Thursday, May 22, 2008

Word on the Street

It’s not like I make a regular practice of handing out change, but when I do, this guy is a likely beneficiary.  He’s out there more often than not, putting in some serious hours selling the Street Sheet - and that is difficult work, though he seems to bear up under it impressively well.  He’s slightly built, his hair thin and lank but still barely more black than grey, deep wrinkles in his weatherworn face surely exaggerating his age. He wears jeans and a plain twill worker’s shirt with a shapeless, slightly-too-small sweater.  But his pedestrian wardrobe is not what you notice.  What you notice is how he stands.

His posture is swayed, his legs rising to the side instead of up, his hips rotated away.  His spine wrenches up to compensate, so he peers at you as if he were rolling over upon waking up in a bed not his own.  His face, too, seems twisted, his mismatched remaining teeth giving a slant to his grin that accentuates the hip-twisted sideways direction from which his gaze originates.  He’s got a complicated physiognomy, but a guileless, steady smile and a self-deprecating approach that’s somehow a retreat, backing away along with you with gracious wishes for you to have a good day.

And if he gets you ear for half a second, craftsman that he is, he’ll have you hip-deep in conversation, getting you talking about the weather or the Giants or the new building they’re putting up down the road… the conversations are not oppressive, and he never exceeds the bounds of propriety in what he says or how long he says it for.  I never hear him complain about things.  His hands, when I occasionally gave him some help, are delicately constructed and very soft.  He has a soft touch all around and helping him out never feels like enabling him.  Nice as he is, this dude needs some help sometimes. 

Earlier today I encountered him in the mid-afternoon, which is to say, I saw him swaying his earnest gig at the corner and just walked on up to accept his cheerful greeting.  I could have avoided him but I didn’t, and in that I felt generous already.  He asked me how it was going, and I told him that I was doing pretty well, and returned the inquiry.  I was suddenly struck by a fear that this had been an insensitive thing to ask when I noticed a faraway look come into his eyes, and he said something like this:

“Well I’m all right, you take the good with the bad and I can’t complain, I woke up this morning and thought, that’s a good start. You know I was in the hospital, I got stabbed - well really it started out and I was up in the marina, of all places, three-four months back, and I see this scuffle on the street, but I just stay away from all that and it sort of breaks up, but then this one fella sees me and he just flips out and comes at me, that’s all I remember and I wake up seventeen days later with my spleen took out, he’d gone and stabbed me for no reason at all, they’d had to put a hole in my throat so I could breathe and no food or water for all that time, I woke up and my family was there, they was crying, and I ask’em, why you crying?  And they tol’me: ‘cause you woke up, and I says, it’s only been a day, and they says, no, it’s been seventeen.  And my mouth and my throat, they was all full of blood.  But the whole thing only cost me forty-eight dollars, since I’m a veteran and all.  I lost fifty pounds in seventeen days, and then I went out and visited my brother in West Virginia and he runs a Dairy Queen, and I put on a pound a day, a pound a day.

“And people ask me,” he paused, looking contemplatively at a new building they’re putting up down the road, “they ask me what I’d do if they found the guy who did it, ‘cause you know the police never did find him at all, but if I found him would I come to him with forgiveness or out of revenge, and you know, I just don’t know which one I’d pick, but I hope it never comes to that, because each day, you know, now it’s a gift to me, it’s an absolute gift when you wake up after seventeen days in a coma, and I’m not going to let that guy who stabbed me get in the way of that.”

At this point a well-built man in his 20s or 30s stepped up to us.  He was simply but very neatly dressed, and presented himself with polite diffidence.  “Excuse me sirs,” he began, “I am sorry to bother you but I must return to Mexico and I have no money to do so.  Can you help me?” The Street Sheet guy almost scoffed but restrained himself, saying only, “I’m selling the Street Sheet to get by here, I got nothin’ for ya – but maybe if you came back in an hour or two, I might be able to help a little....” I reached into my pocket and pulled out seventy cents in change, dropped it in the putative Mexican’s palm.  He nodded gravely and walked away. 

It was time for me to go back to work, so I took my leave of Street Sheet guy and walked back up the murky arcade toward my building.  I felt as if there were something more that I ought to be doing, but I couldn’t think of what.  I was out of change already, I’d bought a Street Sheet earlier in the week, and I was still using my spleen.  I settled for picking up my son from day care.  You may not see the connection, but I do.