Old Joseph was a familiar site in the town center on most afternoons. His clothes were old and worn and quite dirty, unless he was given something new to wear by the people at the soup kitchen. Nobody really knew where he went during the mornings or the evenings and nights. Most people probably didn’t think much about how he managed in the cold winter rain at night.
Joseph was one of those men who had been very successful and
(he thought) happily married with three lovely children. His marriage ended the day his wife asked him
to leave. She had been having an affair
and wanted to divorce him in order to marry her new man. Things didn’t work out as she expected as her
lover suddenly lost interest. He already
had a wife and children of his own. Why
take time to adjust to a new family?
This all meant that Joseph had to pay the mortgage on the
house and support a wife with three young children without the benefits of
living comfortably with them. At first he slept in spare rooms, on sofas and
even the floors of friends and colleagues.
Very soon his work started to suffer; it was becoming harder to find
somewhere to spend the night. He wasn’t
good company and he started to drink. Have
you ever wondered what it must be like having nowhere to shower and prepare for
the day at work? He had very little
money anyway and one day decided that it wasn’t worth the effort and he walked
out of his job.
He managed to get himself away from his home town and became
one of the many homeless in a new place where no one knew who he had been. There
was one thing that made him stand out and also earned him a few coins; he loved
to sing. Joseph had an amazing voice so
he usually finished Saturday afternoons with a bit of money in his pocket. There was quite an audience of people who
looked forward to hearing him and they would shout out requests. He would sing anything, he’d always loved
music so could manage most demands.
Unfortunately, his health started to suffer and his voice
started to fail and eventually you would hear people in the street on Saturday
afternoons wondering where he had disappeared to. When they heard that he had
died they said that it was such a pity to lose a local character who loved to
sing.
Creative Writing Prompts No. 222
