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Buck Buffalo

I can still see Buck walking down the back alley behind our house. Bent over with a ragged top coat over tattered pants and shirt Buck wobbled down the alley. His stick thrown over his shoulder with a dirty burlap bag tied to his stick.

His sack was always filled things but I never dared to speak to him. Buck's face was rough and dirty with a beard, which always curled up. It was just a wild growth on his face. Sometimes I would hide behind the shed next to the back alley and watch him. He stopped at every trashcan on the alley. He peed into the trash drum an if he saw something in it he would stick his nasty hand down into the drum and pull it out. He would take a quick look to see if anyone was watching before he stuffed the things into his burlap bag. Buck would check every trash barrel along the alleyway.

I was not the only kid on the block to see Buck walk the alleyway. Everyone had seen his at one time or another. One time I ask Mama about Buck. She told me to stay away from him. He liked to take little kids off with him to at the end of the alleyway. Lincoln Heights; the colored people live there in shacks. He always walked down the alley where I lived. He would leave his shack early in the morning and walk to the river, which is located at the end of the long alley. A bunch of us kids talked about following him to see what he did at the river.
We never got enough guts to follow him. We were all scared to let him know we were watching him. This went on for years. He walked that back alley everyday. In the winter
He waould wrap a rag around his head to keep his ears warm. Even when ther was snow on the ground he would make trek down the alley. But buck never walked the alley on Sundays as far as I came remember.

The one time he caught sight of me peeping at him behind the shed and it almost made me faint. I could see his dirty black eyes in his dirty face and his snaggle-toothed mouth
When he said what you looking at?" Buck's voice was rough and loud I did not know what to do. So I made a run for it to the house. As I went through the back door I locked it behind me. I just knew that Buck was going to stuff me down his bag and take me to his shack at the town dump.

When I was about 16 years old, I noticed that Buck did not come down the alley for several days. I was old enough to drive so I took Daddy's 1953 dodge truck and drove to the dump.

When I finally got the attention of one of the bulldozer drivers he turned his bull dozzer so I could hear. I ask him if he had seen the old man with the stick and burlap bag. He said they found him dead in his shack about five days ago.

I felt so ashamed that I had been unkind to this old man. I went to the funeral home to see his body. Buck did not look like the dirty old man I use to see walking the alley for all those years. The undertaker washed his hair, shaved his beard off, and put a clean suit of clothes on him. I placed a single red carnation in his hand and said" I am sorry if I hurt your feelings.''

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