_Depression
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Story 1
The World's Greatest
R. Kelly
“I used to be the king of this world,” a lonely, homeless man muttered as he walked along the crowded Manhattan sidewalk. He scrunched his nose as a foul smell wafted through the air, and nearly gagged. “I never let my land get this disgusting.”
The man continued his aimless trekking, crossing roads with the inexhaustible mass of people who, seeing his wispy gray hair and ratty clothing, kept a respectable distance. His self-contained musings kept him occupied, and though many of those who walked past heard what he said, most dismissed his comments as the talk of a crazed man. He said he was king of the world, but with his wardrobe, he was no more than a sewer-dweller. “My world was never this disgusting,” he repeated, appalled by the state of the city.
As he turned into a dark, grimy alley, pulling his two overcoats close in the early August evening to ward off the cold, the man’s disgusted demeanor turned nasty. “See what happens to the world when there’s no one to lead it?” he asked, almost angrily, to his shadow. “This whole place is going to hell.”
Closing his tired, golden-brown eyes, the man brought to mind memories of the time he was king. He stood, clean-shaven and tall, before a crowd of his subjects, shrieking in joy and calling his name. “King!” they shouted, the many voices joining to form a single, high-pitched chant. “King! King!”
An announcer’s voice, projected over the praise, introduced the man, whose bright smile and gleaming, golden eyes shone upon the crowd of his followers. “Thomas ‘King’ Anderson!” the deep voice boomed, and was met with an uproar of cheering and whole-hearted applause. “And, his opponent, Rick ‘The Scar’ Geyer!”
With the referee stepping into the center of the ring, The King turned from his adoring fans and faced his latest victim. ‘The Scar,’ Rick Geyer, was the proverbial new kid in the boxing world, having only begun his professional career three months prior to his match with The King. “I can take anyone,” the eighteen-year-old, fleet-footed boxer had said to an interviewer. “Even ‘The Tyrant.’”
The King strode forward confidently. His boxing career had seen two record knockout times recorded in his first year, and only three defeats throughout the eight long years he had fought. This match was, for all purposes, a publicity stunt. The young upstart had challenged the undisputed champion, and the sport’s coordinators had seen an opportunity to make some big money on a match between the two. Naturally, everyone expected The King to win.
And he did. The King knocked out his opponent in the second round, silencing any who had thought of challenging him. “He came into my kingdom and threatened my throne,” King said after the match, the bruises on his forehead and cheek hurting less than they might have to another boxer. “But I’m a forgiving ruler,” he continued. “This… ‘Scar,’ he can be my court jester.”
The media loved him. The throngs of fans loved him. Thomas Anderson, a boxer by trade with a college degree in Sociology, was the King of his world. But his fame came to an abrupt halt when, in a suspicious hit-and-run accident, he was blindsided by a large, blue SUV and run over. His right arm had been broken at the elbow, his left leg was shattered, and five ribs were completely broken. The doctors said he would never headline again.
The King was dethroned in a matter of days as the newly nicknamed ‘Court Jester’ entertained audiences across the world. “The Joke’s on Who?” newspaper headlines read; “The Reign is Over,” Sports Illustrated reported.
In his alley, sitting on the least damp part of the ground he could find and leaning against a brick wall, the King opened his eyes. “This was my world,” he said. The words seemed to empower him, and he rose to his feet as his voice climbed in volume. “This is my world!” he chanted, drawing curious and questioning glances from passerby on the sidewalk. “My world!”
In his rush of adrenaline, the former star raced from the alley, his coattails flapping behind him as he pumped his fists in the air. “Thomas, The King, Anderson! The King! This is my world! No more sticky sidewalks, no more nauseating smells! I’ll fix this world! This is all my world!”
Cars stopped as The King ran across the road, shouting his decree at the top of his lungs. Those smart enough to give him room stepped as far to the side as possible, while those who were not found themselves face-to-face with a man possessed. “I’ll take back this world! I am the King!”
His frenzied cries of kingship carried him to Times Square, where he stopped at a corner to better speak his cause. “I’ll clean this world! This is my world! I’ll clean it!” he shouted, waving his determined fists at any who would meet his eye.
One man, a disheveled businessman with an obviously sour attitude, laughed at the King as he walked past. “If you want to clean this place, you’d better have enough soap!”
“I’m the King of the world!” Anderson called. “Give me the soap and I’ll clean everything!”
When his raving died out in the night, he returned to his alley, still determined to follow through with his decrees. And upon his return to Times Square the next day, he found a single person waiting for him.
A young reporter, Arianna Geyer had heard the King’s shouts on her way home the previous evening, and she was hard-pressed for a story. This crazed man might be her last chance at landing a solid career, and she was determined to take whatever action she had to in order to put a story together. She met him with a hesitant smile and a half-hearted handshake, introducing herself and asking, "What exactly are you planning to do?"
"I'm going to fix everything!" the King exclaimed, overjoyed to find someone interested in his cause. "This whole world! I'll fix it all!"
"And how, exactly?" Arianna asked, jotting down the seemingly deranged man's statements in her small, spiral notepad. "What can you do to fix this city, let alone the world?"
The King was silent for a long moment, his mouth hanging partly open and curved upward in a lazy smile. "I need soap," he said finally, wagging a finger and beginning to pace past a row of newspaper dispensers. "Lots of soap."
"Soap?" the young, fairly attractive brunette asked, amused. She shook her head at the former star's eager nodding, and spoke the first question that came to mind. "And how are you going to get the soap?"
Again, the King stood silent. Then, turning to the nearest news dispenser, he pulled out a copy of the New York Times and showed it to the reporter. "I'll make the headlines." He shook the paper violently, a giddy smile plastered on his worn out face. "If I get the soap, I can fix this world."
Arianna nodded, seeing her opportunity reflected in this homeless man's eyes. "I'll help," she said. "I'm a reporter. I'll write your story."
Laughing happily, and sensing that his plans might become a reality, the King threw the newspaper into the air. "Let's do it! Let's make the headlines!"
"Well, sir," Arianna cautioned, "I need to write the story. And to do that, I'll need to interview you." She flipped to a new page of her notepad and checked the ink of her pen. All set, she raised her eyes to the homeless man, dressed in little more than secondhand rags, and began her questioning. "What's your name?" she asked. "Where do you live?"
"I'm the King!" Anderson said, smiling wide. "And I live at two-fifty-and-a-half, East Tenth Street!"
After a moment of obvious hesitation, the reporter jotted down the information. After her next seven questions were answered in a similar fashion, however, she shook her head and clicked her pen closed. "Listen, King," she said, sounding fatigued, "I can't write this story unless you tell me more. What's your real name?"
"King," Anderson said, matter-of-factly. "The King."
Arianna sighed, dejected. "And what do you do for a living, other than 'wanting to fix the world?'"
"Well," the man said, scratching at his unkempt beard. "I used to fight. I used to be great. The King."
With a sudden rush of realization, Arianna Geyer dropped her pen. As she fumbled to retrieve it, she stared at the homeless man. "Fighting?" she asked, tentative. "Like, boxing?"
The King nodded happily, clapping his hands. Making a fist, he drifted into a daydream of his days as a star. The roar of his fans drowned out the sounds of the Manhattan traffic around him, and his smile grew to comical proportions as he imagined the world chanting his name. "I am the king of this world," he said, wistfully. "And now I need to clean it up for everyone."
"Thomas Anderson," the reporter said simply, smiling. Knowing who the man was, she felt her chances of landing a story grow exponentially. "The King of boxing." Anderson grinned upon hearing his name. He reached his fist out to the reporter, who tapped it with her own. "Where have you been?"
The man laughed, spreading his arms wide. He looked around him with a great smile, his eyes reclaiming some of the sparkle they held throughout his glory days. "I want to clean this world," he said. "All I need is soap."
Arianna filled half of her notepad during her interview, and at the end of the day offered to buy Anderson dinner. He had refused, disappearing in the mass of commuters as he walked to his alley. The young reporter, anxious to begin typing her story, picked up a light, fast-food dinner and hurried to her small apartment. She unlocked her door quickly and rushed inside, flipping on the lights and locking her door as she scarfed down her hamburger.
With the story already partially written in her head, the blonde sat in her metal folding chair and powered up her small laptop, waiting impatiently as the system booted. She opened her text-editing program and began typing almost as soon as the cursor appeared in the upper left corner of the paper. Her fingers struck the keys rhythmically, pounding out a steady pace as Arianna typed through the night.
The young reporter had submitted her story at five in the morning, and was back in Times Square before seven, waiting for Anderson with three cups of Starbucks' strongest coffee. When the King arrived a half hour later, Arianna handed him the warm cup and shook his hand. "I gave the story in," she said. "I should get a call soon if the Times decides to run it."
"I'm the King," Anderson said, smiling as he drank deeply from the foam cup. "They have to put it in. And then, I'll be able to fix the world!"
Arianna laughed lightly at the man's obvious confidence, and no sooner had she opened her mouth to caution his enthusiasm when her phone rang. She checked the number quickly before flipping open the phone and saying, "Hello?" Her face brightened as she listened to the voice on the other end, and when she finally hung up a minute later, she let out a small, overjoyed squeal. "We did it!" she exclaimed, hugging Anderson and ignoring the smell that radiated from his person. "My boss says the story's going to be on the front page!"
The King laughed happily, pumping his fists. "Now I'll get the soap!" he said, giddy. "I'll start right here, and I'll clean the whole world!"
"I know you will," the reporter said, patting the man on his back. "But you might want to use that soap on yourself first."
The two laughed in victory, and Arianna convinced the King to let her buy him lunch. "Get whatever you want," she said as they walked into the nearest McDonalds. "You'll need all the energy you can get to clean the world with just soap."
The two ate happily, Anderson describing his plan in between bites of his meal - seven double cheeseburgers, three large french fries, and two large diet cokes. "I'll take the soap," he said, "and I'll scrub down every sidewalk and every street. Then I'll give out the soap to everyone in the world, to clean them. And then," he paused for a long moment, "I'll take the rest of the soap and clean it all again."
"That'll take forever," Arianna said. "Won't you need help?"
"I'm the King of the world!" the man said. "If anyone wants to help, they can. But I could do it all myself."
At the table behind the King, a man laughed and turned to face the former boxer. "You're nuts, man," he said, shaking his head. "But I admire your guts. Hey, I tell ya what. If you ever get this plan o' yours off the ground, gimme a call. The name's Straeder. Will Straeder."
"Will Straeder!" Anderson said, happily. "You'd better be ready to get dirty."
"I thought you were getting clean," the man said, winking. He got up to leave and saluted the reporter with a smile before taking off, leaving Anderson even more ecstatic than ever.
Arianna's interview ran the headline of the New York Times, her article titled, "The King's Dirty World." Within twenty-four hours of the newspaper's circulation, blogs all over the internet buzzed to life, people everywhere talking about the crazed King. Again he became a joke, and to most, his plan was little more than a sarcastic line to tell friends.
Though the news story had become a veritable bust, Anderson saw the interview as a victory. People who heard him raving in Times Square tossed bars of soap at him. He was bruised and sore at the end of every day, but he would not give up. He had a plan; he would clean his world.
Arianna and Anderson met once more at the corner in Times Square, the young reporter having just submitted her latest story to her editor. She came armed with a bar of soap, a spray-container of window cleaner, and a roll of paper towels, all of which she carried in a small cardboard box. "So," she said, placing the box atop the New York Times' newspaper dispenser, "are you ready to clean?"
A passerby laughed at the young lady, shaking his head as he walked down the dirty sidewalk. But while some gave Arianna and the King odd looks, a few stopped and stood by, silently watching as the two began their work. The boxing star took his bar of soap and began rubbing it along the sidewalk, enthusiastic to be finally setting his plan in motion, and a crowd began to form around him.
"The idiot's not doing anything!" one of the watchers shouted, laughing.
"He needs to wet the sidewalk, and the soap," another called.
"Anyone gonna give him water?" a third, faceless voice asked. "That's The King, you know. Best boxer to ever live."
Anderson worked silently for ten minutes before sitting on his knees to assess his progress. Satisfied with his work on one spot of the sidewalk, he turned to a separate spot and took his slowly disappearing soap to it. He continued to rub, unaware, as a man walked forward with a hair brush and a cup of water. The man, wearing a jogging suit and sweating lightly, poured his drink over the foot-wide spot of soap the King had made, and used his hair brush to agitate the soap into action. "You know," the man said, finally getting the King's attention, "that soap's not going to do anything unless you wet it and really work at it."
"It still won't do anything, you idiots," a bystander said.
The man in the jogging suit turned in the direction of the voice, smiling. "It doesn't matter what the soap does to the ground," he said, calmly. "It matters what it does to you."
"It makes me think you're both crazy," the man in the crowd called, and with a snide laugh, pushed his way out of the mass of onlookers.
Arianna, Anderson, and the nameless volunteer worked steadily for almost an hour, people constantly passing cups of water to the three cleaners, when a Manhattan cop pushed his way to the group and stopped them. "You're causing a scene," he said. "You have to move along."
"We're just cleaning," Anderson said, his lazy voice almost lost in the echoing traffic. "You want us to stop cleaning?"
The police officer thought for a moment, sighed, and shook his head. "I don't want you to stop cleaning," he said. "But you need to do it without holding up the pedestrians."
With the crowd unwilling to part, Arianna and the jogging-suit man packed up the cleaning materials and walked away, the crowd parting as they left. "Well, at least we tried," the young reporter said.
"Give it a few hours," the man in the jogging suit said, his hands in his pockets as he walked. "Something's bound to happen."
The local news channels ran stories of the Times Square clean-up, sparking the internet back into action. As the web blogs again labeled the event as laughable, a small debate began on a current events forum. Groups of activists for multiple programs used King's actions as an initiative for their own purposes. By the next week, groups of protestors turned from picket lines to soap lines, cleaning sidewalks to get their message across.
The upstart of 'Sidewalk Scrubber' activists sparked the media to act. Fox News pulled Arianna Geyer onto their shows for interviews, and when they finished, she was called on by NBC for more of the same. Anderson soon became a part of the news circus, being juggled from talk show to talk show to speak his mind.
The man in the jogging suit disappeared into the crowd of New Yorkers, watching the media attention with a knowing smile. Soon after helping the King, he flew to Las Vegas, Nevada; he stepped into the boxing ring in his striped shirt, holding a bar of soap in his pants pocket. At the end of the night's match, he gave the winning boxer the bar of soap, telling the man to 'follow the King, and clean the world.'
Arianna and Anderson gained enough money to rent the former boxer his own apartment, and they continued to pass their message on talk shows for weeks before the media finally calmed down. The King became a newspaper headline once again, and when the internet buzzed, it was with praise and respect, not laughter. The King had regained his throne, and every week he walked out into his kingdom with a bar of soap, a hair brush, and a small bucket of water. Every week, the King, Thomas Anderson, cleaned a sidewalk corner.
"I may not be giving soap out to everyone," the King once said on a news program, "but I'm sure not letting it go to waste. I love my world as much as anyone, and I want to clean it up." As the applause died down, he continued. "I don't really care if anyone else helps, or if anyone else cares. I'm tired of smelling crap whenever I walk outside."
Thomas 'The King' Anderson died at the age of seventy-three. His funeral was held in Manhattan, and the procession went past every corner that he cleaned. Bars of soap, with his name cut into their faces, were laid along the sidewalks, to commemorate what he had done. His plan lifted dozens of activists into the national spotlight; his mission led to a concerted effort by New Yorkers to 'Keep the King's Streets Clean.'
Arianna Geyer, daughter of Rick 'Court Jester' Geyer, carried on the King's message for twenty years after his death. She and her father brought Sidewalk Scrubbers to Africa, to help the cause of the third-world countries that desperately needed help. When Arianna died, at the age of eighty-one, she left the King's message on her bed in the form of a cardboard box. Inside the box, dusty but undisturbed, were a single, half-used bar of soap; an empty bottle of window cleaner, and a hair brush.
"He may have been crazy," a Fox News reporter said, standing at the grave of Thomas Anderson, "and he may have been homeless. But Thomas Anderson was the King. And not just any king. He was the World's Greatest. And we will all miss him."
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< Message edited by _Depression -- 8/24/2008 3:03:26 >
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