Diz didn't know the town's name and he didn't see any signs as he came in. The dirt roads were barely indistinguishable from the hardpan desert. There were the old shells of buildings, where most of the boards had fallen out and you could see right through them. Some buildings had old painted signs, but they were worn down, rusted and faded beyond recognition. Diz knew nothing about history, and could only imagine some old western movie with a saloon, a jail, maybe a bank. Diz had tried to look up this place on a book called “Ghost Towns of California,” but he couldn’t find it.

The town had a single road, and all the buildings were scattered around at random on either side of the road. From one end of the street, as Diz approached, he could see all the way to the other side of the town. Diz had lived all his life in LA, until recently. Although he had been in many small towns, seeing from one end of town to another was still a novelty.

In the middle of the dirt road, in the middle of town, there were about 20 people clustered around a bonfire. Diz wondered at creating a bonfire in the middle of the day, as hot as it was.

Diz wanted to say something to the men who had been on the train with him, but when he turned to look he could see that they had already picked out old friends with their eyes, were already preparing their greetings.

Philosophically, Diz believed that homeless people were as good as anyone else. Philosophically, Diz hated anyone who discriminated against them, or sneered at them, or walked to the other side of the street to avoid them. When it came down to it, though, they always made him nervous. They all seemed tired, tense, full of hidden rage. They were as friendly as any other group Diz knew, but just being around them sometimes made him feel exhausted. When he had been given this assignment, he had dreaded the idea of all the homeless people he would have to talk to. Yet the people here didn’t seem tired or tense or full of anger. They seemed to be kings. Maybe this was eden for the homeless, or maybe the old bum had been right: maybe there were the best homeless people in the country.

Diz started taking mental notes as soon as he approached. Punk haircuts and anarchy patches: none. Women: a few, but the men had their arms around them possessively. Age range: Nobody seemed to be younger than thirty, while a couple of people could have been in their eighties. Diz had to be the youngest person there. It was so hard to tell with homeless people, though. Transportation: there were a few vans and motorcycles parked outside town, but not enough to have brought all these people. Most must have come by train, the same as Diz, or hitchhiked here on the highway that was supposed to be nearby. Animals: A number of dogs, some tethered to backpacks, some running free. Drugs: clear bottles of whisky were being passed around. People were smoking little roll-your-own cigarettes, but the only smell Diz could discern was tobacco. Style: A lot of beards, cowboy hats, a few ponytails. Sort of part biker, part cowboy, part hippie. Scanning the crowd he saw mostly faded blue denim, dark-red canvas of backpacks, salt and pepper hair.

They were not what his mother would call “well-groomed” but their clothes straight, their beards were trimmed, some looked like they had recently bathed. Diz wondered if this is what these people looked like all the time, or if they had put effort in to looking good for this event.

Dental hygiene: Poor. As people talked he saw many missing or yellowed or broken teeth. Diz decided he should avoid grinning, if possible, as his teeth might betray him.

As Diz and his train-mates approached, a man stood up. He had a cowboy hat on, with a light-brown vest and a bolo tie. “Welcome,” he said in a theatrical voice, “Welcome friends, new and old, to the sixth world convention of bums, winos, hobos, panhandlers and vagrants.” Diz did the math in his head: six conventions every five years meant that people had been doing this before Diz was born. “Admission is free, like all good things in life.” He stared right at Diz. “People with homes are not invited, not homes that you paid for leastwise.” Diz’ heart leapt and he wondered if he was being issued a challenge, whether he'd have to defend his bumhood. He waited, standing there, unsure whether he should speak. But then the man sat down, turning back to the conversation. Diz found an empty spot, he put his backpack on the ground and sat on the rolled up sleeping bag.

Everyone was talking and there were several conversations going on across the campfire at once. Diz sat, smiled a little, stared at the fire and listened. The man sitting next to him was telling a heated story about the liquor store owner who used to cash his social security checks. Others were constantly butting in, making comments about what the story-teller should have done or how the same thing had happened to them. The speaker was not annoyed by these interruptions, in fact they seemed to energize him, to speed him on towards the conclusion of the story. Except there was no conclusion, nothing was ever resolved, debts were not paid, justice was not achieved. The conversation was filled with racial slurs against Koreans.

Diz looked around, counted faces. Race: Two black, one Indian or Mexican, the rest white. One confederate flag patch on a jacket.

As Diz listened, he saw a pattern in the stories. Some were purely biographical: so-and-so hurt his leg, so-and-so finally got classified as a mentally ill veteran, so-and-so got fed up with San Francisco and moved to Montpellier. The majority, however, seemed to focus on some injustice. The injustice was never resolved in these stories, it seemed to hang over the people like a cloud. People were arrested, forced out of where they were living, denied medical treatment, made enemies out of friends, were robbed or were beaten up. Despite the constant barrage of misfortunes Diz heard, the people there mostly seemed happy.

Diz tuned in to one conversation that he didn’t quite understand at first. They were talking about slogans. Diz understood after he heard “will work for food” mentioned. Diz has seen dozens, maybe hundreds of people holding those signs on street corners and in center dividers.

A man with large scars on his arms spoke up. "You've got to scare them, you've got to show them total hopelessness. That's why 'will work for food' doesn't work, it gives too much of a sense of hope."

"No way," a fat man with a chin full of white stubble said, "'Will work for food' doesn't work because it's been around to long, people have stopped believing it."

Another man spoke up "You know, Jimmy came up with 'will work for food'."

A man who had been in another conversation stopped what he was saying, turned to the last man and said, "You're full of shit."

"It's true," the man said defensively, "He was the first one to do it, and when people saw how well it worked they copied him."

"You're a fucking moron," the man responded.

"Wait, wait," the fat man with the stubble said, "Jimmy's coming, we'll ask him."

"Jimmy's full of shit too," the man mumbled.

Someone prodded Diz with a big plastic bottle of Vodka, already half drained. Diz took it with a smile and drank a tiny bit. He tried to hand it back but the man nodded his head no, "Pass it on man." Diz passed the bottle to the man on his left.

Diz decided that he needed to contribute to some of the conversations, or they would realize he was an outsider. He worried that if he said something, though, they would know he hadn’t experienced anything like the life they had. He tried to find a place he could contribute, but was too nervous.

People arrived in a steady trickle throughout the day. Diz took tiny sips of every bottle he was passed, and he felt a little buzzed. It was nearing dusk when a group of people arrived. The man who had greeted Diz, who Diz had heard called Max, stood up. "Hey Bailey!" he cried with happiness, "I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it."

"Not a fucking chance in hell," one of the men responded. He was a tall man with a big cowboy hat and a huge camping backpack. His clothes were dusty, and definitely not new, but they were somehow regal.

Bailey announced “hey everyone, listen up.” His words seemed to carry some weight with this crowd, because everyone shut up and looked. Bailey was suddenly solemn. "Jimmy's dead.”

"Oh man," one man said, "What happened?"

"I was out of town when it happened, but I guess he got sick and had some really bad diarrhea and wouldn't eat nothing. No one would take him to the hospital. One morning they couldn't wake him up, they called an ambulance but it was too late."

"Aw man," Max repeated, "What about his sign?"

"I got it," Bailey said.

The fat man with the white stubble on his chin stood up. "Jimmy promised me that sign."

"You're full of shit," Bailey said angrily.

Suddenly half the group was standing. "Jimmy owed me forty five dollars," someone Diz couldn't see shouted, "I deserve that sign."

"I don't care what he owes you," Max said, "I saved Jimmy's life and he said I could have anything of his. I want that sign."

"Jimmy didn't even have that sign when you beat up that dog," the fat man said, "He said you could have anything he had right then, not anything he would ever have."

"Were you there?" Max demanded, "Were you there?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Bailey called out, holding up his hand, "We don't have to get all upset about this. We have time to figure out who is the rightful owner of the sign. Right now should be a time of celebration, we're seeing people we haven't seen in five years." He looked specifically at the fat man, "Calm down, relax, we're all friends here, aren't we Richard?"

The fat man, Richard, answered, "We're all friends, unless you try to take from me what's mine." Slowly he sat back down.

Diz was intrigued, this sounded like something that might be a hook to his story. He turned to the man on his left. "What's the deal with this sign?"

"Dunno," he said. He turned to Bailey, who was in the middle of talking to someone else. "Hey Bailey, this kid wants to know what this sign thing is all about."

Bailey turned to look Diz right in the eyes. "Who are you? Are you one of us?"

“Yeah,” Diz said, shocked.

“Well what are you then?” Bailey demanded.

“What do you mean?” said Diz reflexively.

“You a bum or a hobo or a vagrant of what?”

“Beats me,” shrugged Diz, “I don’t claim to be an expert on anything. I do what I have to do to get by. Sometimes I can find a couch to crash on, sometimes I sleep under a warm vent. I work when I can, but sometimes I have to ask people for food or change. I don’t know what I’ll be eating or where I’ll be sleeping tomorrow, so that makes me… whatever it makes me.” Diz looked around, didn’t see any angry faces.

“You ever use a sign?”

“Like ‘will work for food?’”

“Yeah.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Then you don’t know how important a sign is. A sign can be the difference between making zero dollars and zero cents and making enough money to get a nice room with a nice woman with a nice bottle of wine. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Diz said.

“Well, Jimmy was… let's just say that in most things Jimmy was a fuck up, but when it comes to making signs he was the best, without question. And we’re talking about the best sign he ever made. This thing is worth its fucking weight in gold. You hear me? I’d bet my right eye that there’s not a better sign in the entire world. That’s why everybody wants it."

"Well why don't you guys just copy it?"

"A sign isn’t just words. It’s the whole thing: how crumpled the cardboard is, whether it’s ripped or not, what shape the piece of cardboard is, the writing. You copy this sign, you’d get a pretty good sign, but not Jimmy’s sign. Believe me, people have tried."

"Can I see it?"

He laughed, "Maybe later."

After this incident, Diz had the courage to talk to people. He introduced himself and asked people about themselves. It wasn’t hard. Once they got started they would go on for what seemed like hours. One man told Diz that he had a Ph.D. in English. Afterwards, another man told him that last time he had told the story it had been history. "A lot of people living on the streets can't even remember most of their past," the man confided in him, "They like to make stuff up, It's not to be mean or anything. It's just that they like to feel big now and then."

Diz noticed a man who hadn’t spoken all night, who seemed to be watching the crowd. He had been standing, was oddly still. He had a long salt-and-pepper beard, long shaggy hair, and a blue gas station uniform with the name tag ripped off. Diz went over and introduced himself.

The man’s voice was calm and metered. "I liked what you said earlier."

"What's that?"

"About how you don’t know what you’ll be eating or where you’ll be sleeping tomorrow, so it makes you whatever it makes you.”

"Oh yeah,” Diz said, grinning dumbly, "So what's your name."

"Don't have one."

"You don't have a name?"

He shook his head no.

"I don’t mean to offend you or anything, I know it’s not any of my business.”

“I am not offended, but I do not have a name.”

“But surely you were born with a name."

"When I was born my parents gave me a name. I pretended that I possessed it somehow. I have been trying to give up some illusions lately, including that one."

"Sounds like something mystical."

"Perhaps," the man said, "Have you ever noticed that names are something we use when we don't understand something? You don't understand me, so you give me a name so you can pretend you do. You don't understand the path I am on so you want to name it 'mystical' so you can pretend you understand it."

"I guess you’re right,” Diz said, "But names take on their own meaning, more than the things they refer to. If someone says ‘rose’, it means so much more than just a plant. It’s like there’s a world or words and a world of things, and they’re each… a shadow of each other."

“I get the feeling that you've seen many things in your travels Diz, and given them a lot of thought."

"Yeah," Diz said, "I've seen a lot of things. I mean, I don’t know, probably not as much as some of these guys. I’ve seen some stuff, some pretty weird stuff.”

“Weird. There’s another name. What does that mean to you, weird.”

“I guess it means stuff that doesn’t fit in with the way most people think the world works.”

“Why do you care how other people think the world works? You are not other people. What did these experiences mean to you?”

“I don’t know. It means I’m not sure what they meant. I’m not sure if they were real, or if what I thought was going on was really what was going on.” Diz started to feel a little nervous, like he was being subjected to some weird test. “How about you. It seems like you’re… trying something. I don’t want to call it a name…”

“’It’ is a name.”

“Well explain it to me, so I don’t have to use names,” Diz implored.

He looked at Diz for a wrong time. “No, I don’t want to waste my time telling you something you aren’t ready to hear. I will tell you this, though, and it may save your life: When things start to go really wrong, think of the sign."

"The sign?" Diz asked, "What do you mean?" The nameless man ignored Diz.

The man with the huge scars in his arms came up to Diz, put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey kid, you want to go shoot up?" Diz said no, politely, and the scarred man walked out in to the darkness.

Diz sat back down, talked with people for a little while. When nobody was paying attention, he grabbed his bag and walked away from the fire. As he walked further away, the dusty ground turned to darkness. Only after he had left the fire did he notice how loud the mass of voices was.

Diz stepped carefully towards the black hulk of an old building. He felt along the old wood until he found an empty doorway. He went inside. “Hello,” he asked, “anyone here?” There was no answer. Diz set his bag down on the ground. There was distant firelight coming through empty windowsills and through cracks between the boards. After a minute he could see well enough to see that the room was truly empty. He got his camera out of his bag and went over to a window, facing the campfire. He put the camera on top the sill and adjusted the shutter speed and f-stop of the camera. He zoomed in on the people sitting around the fire. He had gotten about ten shots when he was startled by a noise behind him. He looked but could see only darkness.

“Hey kid,” said a voice and Diz jumped a little bit. He recognized the voice as Bailey, the man who had come with news of Jimmy’s death.

“Um, oh, hi.” Diz tried to put his camera under his shirt.

“What you doing?”

“Just taking a piss.”

“And taking a picture of it?”

“Oh, you saw that, huh?”

“So what are you doing?” The voice drew nearer.

“Well, I’m kind of a reporter. But, I mean, I wasn’t lying what I said to you. I do live on the streets, I just make a little extra money now and then taking pictures and writing articles. My brother-in-law publishes this punk-music magazine, and I do little weird articles.”

“And you want to do an article about the conference.”

“I swear, nobody reads the magazine except little punk teenagers in the Bay Area.”

“This conference is for hobos and homeless people only. We don’t want other people coming here.”

“I know, but I’m not going to say where it is. I’m not taking pictures of anything that would tell people where this is. I’ll describe the event and what it’s like, but I won’t name any names.”

“Why didn’t you explain why you were here and ask if you could take pictures.”

“I didn’t know if you guys would want me around. I’m sorry.”

“Well,” he said, his voice suddenly easy-going, “I don’t think it’s nice to be takin’ pictures of people without their permission, but I’ll tell you what: every single one of these guys out here has done worse things than that.”

The man walked up next to Diz. Diz could hear a zipper, and hear the sound of urine. He could smell a pungent smell. “I need you to do a favor for me,” Bailey said.

“Oh yeah?”

“I’ve got this sign, you know, and people are getting all uppity about who’s supposed to get it.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I want to be able to relax and have fun without worrying about people trying to steal it from me when my back is turned, right? So, what I need you to do is take it for me, just keep it with you. You don’t tell anyone you have it, I won’t tell anyone you have it. I’ll get it back later. What do you say?”

"Sure," Diz said. Bailey got the folded cardboard sign out of his backpack and handed it to Diz. Diz put it carefully in his backpack. They left separately, at Bailey’s suggestion. After Bailey left, Diz dug a flashlight out of his bag. He put his hand over it and turned it on, letting out just enough light to see the sign. He snapped a few pictures, but worried they would probably be blurry. Diz read the words. Diz thought that would be a great hook for the article: the best panhandling sign in the world. He wasn’t sure if his brother in law would think it was as great as Diz did. Diz went back and causally sat down by the fire, feeling happy now for its warm rays.

A while later, after several of the people had passed out, one of the men who had claimed rightful ownership of the sign spoke up. "So what are we going to do about this sign thing, how are we going to figure out who gets it?"

"I get it," Richard, the man with the large stubbly chin, said, "There ain't no discussion, Jimmy said I could have it, and so it's mine."

"Probably after you threatened him with your fucking jar," Max said, "I saved his fucking life and he said I could have anything."

"You're not getting that sign," Richard spat angrily.

"Look people," Bailey said, "I'm sorry to disappoint you, I know you all have some claim on this sign and I know you all want it a lot, but I had to pay this fucking Mexican who'd taken all of Jimmy's stuff twenty dollars for this sign, so it's mine."

"Twenty dollars?" Max said, "You know it's worth more than that any day."

"Hey," the man who started the conversation said, "Jimmy owed me forty five bucks, that sign can be a down payment."

"I'm sorry," Bailey said, "But I had to pay for the sign, so it's mine."

"I'm not taking no for an answer," the man who said Jimmy owed him spat, standing up.

Suddenly Bailey had a switchblade in his hand. "Now, now," he said, "None of us want to get unreasonable here, do we?"

The man glared at Bailey. "You're a fucking bastard Bailey, I'm going to tell everybody to never trust you." He sat back down and mumbled curses at Bailey.

Then, before Bailey could sit down. The fat man, Richard, stood up. "The sign is mine."

"Why don't you shut the fuck up," Bailey said.

"I'm not afraid to do what it takes to get what's mine," Richard said.

"Are you trying to scare me?" Bailey asked.

"You should be scared."

"I'm not afraid of your fucking jar," Bailey said defiantly. "You think you can take me down with your voodoo, go ahead and do it."

"One last chance," Richard said.

"Fuck you," Bailey said.

Richard knelt down to his backpack. He pulled out something wrapped in a long stained rag. People around the fire started to wake up their unconscious friends. Slowly Richard started to unwrap the rag. People started to move out of the way. As he slowly, deliberately unwrapped the thing, he glared at Bailey. Soon there was a clearing between the man and Bailey. Bailey's chest was heaving with anger. He still had his cowboy hat on.

"What's going on?" Diz heard one man ask.

"It's Richard's black magic jar. Some gook taught him how to do it."

"What does it do?" the man asked.

"It kills people, that's what it does. He puts all kinds of poison insects and blood and shit and parts off of dead people and any other nasty shit he can find."

Richard had unwrapped the thing all the way. It looked like nothing more than a small mason jar, but what was inside was totally black. He held it up in front of Bailey, taunting him.

"Go ahead you fat ugly fuck," Bailey growled.

Richard unscrewed the jar lid. Almost immediately Diz smelled the worst stench he had ever smelled, like feces and death and more. A wave of panic filled Diz up, his heart was pounding. He put his shirt up to his face. Diz watched as Bailey hunched over and vomited on the ground. Bailey continued to retch, his back lurching, even after the liquid had stopped dripping from his mouth. A look of desperation came in to his eyes. Bailey fell to his knees and Diz could see his face turning red. Bailey’s eyes were wide and he was swaying back and forth. He still had the switchblade clutched in one hand. He looked up at Richard. Then he rose up with a swift motion and sprinted towards Richard, but before he could get to him his footing went out below him and he slammed in to ground. A cloud of dust flew out from under him. He lost grip on the knife and it landed a few inches from his hand. Richard had not moved a muscle. Diz watched in stunned horror.

Bailey rocked back and forth on the ground, his mouth was open and it scooped up dirt. He curled up his legs to his chest and pounded on the ground with the palms of his hand. The firelight caught his eyes and Diz could see them rolling up and down in their sockets. Bailey mashed his face in to the ground. He stopped writhing but made little jerking movements and gagging sounds. It seemed like minutes passed with no one moving, just watching him make those little movements. Then, the gagging noises stopped and he went totally limp. Slowly, Richard put the lid back on the jar. With his lips pursed, almost frowning, and his eyes squinted, he slowly scanned the crowd from one side to the other. Then he started to slowly wrap up the jar. When he was done, he put it back in his bag and hoisted the bag back on to his shoulder.

Richard walked over to where Bailey's backpack lay on the ground. Diz watched as the man opened up the backpack and went through it. His frown grew deeper as he looked through it more thoroughly. Finally he dumped the contents of the bag out on to the ground. There were a few clothes, some cans of food, a bottle of water and a few porno mags. Richard undid the old sleeping bag from the backpack and unrolled it, inspecting it.

"It's not here!" Richard said angrily. He went over to Bailey's body and started patting it down. He kicked Bailey over and searched his other side. "The fucking bastard," he said.

"He must have been lying," one man spoke up, "He must have never had the sign."

"Maybe he didn't bring it with him because he knew you guys would want it," another man said. Diz was perfectly quiet, he didn't want to attract attention to himself.

"You fucker," Richard said, kicking the body angrily, "You fucker." He kept kicking until he was wheezing. He went to sit back down. He grabbed a half full liquor bottle that had been set down on the ground and drank deeply from it.

People began to talk among themselves. Some seemed surprised about what happened, others claimed they had seen Richard do it before. "That shit was real," one man kept saying over and over again in a frightened voice. People eventually started to sit back down again, avoiding the body. Diz sat down too, trying not to look as scared as he felt. Diz wanted to leave right away, but he knew that to do so might draw suspicion. Diz wondered if he could just give the sign to Richard. Would another one of the men get angry and try to stab Diz? Diz didn't want to take a chance. Diz decided to wait until everyone went to sleep and then head back to the tracks and wait there for the next train. Until then, all he could do was wait.

As Richard drank more he spat out occasional comments to Bailey's body, calling him stupid. At one point he said to the body, "Why did you let me kill you if you didn't even have the sign?" He looked up, "Wait a second. Did one of you steal the sign? Did one of you fucking bastards steal the sign?" Everyone was quiet. "If you have it, I'm gonna to find you and I'm going to fucking kill you." He looked at the crowd, his eyes going over Diz. Diz fought to keep his face still. "This is your last fucking chance, you hear me?" Everyone was quiet. "Fine," Richard said, grumbling.

Diz sat, said nothing, pretended to drink when a bottle was passed to him. He tried not to look at Richard too often and he waited. The buzz Diz had felt earlier was gone completely. Everything felt starkly real, especially the cold, dusty air. He was even aware of the presence of the warm ground beneath him. As real as everything felt, the conversations going on around him sounded like buzzing.

Diz remembered the nameless man's strange advice to him and wondered if he had somehow foreseen this. Then why would the man have said "think of the sign"? Obviously it was one of the main things on Diz's mind, there was little chance that he could not think of it.

Diz didn’t know how much time had passed, but people started to lay down to go to sleep. Diz pretended to sleep on his rolled-up sleeping bag. He kept his eyes cracked. A few hours later, all conversation had ceased. Diz rolled over on to his stomach. He looked, and saw Richard sitting up, propped against a piece of wood with his head down on his chest. Diz slowly rose and gathered his backpack up and put it on. He left the campfire, picking his way past unconscious people. The man who had claimed Jimmy had owed him money was up as Diz walked past. He looked right at Diz with a strange look on his face that Diz couldn't decode. "Night," Diz said. The man did not respond.

Diz walked out in to the darkness. He was unable to see the ground when he heard the man's voice shout “Hey wait!” from behind him. Diz took off running. Diz ran for several hundred feet, and then he tripped on something and fell, catching himself with his hands. He looked back, he could see the campfire but it was far away. He could see no one following him. He waited for a long while, listening careful but heard no one. Slowly, trying to stay quiet, he got up. He swore under his breath. If the man had not suspected something, he surely did now.

Diz got up and turned towards the railroad tracks. Then Diz suddenly heard a voice from behind him. It was the same man. "Give me the fucking sign," his voice hissed in the night.

"Okay," Diz said, "I'll give you the sign. I don't want no trouble from this. Bailey just asked me to keep the sign because he was afraid someone would steal it, I never wanted the thing in the first place."

Then another voice came from Diz's right, Diz recognized it as Max, the man who claimed to have saved Jimmy's life. "If you give him the sign I'll kill you. It belongs to me."

"Give me the sign," the other voice hissed. “I swear to god I'll cut you kid."

"It's my god damn sign," the other voice roared.

Diz slowly started to step backwards, aware of the sound of the shifting sand when he stepped. He hoped that the other two couldn't hear it over their own arguing. Then, a flashlight was suddenly shining on Diz. Diz turned and ran as fast as he could. He could hear people chasing after him. He heard the sounds as one fell to the ground, but the other was still chasing. Diz tried to zig to the side, but the footfalls stayed close. He could hear panting, and now there were two people running after Diz. Diz slung his backpack around on his shoulders so it was hanging on his chest. He pulled out the sign, and considered dropping it. But he didn’t think they’d be able to see him dropping it, and they might catch him and stab him. As Diz ran, he groped around in his bag, looking for his flashlight. He could drop the sign, then drop the flashlight so it was pointing at the sign. Then these two crazy homeless people could kill each other over it and Diz could get away. The man without a name, who seemed to have seen this coming, had said “think of the sign.” Is this what he had meant?

Then Diz's foot caught on something and he pitched forward in to the blackness. He landed on his backpack, which was on his chest, with the sign still grasped tightly in one hand. He rolled over so he was lying on his back. He turned on the flashlight, and the two men stopped running, only a few feet from Diz. They panted. They both held knives. Diz dug the toe of his boot in to the sand, ready to kick sand up in their faces if they came closer.

For a second, the three of them were still and quiet. Nobody was sure what the first move would be. Everyone was waiting for something. Diz thought about the sign. He wondered, distantly, if he was going to be killed over the world’s best panhandling sign. If Diz got up, tried to run, one of them could easily reach him and stab him. Diz repeated the nameless man’s words in his mind “think of the sign.” He had only looked at the sign for a second, but the words still echoed in his mind. They were powerful, the sign really was worth as much as everyone said.

The two men started to move forward towards Diz. Diz unfolded the sign, holding it in front of him. He shined his flashlight on it. “Stop!” he commanded, using his strongest voice. "Look at this. Did you ever really look at this?"

They both stopped, and they stared at the sign. It was a large piece of cardboard, too big for the words that were on it. The writing was big, shakily drawn black letters, all lower case. All that was written there was two simple words, one on top of the other: “lonely” and “scared”.

"Don’t you guys get it? The sign, it works so well because it’s true. Lonely. Scared. Don't tell me you don't feel that, because that's a lie. There isn't a person on earth that doesn't feel that somewhere in their souls. That’s why its such a great sign. Its not a trick, not a line. You want to kill me over this, fine, go ahead. Kill me, kill each other. If that’s what you want your lives to be about, then do it.”

Diz looked for any movement, ready throw away the sign and scramble away. But then one of the men turned and walked away. The other mumbled an apology and turned to join him. Diz sat on the ground for several minutes, panting. Then he turned off the flashlight. He put the sign in his backpack. He got up and tried to figure out which way the railroad tracks were.

Then Diz smelled that smell of death and shit and poison. He gagged at it as it filled the air. He pulled the flashlight out of his pocket. Diz made a slow circle, until his light fell on Richard. Richard was standing just a few feet away, with his jar open in his hand. Diz tried to yell something at him, but he gagged. Then another, taller figure stepped forward in to the flashlight beam. Richard jerked his head in surprise, looking at the nameless man with the long beard and the old gas-station uniform. The man with no name stepped forward, grabbed the jar, and crushed it with one hand. Chunky black liquid dripped to the ground. For a few seconds both men stared in to each other's faces. Then, Richard spun and ran off in to the darkness. The man without a name did not follow. Diz kept his flashlight on the man. The nameless man kept the black-covered hand in front of him. With his other hand he pulled out a large pocket knife, which he unfolded with his teeth. Diz got ready to run. "Don't worry," the man said. He coated his contaminated hand with dust and sand and then slowly scraped it off with the knife blade. When he was done he did it again. He did it several times before he finally got up and turned to face Diz.

“What are you?” Diz asked.

“Didn’t you hear? This is the world conference of bums, hobos, winos and vagrants. The best homeless people in the world are here. We are all people who have found something worthy in not having a normal home, a normal job. We have had things taken away from us, and we have given up things by choice.”

"And what have you given up?" Diz asked.

"I have given up my name, my identity, my possessions, my plans for the future, my ideas about what I can or can't do, my allegiances to any group or philosophy. I have tried to give up everything, though every minute of every day I find something I have missed."

"Is that… what has it done for you? What have you gained, or learned.”

The man shook his head no, "Any discussion we could have on the subject would be meaningless."

"What you do," Diz asked, "Is it painful?"

"It is more painful than you can possibly imagine," he said, "And more tiring. I am in a hell of my own devising and I can't even claim to have a reason why I am there."

"How do you do it?"

"Meaningless," he said, "My words would be meaningless to you. You don't understand."

"I want to learn," Diz said.

"You want to learn?" He laughed angrily. "You don't get it, do you? This is not the summer after your senior year, this is not a vacation, this is not something for you to look back upon when you are stuck in a piece of shit job. This is everything. There is no going home, there is no settling down, no resting, no familiar old world. When you wake up, you don’t know where you’ll sleep. When I wake up, I don’t know what universe I’ll be living in at the end of the day. Do you understand?"

"Hmm," Diz said, furrowing his brow as if he were thinking deeply.

"But this is just my path. I don’t claim to be a teacher, I don’t claim this works for anyone but me. Don’t follow my path. I can tell you this, though: You have a choice to make. You know there are incredible possibilities out there. You could find out more about this universe than you could ever imagine right now, but your path will be just as painful. Are you ready for that kind of commitment, have you ever made that kind of commitment to anything in your entire life?"

“I…”

“No, wait, don’t say anything. You couldn’t possibly answer. You have no idea. You’ve taken one step on a path that never ends. In fact, just forget I said anything. You’ll find your path or you won’t. Only you can teach yourself.” He turned to walk away.

“Wait,” Diz said, “I have one thing I want to ask you.”

He turned back. “What?”

“The sign, Jimmy’s sign. Is it… is it a really good sign, or is it some kind of… magic.”

He laughed. “Your question is meaningless. There is absolutely no difference.”

The man walked off. Diz eventually found the railroad tracks. It was morning when a train came, and several people from the conference got on with him. Diz wasn’t sure where the train was going and he didn’t ask. When the last of the men from the conference was ready to jump, he said to Diz “See you in five years buddy.”

“I hope so,” said Diz.