Homeless Harry
I was headed home.
He was not, for he had not one.
I stopped along the way.
“Hey superman,” he called out as I approached.
“I haven’t seen you in a while.”
His name was Harry.
“Sorry, Harry” I said, “I’ve been lost in lots of habits and
tasks.”
“I understand,” he said. “You are a good man for taking
care of your responsibilities.”
Not all of them, but I didn’t tell him.
“How have you been?”
“Winter’s coming, so things are going to get a little tougher,
but I’ll survive.”
“Here, I brought you a 6-pack.”
“You’re the best, superman,” Harry said. “These socks are
getting a little ratty.”
“Well, now you can use your old ones as golf club covers.
These are wool and thick and should help keep you warm.”
“Will do, as soon as my Country Club Membership comes
through.”
We laughed, perhaps to avoid the truth.
We’d had a dozen or so conversations since I first met him
over a year ago, having almost hit him with my truck as I
was backing up on a rainy night in the city. It would have
been the worst night of my life. We got to talking and over
the next few months I gave him some money, some food,
and a blanket or two. I even offered to get him a hotel room
one night when the temperature was expected to drop
below freezing, but he declined the offer.
“That would only make it worse when I’m back here on the
street tomorrow,” Harry said. “Luxury will make a man soft,
and dishonest.”
“What did you write today?” I asked.
He told me once that he tried to write a little every day.
“Just one silly line,” Harry said, “before my pencil broke.
Can you get me a new one?”
“A new pencil or a new line?” I joked.
Harry reached into a shopping bag, pushed aside an extra
pair of less than stellar underwear, pulled out a warped
spiral notebook and opened it carefully. I had seen it before.
“There are only three kinds of unhappy people in the world,” he
read aloud, “those who are trying to survive life, those who are
trying to survive their own minds, and those who are puppets
of their cravings.”
“That is one of the least silly lines that I have ever heard,”
I said. “Is everyone enslaved by something?”
“You already know the answer to that,” Harry said. “You
can’t fool me. You’re smarter than you look. So, what did
you think about today, superman, that no one else did?”
“Don’t tell your friends, but I spent over an hour trying to
figure out what I usually think about when I don’t want to
think about that which I should think about if I were a
better man.”
“You’re a strange superman,” Harry said.
“I’m no superman,” I insisted.
“Okay, then you’re just strange.”
We laughed again.
I helped him open the 6-pack. I promised him that I’d bring
him a new pencil. It started raining, and I could not stop it.
© 2023 Randall Snyder
