Full name Clarence being particularly uncomfortable, the people around town who still know who he is call him Clark. That's how he says his name, and he likes it that way. He spends most of his time walking up and down the border bridge between the eastern and western sections of the town. There are trains there, among other things.

Clarence isn't homeless if the description is based on a very physical notion of home, but that's usually not the case, and he has that physical housing space, in a hidden place. It's just not particularly important.

He carries a transistor radio in the torn lining of his jacket, and wears headphones. The plug to the headphones is usually lost somewhere in his folds of clothing. He has a scanner that is usually pressed against the usually stubbly hair on his face and he likes the way that that feels.

And Clarence is waiting for something unusual and spectacular, something that is inspiriting in the very real sense of the word, and, after all, what better place than a border between things.

Clarence keeps this border space because over a year ago he and his friends had decided to go to the roadside diner on the western part of town near where the large ramp elevates to the actual border bridge. They'd walk around there and have coffee spiked with whiskey. It was a usual thing.

This time they didn't do the usual thing because, instead, Clarence drove his oldsmobile and his two friends through a stop sign and into a six-wheel truck, and Clarence's two friends died shortly thereafter while Clarence slowly regained consciousness, only to lose it all again after the sight of his own blood and his broken femur. They are particularly unusual sights to see.

But Clarence does have his own physical space, and that does count for something. It just doesn't truly reach the notion of home. Home is somewhere near the border, by a ramp or diner or perhaps just the whole exacting place where things come and go from miles this way and that, and they stop at that home and they load and unload their baggages, and prepare themselves for wherever it is they're going to go next.

Extraordinary, really.

And there are voices on the scanner that Clarence likes against his face, and they're sandy and coarse, and there really isn't that much reception at home, but there are certainly voices. They're just familiar at home. Ghostly in a way, but they're there, and it's familiar.

At home.

They sound out Clark from time to time, and it's rusty, but it's there. Just one easy syllable. just one sound, and it's there, and then it's gone. and it's enough and it's familiar.

Clarence wonders about dying sometimes, when enjoying the scanner on his face, and really he does spend a lot of time on the border. But death, it's a strange notion, not unlike home.

And Clarence is home, after all, and the kids do come around about every other saturday to take new pictures of the scene and the new ways the season pushes around the things moving between east and west. Clarence likes photography, but he likes it all wrong. Things are blurry and never captured in the right way in Clarence's portraits. It's like Clarence just scoots around whatever is really there. Really there.

But Clarence doesn't stop, and he knows his way around the border. And they're there to talk to from time to time, among other things, and that's usually enough to keep it all going.