RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 181
I looked at it with little relish. It was nine yards long and I knew
the species: a semi-literate hard-luck story that would take a
ton of editing to deliver a gram of content.
But I couldn’t inflict the indignity of rejection on sight. I had
to read enough to say “very interesting, but … most unfortunate
… policy constraints … try the Weekly Mail.”
I started reading, and after a page a bomb could have gone
off and I wouldn’t have lifted my head.
Six thousand words later I came to the “copyright” logo
with which Steve signs off his endeavours. I had to publish his
story in all its length, accompanied by his own cartoon strips of
prison jokes.
“concrete Island” featured in the next edition – keeping
company, I may say, with two people later to make marks; a
lovely low-key landscape graphic by Janina Pechova and a
searing lid-lifter on police misbehaviour by Sam Sole.
That was the beginning of a friendship, a one-way one in
that I can never find Steve. He finds me. It might be a rescue
call from a police station at 3 a.m. It might be a letter from a
hobo mission. It might be a phone call from his latest employer,
usually either a printer or a builder.
Steve finds jobs. Dozens per year. He picks up skills like you
pick up a dropped key-ring. at a construction site, say, he’ll see
“carpenters needed”. He walks in, he says “here I am”. They
say “where are your papers?” He snaps his fingers in silly-me
manner. He says, tsk, what a pity I left them at my auntie’s
house in Tweedoringspruit, but she’s put them in the post and
they’ll surely arrive by friday.
Then he says “but I can do the job, I’ll show you.”
for a week or two the foreman brags like mad: he has the find
of the century; this guy does ten men’s work with a machine’s
accuracy. The next week, Steve either goes on a binge and
vanishes, or, more individually, gets a dose of moral outrage
and gets up and walks out, stone cold sober.
Steve doesn’t believe in bullying, is the thing. any bullying, of
any humble person, never mind colours and stuff. The foreman