A Minor Act of Grace

It was mid-day in mid-July, a hundred degrees in the shade with air so mucus-y thick it dulled the mind and clogged the senses.  From the relative comfort of my air conditioned little car, I could see the bus stop, just a nondescript street corner with a tired transit sign set against a backdrop of an abandoned convenience store - and where there was no shade at all - and the two people standing and waiting.  One was an elderly lady, shrunken with age and crone-like, dressed all in black with a death grip on her oversized umbrella and several plastic grocery bags hanging from her arm.  The other was a balding, paunchy, middle aged man in khakis and a sweated-through t shirt, holding a bright yellow homemade sign.  They didn’t seem to be together but both looked wilted and a little desperate.  Curious about the sign, I swapped my sunglasses for my trifocals and looked again.  It was actually no more than a flimsy piece of poster board with crudely written black lettering, cheap and handmade but perfectly legible.

Help bury my grandpa, it read, Donate.

I read it twice, not quite sure whether to be amused, disbelieving or disgusted.  The liberal part of me that still thinks the human community is decent and worthy to be here wanted to empathize but my cynical side saw a cheap, common scam. 

I was still considering what to think about this when a city bus – brightly painted with mural-style green and purple flowers, a possibly well intentioned project the local arts council dreamed up in support of beautification, I suppose – chugged and coughed its way to the bus stop in a haze of exhaust fumes.  Tired brakes groaned and the laboring engine rumbled to a stop, I heard the doors open with a whoosh of air and watched the old crone make her way on board.  The man with the sign stayed where he was as the multi-colored bus wheezed its way away.

Help bury my grandpa, I read again, Donate.

I wasn’t surprised when the police car arrived and pulled into the empty parking lot.  Panhandling, while illegal here, is mostly tolerated depending on the zip code – oh, my, more cynicism - or unless it becomes aggressive and I had no doubt that someone had taken offense to the man or his sign or both.  A weary looking officer, hot and irritable I imagined, climbed out of his car and walked slowly toward the sidewalk. The conversation was brief with no sign of hostility from either side and ended with the man rolling up his poster board and trudging toward the side street.  The officer was halfway into his vehicle when he hesitated and re-emerged, holding a bottle of water in one hand and what looked to be his wallet in the other.  He called to the man with the sign to hold up and as I watched, he handed over the water then reached into his wallet and withdrew a few bills and handed them over as well.  This second meeting ended with a handshake and a smile on both sides.

There’s nothing like a minor act of grace to make my inner cynic beat a hasty retreat.