The Salvation Army Man

**Below is an excerpt from a short story I am in the process of finishing, inspired by the photograph below.

He came around in a starched white dress shirt and navy blue trousers every day except Sundays. Sometimes he’d walk right by without so much as a nod or a tip of the hat. Sometimes he’d stop and wave and force a little polite conversation. But, for me and my sister, whenever he crossed that threshold down the road- the part of the road where the shiny black pavement turns to cold, hard gravel and dirt- dressed in his Sunday’s best and carryin’ a brown paper sack under each of his hands, we knew he wasn’t jus gonna walk by. No, when he brought the sacks under his arms, we knew he’d be joinin’ us on the stoop.

He wore brown penny loafers, so worn there were three or fo holes in each sole. He was balding and kept a rusted can of Penelope’s Miracle Hair Wax in his left back pocket; always had to keep his hair smoothed back. He smoked a pack of Pall Malls a day. I remember the cigarettes ‘cause he always left the butts littered on the dirt yard in front of our stoop. The thing I truly remember most, even mo’ than the cigarettes and the wax cans and the penny loafers and the starched white shirts, were the gifts. Now, it wasn’t often he’d bring gifts, but bein’ in charge of the Salvation Army in town gives you the liberty and creative license to bring by a little trinket or toy or tool or who knows what every now and then. Those brown paper sacks under his arms would be filled to the point of burstin’ with pots and pans for Granny B, new curtains for Mama’s windows: we had fo windows. One on each of the fo walls of our little house. He’d bring wooden horses and action figures. He even brought a black rubber tire jus for me. He told me in his neighborhood, over on the other side of town where the pavement’s shiny and black and smooth, the kids all curl up inside the rubber tires and roll down the hill ‘till they hit a tree or fall out. Anything you can imagine and the Salvation Army man could bring it.

Now I’m gonna make a point in tellin’ y’all that it wasn’t no charity work he was doin’ back then neither. He didn’t bring no food. And he didn’t bring no clothes. Mama worked plenty hard to provide us with those sorts of things. She worked for the food and the clothes and the roof over our heads; the Salvation Army man brought the rest.