They put a picnic table in the alley behind the dry cleaners, so the people who work in the shops there have someplace to eat their lunches. It's one of those Ikea-colored, one-piece aluminum models you see outside taco stands. Easy to steal, so it’s chained to a pipe. But Sunday the shops were closed, and Don got to sit there.
We didn't know each other, but he smiled, so I waved. He had a big piece of crooked cardboard in his lap, and he raised it high to show me as I passed. It was a profile drawing of an old car. 1951 Buick, it read, in scratchy capital letters.
“Hello,” I said, walking over to get a better look.
“Hello.” He offered me his drawing hand, but he was holding his pencil and a wad of paper and could only spare two fingers.
“What’s your name?”
“Don.”
“Good to meet you, Don. That’s your drawing?”
“Yes,” he said, holding it up again. “It’s a 1951 Buick Roadmaster.”
“Yes it is,” I said. “I’ve seen them before.”
He nodded agreeably behind the graying cardboard.
“Buick Roadmaster,” he confirmed, then turned the picture around to take another look at his work. “1951. I saw one yesterday driving on the street, so today I drew it.”
“Can I take a picture? Of you with your drawing?”
“You’re gonna make a picture of it?”
“Yeah, and I’ll take one of you holding it up, too. All right?”
“Sure.”
I snapped the pictures, and he returned the cardboard to his lap, fixing the pencil in his fingers.
“How do you spell ‘Roadmaster’?”
“R-O-A-D-M-A-S-T-E-R,” I said.
He started writing, taking time to shape each letter. He slowly shaped an ‘R’, then started on an ‘A’.
“‘O’,” I said. “The next letter is ‘O’.”
He tilted his head back in acknowledgement. “‘O’,” he repeated, correcting the letter.
“Then ‘A’.”
“Then ‘A’,” he said, carefully balancing both sides of the arch.
He waited.
“‘D’,” I said finally.
“‘D’.”
“‘M’.”
“‘M’…”
“1951 Buick Roadmaster,” he read aloud when we finished. He put out two free fingers to shake my hand again, then took a moment to regard his finished drawing with quiet admiration.
“Do you want to take another picture of it now, now that it’s got the whole name?”
“Sure,” I said. 
copyright, © 2009 Wyatt Doyle for information on Wyatt Doyle's collaboration with Stanley Jason Zappa, STOP REQUESTED, click here.
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