By Jeff Hampton
“Hi Ruth, I’ve got another thirty minutes of work here. See you in about forty.”
Herb Fuller was a hard-driving boss and micromanager who pushed his people hard and himself even harder. He had built his namesake Fuller Corporation from nothing into an industry powerhouse, but success had been expensive: he had no close friends, and his marriage and family had come second to his business. In fact, as financially successful as the business was, it never showed up on one of those annual “Best Places to Work” lists. Herb Fuller was respected, but he was not liked.
Downstairs, the parking garage was empty as Herb walked to his Mercedes, but ten feet from the car door he heard the shuffle of feet behind him. Before he could turn to see who was there, he felt a bump on the head and then everything went dark.
An hour later, two men came down the alley and were poking around in the large dumpster at the end of the parking garage when one saw a bare foot sticking out from beneath the cardboard boxes and plastic garbage bags.
“Whoa . . . come on, Nigel . . . let’s get out of here.”
“No, Buster, we can’t just walk away.” Nigel climbed into the dumpster and uncovered the rest of the man. He was dressed in a wrinkled denim shirt and dirty khakis. Nigel checked his pulse and then gently rolled him left and right to check for signs of injury.
“He’s alive,” said Nigel. “We need to help him.”
“We can’t call anyone. They’ll think we did this,” said Buster.
“No, I mean let’s take him home,” said Nigel.
They loaded him into their shopping cart and pushed him some blocks to the tent city under the highway overpass where they carefully slid him into their tent and covered him with blankets.
“What are we going to do with him?” Buster asked.
“We’ll let him sleep this off and check on him in the morning.”
“Shouldn’t we get him to a doctor or at least take him to a fire station?”
“And have him get thrown in jail?” Nigel asked. “You see the way he’s dressed. He’s just another bum sleeping off a hard run of drinking. What would you want done if it was you?”
Buster didn’t answer.
So they let him sleep, taking turns snoozing in the other side of the tent until dawn, when the man stirred and crawled out of the tent, dazed and confused.
“What . . . who . . . ?” he asked as he struggled to get his feet under him.
“Not too fast,” said Nigel. “Have a seat right here.” He eased the man over to a lawn chair. “We found you last night. I reckon you’re feeling pretty hung over. Must’ve been some party.”
“Party?” the man asked. He searched his memory but there was no party; there was nothing.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Nigel. “It’ll come back to you, and when it does you’ll be ready to get back home or wherever it is you need to be.”
But it didn’t come back to him—not that day or the next. And without any recollection of who he was or how he got into this situation, there was no sense of what “home” might be. All he knew was what he saw in front of him: a homeless camp under a highway overpass in the middle of a city. In time he learned the name of that city, and with nothing to go on and not knowing that he wasn’t homeless, he joined the ranks of those who were. Nigel and Buster made room for him in their camp, and they wrangled him some shoes and socks, a winter coat, and some clothes that fit him better than what he was wearing when they found him. They also introduced him around, and he learned there were some in the camp who were working to get back into the flow of mainstream life, some who were stuck in this place, and some who were confused and dangerous. And then there were those like Nigel and Buster who had grown to accept life on the street.
Ten minutes from downtown, on a quiet, tree-lined street decorated for the holidays, Ruth Fuller sat at the dining table with two police officers.
“So, let me get this right: He said he’d be home in forty minutes and now it’s been almost four days? And you’re just calling us now?” one of them asked.
“Well, it was late when he called, and I had already gone to bed. And then by the time I got up, I thought he was already gone again. He’s never here very long. And then I didn’t hear from him all that day or the next, and, well, he’s got his life, and me and the kids . . . we’ve got ours.”
“That accounts for the first two days. What about the two days since then?”
Ruth paused. “Let’s just say that Herb and I have been in a strange place the last few years. I don’t know what all goes on with him. It’s not unusual for him to disappear for hours and then call me from New York or Europe or wherever he’s doing business. But he’s always been here when I need him, like at the Christmas gala for our foundation in four weeks. Anyway, here’s a picture of him, but you probably don’t need it. He’s well known around town—at least he is in the business community.”
The officer looked at the photo. The man in the picture looked vaguely familiar. “Okay, ma’am, we’ll let you know if anything comes up. Meanwhile, you do the same.”
The next day, Ruth met with Fuller’s board and told them that her husband was missing, but for his safety and for the financial health of the company they would not announce that news until there was more information. For now, they would say he was taking a leave of absence.
“So how are you feeling today, mister?” Nigel asked their guest. “And while I’m asking questions, what’s your name?”
The man looked down at his hands, searching for something familiar. But there was nothing: no ring, no scars. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“Well then, we won’t pin anything on you that doesn’t fit. We’ll just call you Mister for now.”
Mister shrugged. “OK.”
“So today, Mister, we’re going to make the rounds. You can join us if you’re up to it.”
With nothing else to do, Mister followed Nigel and Buster and learned that “the rounds” was a long, circuitous walk through the back alleys lining the office-warehouses on the south end of downtown. Pushing a wobbly shopping cart, they searched dumpsters for anything they could sell or trade, and anything they might find useful at the camp.
At one stop, while Nigel and Buster dug around inside a dumpster, Mister poked around in some boxes sitting on the ground. In one he found two wads of tissue paper and unwrapped them to find a cracked, red glass Christmas ornament and a small ceramic figure. It was a bearded man in a long flowing robe and sandals. He was cradling a small white lamb in his arms, but one of his arms had broken off.
“Christmas,” Mister said softly as he turned the figure around in his hands.
“So, you remember Christmas?” Nigel asked, looking at him from the top of the dumpster.
“Oh yes,” Mister said, holding the figure in his hand. “I remember when I was little and my parents would decorate for Christmas. Mother would let us help set out a nativity scene, but one year my sister and I got a little rambunctious, I dropped one of the shepherds and . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the broken shepherd now in his hands. He tried to move this fragile memory from his childhood forward toward the present, but his thoughts were as ragged as the rough edges of the shepherd’s broken limb.
Nigel’s voice brought him back to the present. “Yeah, that decorating and all that’s fun for the kids for sure . . . but then kids grow up and life gets difficult.”
Mister looked at Nigel and Buster, dressed in mismatched outfits of clothing they had obviously found on trips such as this. And then he looked down at himself and saw the same. He wondered: Is this really who I am; is this who I’ve always been? And then he looked down at the broken shepherd in his hand.
“So, when is Christmas?” he asked.
“Three weeks, give or take a few days,” said Nigel.
“And . . . how do you . . . how do we celebrate Christmas here?”
Nigel turned the cart and started back down the alley, talking as he went.
“We go to the city shelter at noon where they have a big spread for everyone, and then we mostly just get on about our regular doings, whatever that may be. Folks with families may make phone calls. I know a couple of men who have families in the area, and they’ll come get’em for the day.”
“Really . . . they’re homeless but they have family nearby?”
“Yes, it’s complicated. There’s some estranged from their kin for whatever reason; some who live under a cloud of shame of some sort and find it hard to connect.”
“What about you?” Mister asked.
“I lost track of my people years ago,” said Nigel. “Just one of those things. And Buster was raised in foster homes and never had anyone to call his own. He came back from the war and tried to make a fresh start but nothing quite suited him. So we have each other. Brothers, right?”
“Right,” said Buster, and the two men bumped fists.
Mister pondered that as they continued on their rounds. All the while he kept putting his hand in his coat pocket, touching that figure and returning to that childhood scene. And he kept searching his mind, but as hard as he pushed, he couldn’t bring himself forward from that childhood memory.
That evening, during a meal of canned soup heated on a small propane stove, Mister pulled the shepherd out of his pocket again. Nigel watched him as he brushed off the wool lent from his pocket.
“You like that shepherd, huh?” Nigel asked.
“It’s just a connection to who I am—or who I was,” Mister said.
“You think you were a shepherd?” Buster asked.
“No, of course not. I just mean the memory of having nativity figures like this when I was a child.” “
“We had those too,” said Nigel. “I liked the kings best. They had all the fancy clothes and the goods. People stepped aside when they were coming through. What about you, Buster?”
Buster thought a moment. “I think my favorites are the shepherds like that one there. They got to see the big show and be part of the scene. They sort of led the way to the stable for others to follow, and then they disappeared back into the night and nobody bothered them. They were like us.”
That night, as the city around them went to bed and the traffic above them quieted, Mister pulled the broken shepherd out of his pocket again. As he held it in his hand, he began to see the other figures in his mind: the angels, kings, sheep and cattle, Mary and Joseph, and of course the baby Jesus. He wondered about the Christ child—wondered how and when he knew who he was and what he was to do? And until then, did he feel lost and abandoned like Mister felt now? Or did he become who he was by simply accepting the conditions into which he was dropped by his father in heaven? And then he wondered how he could remember so well that story of the Christ child who was the messiah, and yet he couldn’t recall his own story. He felt as broken as the shepherd in his hand.
The next morning, Mister asked Nigel and Buster, “Can you show me where you found me?” They took him up into downtown and to the dumpster behind the parking garage next to the office tower.
“We come through here once a month to see what the office folks are letting go of,” said Nigel. “That’s how Buster got those wingtips he’s so proud of.” Buster clicked his heels together with a big, wide grin.
Mister walked around the dumpster and then looked up at the parking garage and the office tower, looking for anything that might tickle a memory, but there was nothing. He heard some talking and looked over to see some well-dressed business people carrying gift bags across the drive from the garage to the office building. He watched as the glass doors opened, and from inside he saw the glow of a towering Christmas tree and heard the sound of carols echoing through the lobby. As the doors closed, he noticed the sign above them: Fuller Tower.
As the three men came out of the alley and back onto the sidewalk, a black Mercedes drove by. Ruth was riding in the passenger seat, her adult son driving. They’d been to the office to pick up some of Herb’s belongings as well as to look for any hints of where he might have disappeared to. As she looked out the window, Ruth saw the three men walking up the sidewalk. She turned to look forward again but then did a double take because something had caught her eye.
“Wait . . . pull over,” she said. They sat with the engine idling and waited for the men to walk by, and that’s when she saw it again: The taller of the three had a distinctive lean toward the right when he took a step with his right foot. She watched it over and over again until she was sure and jumped out of the car.
“Herb?”
The men were talking and paid no attention as they moved on.
“Herb . . . Herbert!”
Something in Mister’s memory clicked and he stopped walking. He turned and looked to see the woman standing beside the car. He cocked his head like a dog, as if that would help him see something familiar. Ruth did the same as she walked toward him, and then she stretched out her hand and brushed through the heavy growth of beard on his chin. And there it was—the one-inch scar he got the same night he busted his knee trying to make that first down for the high school football team.
“Herb . . . where . . . what?”
“Dad?” came a second voice, this time from the driver of the Mercedes. Mister just stood and looked at them both.
“Wait a minute, now, Mister is with us and . . . ,” Nigel said, but Mister touched his arm to quiet him. He looked into the eyes of this woman and this young man and sensed a connection. He nodded to Nigel and Buster to let them know it would be okay, and then he walked with these new strangers to their car. In ten minutes, he was home.
A week later, Herb was standing at Ruth’s side at the foundation gala. He pretended to know everyone, but it was just an act. His memory never came back completely, but he quietly embraced the new life he had been given. He resigned from the business he had built, leaving it in the hands of individuals he had hand-picked years earlier for just such a day. He joined Ruth and put all his energy into the foundation, adding a new twist by making sure they focused some of their attention and resources on the needs of the homeless. He created a special fund for that purpose: The Broken Shepherd Project.
Ruth welcomed this new version of Herb—there were pieces of him that reminded her of the man she had fallen in love with and married—and yet she knew he was restless because his new life story was incomplete. He had been not more than ten minutes from home the whole time he was gone, and yet he had traveled a million miles to a different place and time. Desperate to connect the broken pieces, he went back to the homeless camp and found it had been cleared out and cleaned up. When he inquired with the police about it, he was told all the residents had been moved to shelters and housing. So he went to those places and not only did he not find Nigel and Buster, but he couldn’t find anybody who recognized his description of them. It was as if they had never existed.
Or maybe they were, as Buster had suggested, shepherds who had been part of the scene and then quietly disappeared into the night. They might have been a little broken, like the shepherd figure that now stood on Herb’s desk, but in their simple way they had shown him the way home.