Jerry, part two.....

I had not expected to see Jerry again, to be honest. He told me he was a rather private person, and was fine on his own. The offer of a shower still stood, though, and when the knock came at 7 AM I assumed it was for that reason, but he had already been up, been to McDonalds and had a cup of coffee in hand. He just wanted to talk. So we talked.
We talked about his life some more. He told me that his mom and dad had passed away and had left him, and his siblings, about 80 acres and a house in West Plains, Missouri, and that his family wanted him to come home to live on it. He doesn’t much like being around people at times and hits the road to get away from them. I asked him what his goals were, or what did he dream of, or what did he enjoy doing. He thought for a moment---(Jerry is a very softspoken and thoughtful man, and not once did I ever sense that he was just reciting lines or telling me what he thought I wanted to hear, save for the very first minute I met him. He was walking on the road and I asked him where he was heading, and he told me that he had somewhere to be and that he was okay, lines that sounded like the rote answers to repeated police questioning.)
Anyway, after he realized that I was not the police, he was much more at ease and spontaneous. And after a long time thinking his simple answer was, “I love the smell of grass. I think I’d be happiest cutting grass.”
I asked him about the police, and if they had bothered him much, but he said that they actually were generally very nice to him, and had on occasion given him rides and even paid for a cheap motel room for him. This is something that I have also discovered as I walk…the police, despite vicious reputations at times, have been more than kind to me, and in fact, in Mississippi, where I expected a lot of questioning, I was not stopped even once, even on e awful morning after sleeping on a loading dock of a closed for the weekend business, and emerging from the parking lot right in front od a Corinth, Mississippi cop, who basically ignored me.
I tried to offer Jerry some food, but he said he was good. He was going to hit the intersection with his sign to try to get a few bucks, and he thanked me for my company, which he really seemed to enjoy, as did I, and he left.
A few hours later I myself departed and as I rolled across the street to the sidewalk, who should I see but Jerry, backpack on and heading North. I asked him where he was off to next, and he told me that he thought about what I had said to him about having someone at home that cares for him (he has a girlfriend worried to death about him, although she accepts his lifestyle) and he had decided to go home for a while. I told him that I thought it would be a good thing for him and to just try it for a week, to see if it took. He agreed. We shook hands, and parted for the last time.
I hope to see Jerry again. What a decent human being…