Smoke Box
April 15, 2010
“I’m Smoke Box.”
“What?” I asked in response. I pretty much heard him, but wasn’t sure if I’d heard correctly. But with meeting people who introduce themselves as ‘Gumball’ and ‘Moon Wolf’, it shouldn’t have taken me by surprise.
“S-M-O-K-E-B-O-X,” he replied.
He didn’t look much like a ‘Smoke Box’, but I could imagine ‘Smoke’ or ‘Smokey’, I guess. The first thing I noticed about him was his hat. A big black leather cowboy hat, molded under around the brim. It shaded his eyes in a mysterious, pleasant sort of way. He had a long thin face with a mature goatee, and wore a long dark pony, an over-sized black Harley Davidson vest, camo pants and black leather fingerless riding gloves with knuckle holes.
I had never seen him before.
“Take a look at that article when he’s done with it,” were the first words he spoke to me. He had a soft voice to contradict his dark attire. I looked over and saw Travis reading an article cutout. Travis looked up, smiled curiously, cocked his head, handed the article to me.
‘11-yr old Girl Saved After Four Days in Alligator Infested Swamp‘, read the title. I read it. A fifth grader, for unknown reasons, rode her bicycle into the woods and was found four days later in a swamp among thick brush. She lived. It was uplifting.
Smoke Box talked in a kind, gentle, patient sort of way. Judging by this and the fact that he wore a pair of sunglasses all evening which he never removed, I figured he might have smoked a bit of pot before the barbecue. He talked mainly about three things:
1. Playing the piano. (He spoke of playing in different locations including Astoria, Anchorage, and a shelter across the river).
2. A video of himself on YouTube singing karaoke to ‘Wasted Time’ by Don Henley as an intended spiritual message to viewers.
3. ‘Dad’. I assume this is his term for God. Mostly, he incorporated ‘Dad’ in all which he was talking about and implied that ‘Dad’ talked to him or sent him messages.
Smoke Box sat down, carefully pulled a square of paper towel from the roll, folded it in half, and began to write on in with a metallic silver marker. ‘YOUTUBE IN GOD SERVES’ he wrote. He neatly outlined this in green pen, and then continued writing ‘ME SiNGiNG WASTED TIME FROM THE EAGLES DON HENLY’. He drew a box around ‘WASTED TIME’ with an arrow pointing to ‘IN GOD SERVES’. He then wrote down his email address and handed the napkin to me.
When he stepped away, I pointed at Smoke Box and asked Brian, “Do you know that guy?”
Brian spoke in a quiet, secretive voice. “Yeah,” He said “I’ve known him since 2004 when I moved here, but he’s always in and out. He told me that he just came back from Denver. He’s a real nice guy. I like the way he talks. Really down to earth. He told me a few years ago that used to have a Harley and got in a real bad motorcycle accident so now he has his bicycle instead with real tall handlebars,” Brian gestured toward a bike leaning against a concrete pillar with, as he said, ‘real tall handlebars’. It was all souped up with fat tires and lights of all shapes, sizes and colors zip-tied on here and there, and a pair of hand-cuffs locked to the frame. I assumed he used them as a fancy sort of bike lock. “When you get him talking about that stuff is when you can really hear how nice he sounds when he talks,” Brian continued in a whisper. “He’s just a really nice guy.”
I believed him.
