Back at the Flagstaff Train Station

 

The Commander and the Bums

The commander of the free world—Kadizzle’s wife—had a doctor’s appointment in Flagstaff, which left the lowly foot soldier with time to kill. What does a man do when turned loose in a strange town with hours on his hands? Kadizzle does what Kadizzle always does: he goes to watch the trains rumble by.

At the depot, fate served up a rerun. The same rail-side philosopher he’d met on a previous visit was back on the bench. A bum by appearance, but a scholar by conversation. He had once been an educated man, but he traded in the rat race for the liberty of nothing. His philosophy was simple: happiness requires less than we think.

As they compared notes on life, a woman wandered over—another traveler on the margins. Her mind was frayed, her possessions in a tattered bag. She asked the two men to guard her worldly goods while she ran to the store. Kadizzle slipped her a few bucks and told her to bring him a Coke and something for herself. That’s how commerce works at the edge of the empire: one person buys time, the other buys sugar water, and dignity is bartered in between.

Kadizzle has always liked bums. Since childhood, he has admired the peculiar freedom they enjoy—the ability to exist outside the petty chores and schedules the rest of us are chained to. Their kingdom has no mortgages, no HOA meetings, no quarterly reports. Just benches, boxcars, and the slow shuffle of migration.

The philosopher-bum explained that Flagstaff’s nights were growing cold. Winter was coming. His plan? Head south and west where the sun still has a little mercy. Bums migrate with the seasons, just like billionaires with private jets. Both chase warm weather, but only one leaves no carbon footprint.

Maybe the rest of us are the fools. The bums roll with the weather, laugh at the system, and drink a Coke bought with somebody else’s pity. They own nothing—and in that, they own everything.

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