The Last Time I Saw Stinky

(The last names used in this story have been changed for privacy. The rest has been told exactly as it occurred.)

The last time I saw Stinky was in 2009. His real name was Virgil Shaw, and I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t a very nice nickname our apartment complex had for the landlord’s maintenance man.

But one couldn’t fail to notice a certain … aroma … of cigarettes and body odor after Stinky had paid a visit to your apartment.

If Stinky had been in your apartment to change an air filter while you were away, you knew. Even if he had been there hours prior. I could add more examples, but let’s just say that Stinky was the kind of man who made a lasting impression.

I first moved in during the summer of 2004. Over the years I eventually learned that his name was Virgil and stopped referring to him as Stinky.

He wasn’t a bad guy, after all, and I figured he didn’t deserve such a cruel name. He even had a long white beard, kind of like Santa Claus. Yeah, that’s it — just a smelly old nicotine-stained Kris Kringle. That’s how I decided I’d see him.

Then the asshole hit my car in the parking lot and didn’t leave a note.

Forever Stinky

Now look, I can’t say beyond all doubt that it was him, but he had a small old truck that he always drove around with the tailgate down. The dent in my trunk was the same height from the ground as his lowered tailgate (I measured), and the orangish-red paint it left behind on my car matched that of his truck. The evidence was all there.

So I changed my mind, and he was forever Stinky after that. That would be his penance for the $450 damage his rusty hit-and-run sleigh caused.

The reason that I’m providing this seemingly meaningless backstory is that it portends perhaps the strangest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life. Well, at least in my adult life, that is. There are only a few other unexplained times in my existence on this earth that rival what I’m about to detail, and I have submitted them below for your approval.

Lumbricina Gigantis

Once as a child, I was in the woods behind my next-door neighbor’s house and spotted what appeared to be a python-sized translucent worm slithering through a rotted fallen tree. I tripped and fell as I ran from it, and while trying to scramble to my feet I turned to see the slimy rings of its see-through body bending up out of the ground and back down into the log.

I swear this really happened, but because I was a child I failed to properly and scientifically document the event. I’ve never heard any reports of giant translucent worms in the Indiana countryside since then, so either they don’t exist, or I’m the only one who has ever seen one and lived to tell the tale.

The bird’s the word

Regarding another unexplained phenomenon, I was probably a few years older than the time I saw the giant worm because I was now equipped with an air rifle. If I’d had that gun back when I saw the worm, who knows what the outcome might have been. I like to think that I would have changed history by introducing mankind to a secret underworld of worm people.

Instead, I killed an innocent bird.

I was not really versed in the proper use of BB guns yet, so you might say I was a bit cavalier about the possibility of shooting my eye out. After all, I had watched my older brothers shoot at each other from atop adjacent hills in the forest. I did this, of course, standing right next to one of them and laughing.

One day, armed with my own blue-steeled beauty, I was feeling particularly sulky about something (I don’t remember what). With my head down and dragging my feet, I carried my gun through the backyard and into the woods. Just then I heard the most beautiful song coming from a bird high up above. I was in no mood for this cheerful tune.

“Aw, shut the hell up,” I said. And, without looking up, I pointed my gun into the air with one hand and pulled the trigger. Moments later, the most colorful and exotic bird I had ever seen fell dead at my feet.

I felt positively horrible, and from then on I never pointed my gun at another animal, and I never fired it again without aiming. I have absolutely no idea what kind of bird it was, but I’ve never seen or heard one ever since.

I’ve always had this terrible feeling that I killed something truly unique and magical. But I’ve also often wondered if that beautiful bird was sent to teach me a lesson.

I buried that lovely little bird and told no one what I had done.

Son of Aquaman

Finally, when I was much younger — six years old, I think — I was in California with my family on vacation. I believe we were in Los Angeles and staying at a hotel. My brothers and I were playing in the pool as Mom sunbathed on the patio.

Well, my brothers played while I watched. I was a horrible swimmer.

I delighted in a game my brothers were playing. Taking turns, they would each walk towards the inground pool repeating the words “walkie, walkie, walkie,” and would pretend not to notice the pool and fall in. Obviously, this was pretty heady stuff.

Eventually, my brothers tired of their game and began rough-housing with each other on the other end of the pool. They forgot they were supposed to be watching me, but what was I really going to do anyway?

I decided to play my own “walkie, walkie” game and fell into the pool just like my brothers had.

I sank to the bottom like a stone.

When I found my bearings, I did my best not to panic. My first observation was that I could see underwater. That was new for me. I spotted a railing beside steps that descended into the long end of the pool and luckily I was just out of reach.

Only I couldn’t reach it. I felt like I was doggy paddling, but no matter the effort I applied I couldn’t manage to get closer to the railing.

I was drowning.

I don’t know how long I was under, but it felt like an eternity as I struggled to reach that railing. Then the strangest thing happened. I started to breathe.

No, I’ll never understand how that happened, but I can still remember that like it was yesterday even though it was nearly forty years ago. I was breathing underwater.

This wasn’t the kind of breathing underwater that you know you can just do forever. No, I seemed to know that these extra few gulps of air were limited in supply.

I felt the end coming and made one last lunge towards the railing. My outstretched arm caught the pole, and I pulled myself up out of the water.

No one had seen. Mom sat up and pulled her sunglasses off just as she spotted me. I did a full bow like a performer and then collapsed into a sun lounger.

I think I had a guardian angel on my side that day. Sometimes I wonder if that beautiful bird I’d shot was in fact my guardian angel and that I’ve been on my own ever since. Like, how messed up would that be?

But none of that compares to the last time I saw Stinky.

Fast forward

The last time I saw Stinky, I hadn’t thought of him in several years. I had bought a home not far from that apartment complex in 2009, and I forgot all about the man.

I was working as a photojournalist at the local newspaper in 2014. It was a cold winter day and we were expecting a good snow with a few inches of accumulation.

The snow came right on cue, and I knew that snow in a sleepy town was nine times out of ten going to be the top news of the day.

I bundled up and headed out to find some weather features to accompany the article. The date was January 21.

I never liked getting weather features. The idea is to go out and try to find someone scraping a windshield or shoveling a driveway or — the true show-stopper — a good samaritan helping push a vehicle stuck in the snow. If all else failed, you had to at least come back with a snowplow.

You had to get that damn snowplow.

At 10:13am I spotted a man with a white beard using a snowblower outside a building owned by my former landlord.

Stinky! I mean Virgil! He’ll make a good photo, I thought. I no longer cared about the possible hit and run. I’d moved on.

I parked my car, grabbed my gear and made my way over. As I got closer, I realized this man wasn’t Virgil Shaw at all. His name was actually Vanas Dutton, but he did look quite a bit like the maintenance man I’d known.

Vanas kindly agreed to let me take a few photos of him. I drove around town for a while longer and found a few more keepers as I called them. I got the damn snowplow too.

I headed back to the office to edit my images for the next day’s front page. As I worked on the photos of Vanas, I wondered whatever happened to old Stinky.

I’m not sure how to explain this

What happened next was weird. The rest of the day played out as normal, and it was just about quitting time.

As sometimes happens in newspapers, right when you’re about to head home, something newsworthy changes your plans.

Tones went off on the police scanner in the newsroom followed by the words “house 10-70, Garden City.”

Shit.

I threw on my coat, grabbed my cameras and ran out the door to my car. I sped away in the direction of Garden City because a house was on fire, and it was going to be the biggest news of the day.

Garden City is no city at all. It’s just a little unincorporated town on the outskirts of the city limits. It was only 1.3 miles from the newspaper office, and I made it there in just a few minutes, even beating some of the fire trucks because I was closer.

I parked in a place where I was sure I wouldn’t be in the way or get blocked in, and I walked down the road in the direction of the action. I made my first image of the scene at 5:12pm.

There, with a hand on his forehead as he watched his home and belongings destroyed in flames, stood Stinky — the real Stinky — Virgil Shaw!

Now, let me just pause for a minute to drive that home. Here is a man who I had not thought about in at least five years.

Five. Whole. Years.

Not a single solitary thought.

But the day I mistook another man for him … the day the name Virgil Shaw once again popped into my consciousness after five years … his house burns down only a few hours later, and I’m there to watch it happen. I felt awful for him, and I was ashamed all over again for calling him Stinky. Thankfully he had friends to comfort him and to provide shelter for the coming frigid winter days.

And that, my friends, isn’t just odd. It is the strangest thing I have ever personally witnessed. I don’t know if I really saw that giant worm, I don’t know if I actually breathed underwater, and I can’t say for certain that I killed the last bird of its kind on the planet.

But I did mistake a man for someone else once, and that someone else’s house burned down mere hours later.

I put my hand on Virgil’s shoulder and told him I was sorry. There wasn’t much more to say.

That was several years ago, and I felt it was finally time to tell this story. My only hope is that — now that I’ve thought of Virgil once more — his house doesn’t burn down again tonight.

Sorry, Virgil.