It wasn’t a light dusting or a little smear on the
cheek. It wasn’t something he hadn’t
had time to wash off. No, this was old
dirt, grown up dirt, the kind a person had lived in so long that it was closer
to a second skin. This was filth with
random traces of blood, sunken deep into the creases of his face, packed so
hard and deep into the wrinkles that it smoothed out the lines around his
mouth. His hands were blackened with it,
the elongated, ragged nails crusted over and embedded with it. His clothes were stiffened with it. When he walked, he flaked, leaving a cheese
grater-ish trail of clods and clots of mud mixed with what looked like
half-digested, dead grass. You could
hear the raspy swish of denim against denim and the slapping of the soles of
ancient Keds. A single strand of frayed
shoelace dangled from the top of one discolored shoe, the other was held
together by a pair of thick rubber bands.
He smelled of excrement and tobacco and sour milk. He made me think of dead coal miners.
“It’s no crime to get dirty,” I could hear my daddy telling
me, “But it’s a sin to stay that way.”
We’d been walking across Boston Common on a late spring
afternoon with the swan boats full of tourists and the tulips and daffodils in
full bloom when we passed the old man on the bench, singing to himself and
drinking steadily from a bottle in a paper sack. He smiled with decaying, yellow teeth and
stretched out a grimy hand.
“Can you spare a dime for a cuppa coffee, mister?” the words came out sleepy and slurred, the air
suddenly smelled like a landfill, raunchy with whiskey and the smell of spoiled
food. My daddy frowned and shook his
head, steered me gently but firmly away.
“Is he sick?” I wanted to know, “He smells like he’s sick.”
“He’s just a bum,” my daddy said roughly and in a tone of
voice I couldn’t remember ever having heard before, “Just a dirty old drunk,
living off welfare, probably hasn’t worked a day in his life and isn’t likely
to. He’d drink up anything you gave
him.” He glanced over his shoulder as if
the old man might be following us. “You
stay away from the likes of that, you hear?
Damn deadbeats.”
We passed more of these shabby, sad men - funny, I thought,
how we’d made this walk through the Public Garden so many times and I’d never
noticed them - they were huddled on benches, crookedly propped up against
trees, curled up in shadowy, grassy corners.
Some were in tattered winter coats and helmet-like old caps. Some were wrapped in ratty, cast off
blankets. Some had no shoes. All were grizzled and unshaven with wild,
bleary eyes and second hand everything.
They slept or staggered through the manicured flower beds, clutching their paper sacks of cheap whiskey
with a death grip, some staring down the tourists and shoppers with dismal, despairing,
dirty faces and others trying to be invisible.
They smelled of whiskey and rot and madness. They scared me.
“Bums,” my daddy muttered disgustedly, “Giving the Common a
bad name.” He slipped his hand into mine
and maneuvered himself between me and them.
“They die off some in the winter, just flat out freeze to death some of
them.” He shook his head and smiled at
me. “I expect they’re better off.”
I didn’t question this philosophy, didn’t know about
alcoholism or homelessness or mental illness or Salvation Army shelters filled
to capacity when the snow came. My daddy
was a gentle man, a kind man, a soft-spoken and understanding man without an
ounce of cruelty in his nature. If he
said they were bums, they were bums, I decided.
If he could turn his back on them, then so could I. But here in the grocery store, some fifty odd
years later in the present day, the memory seemed less clear cut and
considerably less right. I’d lived some
since that spring afternoon, learned a thing or three about poverty and hard
times and more than I’d ever wanted to know about addiction. Throwing away the dirty people wasn’t an
answer.
I watched as some of the regulars, offended by the sight of
the bum and appalled by the smell, carefully bypassed him, their faces
registering a curious mix of shock and indignation. Others were curious but covert, pushing their
carts past him but keeping to a discreet look-but-don’t-touch distance. I watched him fill his cart with canned goods
and ready to eat meals for one, a loaf of day old bread, a plastic jar of
peanut butter, six sad bottles of Yellowtail and a single chocolate bar. Limping and shuffling, he made his slow and
deliberate way to the cash registers, the flurry of waiting shoppers parting
like The Red Sea and opening a wide, solitary path.
“$42.18”, the cashier said doubtfully, and then though it
was wildly improbable but she was required to ask, “Do you have a courtesy
card?”
The bum, reaching deep into his side pocket and pulling out
a crumpled mass of greasy, stained bills, gave her an uncomprehending look and
tried to hand her a fistful of bills.
She reacted with a grimace, pure reflex, I wanted to think, and
unconsciously took a step back.
A woman, a frequent shopper whose face I recognized but
whose name I didn’t know, stepped forward.
“He can use mine,” she said briskly and rattled off a
telephone number to the cashier.
The clerk collected herself and a little shamefacedly
punched in the number.
“$38.36” she told the bum and did her best to look pleasant.
The woman shopper gently took the bills from his hand,
counted out $40 and handed it to the cashier. When she handed him his change,
he replaced the bills in his torn pocket but dropped the silver - all eighty-two cents of it - coin by coin, into
the little plastic Help the Homeless -
Give To The United Way donation
jar. A number of jaws, mine included,
dropped at this but the woman shopper who had stepped up to help, just
smiled. The bum picked up his plastic
bags and stumbled awkwardly toward the side door, leaning just a little left
and not having said a single word. When the automatic doors slid open, he
disappeared across the parking lot in the afternoon haze, headed toward the
shelter and shade of the nearby bus stop.
I wondered all the way home what my daddy would’ve thought.
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