There’s a 1950s-sitcom feel to this piece about a mentally retarded man who spends his Saturdays visiting his fans on Main Street—but it’s not hoaky. Leland sets a theme and builds it through evidence: concrete detail, dialogue and scene. The voice is more transparent than sentimental. The structure has two tracks: a Saturday with Bill Brown on Main Street and a chronology of his life. Leland alternates between these tracks and closes with one lovely, telling scene.
If you’re going to set out to do a “profile,” this is a good model because it portrays its subject with completeness but does not seek to describe him. It shows him, through entertaining story.
The piece also, indirectly but powerfully, has relevance to public policy. It seems to us an argument for locally owned businesses, for public policy that fosters downtown commerce and community.
Read this narrative »
When Saturday comes to Main Street, so does Bill Brown.
He sets out in that flat-footed way of his, feet turning out, hands dancing from hips to pockets to brow, blue eyes darting every which way.
If the phone rings in Al Smith's jewelry store, Bill Brown answers it. If Al Moore steps away from his barber chair, Bill Brown steps up. And if it's time for the weather report at WBCU radio, Bill Brown borrows the microphone.
"This is Bill Brown saying, 'Sunshine. Sunshine. Sunshine.' "
Bill Brown has had the run of Main Street for 45 years. Shop owners expect him. In a town like Union, population 9,800, everyone feels a kinship—and responsibility—to everyone else. Especially to people who can't help themselves. People like Bill Brown.
Back when he was born, two days after Christmas, 1933, few people thought he would live beyond childhood. He was born retarded, a hydrocephalic baby, a water head, as they say on Main Street. They gave him little chance.
But Bill Brown fooled everyone.
His friends always figured it was Main Street that kept Bill Brown alive.
Main Street, Union, is two jewelry stores, a barbershop, a shoe store, a $10 store that used to be a dime store, sidewalks lined with holly trees, the boarded-up ghost of the Hotel Fairforest, the newsstand, people shopping, people there just because it's Main Street.
Bill Brown's first stop on Saturdays is always WBCU radio.
Carlisle Henderson, 68, is on the air in the control room, second door to the left. Bill Brown waits for the red "ON AIR" light to go off, then demands Henderson's attention.
Whatever Bill Brown wants; Henderson learned that early on.
Here came Henderson in 1955, a newcomer from Spartanburg, the big city 28 miles up the road, hired to manage Edgar-Brown-Bailey funeral home, and determined that his first funeral would set the standard for this town. Everything looked perfect. Flowers. Casket. Registry. Then, he saw this odd little man, barely 5 feet tall, with the run of the church, pumping hands, greeting everyone by name—loudly.
"You be seated!" Henderson chided.
Right then and there, in the middle of the church, a woman jumped up: "You leave him alone! We know how he is. He's not bothering anybody."
Bill Brown and Carlisle Henderson have been friends ever since.
Saturday mornings, Henderson makes room for Bill Brown at the controls. They've followed this routine too many years to count, ever since Henderson gave up the funeral business for the radio business and moved to Main Street. Bill Brown slips headphones over his big ears, turns the volume up, turns it down to where he started, then back up again. He draws the microphone against his lips. Time for the weather.
"Sunshine. Sunshine. Sunshine."
It could be raining, but to WBCU listeners, the sun is always shining at 7:45 a.m. when Bill Brown announces the weather. Listeners expect it. That's Bill Brown.
"This is Bill Brown saying, Hello.' I'll see you tomorrow. And have a good weekend. I'll see you next weekend. And may God bless you. That winds it up. This is Bill Brown saying, Tallyho!' "
Brown's Boarding House
Most people call him Oogie, some call him Dr. Brown, some call him Billy. He prefers Bill Brown. Both names. His real name is William Harrison Ledford Jr. His mother, Mary Ledford, died in February 1935 when he was 14 months old. His father, William, moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., and left him with grandparents Clarence and Kate Brown. People got to calling him by his grandparents' last name. They ran Brown's Boarding House, a two-story Victorian house on South Church Street just off Main.
Miss Kate would put little Billy in a playpen on the wide front porch, with blankets and pillows to cushion him. Monk Gregory and his friends got to know Billy as they walked to Union Grammar School. He was a happy baby. But his head was so big he couldn't hold it up. He didn't walk until he was 6, when other little boys his age were already climbing trees.
Still, he liked to be included in the schoolboys' games. So the Christmas that Jimmy Brown got a red wagon, the boys ripped cotton from an old casket at the funeral home across the street, lined the wagon, and wheeled Billy up and down Main Street.
He would mimic a car horn, warning people out of the way of the hurtling red wagon. Instead of "aooga" it came out "oo-gie," and people started calling him that. Just about everybody on Main Street has a nickname. And Oogie seemed to suit him.
So did Main Street.
Back then, public schools didn't accept the retarded, and Miss Kate wouldn't hear of sending her grandson to the State Training School 30 miles away in Clinton.
So Bill Brown got his education on Main Street.
The Bank
His route covers four blocks, from Ellis Langley's dry cleaners to the courthouse.
"You want me to pay you now or later?" Henderson makes sure to ask at the radio station.
"Now."
Henderson doesn't need to ask, but he does. He knows Bill Brown wants him to write that $1 check for his weekly "insurance payment" right then. Bill Brown is like that. He thinks he's an agent. He's been selling make-believe insurance to people on Main Street since 1950 when Mayor J.T. "Bull" Gregory bought him a collection book and let him sit in on Thursday morning turn-in meetings at Palmetto State Life Insurance Co.
The 15 agents turned in their collections, and lo and behold if Bill Brown didn't show up one Thursday with a pocketful of money. For 41 years, people have been digging into their pockets, first for quarters, now for dollars, for Bill Brown's insurance payments. They supplement his $446 monthly Social Security check.
People haggle. But Bill Brown gets his way—and their dollar.
"You're behind. I want my money."
He tucks Henderson's $1 check in his pants pocket and races in that flat-footed way of his for Arthur State Bank.
By now it's 9 a.m., and Main Street is waking. Men lean against storefronts. Al Smith pokes his head out of Smith's Jewelry Store to see if anything is going on. Usually he sees nothing going on along Main Street in Union. Just men leaning against storefronts, Bill Brown in a single-minded determination to the bank.
Bill Brown turns left out of WBCU, past Graham's Flowers and South Carolina National Bank, then across Gadberry Street to Gordon's Shoes, where he recognizes a red pickup truck, doubles back and hollers the guy down, demanding his insurance money. He stuffs the dollar in his pocket. Then he turns back past Amy's Shop, the newsstand, Hamrick's Jewelry and into Arthur State Bank with the U.S. flag hanging in the front window, a patriotic curtain.
First thing, he cashes Henderson's check, promising teller Jane Owenby he'll take her to the dance. Then he crosses the lobby, and sits right down at Monte Lancaster's desk as if he were a shop owner asking for a loan. Lancaster has worked at Arthur State Bank 29 years, first as teller, now as vice president and cashier.
"The sheriff called me and I had to go make five arrests last night," he tells her.
"Well, they sure kept you busy. I know you're tired."
"I worked real hard. Real hard."
The Courthouse
Much of what Bill Brown does, he does in his imagination.
But for as long as people can remember, he's picked the jury pool for trials. So when he tells Monte Lancaster he's "jury boy" next week, that's not make-believe. There are 12 or 13 terms of court each year in Union County, and for every one, Bill Brown dresses up in a pair of his best trousers, jacket, white shirt and tie. He earns $10 a day.
Bill Brown stands, important, at the front of the courtroom. He adjusts his clip-on madras tie, buttons his blue blazer over his round stomach, slips his glasses up his nose, unbuttons the blue blazer, adjusts the clip-on tie.
At clerk June Miller's nod, he reaches into a drum. He grabs a white plastic capsule about the size of a tube of lipstick. There are 75 of them, each containing a name. Miller reads the name out loud. Attorneys seat the juror, or not. Picking 12 only takes 15 minutes, but in those 15 minutes Bill Brown feels as powerful as the judge.
The law says a child under age 10 or a blind person must pick the jury pool. That way, there can be no chance for manipulation. Judges and lawyers in Union all figure that since Bill Brown can't read and has the IQ of a 4-year- old, he'll do just fine by the law.
But there was that time back in the early '80s when a man went on trial for his life.
That time, they decided to follow the letter of the law. They called in a legally blind person from the eastern side of the county. They explained it to Bill Brown. At least they tried to. He'd get to help pick jurors next time.
Bill Brown pursed his lips, wagged his forefinger and cussed everybody in the courthouse. Then he charged over to WBCU.
"Ca-Ca-Carlisle. They fired me."
Henderson announced it on the air. He didn't think it right, taking away Bill Brown's job. The town agreed. All hell broke loose. Bill Brown's friends called the sheriff. Bill Brown's friends called the clerk.
That's the last time anybody else helped picked jurors.
June Miller's Office
Every now and then, when court recesses, Bill Brown wanders downstairs to June Miller's office. He shuts the door, pulls his chair as close to her desk as he can.
"Miss June, I just could not come back."
"I know you couldn't, Bill."
"I just miss her so."
Bill Brown never got over the day Ollie McDonald died.
For 28 years she fed him, bathed him, shaved him. McDonald ran the boarding house from the time Miss Kate died in July 1960 until they tore it down in the early '70s. Then she took Bill Brown with her into the projects on South Pinckney Street.
"My baby," he called her.
Bill Brown was picking the jury pool that day in November 1988 when a heart attack killed McDonald. By the time court recessed for lunch, word was out about her death. C.B. Jeter the real estate broker picked up Bill Brown and drove him around town 20 minutes until his best friend Don Shetley could get to the house.
"Ollie passed," Shetley told him.
Bill Brown was 54 and he didn't understand. He had seen Ollie that morning. At first, the news of her death was just news—to spread around as he would news of a car wreck—not flesh and blood, not a night alone without anyone to draw his bath, not the next morning without anyone to shave him.
"Ollie's dead," he told Jeter.
"Ollie's dead," he told Shetley.
It took a night at home without Ollie for Bill Brown to understand. The next morning, he called Shetley to come get him. Bill Brown depended on Shetley. He called him if he needed an air conditioner, a Halloween costume, a friend to talk to, man to man.
They drove to Shetley's insurance office. Shetley's wife, Lillian, was working the front desk.
"Honey," Bill Brown told her, "You go on home. We've got a business meeting."
They took their lunch in the back, in Shetley's office. Shetley sat down to eat. Bill Brown took Shetley's hand in his, and wept.
"Don't let them put me nowhere. Don't let them put me nowhere."
Shetley surely wouldn't let that happen.
"Where would you like to go?" he asked. "Do you know anybody you might could stay with?"
"How about June Miller?"
"Her husband just had a heart attack."
Bill Brown leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, smiled a mischievous smile.
"You run Lillian off, and you and me will live in that big house of yours."
Dot Fowler's Home
It was Dot Fowler who took him in.
She had known Bill Brown since childhood. His grandmother Kate married her uncle Clarence, and Fowler often visited the boarding house with her parents. On Sunday afternoons, the families would drive to Saluda, in the N.C. mountains, for a change of scenery.
For 20 years, Dot Fowler managed the Hart Street Wash-A-Rama. No husband, no children, she set her own schedule, traveled, enjoyed her independence.
She was working at the laundry when someone told her McDonald had died. The word around town was Bill Brown would be sent to the center in Clinton for people with mental retardation.
"No." Fowler shook her head. "They can't take Billy out of town."
Her tears welled. Bill Brown wasn't a blood relative, but he was kin all the same.
"He won't live no time if they're to do that. He'd just grieve himself to death. I'd take him in before I let them do that."
Word of Dot Fowler got back to Shetley. He drove to the Wash-A-Rama. He talked in a round-about way about what to do with Bill Brown. He never came right out and said what he was doing there.
"I wouldn't mind keeping Billy." Dot Fowler finally came out and said it. She imagined how taking in Bill Brown would change her life.
She imagined how sending him to an institution would change his.
Shetley warned her she'd have to draw Bill Brown's bath.
No she wouldn't. She lowered the water heater thermostat so he couldn't burn himself, stuck strips of tape in the tub at the level he should fill it to and showed him how. He's done it ever since. He squats on his knees, turns on the faucet, stops it just so.
His friends on Main Street know he's in good hands with Dot Fowler.
Smith's Jewelers
And Saturday mornings, when he leaves the house, she knows he's in good hands on Main Street.
After visiting with Monte Lancaster at the bank, Bill Brown crosses to the other side. Al Smith hasn't even turned the "Closed" sign to "Open" at Smith's Jewelry Store when Bill Brown bursts in.
"You collecting today?" Smith asks. "Where's my name?"
Bill Brown reaches into his pocket for a folded piece of yellow legal pad with his list of names—row after row of mmmmm.
"Right here." He points to a line.
mmmmm.
No one can figure it, but if Bill Brown writes down someone's name, a week later he'll point to the very spot even though every name looks like mmmmm.
He first stopped in at Smith's in 1944, the year Russell Smith opened the store. He now stops in to see son, Al, and grandsons, Joe and Tommy.
Bill Brown just being there makes them all feel better, even on bad days.
One morning, he was standing at the watch counter at the far end of the store. L.L. "Triple L" Ledwell walked up behind.
"Boo!"
He poked Bill Brown in the sides.
Bill Brown's head rolled. He fell to the floor.
Smith jumped up from his desk and leaned over the counter. Bill Brown lay motionless on his back, eyes bugged out, arms by his side, legs stretched.
Ledwell shook him.
"Brown! Brown!"
Ohmygod, we've killed him.
Bill Brown jumped to his feet. "I fooled you!" He laughed at their craziness and ran.
The Barbershop
There's usually a crowd Saturday mornings at Main Street Hair Care, men sitting against the wall, talking about nothing in particular, reading Bassmaster magazine.
As the regulars tell it, a stranger from Charlotte walks in, and sits with the others. Bill Brown fiddles with the scissors and combs behind a vacant barber chair.
"Next."
The visitor looks around, and when nobody gets up, he does. The waiting men bury their chins in their chests, chuckling, but the visitor doesn't notice.
Bill Brown drapes a tunic over the stranger the way he's seen Al Moore the barber do hundreds of times. He swishes a brush this way and that over the man's neck, pretending to wipe away bits of cut hair. Then he rips away the tunic with the flourish of a matador.
"That's it. $2."
Main and South Mountain
Charlotte, Spartanburg, Columbia, it doesn't matter where they're from. Out-of-towners have mistaken Bill Brown in the hearse for a mortician, Bill Brown waving from the lead car in the Christmas parade for a politician, Bill Brown walking Main Street in a blue uniform for a police officer.
One Christmas season, Bill Brown the police officer was directing traffic on Main Street at the corner of South Mountain, pointing ahead, pointing right, pointing left. Then arms outstretched, both hands in front:
Stop.
The locals minded the traffic light. That was just Bill Brown. They waved and drove on, as they would if he had belched or passed wind or said something vulgar, as he sometimes did.
An out-of-towner didn't know any better when Officer Bill Brown waved her one way, then the other, until she was crossways to the street. A traffic jam on Main Street, for goodness sakes. The chief went to see for himself. The motorist was near tears.
"I'm going to write you a ticket," Bill Brown yelled.
He blew his whistle.
"I'm going to write you a ticket."
Bill Brown never played cop again.
They took away his uniform. Whenever that police chief passed, Bill Brown cursed him for it.
"There goes that SOB."
Get Bill Brown angry, and cusswords fly. Some people get him angry on purpose.
"You were born naked," they jeer.
Bill Brown doesn't understand, and it upsets him so.
"You SOB."
When he gets upset his arms go rigid, elbows tight against his side, hands making small circles in the air as if he's trying to shake them dry—and, of course—cusswords flying.
He never forgets if someone is mean to him. Twenty-five years later, he'll walk out of a store if that person walks in.
One night, years back, some men drove Bill Brown all of 32 miles to Laurens for a dance, then left him. The people in Laurens thought the odd little man was drunk. They locked him in jail. They couldn't figure out who he was, where he came from, what he wanted. Then Bill Brown spoke three words:
"Sheriff Harold Lamb."
"There ain't nothing wrong with that boy," Lamb told the Laurens police.
He drove right then, in the middle of the night, to bring Bill Brown home. And he swore if he ever found out who carried Bill Brown to Laurens, he'd put them under the jail.
Union Services
In 1985, Bill Brown turned up missing again, this time from Main Street.
Ellis Langley at Union Dry Cleaning Co. & Steam Laundry knew something was wrong when Bill Brown didn't show up. He called Al Smith at the jewelry store. He hadn't shown up there either.
They called Ollie McDonald. Was Bill Brown sick?
Turned out he was enrolled at the new Union Services activity center for people with mental retardation. The directors thought it time Bill Brown got some job training. He was 55.
For five days, he took the bus to Union Services on West South Boulevard instead of walking Main Street. For five days, he didn't see Carlisle Henderson or Al Smith or Monte Lancaster.
Saturday morning, Bill Brown returned, a lost friend.
"How you like it?" Henderson asked.
"Hell, they're all crazy over there."
Bill Brown may not have much of an IQ, but he can sure tell if someone lived in an institution.
The center kept Bill Brown busy, sorting baby nipples, hoping he would learn to differentiate by color. His friends ribbed him so much over those nipples that one afternoon in September 1985 Bill Brown stalked out and didn't return for five years.
Now, he proudly calls it "my job." He slips knee-high hose onto cardboard, or sorts Christmas gift bags. He might earn $41 every two weeks, depending on how fast he works. He doesn't work that fast. He gets bored. And he doesn't sell insurance. They won't let him.
He works Monday through Friday. Saturdays belong to Main Street.
The Dance
By 11 a.m. Saturday, he's visited most shops, from the bank at 100 E. Main St. to the dry cleaners at 307 E. Main, two-tenths of a mile, but much longer the way Bill Brown walks it.
His friend Don Shetley pulls up in his white Ford pickup. They drive to Shetley's office on the bypass, a few minutes away, just long enough for Bill Brown to tell the news from Main Street.
"You hear about the wreck?"
"No. What happened?" Shetley says that even when he knows. Bill Brown gets a kick out of telling him.
"A man got killed."
Shetley sits behind his desk. Bill Brown sits on the other side, pen at attention. Then it begins. Bill Brown calls the meeting to order.
"Meeting in order."
"Make a motion," Shetley says.
"Motion," Bill Brown answers.
"I make a motion to have a dance for Bill Brown," Shetley says. "What time?"
"Seven o'clock."
"When are we going to have it?"
"Thursday night."
"I make a motion there be no cussing, no liquor," Shetley says.
"Motion seconded. I make a motion, Thursday night, 7 o'clock. You want to make a motion?" Bill Brown asks.
"I make a motion tickets be $3 at the door."
"Second motion."
"Who's going to get the money?"
"I do," Bill Brown says.
"I make a motion the money goes to Bill Brown. Any more business? Make a motion."
"Motion to adjourn."
They've been planning that dance every Saturday for five years, and they'll be planning it next Saturday just as soon as Bill Brown finishes his rounds on Main Street.
He sets out in that flat-footed way of his, feet turning out, hands dancing from hips to pockets to brow, blue eyes darting every which way.
If the phone rings in Al Smith's jewelry store, Bill Brown answers it. If Al Moore steps away from his barber chair, Bill Brown steps up. And if it's time for the weather report at WBCU radio, Bill Brown borrows the microphone.
"This is Bill Brown saying, 'Sunshine. Sunshine. Sunshine.' "
Bill Brown has had the run of Main Street for 45 years. Shop owners expect him. In a town like Union, population 9,800, everyone feels a kinship—and responsibility—to everyone else. Especially to people who can't help themselves. People like Bill Brown.
Back when he was born, two days after Christmas, 1933, few people thought he would live beyond childhood. He was born retarded, a hydrocephalic baby, a water head, as they say on Main Street. They gave him little chance.
But Bill Brown fooled everyone.
His friends always figured it was Main Street that kept Bill Brown alive.
Main Street, Union, is two jewelry stores, a barbershop, a shoe store, a $10 store that used to be a dime store, sidewalks lined with holly trees, the boarded-up ghost of the Hotel Fairforest, the newsstand, people shopping, people there just because it's Main Street.
Bill Brown's first stop on Saturdays is always WBCU radio.
Carlisle Henderson, 68, is on the air in the control room, second door to the left. Bill Brown waits for the red "ON AIR" light to go off, then demands Henderson's attention.
Whatever Bill Brown wants; Henderson learned that early on.
Here came Henderson in 1955, a newcomer from Spartanburg, the big city 28 miles up the road, hired to manage Edgar-Brown-Bailey funeral home, and determined that his first funeral would set the standard for this town. Everything looked perfect. Flowers. Casket. Registry. Then, he saw this odd little man, barely 5 feet tall, with the run of the church, pumping hands, greeting everyone by name—loudly.
"You be seated!" Henderson chided.
Right then and there, in the middle of the church, a woman jumped up: "You leave him alone! We know how he is. He's not bothering anybody."
Bill Brown and Carlisle Henderson have been friends ever since.
Saturday mornings, Henderson makes room for Bill Brown at the controls. They've followed this routine too many years to count, ever since Henderson gave up the funeral business for the radio business and moved to Main Street. Bill Brown slips headphones over his big ears, turns the volume up, turns it down to where he started, then back up again. He draws the microphone against his lips. Time for the weather.
"Sunshine. Sunshine. Sunshine."
It could be raining, but to WBCU listeners, the sun is always shining at 7:45 a.m. when Bill Brown announces the weather. Listeners expect it. That's Bill Brown.
"This is Bill Brown saying, Hello.' I'll see you tomorrow. And have a good weekend. I'll see you next weekend. And may God bless you. That winds it up. This is Bill Brown saying, Tallyho!' "
Brown's Boarding House
Most people call him Oogie, some call him Dr. Brown, some call him Billy. He prefers Bill Brown. Both names. His real name is William Harrison Ledford Jr. His mother, Mary Ledford, died in February 1935 when he was 14 months old. His father, William, moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., and left him with grandparents Clarence and Kate Brown. People got to calling him by his grandparents' last name. They ran Brown's Boarding House, a two-story Victorian house on South Church Street just off Main.
Miss Kate would put little Billy in a playpen on the wide front porch, with blankets and pillows to cushion him. Monk Gregory and his friends got to know Billy as they walked to Union Grammar School. He was a happy baby. But his head was so big he couldn't hold it up. He didn't walk until he was 6, when other little boys his age were already climbing trees.
Still, he liked to be included in the schoolboys' games. So the Christmas that Jimmy Brown got a red wagon, the boys ripped cotton from an old casket at the funeral home across the street, lined the wagon, and wheeled Billy up and down Main Street.
He would mimic a car horn, warning people out of the way of the hurtling red wagon. Instead of "aooga" it came out "oo-gie," and people started calling him that. Just about everybody on Main Street has a nickname. And Oogie seemed to suit him.
So did Main Street.
Back then, public schools didn't accept the retarded, and Miss Kate wouldn't hear of sending her grandson to the State Training School 30 miles away in Clinton.
So Bill Brown got his education on Main Street.
The Bank
His route covers four blocks, from Ellis Langley's dry cleaners to the courthouse.
"You want me to pay you now or later?" Henderson makes sure to ask at the radio station.
"Now."
Henderson doesn't need to ask, but he does. He knows Bill Brown wants him to write that $1 check for his weekly "insurance payment" right then. Bill Brown is like that. He thinks he's an agent. He's been selling make-believe insurance to people on Main Street since 1950 when Mayor J.T. "Bull" Gregory bought him a collection book and let him sit in on Thursday morning turn-in meetings at Palmetto State Life Insurance Co.
The 15 agents turned in their collections, and lo and behold if Bill Brown didn't show up one Thursday with a pocketful of money. For 41 years, people have been digging into their pockets, first for quarters, now for dollars, for Bill Brown's insurance payments. They supplement his $446 monthly Social Security check.
People haggle. But Bill Brown gets his way—and their dollar.
"You're behind. I want my money."
He tucks Henderson's $1 check in his pants pocket and races in that flat-footed way of his for Arthur State Bank.
By now it's 9 a.m., and Main Street is waking. Men lean against storefronts. Al Smith pokes his head out of Smith's Jewelry Store to see if anything is going on. Usually he sees nothing going on along Main Street in Union. Just men leaning against storefronts, Bill Brown in a single-minded determination to the bank.
Bill Brown turns left out of WBCU, past Graham's Flowers and South Carolina National Bank, then across Gadberry Street to Gordon's Shoes, where he recognizes a red pickup truck, doubles back and hollers the guy down, demanding his insurance money. He stuffs the dollar in his pocket. Then he turns back past Amy's Shop, the newsstand, Hamrick's Jewelry and into Arthur State Bank with the U.S. flag hanging in the front window, a patriotic curtain.
First thing, he cashes Henderson's check, promising teller Jane Owenby he'll take her to the dance. Then he crosses the lobby, and sits right down at Monte Lancaster's desk as if he were a shop owner asking for a loan. Lancaster has worked at Arthur State Bank 29 years, first as teller, now as vice president and cashier.
"The sheriff called me and I had to go make five arrests last night," he tells her.
"Well, they sure kept you busy. I know you're tired."
"I worked real hard. Real hard."
The Courthouse
Much of what Bill Brown does, he does in his imagination.
But for as long as people can remember, he's picked the jury pool for trials. So when he tells Monte Lancaster he's "jury boy" next week, that's not make-believe. There are 12 or 13 terms of court each year in Union County, and for every one, Bill Brown dresses up in a pair of his best trousers, jacket, white shirt and tie. He earns $10 a day.
Bill Brown stands, important, at the front of the courtroom. He adjusts his clip-on madras tie, buttons his blue blazer over his round stomach, slips his glasses up his nose, unbuttons the blue blazer, adjusts the clip-on tie.
At clerk June Miller's nod, he reaches into a drum. He grabs a white plastic capsule about the size of a tube of lipstick. There are 75 of them, each containing a name. Miller reads the name out loud. Attorneys seat the juror, or not. Picking 12 only takes 15 minutes, but in those 15 minutes Bill Brown feels as powerful as the judge.
The law says a child under age 10 or a blind person must pick the jury pool. That way, there can be no chance for manipulation. Judges and lawyers in Union all figure that since Bill Brown can't read and has the IQ of a 4-year- old, he'll do just fine by the law.
But there was that time back in the early '80s when a man went on trial for his life.
That time, they decided to follow the letter of the law. They called in a legally blind person from the eastern side of the county. They explained it to Bill Brown. At least they tried to. He'd get to help pick jurors next time.
Bill Brown pursed his lips, wagged his forefinger and cussed everybody in the courthouse. Then he charged over to WBCU.
"Ca-Ca-Carlisle. They fired me."
Henderson announced it on the air. He didn't think it right, taking away Bill Brown's job. The town agreed. All hell broke loose. Bill Brown's friends called the sheriff. Bill Brown's friends called the clerk.
That's the last time anybody else helped picked jurors.
June Miller's Office
Every now and then, when court recesses, Bill Brown wanders downstairs to June Miller's office. He shuts the door, pulls his chair as close to her desk as he can.
"Miss June, I just could not come back."
"I know you couldn't, Bill."
"I just miss her so."
Bill Brown never got over the day Ollie McDonald died.
For 28 years she fed him, bathed him, shaved him. McDonald ran the boarding house from the time Miss Kate died in July 1960 until they tore it down in the early '70s. Then she took Bill Brown with her into the projects on South Pinckney Street.
"My baby," he called her.
Bill Brown was picking the jury pool that day in November 1988 when a heart attack killed McDonald. By the time court recessed for lunch, word was out about her death. C.B. Jeter the real estate broker picked up Bill Brown and drove him around town 20 minutes until his best friend Don Shetley could get to the house.
"Ollie passed," Shetley told him.
Bill Brown was 54 and he didn't understand. He had seen Ollie that morning. At first, the news of her death was just news—to spread around as he would news of a car wreck—not flesh and blood, not a night alone without anyone to draw his bath, not the next morning without anyone to shave him.
"Ollie's dead," he told Jeter.
"Ollie's dead," he told Shetley.
It took a night at home without Ollie for Bill Brown to understand. The next morning, he called Shetley to come get him. Bill Brown depended on Shetley. He called him if he needed an air conditioner, a Halloween costume, a friend to talk to, man to man.
They drove to Shetley's insurance office. Shetley's wife, Lillian, was working the front desk.
"Honey," Bill Brown told her, "You go on home. We've got a business meeting."
They took their lunch in the back, in Shetley's office. Shetley sat down to eat. Bill Brown took Shetley's hand in his, and wept.
"Don't let them put me nowhere. Don't let them put me nowhere."
Shetley surely wouldn't let that happen.
"Where would you like to go?" he asked. "Do you know anybody you might could stay with?"
"How about June Miller?"
"Her husband just had a heart attack."
Bill Brown leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, smiled a mischievous smile.
"You run Lillian off, and you and me will live in that big house of yours."
Dot Fowler's Home
It was Dot Fowler who took him in.
She had known Bill Brown since childhood. His grandmother Kate married her uncle Clarence, and Fowler often visited the boarding house with her parents. On Sunday afternoons, the families would drive to Saluda, in the N.C. mountains, for a change of scenery.
For 20 years, Dot Fowler managed the Hart Street Wash-A-Rama. No husband, no children, she set her own schedule, traveled, enjoyed her independence.
She was working at the laundry when someone told her McDonald had died. The word around town was Bill Brown would be sent to the center in Clinton for people with mental retardation.
"No." Fowler shook her head. "They can't take Billy out of town."
Her tears welled. Bill Brown wasn't a blood relative, but he was kin all the same.
"He won't live no time if they're to do that. He'd just grieve himself to death. I'd take him in before I let them do that."
Word of Dot Fowler got back to Shetley. He drove to the Wash-A-Rama. He talked in a round-about way about what to do with Bill Brown. He never came right out and said what he was doing there.
"I wouldn't mind keeping Billy." Dot Fowler finally came out and said it. She imagined how taking in Bill Brown would change her life.
She imagined how sending him to an institution would change his.
Shetley warned her she'd have to draw Bill Brown's bath.
No she wouldn't. She lowered the water heater thermostat so he couldn't burn himself, stuck strips of tape in the tub at the level he should fill it to and showed him how. He's done it ever since. He squats on his knees, turns on the faucet, stops it just so.
His friends on Main Street know he's in good hands with Dot Fowler.
Smith's Jewelers
And Saturday mornings, when he leaves the house, she knows he's in good hands on Main Street.
After visiting with Monte Lancaster at the bank, Bill Brown crosses to the other side. Al Smith hasn't even turned the "Closed" sign to "Open" at Smith's Jewelry Store when Bill Brown bursts in.
"You collecting today?" Smith asks. "Where's my name?"
Bill Brown reaches into his pocket for a folded piece of yellow legal pad with his list of names—row after row of mmmmm.
"Right here." He points to a line.
mmmmm.
No one can figure it, but if Bill Brown writes down someone's name, a week later he'll point to the very spot even though every name looks like mmmmm.
He first stopped in at Smith's in 1944, the year Russell Smith opened the store. He now stops in to see son, Al, and grandsons, Joe and Tommy.
Bill Brown just being there makes them all feel better, even on bad days.
One morning, he was standing at the watch counter at the far end of the store. L.L. "Triple L" Ledwell walked up behind.
"Boo!"
He poked Bill Brown in the sides.
Bill Brown's head rolled. He fell to the floor.
Smith jumped up from his desk and leaned over the counter. Bill Brown lay motionless on his back, eyes bugged out, arms by his side, legs stretched.
Ledwell shook him.
"Brown! Brown!"
Ohmygod, we've killed him.
Bill Brown jumped to his feet. "I fooled you!" He laughed at their craziness and ran.
The Barbershop
There's usually a crowd Saturday mornings at Main Street Hair Care, men sitting against the wall, talking about nothing in particular, reading Bassmaster magazine.
As the regulars tell it, a stranger from Charlotte walks in, and sits with the others. Bill Brown fiddles with the scissors and combs behind a vacant barber chair.
"Next."
The visitor looks around, and when nobody gets up, he does. The waiting men bury their chins in their chests, chuckling, but the visitor doesn't notice.
Bill Brown drapes a tunic over the stranger the way he's seen Al Moore the barber do hundreds of times. He swishes a brush this way and that over the man's neck, pretending to wipe away bits of cut hair. Then he rips away the tunic with the flourish of a matador.
"That's it. $2."
Main and South Mountain
Charlotte, Spartanburg, Columbia, it doesn't matter where they're from. Out-of-towners have mistaken Bill Brown in the hearse for a mortician, Bill Brown waving from the lead car in the Christmas parade for a politician, Bill Brown walking Main Street in a blue uniform for a police officer.
One Christmas season, Bill Brown the police officer was directing traffic on Main Street at the corner of South Mountain, pointing ahead, pointing right, pointing left. Then arms outstretched, both hands in front:
Stop.
The locals minded the traffic light. That was just Bill Brown. They waved and drove on, as they would if he had belched or passed wind or said something vulgar, as he sometimes did.
An out-of-towner didn't know any better when Officer Bill Brown waved her one way, then the other, until she was crossways to the street. A traffic jam on Main Street, for goodness sakes. The chief went to see for himself. The motorist was near tears.
"I'm going to write you a ticket," Bill Brown yelled.
He blew his whistle.
"I'm going to write you a ticket."
Bill Brown never played cop again.
They took away his uniform. Whenever that police chief passed, Bill Brown cursed him for it.
"There goes that SOB."
Get Bill Brown angry, and cusswords fly. Some people get him angry on purpose.
"You were born naked," they jeer.
Bill Brown doesn't understand, and it upsets him so.
"You SOB."
When he gets upset his arms go rigid, elbows tight against his side, hands making small circles in the air as if he's trying to shake them dry—and, of course—cusswords flying.
He never forgets if someone is mean to him. Twenty-five years later, he'll walk out of a store if that person walks in.
One night, years back, some men drove Bill Brown all of 32 miles to Laurens for a dance, then left him. The people in Laurens thought the odd little man was drunk. They locked him in jail. They couldn't figure out who he was, where he came from, what he wanted. Then Bill Brown spoke three words:
"Sheriff Harold Lamb."
"There ain't nothing wrong with that boy," Lamb told the Laurens police.
He drove right then, in the middle of the night, to bring Bill Brown home. And he swore if he ever found out who carried Bill Brown to Laurens, he'd put them under the jail.
Union Services
In 1985, Bill Brown turned up missing again, this time from Main Street.
Ellis Langley at Union Dry Cleaning Co. & Steam Laundry knew something was wrong when Bill Brown didn't show up. He called Al Smith at the jewelry store. He hadn't shown up there either.
They called Ollie McDonald. Was Bill Brown sick?
Turned out he was enrolled at the new Union Services activity center for people with mental retardation. The directors thought it time Bill Brown got some job training. He was 55.
For five days, he took the bus to Union Services on West South Boulevard instead of walking Main Street. For five days, he didn't see Carlisle Henderson or Al Smith or Monte Lancaster.
Saturday morning, Bill Brown returned, a lost friend.
"How you like it?" Henderson asked.
"Hell, they're all crazy over there."
Bill Brown may not have much of an IQ, but he can sure tell if someone lived in an institution.
The center kept Bill Brown busy, sorting baby nipples, hoping he would learn to differentiate by color. His friends ribbed him so much over those nipples that one afternoon in September 1985 Bill Brown stalked out and didn't return for five years.
Now, he proudly calls it "my job." He slips knee-high hose onto cardboard, or sorts Christmas gift bags. He might earn $41 every two weeks, depending on how fast he works. He doesn't work that fast. He gets bored. And he doesn't sell insurance. They won't let him.
He works Monday through Friday. Saturdays belong to Main Street.
The Dance
By 11 a.m. Saturday, he's visited most shops, from the bank at 100 E. Main St. to the dry cleaners at 307 E. Main, two-tenths of a mile, but much longer the way Bill Brown walks it.
His friend Don Shetley pulls up in his white Ford pickup. They drive to Shetley's office on the bypass, a few minutes away, just long enough for Bill Brown to tell the news from Main Street.
"You hear about the wreck?"
"No. What happened?" Shetley says that even when he knows. Bill Brown gets a kick out of telling him.
"A man got killed."
Shetley sits behind his desk. Bill Brown sits on the other side, pen at attention. Then it begins. Bill Brown calls the meeting to order.
"Meeting in order."
"Make a motion," Shetley says.
"Motion," Bill Brown answers.
"I make a motion to have a dance for Bill Brown," Shetley says. "What time?"
"Seven o'clock."
"When are we going to have it?"
"Thursday night."
"I make a motion there be no cussing, no liquor," Shetley says.
"Motion seconded. I make a motion, Thursday night, 7 o'clock. You want to make a motion?" Bill Brown asks.
"I make a motion tickets be $3 at the door."
"Second motion."
"Who's going to get the money?"
"I do," Bill Brown says.
"I make a motion the money goes to Bill Brown. Any more business? Make a motion."
"Motion to adjourn."
They've been planning that dance every Saturday for five years, and they'll be planning it next Saturday just as soon as Bill Brown finishes his rounds on Main Street.
