by Robert Westfall

Created on: November 27, 2011

It was a cold and rainy night when I met a crazy man named Leonard. He was sitting towards the back of Duke’s Place, a “shiny” diner of red and chrome inside and out. I’d been behind the steering wheel of my eighteen-wheeler for ten straight hours and was ready for a break so Sally, the regular night shift waitress, brought me my usual; a hot cup of coffee and an ashtray. I looked to my left as I lit a Marlboro and took a sip…and I knew better…but I asked her: 

“Sally, what’s the deal with the hobo?”

He was dressed like one wearing dirty jeans, a brown toboggan on that may have been tan at one time and an old army jacket. He’d smoked so much that his ashtray looked like the top of Mt. Everest and you count the coffee refills by the brown streaks down the side of his cup. 

“That’s Spooky Leonard,” she whispered, “and don’t pay any attention to him or you’ll be—“ 

“Sorry to bother you, driver, but can you spare a light?” he asked as he held a Camel out and scared the brown out of me and Sally. I obliged because I didn’t have much of a choice. I studied him as he inhaled and blew the smoke out of both nostrils looking like a fire breathing dragon.

I had some time to kill—and I thought then I’d like to be a writer—so he was a character study…so to speak.

“So tell me something, pal, why do they call you Spooky?” I asked.

“Because I say a lot of scary stuff. Stuff most people can’t or won’t believe.”

Okay, I bit. “Like what?”

“Like there’s this person named Anwar who says he’s from a galaxy far, far away, and comes to get me every year about this time.”

“Why now,” I asked trying to hold back my laughter. Funny thing was Sally wasn’t smiling; she was pretty much petrified.

“Tonight’s my birthday. I’m forty, but I made a deal with the big ‘A’ last year.”

I couldn’t help myself. “What’d you do, offer him a good price on his saucer?”

He looked straight at me with his dark brown to almost black eyes, not blinking; almost hypnotic. He cracked a smile that chilled me to the bone. “What size shoes do you wear?” he asked me.

“Size twelve.” I didn’t want to answer but I couldn’t stop.

“About a thirty-eight waist?”

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