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THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN'T QUITE
Illustrated by WALKER
You could say Jonesy and/or I were not all there, but I don't see it that way. How much of Stanley was or wasn't there?
Have you ever been clear down there on skid row? Oh, sure, every city has one and no doubt you have given it one of those look-away-quick side glances. That isn't what I mean.
Probably not. And, if you haven't, I could make a suggestion.
Don't go.
Skid row is a far, remote way and there are all kinds of horrors down there, the seen and the unseen. To each his own, as they say, and everyone there has his own personal collection. All right. General opinion is to let them be there and the hell with them, people and horrors too, if there is a distinction. Unfortunate, but what can you do? Nothing. Look the other way. That's all right with me. I don't know anything better to do about the horrors that are, or that may be on skid row than to hope they will stay there where they belong--and let me forget them.
That's why I'm writing this. I want to do the story of what I saw, and what I think I saw or felt, and what I didn't see, to get it off my mind. Then I am going to do my damnedest not to think of the whole thing.
Who are the misfits and derelicts on skid row? Anybody; nobody. Individuals, if they are individuals, come and go. The group, with few exceptions, is always the same. It is built of the world's rejects--lost souls, bad dreams; shadowy, indistinct shapes, not a part of life nor yet quite altogether out of it, either.
I was down there. I left. But I kept passing by every once in a while to pay a little visit. For that I had two reasons. One, I could sometimes pick up a lead on something for a Sunday feature for my paper. The other--just taking another look now and then at where and what I had been was a sort of insurance for me.
So, from time to time I would stop by The Yard for an evening. I would spring for a jug. I was welcome. Those in the regular group knew me and they held me in no more than the same contempt they had for each other and themselves. Being no stranger--or, perhaps, not too much less strange--I fitted well enough with the misfits of that half-world where the individual rarely stands out enough to be noticeable.
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