The sky over the river was dark blue, reflecting the light from the factories further west. The metal walls had gone black against the skyline.
“It seems heavy,” Joseph said. “Depressing.”
“I told you. It exacts a cost.”
He stared at the fire a moment, then looked up. I could see the reporter’s mind turning behind his eyes.
“Why don’t you live here? You’re wanted. The police don’t come here.”
“You know one reason.”
He nodded. “Leland. What are the others?”
A talented journalist knows when the question he asks is more than a question, it’s a crossroads. The person asked must select a path and follow it. Once chosen, there’s no turning back. To take the next step is to commit. Joseph knew it. I knew it.
“Why are you in Savannah, Joseph?” I asked. “What happened at the AJC?”
His jaw tightened. He sat back and gazed into the fire. For fifteen minutes or longer, he sat still and staring. I let him meditate on his sins in response to asking for mine. He shocked me by unburdening himself. In retrospect, his story had less impact than my own, but his sins were smaller. He could have been baiting me, offering his story for mine, but I don’t believe so.
