Camden

I left my grandparents' house Saturday morning. Their pastor from the First Assembly of God, Jim Davis, drove me in their car across the interstate bridge and into Tennessee, and let me off where I could get on a smaller road.
I walked through Finley and into Dyersburg, where I stayed the night next to an animal hospital.
Sunday I made good time, and made it through the swamp bottoms to the town of Trenton, and rolled in the First Baptist Church courtyard.
I woke up Monday with a sore throat, but didn't feel bad otherwise. I walked through Milan around one, stopped in for a while at the library, and then made it up the road to a school beyond Atwood to put up my tent for the night.
In the morning somebody outside my tent woke me up.
"Guy? You in there? You're on school property, guy. You know that, don't you?" Of course I know that, I think to myself. Pretty obvious.
"Oh, really?" I say. "I wasn't sure, exactly. I just saw a place to put up my tent."
"Well...school's about to start."
"Oh. Sorry. I'll try and get out of here as quick as I can."
He walks off, and I get up, and I'm feeling pretty sick. My sore throat has turned into a swollen throat, and my head hurts, and I'm a bit woozy. It doesn't help that the sun isn't up yet and there's frost all over my stuff, and it's freezing cold as I pack up.
I make a few miles to the town of McLemoresville and stumble inside a gas station and sit for a few hours watching the morning news and 'The View,' then start to feel a little better and start walking again. I move slow, for the next eight miles or so. Don't do more than a mile or two before having to sit down and take a rest, but I get to Huntingdon, eventually.
Curled up, trying to get warm in the sun next to the Wal-Mart, a cop shows up and says lots of people think I'm drunk or 'having a spell' and he makes me get up and leave.
I walk to the police station to see if there's a park or something where I can set up my tent for the night. The two ladies there aren't sure what to do with me, and finally decide to drive me out to a park that's three or four miles out of town, where they seem to think I'll be out of the way. It's only five oclock, and I'd much rather sit in a warm McDonalds for a few hours than go straight to the park, but I don't have much choice.
One of the ladies puts me in a cop car and takes me out beyond town. The park sits right across from the Civic Center, but I don't know why either one is so far away from the rest of town.
She lets me out and I sit down, feeling sorry for myself, under a picnic shelter. Before long I come under assault from a squirrel, high in the pecan tree that leans over the pavillion. He takes a bite out of a pecan, then drops it and it falls for thirty feet before crashing on the metal roof above my head, and it drives me crazy.
I go out and look up and curse at the squirrel but he doesn't seem to be afraid of the vile death I plan for him, because he keeps going at it, high in the tree.
About this time I see that across the street people are parking outside the Civic Center and a lot of them are going inside. I figure that maybe there's a play going on, or something, and I decide to investigate because it sounds warm.
Turns out they're just training election officials, and I sit on a balcony overlooking the meeting, and try to sleep, but my head is really hurting.
After a couple of hours, as they're all getting ready to go, I've decided that I'm not going back out into the cold, tonight, if I can help it. I form a little plan in my aching head.
When the meeting officially comes to a close, I pick up my things and head for the bathroom, then sit in a stall, with my pack on, and hold my feet up. After maybe twenty minutes, everybody seems to have left but the janitor, who whistles, as janitors like to, as he sweeps the floors. Eventually he makes his way to the bathroom.
I hold my breath for a good minute while he runs water in the sink and walks back and forth in front of my stall. I'm sure that he's going to try and open the door, at some point, and find me. But he doesn't. Eventually he just turns out the lights and fairly quickly I can't hear his whistling anymore.
I sit in pitch black for another half an hour, to make sure, and then slowly stand up, stiff, and stumble in the dark out of the stall. I carefully take off my pack, still in the bathroom, search with my fingers for my headlamp, then turn it on so that I can see. Feeling like a bank robber, I open the door to the bathroom cautiously, then creep out and look around the building. There's a light on at the far end of the main room, and I freeze and put a hand on my headlamp, but nothing moves. After a while I decide it's permanently on, so I walk over to a spot near the kitchen, and unstrap my pad, and unroll my sleeping bag on the floor.
I sleep well.
In the morning, around seven forty five, somebody opens the back door, while I'm still sleeping twenty feet away, in plain sight.
An older man starts scooping out ice from the freezer, and only turns on one light, that doesn't quite reach me, and I cross my fingers. He gets a bag of ice, then walks back out the door and I practically sing.
But he comes back. And this time he quickly turns on a bunch of lights. He starts to walk toward the other end of the main room and looks right at me. And keeps walking. He doesn't say anything.
I'm really confused. He had to have seen me and yet he didn't so much as blink. Maybe he's blind, I tell myself, holding my breath, but it's a long shot.
After five minutes of walking around, the man comes back and starts messing with the ice again. By this point I'm up, stuffing my sleeping bag and packing my things. He finally acknowledges me by nodding my way, as if we're friends and I sleep here all the time. Then, a few moments later, almost as an afterthought, he says "Hey. What are you doing here, anyway?" He says it without the slightest touch of concern. I gulp. "Long story."
I quickly get to my feet, walk slowly toward him and give my explanation. A long tirade about not being homeless, no, and not being destitute, no, and being sick, yes, and not wanting to sleep in the cold, and such.
He shrugs it all off. "Mike know you're here?" I shake my head. "How'd you get in?"
"There were people here when I came in."
"The flea market?"
"Not sure what it was."
"Huh." He strokes his chin, thinking. "You need a ride somewhere?"
I say that McDonalds would be nice.
He puts me in his truck, with another couple bags of ice, and takes me back into town.

Turns out the guy is a friend of the manager, but has no role with the Civic Center, himself, except that when he's going fishing he stops by to get ice. He tells me that he probably won't even mention me sleeping in the Center to Mike - his friend the manager - and explains.
"Doesn't seem like a big deal. You were cold. Came inside. No harm done. The world would be a lot better if people were just nice to each other. So just remember that I helped you out a little, and the next time somebody's down, why you just give them a hand, yourself.'
I sit in McDonalds, with a cup of coffee, and ponder the ways of the world.

I'm feeling a lot better now. I spent the rest of yesterday primarily at the Huntingdon library, and then walked a few miles before putting up my tent in a field.
Today I woke up feeling almost normal, so I'm hoping that I just caught a touch of something, and that I'm already on the back end of it. Today I've walked from Rosser to Camden, and might make a few more miles by evening, but I'm not sure.