The Story of Walk Away Boy

Today's offering is a bit longer than usual. It is the story of how I wrote Walk Away Boy. I wrote the story in preparation for a book that I will be publishing soon called The Rise of Silence. The story takes about 5-7 mintues to read, and I believe it is well worth the time invested. But if you're pressed for time, you can listen instead on YouTube. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/mRLiYjiUxMU​

I ran a little junk booth for a while. I went around and asked the yard sales to give me what they didn’t sell, and some did. And then I sold it at the swap meet. And I made a few dollars. 

Next to my junk booth was another junk booth. And the man who ran the booth was named Rod. Now and then, Rod would come and buy some of my junk to add to his junk. He was my biggest customer. And I was surprised that he bought my junk since he had so much junk of his own, about a fifth of an acre’s worth, strewn out on plywood sheets atop little metal sawhorses, and more stuff underneath, and laid out on tarps. It was quite a collection. 

People came and wandered up and down the isles of junk. Now and then, they’d want something. When we offered them a price, more often than not, they’d try to get it for less. After all, we were dealing in junk, people’s left over excesses. And the expectation was that we would let it go for nearly nothing. And in this we rarely disappointed our clientele.

One day, Rod asked me to help him move some things. “I’ll pay you twenty dollars,” he said. And I couldn’t pass that up. So we went to a long quonset hut that was full of junk. I was amazed! “The lady that owns this place says I have to get out,” he said. The building was full of the types of things that Rod sold at the swap meet. And interspersed were little piles of rotting food, old papers, nudie magazines. The next stop was a motorhome, packed full of junk, and then a large storage unit packed from side to side and high up to the ceiling, and then an out building in someone’s yard. “Do you pay rent on all of these?” I asked. 

“Yes,” he said, “That’s why I’m so broke.” 

“How many do you have?” I asked.

“Ten or twelve,” he said.

Wow! I didn’t say it outloud. But wow!

As we were lifting a weight set into my van, Rod complained. “This is hard work,” he said. “I’m getting too old for this.” 

“Have you thought of doing something else?” I asked.

“Yeah. But I don’t know what else I’d do.” he said.

As we went from place to place, I wondered what the value of his stash might be. I started adding it up in my mind - just the few things that passed through my hands. And I quickly realized that even at garage sale prices, Rod might be a millionaire. 

But the flow was all damned up. Too much in, and not enough out. And he seemed to lack the ability to put any real value on things. “It’s all junk,” he said. And it seemed like that was how he felt about himself. His face was dirty, his hair unwashed, his fingernails long. And he wore the same clothes every day. But there was no time to take care of what he had.

All the same, he was a busy man, stashing, hoarding, and moving it around from place to place. He sold an item here and there. And nearly every day, he bought more stuff. People stopped by his booth before going to the dump. They knew that Rod could not resist. He’d buy another pickupload full of junk with his last few dollars and go to bed worried about how he’d make ends meet. 

And I had that strange but familiar feeling that I had been sent exactly to that place to witness Rod. “Why am I hear, God?” I kept asking. 

After a week or so, I retired from helping Rod. I couldn’t take it anymore. I made my way to our desert camp and sat behind the steering wheel of the van thinking about Rod and about people and things. I wondered what it would take for him to turn the tide of his affairs. I realized that even if he stopped buying junk and devoted the rest of his life to the dispensing of his surplus property, he would probably die before he finished. And the canker of the dark and rotting places might just kill him in the process. The only solution I could see was to walk away from it all.

And then I thought about myself. “What am I still holding on to?” I wondered. And I wrote this poem in the spirit of that question and desire.

Walk away boy,
Walk away.
You'll never have enough
And you'll never find the thing 
That you were missing.
Walk away.
You know that she's a fake
And that she lures you 
With a dream.
Walk away.
And let them come 
And carry it all 
Into the hollow 
Of their empty eyes,
Where the darkness 
Needn't bind you any longer.
Fly away.
Fly away, boy,
Into the brightness 
Of the morning sunshine.
And let the coolness of it's rivers
Wash away the mystery
Of all you hoped to find there.
It is easier than you think.
And it is a breath away.
It is a moment.
It is now.

A week or two after writing this poem, a friend helped me close my junk booth. We loaded it all up in the van and in his truck and dropped it off at the homeless relief center. After they served the evening meal, they let the homeless take what they wanted. 

The volunteer said that most of it was gone within 15 minutes. One lady took the lion’s share, he said. But he shook his head and chuckled. “I don’t know what she will do with all that crap.” he said. “She lives in a tent!”

​