Nameless

I met a guy who lived on the street.

It was the first day of summer, that’s what the calendar said. This guy I met said summer started four months ago.

It was still snowing four months ago, I said.

He said summer started four months ago in a bowl of soup.

I thought this guy was crazy.

I had my tie undone and my shirt out, walking home from work in shoes that gave me blisters because I can’t stand the bus and I can’t afford the gas to drive.

I work hard and I get by. There’s some kind of injustice to walk across the city after all day at work because you still don’t make enough to buy gas.

This guy with wild eyes came up to me and shook my hand.

Beautiful day to you, he said.

I don’t have any change, I said.

I tried to get away. He smelled like the river, like he jumped in and swam in three million toilets and then let himself ferment in the sun.

Can’t go walking without a hat, he said. And he took off his own hat and put it on my head.

I went home to my condo and my TV. I washed the hat in the sink because it would fall apart if I put it in the machine. Here I thought I was doing this guy a favor; I told myself I’d give it back to him all nice and clean.

I take the same way to work the next morning so I could give the guy his hat back.

I looked for him, but I didn’t see the guy until he steps out and goes, Summer sure has been nice this year. He’s missing one of his bottom teeth in his smile.

I brought you your hat back.

Keep it, he says. Too nice to be hiding under a hat.

Well I don’t want it.

That’s when he says the bowl of soup thing.

I thought he was crazy, so I laughed and walked on. The torn hat, I left next to him.

I took some extra hours at work and could drive for a while. Then they switched my shifts and cut my hours so now I’m walking home at night and it’s raining. There’s nothing worse than being wet in the dark in the city.

I’m walking and I see this crazy guy, and he sees me and holds something out to me. It’s an umbrella, some old one without any springs. He doesn’t say anything, just holds it out to me.

Why do you give me stuff, I said.

He looks me up and down and says, Couldn’t you use it?

Sure, but so could you.

Oh this? he says. This isn’t too bad.

Now, I’m tired, and I’m soaked. So what’s bad, buddy?

He says that six months ago he didn’t have a hat or shoes or food. That’s bad, he says. He sits down against a guardrail and looks at me with these deep eyes. There’s something about those eyes just now, and I have to squat down to hear him over the rain.

I was under a bridge some few blocks up, he says. My toes were blue and the one was going black at the tip. Couldn’t walk much so I didn’t eat much.

My stomach growls and I get a little embarrassed.

He says he thought he would die there, under that bridge. He says he was sleeping on a newspaper that had an article about the cops finding a vagrant frozen to death, the nineteenth this year. He figured being number twenty was worth something, at any rate.

I saw this woman and she was pushing a cart of clothes and things, he says. The wind blew this hat (and here he taps his hat) off her cart and down by the bridge. She followed it and saw me and put it on my head.

Some people are walking near us and they’re looking at this guy and looking at me and then when I look back, they quickly see something interesting somewhere else. This guy goes on.

She brought her cart down to me, he says. She said how she got put out after her husband died and that cart was all she had left of him. Her husband was some outdoors guy, but not like me, he says. When he laughs its loud and short. More people look at us and then look away.

It’s still raining on me. The umbrella is small and I try to get my head and his head under it, but he smells even worse than the last time I saw him, so I don’t want to get too close.

He says, she made up a little gas stove under the bridge and cooked some soup out of a can and with some river water. She had some cans in her cart.

Her husband was in the cans? I joke.

He just looks at me.

She got my feet into boots and we ate soup under the bridge, he says. It was the best meal I ever had. She opened up some beans and I tell you, it was like she opened up summer under that bridge, the way those beans smelled.

It’s like he’s preaching a religion, the way this guy is talking about some beans and dirty soup. And in the rain, smelling this guy and crouching under an umbrella, I just about believe him.

It’s been summer ever since, he goes. Every time I get some money I try to give something to someone who needs it. And I just get better and better. I got a tent even, and a sleeping bag.

So why are you out in the rain?

Gave them away. He gets closer to me now and whispers, I got a whole case of Spam down there. Been eating great. Meat keeps a man going, he says.

Sure it does. Listen, take this money. Buy another tent.

He laughs and it echoes off the river. They don’t let you in stores, especially tent stores, like this. He says they think he’ll steal something.

You show them this money; tell them you’re buying a tent.

Yeah, he says, looking at me sideways. They understand money.

I understand money too. I leave my money with the guy who thinks summer is a can of soup and a can of beans over a stove that warms his toes.