For Fear of More Than Backwash

Main Street was a ghost town lit up for seemingly nothing. The night was young enough to make believable promises though the sidewalks were mostly deserted. Perhaps the recent drop in temperature was discouraging the locals from venturing out into the fray. I was running a few minutes late, but knew I'd still beat her to the restaurant. Late in my mind is only two minutes early.

A traffic light changed and halted my forward progress. Neon glow from the convenience store on the corner bounced off a three-day-old puddle too stubborn to disappear. I pulled hard on my cigarette as the autumn air crept up the loosely rolled sleeves of my red cowboy shirt. Part of me felt like the essence; part of me felt like a fraud.

A rattling sound approached from behind while unaffected cars sped by. I turned and saw a shopping cart full of empty bottles and cans being pushed by one of Beacon's resident homeless. A gray sweatshirt broke the wind from his back and a pair of navy slacks somehow matched. The standard ancient running sneakers propelled him along, this time in my direction. His salt-and-pepper hair sat above a sun-wrinkled face accented by shining blue eyes that were deep in forming a question.

"Smrgls grb," he said with unflinching conviction.

"Excuse me?" I asked the undecipherable pilgrim.

"Arltm fwp, brg," was his puzzling response.

This'd get nowhere and there was somewhere I had to be. Couldn't keep an old friend waiting; ten years was long enough. It was one of two things he probably wanted and my pockets weren't jingling with change. I pulled my pack from my breast pocket and handed him a smoke. He thanked me with a nod and slipped the menthol behind his ear, clearly not ready to indulge in its sick pleasures. His eyes were still glued to my face like there was something more he wanted. My left hand rummaged through the pocket of my Levi's. Nothing but a lighter, a pen, and my bulky set of keys. I was prepared for the awkward denial of currency that always made me feel like less of a decent human.

"Are you new around here?" he asked in a suddenly recognizable idiom.

"Yeah. Why?" Was I an obvious outsider? Was my plaid shirt not up to snuff with the downtown hipster regime? Were my cigarettes not trendy, maybe even disgraceful? Was I a dead give-away for a new Beacon denizen because I stopped to chat? The endless paranoid possibilities raced through my mind in the brief time it took for him to respond.

"I haven't seen you around. Want some beer?"

He lifted a brown-bagged tallboy from his cart and extended it my way.

"No, thanks," I told him as politely as possible. "I'm heading to dinner," unsure what that fact had to do with taking a swig of brew. The truth was that I could've used a drink. The last several weeks had been brutal. They were nothing compared to this man's problems, of course, but difficult in their own right relative to my own trivial life.

"It's my last one," came the humbling reply from my one-man welcoming committee. His tone wasn't sad, it was sincere.

A tingle ran down my spine at the thought of what had happened. Bukowski reincarnate. Another man in the trenches. The snowflake tattoo made sense again: we're really all the same, as different as we are. A man who's lived so hard that there's not much left, like a piston never oiled and worn away by friction, took the time of day to trade some beer for a smoke and make an honest man out of a kid in needless haste. He wasn't aware that the busier of the two bars in town had a limit of two Long Island Iced Teas per customer. He didn't know, and I didn't care. A friend could order those last couple anyway-- a friend like the one who was waiting to meet for dinner. I was lucky to be where I could start over whether or not I deserved it. Beacon was a blessing, even without the intended roommate.

"Take it easy," I said as the light turned green, not stopping to think that it was the only way he could take it.

"Rflp dwt," was barely audible amidst the rumble and clang of a shopping cart starting up again.

I was only one minute late.