Broken Mirror

Broken Mirror

For over a year I found myself lost in my little make believe world. I had been drinking very heavy and had become a bum. One day I found myself walking along
a road in this God forsaken Mojave Desert half drunk wondering how I got here. When I arrived in this town called Pear Blossom just east of Palmdale in California,
I was so exhausted and hungry. As soon as I got in town I started bumming for food and money from whoever I could throughout the town. Near evening I went behind the stores looking through their trash for what ever I could find to use to survive.
I found a bar that I went behind looking through their trash for empty whiskey and wine bottles. I would gather them together and pour what ever was left in them into one bottle. Most of the time there would hardly be enough for one swallow.
After being in the town for three days sleeping behind dumpsters at night,
I gathered my few little things together and began walking out of town and down the main highway through the desert. I walked seven or eight miles out of that small town of Pear Blossom. I was so weak and messed up from drinking and not eating that I was barely able to walk.
As I was walking along the road on the soft shoulder, I stumbled and fell into the bushes. I was so tired and weak and half drunk that I just laid there. I laid there for about an hour as cars and trucks passed me by. I was starting to get real thirsty for water. Then a small R.V stopped alongside the road to check his oil. As he got out, he suddenly noticed me lying in the bushes.
He got back into the R.V. There was an elderly woman looking at me through the window.
The man came back out of the R.V with a pistol in his hand not taking any chances with me. He tapped me on the shoulder with the gun and asked if I was ok.
I'm sure he thought I was dead. I asked if I could have some water. The woman handed him a plastic gallon container of water and said that I could keep it.
He then turned and walked back towards his R.V saying in a whispering voice to the woman, he's just a drunk. He will be ok. He then got up into his R.V and they slowly drove off leaving me with the container of water. The next morning early, I started down the road again.
I prayed to the Lord and had long conversations with him to guide me in the right direction and through this desert.
It seems that I can't get more then a few miles without taking a drink from my bottle of whiskey. Barely making my way across this desert, I keep saying to myself why would he send me this way through the desert? It must be the whiskey and lack of food that's making me think that I have been talking to the Lord all this time.
Every step of the way as I drank from my bottle of whiskey I felt more like I was losing my mind. I stopped by this huge boulder partially covered by a creosote plant and leaned against it to rest. I looked out over this terrible looking gray desert and how scary it looked. Off into the far distance I would see dust devils moving around out in the desert and one passed near me blowing dust and sand all over me and into my eyes as it passed. I took what water was left from the plastic container and poured it into my eyes to clear them. As I leaned my head back to take a few drinks from the bottle of whiskey, that I kept inside my shirt close to my body, so I would know it was always there. I see a town in the far distance. Once again I feel that I'm imagining it, but after resting against the boulder I continued in that direction.
A few hours later I see a sign that says welcome to Barstow California.
I sat down along side a Joshua tree near the sign before entering the town and rested for a little while. Around 20 minutes later I got up on my feet and started walking down the sidewalk through the town. I could hear some of the people telling each other as they looked toward me, that guy looks like a bum. Some of the others called me a tramp and a drunk. After being there a few days, I tried working for some food but I notice most people were scared of me because of the way I looked.
I would usually end up bumming for money or what ever food I could get or pennies dimes and nickels or what ever they would toss my way. I found a corner at the end of town near a gas station were there was a lot of traffic coming from it.
As they would pull out of the station, I would put my hand out towards them with a little metal can in it so they could drop in a coin or two. Teenagers would drive
by me and yell dirty names and throw half filled coke cans at me. Many times I would be so hungry and thirsty that I would have trouble standing up and would have dizzy spells. One time I was so weak from lack of food that when I stood up to beg for some money from this guy, I fell back against the wall I was standing near.
The guy grabbed me and sat me down and put three dollars in the little can that fell from my hand. He looked around with a strange look on his face and said you will be ok and hurried away from me. At night I would sleep in the bushes near the freeway that ran along the side of town.
I would bundle up with a blanket that I had found in the alleyway behind a thrift store in the trash dumpster.
I was lucky to find it, the blanket was thick and I desperately needed it.
I seemed to be cold all the time, even in warm weather. I was really in terrible shape,
I needed a shave a shower and my hair cut, it was so long and dirty. I had weeds and thorns from bushes in it.
As I lay there in my spot in the tall bushes bundled up in my blanket I notice that my hands were filthy dirty from not washing them. I had no energy at all, even to wash my face.
I laid there thinking, I have tried and tried to work and do the right thing but no one would ever take a chance on giving me a job. As time went on it seemed it just got worse for me, laying here and hearing sounds of the cars traveling pass me near the freeway. Many times I would be scared to fall asleep.
I was afraid I would never wake up. I would dream off and on all night long and have nightmares mostly every night. Every once in awhile in the middle of the night,
I would wake up screaming. Very often I would lay there crying thinking of my mother and how she died.
I'll never forget a few years back when she was hit by a car and drug a few hundred feet and died at the scene. The driver never stopped. It seems like that's when I really started drinking heavy.
I just didn't care about any thing. I was having trouble coping with my mother's death even after all this time. I would pray all the time to stop drinking and for things to be better for me and to see my mother in heaven some day. I would ask the Lord time and time again to help me straighten out my life. I cried many times to the Lord to take me off of the road and help me stop drinking.
But after a year-and-a-half being on the road I started to lose faith. I started blaming the Lord for not helping me and asking why was he doing this to me, then a few minutes later I would be praying to him to help me again.
I knew it was the whiskey working on me, but it was hard to put it down and after drinking hard whiskey and cheap wine for a few years almost daily I knew it was controlling me. I was getting more scared every day.
I knew I was starting to lose it. Being on the bum, drinking and a lack of food and all the stress was starting to get to me, I could not think straight, I was so stressed and drunk most of the time. I would drink myself to sleep laying in the bushes and with out
knowing it, being drunk I urinated on myself while I was asleep. I wouldn't know it until the next day and had no way of showering, so I would be wet and smelly for days.
I knew I needed help badly but didn't know where to turn. Most days I would sit in this half broken chair, in dirty clothes that I've had on for months with my hair going every which way and my face all sun burned and blistered, a half empty bottle of whiskey in my pocket.
I would go sit in my broken chair half drunk with food dried on the front of my coat and smelling terrible. Feeling so bad it was like I only had a few days to live. Sitting there with an old broken plastic milk case in front of me and a small can sitting on it with a note that I scribbled on a small piece of paper with my hands shaking, it read please help me. I would get so hungry at times I would be bumming money from whoever I could. Feeling so nauseated and sick I bent forward and put my hands to my face covering my eyes. I felt a hand touch me on my shoulder and words that were so soft as he spoke, there was no other sound but his voice that I heard.
The voice said follow me. As I looked up at him it was hard to see him, he started walking across the street in to the glare of the sun. I was trying to see what
he looked like because of the sun shining directly behind him I couldn't make out how he looked.
As soon as I stood up and started to move I could tell my whole body was different. Suddenly I was not hungry and I had strength and for some reason I knew I would never want to drink liquor again. It was the strangest feeling that came over my body that I'll never be able to explain. I wasn't sure what was happening to me,
but I knew in these few seconds I was a new person.
I followed him across the street to this small church that was scary to me because of all the time being on that corner, I can't remember seeing a church there.
But strangely enough I was not scared, I felt like a new person from the moment he touched me and I didn't want to lose that. The people in the church took me in
and I heard one of them say in a low voice "we've been waiting for you."
With their help over the next five months I was a new person.
For months I couldn't believe what was happening to me. Many times I would look at myself in the mirror for long periods of time to see how much of a change there was in me and I would never forget this mirror, it was like magic to me every time I passed it. Every time I pass the mirror I would stop and thank the Lord for helping me.
I think back every so often about how rough it was for those two years.
The gentleman that touched me on the shoulder disappeared once I got to the steps in front of the church. I never saw him after that. Many times I would ask about him but nobody knew who he was. "I think I know who he was". After many months of help, they found me a job in a near by town.
I went to work but still kept in touch by telephone with the small church for a long period of time. I would joke with them when I would call and ask them if they ever wanted to get rid of that mirror I would take it. I lost contact with them the next time I tried to call, the phone was disconnected. So one weekend I had off I decided to go
by and surprise them with a visit. Pulling into Barstow in my car and turning down the street where the church was, and for a moment I thought I turned down the wrong street. I pulled over to the curb and stopped.
Than got out of the car and stood near the front fender overlooking this small portion of desert property across the street from where I used to sit and beg for money and food. I see a gas station attendant working at the station. I went across the street to him and asked, what happened to the church that used to be across the street? He said I've been working here at this station for 12 years and there has never been anything on that property. I said there used to be a church there, he looked at me a little strange and said maybe you have the wrong street, and then suddenly walked away. I went back across the street to where my car was parked. I started looking around on the property. There was absolutely no sign of anything ever being there.
I walked across the property to my car upset and confused and started crying thinking about how much they did to save my life. I'll never be able to thank them.
I was starting to think it was all a "dream".
I leaned against a tree near the sidewalk by my car and closed my eyes and I said to the Lord please don't let this happen to me. I put my hands over my eyes and started praying. Please "Lord show me a sign that it was not a dream.
After a few seconds as I was bringing my hands down a way from my eyes, between my fingers I saw something shining a few feet away from where
I was standing. As I walked over and picked it up and brushed the sand off of it.
I see it's a small piece of a "broken mirror." I instantly knew it was part of that
mirror that used to be in the church. I put it in my shirt pocket and got into my car.
As I started to drive away, I looked back across the property and said thank-you.

"Broken Mirror" A story by Norman Clifford