An old-timer, engulfed in an abysm of time, and space-walking through a world he hardly knows anymore, is drawn to a bench like a magnet and not necessarily because his limbs are worn out but for a lack of all those yesterday errands that finally are all done.

And so it was the other mid-morning, a burst of welcome bright sunlight breaking through endless layers of drear fog that so often in winter's time creeps into our town on little cats feet as poet Carl Sandburg would have said, and I took a seat at the far end of a bench where an unshaven, middle-aged and sockless man-of-the-street, ruddy of face and wearing a badly soiled baseball cap and rag-tag clothes was bent over exploring the contents of a trash can.

The can yielded little more than a partly devoured sandwich and a piece of dried pastry, but both were apparently to the liking of an empty and growling stomach and he took a seat at the other end of the bench and devoured both.

“How you doin' partner?” he asked me, mouth exposing what could have doubled for a rickety old fence with several pickets missing and the others brown and rotting away.

Well aware that being addressed as partner, a panhandler pseudonym predicating that he is about to ask for a handout, I mentally pictured the inside of my wallet to try to remember if there were a couple of dollar bills in there that I could spare.

“You don't happen to have a couple of bucks you could lend me for a few days to help get my feet out of the wet and cold?” he asked. “I'm figurin' to find myself some odd jobs, but folks don't hire men that don't have no socks on. I could probably pay you back by Friday or Saturday.”

Not only was he without socks, I noted, but wearing mismatched shoes – one brown, but the color of the other pretty hard to distinguish because a buckskin-like string had been tied around it to prevent the loose sole from slapping against the pavement.

“After I get a couple of bucks to buy socks I'll head for one of those charity second-hand stores that sometimes will outfit a guy with clean pants, a shirt and even a jacket,” he explained, “because a man has to look half-way presentable to get work.”

I handed him a couple of dollar bills even though I realized the odds were he'd never set foot in a store that sold socks but head straight for the drug store down at the corner that sells a passel of cheap wine to down-and-outers that ignites a glow in their hearts and some heat in their bellies.

I was about to move on when a slip of a shabbily-clad woman, tangled gray hair, wrinkles like turkey tracks across her face and teary eyes approached and reached out for the man, and when he got up, threw arms around him and sobbed against his shoulder.

“M'gawd, look at you Charlie,” she whimpered. “You just have to come home or some night you're going to die out here in the cold and wet of the street.”

“Honest Mama,” he said, “I'm OK,” and pulling her down on the bench, put an arm around her trembling body and tears running freely down her cheeks. “I just need a little money to get cleaned up, buy some duds, shoes and socks and get back on my feet. I'm gonna find work any day now, Mama. I promise.”

“You tell me this every time we meet down here,” she said, burying face in hands and shuddering.

“This time I really mean it, Mama,” he said, laying an arm around her shoulders. “Probably I'll be working by this time next week if I can just round up twenty bucks to buy some clothes and socks, get a shower, haircut and shave. I promise you, Mama, I'm going to make you proud of me this time. And all I need is twenty bucks.”

I felt somewhat ashamed to be eavesdropping on the tragic conversation, but somehow couldn't tear myself away.
“If you could just find it in your heart to lend me that twenty, Mama, I'd make you proud. I know I've told you all this before, but by God, cross my heart, this time I really mean it.”

Hesitantly, the weary and sobbing woman reached into a tattered purse and pulled out a few bills and some change, I don't know how much it was but it sure didn't look like it would add up to twenty dollars.

“This is all I have until my next welfare check comes,” she cried, “and I'm two months behind on the rent.”

And from her apparent physical condition it also appeared that she may not have eaten in awhile. Nevertheless she pressed the bills and small change in one of his grimy hands, got up and slowly walked away, trembling and probably still crying.

“I'll see you around, partner,” the man told me, offering a grimy hand shake that I'd rather not have accepted and then got up and headed in the opposite direction of his mother, and right past two charity second-hand stores on his hurried way to the corner drug store.

With heavy heart I sat there for a few more minutes. It had grown somewhat chill and I noticed that the sun had once again hidden itself in the overcast sky. And fog was creeping back into town on little cats feet.

(Comments to the author at vallefox@accessbee.com.)