An Echo of Evla Deira

One

ONE

New York City

1931

            Everyone in Hooverville belonged, or didn’t belong, equally.  The devastation of the Great Depression had dissolved class distinctions for many, so that former lawyers, teachers, mechanics, janitors, actors and more all found themselves cast out, living side by side in equally feeble tents or shanties, in equal states of hunger and hopelessness, right in the middle of New York City’s famous Central Park.  Everyone in Hooverville belonged...except for me. 

            Of course, I didn’t know this yet.

            I tried to ignore the strange looks and the whispers which followed me whenever I left the make-shift shelter that now served as my home.  Not being much of a builder, I had crafted myself a shanty out of cardboard and a few old pieces of scrap metal I had found in a garbage bin behind one of the many abandoned warehouses the Depression had left in its wake.  When ignoring them didn’t actually make the strange looks and the whispers stop, I finally decided that it would be best if I just kept to myself, and this plan worked perfectly, for a time.  The other inhabitants of Hooverville knew nothing about me, and I knew nothing about them.  That was the way I preferred it...and that was the way it would have stayed, if I hadn’t taken that walk. 

            It had rained for days, and my situation had become beyond unpleasant.  In spite of my crude shelter, I still got plenty wet, and I was frozen right down to my bones.  I was fairly certain I felt the beginnings of a fever coming on.  On waking up to finally see the sun that morning, I had felt lighter of heart than I had in weeks.  I was so cheered by the warm glow of the sunlight, in fact, that I decided that I would take a walk around the park, no matter what reaction that caused in my Hooverville neighbours.  Later I would remind myself that I’d left for my walk with no intention of getting involved in anybody else’s affairs.  It was only chance that led me to pass by at just the right time to overhear the conversation of two men who were looking for materials to make a fire.

            “Where’s Miles?”  The first man, a tall man of about forty with brown hair and a thick beard, asked the other.

            The second man, slightly younger with reddish-blond hair, shrugged.  “The same place as the others, I guess.”

            “The others?”

            “You haven’t noticed?  He’s the third one this week.”

            “The third one?”

            The second gave an exasperated sigh.  “The third one to go missing!”

            “Missing!”

            The second man nodded.  “Johnson just vanished into thin air about three days ago.  Then, night before last, Joe Miller was talking to this guy, a real moneybags, with a fine suit, fancy car...then next morning, his wife is walking around, asking has anybody seen her husband?  Nobody’s heard a word from either of them since.”

            I raised an eyebrow.  Nobody left Hooverville willingly.  They couldn’t.  Hooverville was the last stop for outcasts, a last resort for those with nowhere else to go and nobody else to turn to.  Something was very wrong here.  The smart thing to do, I knew without question, would be to pretend I had never heard the men’s conversation, go back to my shanty, and continue on with my quiet life.  With no family and no money, I had enough problems of my own to worry about.  It wasn’t my responsibility to investigate the disappearances of these missing men, I told myself.  Quite reasonably too, I thought.