On the east side of town is a series of tenement buildings filled with all kinds of people, ranging from the mid-level drug dealer to the struggling single-mother on welfare. These buildings are coincidentally called the New Hope Projects, like some sort of sick joke about the nature of social mobility in the American metropolis. Most people outside the know are oblivious to the set of culture that emerges from a poor group of people in close proximity. There are stories and there are legends of people and events that never truly get forgotten. One such legend lives inside building B in room 425. He is known as the scavenger.
The scavenger is really a perfect name for him as he never loses anything, but accrues more and more. Those who see him migrate to and from his room say he always comes back with bundles, but never leaves with anything. There is a certain level of acquiescence as to leave him alone: uncertainty looms from behind his closed and latched door. He’s a source of mystery and almost a source of pride to the projects. His nickname permeates the dankest drug dealer’s frame of project culture and the rhymes of the children playing hopscotch and jumprope.
The wind of the projects whispers of big drug connections and a forgotten family in Eastern Europe. The children joke about his mole-like countenance, his bent back and the black overcoat he wears. “1-2-3-4. Moleman hides behind the door. 5-6-7-8. Ugly face and big-ass weight.” The teenagers mock him until he passes them, at which point he becomes quiet. “They say those bags is body parts.” “Man, please, that room don’t stank.” “Like you ever seen it.” And so on. Stories get made up and stories get forgotten, but an overarching stench of the unknown gets carried forth and perhaps even a level of respect for the scavenger gets exhibited.
The truth of the matter is that the scavenger has an unhealthy obsession with getting the most out of his money. Every day he ventures to traveling agencies and free museums and stocks up on all the brochures. He needs them to know he is getting the most out of his life. It started out funny, but as it continued, the shopkeepers and security began chasing him out: “one brochure per person, you ugly fuck.” So he has to resort to less obvious tactics, like soliciting more beautiful people, several dozen a day. The Japanese tourists with the camera who speak nearly no lick of English. The laughing hipsters with jingling change in their front shirt pockets. Some days it’s easy come, easy go, but other days the police chase him and he has to drop his brochure bags and the police catch him and beat him with his night sticks with threats of mental institutions and the big freeze.
And so he lives. And so the projects spread its myth of a man so far rooted into the underground he has no human connection.
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