The Charleston Christian Novelist

A small, gray-bearded man wearing glasses smoked a cigarette and drank a cup of coffee while sandwiched between the ice freezer and firewood bin of the Charleston General Store.

I pulled my car into a parking space ten feet away. I exited the car on a foggy Monday morning, headed for the front door. Elmer and I had just explored a secret beach at low tide and not a single person had appeared to taint our solitude and inspection of sea stars.

A classic black and white, speckled composition book with its cover resting open at a 45-degree angle rested atop the firewood bin. I noticed writing on the cover that looked like a title.

I’d written in hundreds of these composition books starting with my first journal in 1979, passed out a thousand more to students over the decades to serve as first journals.

It has long been my custom after seeing such compositions books in public to ask writers the nature of their writing. In my experience, their presence meant someone was writing something creative, something fanciful, something important, or somewhere in the middle.

The man was standing at profile to me. I noticed a fishing tackle box next to the composition book, neatly arranged with pens, pencils, markers, crayons and note cards. (Why didn’t I have a rig like that?)

“Hey, what are you writing?” I said, stopping a few feet away from him.

He turned toward me. His face was sunburned, weathered, exhausted—the face of a homeless man. I’ve seen enough up close to know. I put him in his late 50s or early 60s. In no way was he addled or his countenance exhibit evidence of hard drug use.

His face lit up at my question. No one I’d ever asked about the nature of their writing in composition books has refused answering. Indeed, all responses have astonished me with their enthusiasm, especially if the writers were homeless men and women.

He said he was writing a novel, a Christian novel. He handed me the composition book. I opened it and the first page was blank. I turned the page and beheld a two-page spread of a wild, sprawling Venn diagram that constructed some kind of outline, or so I surmised. I asked him what it was.

I learned:

The novel was titled Working Papers

It was about the store and Christ’s infinite capacity to love.

He diagrammed it after some kind of epiphany that occurred in the store 24 hours ago.

The employees were going to become his new family. They didn’t know this yet.

The core of the novel was his being abducted or abandoned as a boy in Coos Bay, his hometown.

I thumbed through more pages and saw a dozen chapter titles, illustrations, notes. It was all happening so fast I no longer recall any words from my perusing.

Was the epiphany akin to Saul on the road to Damascus but in his case inside the Charleston General store near the liquor alcove and display of beef jerky? Was it a genuine epiphany? Who I am to determine its veracity? Was this man insane? He certainly seemed saner than the current President of the United States.

“So when are you going to start writing it up?” I said.

“It’s hard to write if you don’t have any place to sit,” he said.

What truth! It nearly knocked me over. You can’t put your ass in the chair to write if you don’t have a chair.

“You’re homeless?”

“I’m sleeping in the jetty near the Coast Guard Station.”

How anyone could sleep in a jetty was beyond my understanding although there were plenty of huge flat rocks where a man could roll out a sleeping bag, listen to the tide, smell the brine, get up in the morning and fish or crab for breakfast.

Our conversation continued and he drifted into several non-political conspiracy theories I couldn’t follow and didn’t probe.

At one point he told me his name was Sean. I introduced myself.

I suggested he try writing at the picnic tables at the Charleston Marina. He thought that a good idea. I said I was a writer and would love to read anything he wrote.

He didn’t ask me about my writing.

I said goodbye and went inside the store for the purchase of cheap vodka. On my way out, I detoured to the man who was now writing in the composition book. I gave him ten bucks for him in gratitude for sharing his story. A bargain for sure.

He thanked me. I said I’d be seeing him soon at one of the picnic tables at the marina. I visited there all the time with Elmer. I might even bring along a folding camp chair and TV tray. He could set up a writing studio on one of the flat rocks at the jetty and get down to real work on Working Papers.