The Chicken Line

I met Savannah Thomas at the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and El Centro.  He was a not so young black man that pulled up to the crosswalk on his blue bike.  He asked me if I had a Merry Christmas and I said "yes, how about you?"  Well, that was it, he walked with me 15 blocks and did not stop talking.  He moved to Los Angeles in 1981 from Savannah, Georgia.  He was a small time hustler who sold double A batteries and made a daily weed run to Skid Row.  "They know me down there so that's where I go for the deal."  The right side of his mouth was missing teeth and the ones on the left were brown.  I asked him where he lived.  He was homeless because of drugs.  "I'm a weed smoker and I smoke crack 4 times a year."  I wanted to believe him but I'm just not that naive anymore.

The streetlights popped on and it was around 6 o'clock.  He stopped me and made me look at him so he could tell me he liked talking to me.  He said my eyes were shiny and I had good hair.  "Why don't you meet me at the chicken line on Sunday at 4pm."  "The chicken line?" I asked.  He said some older white man got busted for laundering money, about 2 million and somehow got off by telling the judge he would give back to the community.  So every Sunday he feeds El Pollo Loco to hundreds of homeless people.  They line up in front of the YMCA in Hollywood.  Savannah said that I should definitely come because with my look I could probably get a job working the chicken line.   I told him I already had a job.  "You're a responsible one." he said.

We finally bid our goodbyes and I promised half heartedly that I would show up on Sunday.  Part of me really wanted to.  I was curious.  I turned toward my destination and my heart ached for him.  Drugs robbed him of his potential.  I wish I knew him when he first moved her and I could have been his friend and told him he was too good for the pipe but it got the best of him.  At least fate didn't get him like his cousin Terry T. who joined a gang and was in a shoot out at a high school in the Valley.  He survived but got life without parole.  Savannah had a deep sadness in his eyes when he told me.  "He made a choice and sacrificed his life for that choice."

I wonder if Savannah knows he has made a choice too.