Not Wild

 

It looked like it could be a fine day, though North Side Park was so near the rescue mission. There wasn't anything necessary to do, had been doing errands that could have been put off, like returning books to the library, half read, like wasting all your food at the prison commisssary, and getting yelled at by a guard. But that type of perception is just a product of letting one's self get morbid over the times, what with one person in a hundred in durance vile, and new ways of putting people there arriving, like gifts, for people like the ones milling about the sprawling, lovely park. Me, I've never been 'in,' but the fear keeps me thinking of things that compare to it. Maybe that state of affairs has some sort of gravitational pull that invades the mind, because there isn't really any reason to think the way I do.

My legs were hurting from middle age wear and tear, which caused me to make my worst decision for the day. I sat down under a shade tree, to rest. How assinine. Soon I was approached.

The guy had a pleasant, large, long face, with black moles the size of quarters across his forehead and cheeks. If it was melanoma, he was walking distance from Allegheny General, but then, as is the case with being jailed, being hospitalized can be low on people's list, so I'm slightly sympathetic. His physique was kinda' poor, him being on the short side, with a torso that seemed cheated here and over-arched there. His hands were gnarled, and too big for the rest of him, which, in the nicest of derelicts, can cause people to think 'strangler.'

He had a pleasant, subdued, church-warden kind of smile when he talked. When he stopped by to talk, under the shade tree, he stood just behind me, like a safety measure, before saying 'Hi.'

 I have a weak social constitution. I said, "Hi" back. Then I tried to ignore him while he was talking, but, again, I have Silly String for nerves, and can't find it in me to tell people to fuck off. When I was younger I deluded myself with the idea that I was tolerant and kind towards people less fortunate, which is like saying that it's better to flunk your exams. Then the decisions about your future are safely out of your control. The man's assuption about me was that I could use some help.


He pulled out of his pocket some neatly folded, clean typed pages, telling me he has a list of food banks and soup kitchens, with locations and times to show up hungry, and talked to me a bit about how it's good to be able to find food when you need it, which isn't too heinous a thing to launch into. I said thanks for the tip, but I was hip to where "the ragged people go," like in a Simon and Garfunkel tune. Odd how I can't, without straining, make myself hear those folk songs I used to love, like 'The Boxer.' Just certain lines come to memory, always for the wrong reason.

I guess, if you were there, you would have heard what the guy said, and not what I thought at the time. The difference, in this life, between the homeless and the merely fucked up. He got nostalgic, as I got nervous agitation. "I used to come around here a lot," he said.

During his next several sentences, he kept getting to the middle one, then stopping, leaving me to wait for him to finish it, during which time, I was unable to control the tendency to fill in the part of the sentence he stopped at. Like, "Yea, I used like come down here and get me..."
He stopped after the word 'me,' and I started to think "...a bunch of guys together, we'd get a hotel room, and blow each other till sun came up." But that wasn't how he finished his sentence, his, not mine, not mine to judge of revise. When he continued his train of thought, right where he left off, I think, can't read his mind, sitting there like a fool, him standing off to the side, in the shade, it went to, "....a nice little water mellon....," and while waiting for him to continue, for maybe fifteen seconds, I thought to myself "....then I cut a half inch hole in it and fuck it like it was Mae West." 



But he continued, saying, "....and then I get me a little bag 'a ice cubes, and drop it on the sidewalk so the cubes break up." He paused again, but his time I couldn't place him doing anything too foul with the ice cubes, so I just cursed silently. "Then I put the ice and the mellon in a big cooler I got."

His story continued, and with each pause, I found new rotten things to think. It ended with him taking the ice, the mellon and the cooler to his church, so he could share it, on a blistering hot day, with all the congregants, on Sundays that might have been like Plymouth Rock, for all I know. He seemed like a very good natured guy. Looked homeless, seemed the sort that doesn't harbor malice, the way I do. But then lots of serial killers have a social side to them. I found a reason to stand up and walk away, with the man walking behind, still talking to me. Not wild about this form of communication. Like sliding down a greased pole.