“DAMN IT!” Rusty yelled kicking the trashcan he had been riffling through. Grabbing an empty Coke bottle, Rusty turned and threw back into the busy urban road behind him. The plastic bottle skipped across the concrete narrowly missing two passing cars. “FUCK!” He yelled before shuffling down the street with his shopping cart in tow.
Rusty Mullins had been homeless and living on the streets of New Chesnut for the past 15 years. The slow mental and physical erosion that had led him to homelessness could be traced back to his time spent in Vietnam. Drafted into the Army at 19 years old Rusty found himself on the front lines in Vietnam fighting an unwinnable war, but by his 21st birthday Rusty was back stateside confined to a hospital bed. To this day Rusty still can’t remember what led up to the explosion, but the scars, skin grafts, and missing fingers on his left hand were a constant reminder of that day.
After his release from the hospital, Rusty was able to reintegrate back into society and, for short period of time, live a fairly normal life. The GI bill had helped put Rusty through college, and upon graduating Rusty landed a middle management job at a local factory. For the next ten years life was pretty good for Rusty. He had a decent paying job, he had had a couple different girlfriends, and for the most part he had been able to keep the mental trauma from Vietnam tucked away in the dark corner of him mind. That all changed when Rusty found out the factory was closing, and he began drinking... heavily.
The drinking and the stress of loosing his job took Rusty to a dark place in his mind, and that’s when the mental demons he had carried for years finally came out. Slowly but surely, Rusty’s life began to crumble around him. At age 43 Rusty was homeless and living in his car... By the time Rusty turned 50 his car was long gone and Rusty was roaming the streets of New Chesnut.
“It’s the fucking chemicals.” Rusty said aloud to no one as he approached a dumpster. “Cats everywhere!” He said opening the lid to see a satchel sitting atop the bags of trash. Even in his degraded mental state Rusty knew that there was value in the Satchel. “Kung Fu Turtles...” Rusty mumbled pulling the satchel out and sitting in his shopping cart. Turning his attention back to the dumpster, Rusty began ripping open the bags of trash in search of food or anything he could flip for a buck.
