So I got lost driving home after meeting my husband for our early Monday night dinner date. I knew I was going in the right direction, but a turn here, a turn there. And then where are you? A dash of serendipity. Listening to the stories on NPR as I meandered. Let the good times roll.
And there he was. Tall and slender. Hunched over as if he were hiding in plain sight. A wool beanie pulled down past his eyebrows, sheltered there under the hood of his winter jacket. In the 108 degree of Las Vegas this balmy August day.
Something compelling in his gait as he pulled his overflowing shopping cart along the sidewalk of the expansive modern shopping center I had just accidentally encountered as I tried to sashay my way home. He wasn't asking for anything as he slowly ambled along. I wasn't sure if he could see where he was going, with his face cast so downward. Maybe he was watching his feet. Maybe he was in another world, not paying much attention to this one.
I drove past him and into the next parking lot entrance so I could have a minute to get out of the car and make it to the sidewalk in time to intercept him. After finding cash to pay for pizza a half hour prior, I was aware I had a roll of at least 10 ones in my purse that I figured might now serve a higher purpose. Perhaps I had been directed here? The Universe, God, Whoever- is often curiously full of detours, surprises. There are times when I look to help a homeless person, I end up chasing one down instead of just reaching out to someone on the corner with a God Bless You sign. Not every time, but sometimes.
When I got to the spot where he could hear me, I chilled a little, hesitating. Help is not always welcome, and I remembered being attacked by a little old white haired lady wearing a babushka, pushing a shopping cart a couple years ago on one of my Out to Save the World Missions, so I hesitated. Daunted, I called out, "Sir, I hope you won't be offended, but I just found this and thought perhaps you could use this more than I could tonight." He turned and let me approach. I held out my paltry wad, which he accepted. I noticed he had one dollar in his other hand, a sweatshirt sandwiched between his coat and T-shirt. We began to talk. I wanted to unnotice how filthy his tan winter coat was, but I had to check it out repeatedly just to make sure it was as disgusting as I first thought. It was. I have an unnatural love affair with washing machines, holding them in almost sacred respect---years ago having spent hours washing dirty cloth diapers in the bathtub with water heated on the kitchen stove. But no one and nothing is invincible, and I knew that no washing machine had the superpower required to deal with this coat. How to wash away the grime and muck of the world from someone's soul if you can't even do a decent job with fabric? I despaired.
What could I do? I asked if I could give him a hug, and we embraced. He told me of his hopes to get a home with other homeless wanderers, but that it was hard because so many were drugged out or otherwise "occupied" and yet he cheerfully shared that he always dwelt on the positive because that just might make something good come about eventually. I told him of states where there was progress to the point of having no more chronically homeless, and that it was not simply charitable, but economically sound. He couldn't believe that. I mentioned Utah pioneering that effort, and he thought Utah was an extremely cold climate, and was pretty incredulous when I told him that just a hundred miles away was St. George, with a climate comparabable to that of Las Vegas.
So we talked of things for half an hour. Of this and that. Of Discovery Channel (he advised me to get TV), of his Grandma and what different interpretations age old adages might have. His name was Darius. He really was intelligent. He was gentle. His smile was sweet and his eyes were kind. But they had familiar look to them that I recognized. I knew not why at the time.
24 hours later, it came to me. In my late teens I had worked those summers in between college in a State Hospital for the "insane". So many there were people I would never forget. Etched into memory was one young woman who was brought there in restraints, her wrists and ankles tied to the bed posts in the middle of the Ward. Of course, whatever remnants of her spirit remained, immediately held hostage to the ubiquitous drugs of such a place.
I was so taken with her irrepressibly cheerful demeanor, surreal and out of place as it was. She would burst into song when anyone approached, "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray...." Her eyes were bright and clouded at the same time, exactly like those of the man I had just now encountered all these decades later. Her story shattered instantly my idyllic world bubble. She had finally broken after enduring a few years of her husband selling voyeuristic privileges to dudes who watched as he forced her and her baby daughters to perform sex acts with random strangers. So beyond my feeble imagination. My idea of Hell at the time was of burning fires to be delivered at a date yet to be announced. Never dreaming such a blazing scenario might actually be preferable to Hell-in-the-Raw-in-the-Here-and-Now.
And so I wondered what searing or smouldering Hell had led this mild man to fill a shopping cart with plastic bags and spend his days cloaked against the cold in the midst of the relentless heat. And my soul ached for his, for my songbird of long ago, and for all of us who are lost. So, so lost. But soon my tears too will be swallowed by the desert heat. And what will become of Darius?
* http://www.notesontheway.com/
