"Go away. Leave me alone."

"Go away. Leave me alone."

That was Fremont, fourteen years ago. His voice was gruff and scratchy like from a three day cold. The walls rising up around him were invisible but just as concrete as a castle. There was a note of finality, of the door swinging shut. I wasn't the only one standing there, a few others were gathered 'round. Fremont conducted his press conference and vanished. No one bothered to pursue.

I remember thinking, "I've just witnessed a man's death." Fremont couldn't measure up, unable to suffer the eyes of the world upon him. Yet it was he who called out to me now on one of my endless wanderings downtown. I didn't recognize him at first. The scars of the world and a life unlived had marked him deeply. Yes, I thought to myself, there are consequences in walking through the landmines of life. How am I not him?

He wanted to talk. Am I to be his confessor? Opening up was the last thing he wanted to do last time I saw him. He'd dropped out of night school to get the prescribed degree to paradise but that was always his mother's idea, not his. He was broken with nowhere left to turn. We'd worked together buffing floors in commercial buildings. He asked me one time if I knew my IQ. "136," I replied. My literate friend said his was 135. I looked at him and smiled. "Moron."

That was one of the few times I saw him with an honest laugh, wholly forgetting himself. So I guess we had a certain understanding he couldn't get from the great unwashed. I have to admit I was surprised he was still alive and curious as to his story. Where does one go when one has nowhere left to go?

"The army." Dear God. Fremont explained his lack of purpose drove him into the ground. That and his mother's voice he carried in his head. In the cruelty one cannot help in the depths of hell, I once snuck up on Fremont while he was buffing inside a room. Then I yelled at him in the most angry and accusatory tone I could muster, channeling his conservative mother's disappointment. Boy howdy, did I hit home. Fre cut loose the buffer and leapt back in terror, seething and furious with me to the point of fear - my fear, that is. My suspicions confirmed, I never did a trick like that again.

The army, as expected, was simply a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Fre had no ambitions of rank but he was too intelligent to be a happy grunt. I could of told him that! But he was a man on the run. He ended up getting deployed to Afghanistan. His eyes lowered and voice quieted. I was to be his confessor after all. Wasn't too sure how comfortable I was having someone look to me for a position of responsibility but I had to wing it best I could.

In the streets, it's rare moments like these that keep the world from falling apart. We were making history.

He said the enemy wasn't some Muslim fanatics he'd never met. They were happy with war. Even the ones "on our side" scared the hell out of him. They had dead eyes. A man told him if he left his house without carrying a gun his wife would laugh at him. Little kids practiced shooting as soon as they could lift and point. From the beginning of time war ripped the Afghan soul. Fre only met one man who would not war. The man spoke bereft of spirit of the starvation that visited their barren lands. "He said to me, "Do you know what it's like to watch your children starve? We were eating grass, anything. I'd have happily died before them..." That pulled the teeth out of him. Me too."

Fremont had a faraway look in his eyes, like he'd been to the lonely reaches of the universe. Either you understood or did not. For a moment, the world stopped spinning. I wondered if anyone noticed the hesitation.

No, the real enemy was the "soul-takers". They wanted you to give up on your life. You can have a woman, a family even, but only within the confines of an army life. In the end, your heart must be hard and put the army first. Step outside that circle and wolves pounce on you. Who are you? What do you know? You are nothing. You know nothing. But those attacks had the opposite effect on Fre. Hearing his own sentiments out loud showed him the foolishness of his thinking. He learned to fight for his life. He was somebody. He did know something.

He signed up with a couple of temp agencies when he got back. He liked the freedom that afforded him to walk off any job as he wished. He started doing a little creative writing. Fre had told me before he was "most excellent at school", meaning he was good at being at a student who had his direction and tasks defined for him. Out in the real world he was lost with his literature degree. So the slingshot of the "army hell" was to get him to writing and the writing showed him a side of himself he didn't know he had.

I thought to myself: Damn, I'm understanding this way too well! But from the looks of him I knew this story didn't have a happy ending. My heart was pounding. To those who passed Fremont on the street he was just another bum from whom you hid your children. But here I was hearing the wealth of his story - the untold story of so many lives and I couldn't help but thinking how much more wonderful the world would be if every story were known. Who would not embrace this "bum" then?

Fre latched onto a permanent job driving a forklift in a warehouse. He told me the owner was a psycho who pumped Rush Limbo over the speakers in some sort of weird indoctrination technique. Fre kept on his own headphones of healing music which made the demagogue's words all the more absurd in comparison. That and the newfound writing flowing through his head. Finally, he got to a point were he decided to step out.

Fremont was never much of a drinker but one night he "felt like it." He was feeling sociable and met a female friend who also knew her away around a book or two. "It was almost like sex I had so much pouring out of me. I didn't have to lie or hide myself like with those reprobates at the warehouse. She was ethereal, walking me through the stars. She understood. I felt I'd been lifted out of the muck." His eyes were alive with pain. The weak part of me wanted to leave while the story still had a happy ending.

I asked if he wanted to head to the 7-11 on Commerce street and get a couple of beers. My treat. He paused before saying OK. As we walked both our minds were spinning. We were two ships passing in the night but walking as one in the now. I felt a strength, a force field around us that could fend off any attack. We were on important business and were anyone to interrupt that there'd be hell to pay! I almost wanted someone to fuck with us. Instead, everyone gave us our way, sensing the danger. We ended up on a wet bench behind McDonalds.

"So what happened?" I asked. "You got married and have five kids and now you're mayor of this goddam city!"

Fre couldn't laugh but gave a wry smile as I gave license for him to tell his tale of woe without fear of judgment. "She was a bridge too far." He said he knew they had a good thing going and he knew deep down keeping that alive was the most important thing. But Fre had never faced that kind of responsibility before. In the army, facing death had been easy. But facing life made cowards of them all. If he fumbled in the care of this flower, he'd be branded a forever loser. Paralyzed with fear, he ran away. "She'd never been happy with some dilettante warehouse bum anyway," he told himself - obviously not for the first time.

Fremont pined over her for the next two years, imagining himself still in her company, making private jokes, vicariously wandering the wonderland only two can share. Not for the first time, I had to look away as he was speaking. But no matter my own pains his story triggered, I had to see this to the end to serve the greater good. Then Fre spied her one day at the Dallas Museum of Art.

She was with a sharp dressed man in a pinstriped suit, a winning warrior of the world. They were chuckling in each other eyes. Now that man shared her private jokes. Fre said he'd rather suit man had been fucking her than doing that. He collapsed inside, desperate to flee his trespassing footsteps in the hallowed halls. His days of imagining came to an end. Fremont had come to the streets to die - like so many of us.

"There's just no room in this world for love, Harry." Everyone has a religion and that became Fre's mantra. In a sense, it was hard to argue with him. Love in the streets can get you picked off like a housefly if you're not very, very careful. But then that's why he came to the streets, to be in a place where love has no chance. Fremont will never again put himself in a position to possibly succeed. Fear of success, I know thee well.

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PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - Houston Rockets forward Terrence Jones was arrested in Oregon early on Wednesday after police said an officer saw him stomp on the leg of a homeless man who was asleep on a downtown Portland sidewalk.

The 21-year-old NBA player was taken into custody at the scene and jailed on suspicion of harassment, Portland police said in a statement. A jail information website showed he was later released on his own recognizance.

The homeless man, Daniel John Kellerher, 46, suffered a minor leg injury, but did not require medical attention, the police statement said.

According to police, Jones was among a group of people who left a downtown nightclub at about 2 a.m. local time and spilled onto an adjacent street.

A sergeant, who ordered the throng back onto the sidewalk then saw the 250-pound, 6-foot-8 Jones stomp on Kellerher's leg after shouting at him and another homeless man sleeping in a doorway to "Wake up," police said.