Merle and the Homeless Man 2

The man sat up for a minute, holding his bare hands out to the people passing. They ignored him, skittering like scared deer out of his path into the road. They kept walking, and the homeless man stared after them for a moment, before flopping back into his previous position, a comatose looking pile of rags on the corner. I snapped a picture, nobody buys my pictures anymore. They say they’re too grim for the front page of the paper, this week I couldn’t even make page eight. Whatever.
The tourists had already reached the other side of the street, and I seethed after them. Selfish pigs. How do they look at him? A blight on the street corner they happened to be observing? An animal in the streets, perhaps a criminal, perhaps a n’er-do-well? How bout the other side? A man on hard times, trying to survive from day to day, maybe getting enough for a meal at McDonalds one day, enough for a CVS trip the next.
I stood about ten yards up the road, watching him with a thousand questions buzzing in my head. Who was he? Where was he from? Has he always been here on this corner? Where’s his family? Where has he been? I wanted to know, and scratched my head pensively with the camera swinging around my neck.
I walked over; my feet in their cheap Birkenstocks looking like silk slippers next to the fraying boots worn by the man. I said, “Hey.”
He sat up, looking me up and down, with a confused and apprehensive look in his eyes. “Hey.”
His voice was gravelly, sounded older than forty, and looked it too. His eyes were tired, with bags under his lids, and his beard was unkempt and grizzled. I hadn’t seen his hair from the distance, it was white streaked with gray, it looked like the gray was made up of dirt and filth accumulated by the street. So perhaps a lot older than forty. I asked if he was alright.
He smiled revealing straight teeth that hadn’t been brushed perhaps for days. “Better than some, worse than most of the rest,” he said, “but I’m not going to complain about the rest.”
I asked him if he had anybody around here to help him, he said no. Nobody was with him, he hadn’t heard from his family since 1961. He was out here, all alone. For me, that was the final straw. I told him, “My name is Merle. I’m a journalist from Pittsburg Times. What’s your name?”
His name was Ian. Ian Carrigan, whose father was an Irishman, moving to America right after Ian was born in 1906. That made him sixty-nine. And on the streets. He had no idea where his family was, had no money, and couldn’t get a job because he was old and didn’t have the money to wash and get a home. I talked with him for a while more and said, “Get up, I’ve made up my mind.”
“What?”
“Come with me, we’re going to the Sheraton.”
“What?”
“I’m going to get you a week at the hotel, a razor, and some food. Ready? Have any stuff?”
His eyes widened in shock, and he looked down, grabbing a small leather briefcase. He said, “I’m ready. But I’d like to tell you something and ask you something. I’ll tell you first, you are the first person, ever, to offer me anything while I was on the street, besides a few coins. The second, you sure you want to take in an old, untrustworthy street rag?”
I told him I saw the people walk by him earlier, and it made me stop and think about how people don’t seem to care about fellow man as much. I told him I wanted to change that. I told him he didn’t look like the type to be faking all this He grinned and said sure – he looked harmless most of the time, and we headed off to the hotel.
I told him he had to agree to take dinner with me, that was one of my few conditions. And he asked several times how he could ever repay me. I told him again he could help with the halfway house. He again enthusiastically agreed.
Four hours later, I came back to the hotel. I went up and knocked on his door, I thought we would get a little dinner at perhaps an Italian Restaurant in town. The man who answered the door was completely changed. Beardless, his jaw line was strong and proud, and his hair, combed and washed was long and pure white, pulled back into a simple ponytail at the nape of his neck. His blue eyes sparkled and he laughed at the look of pure astonishment on my face. Using some of my borrowed shirts and pants, he looked like any other citizen, and we walked out to the restaurant. I noted how skinny he was. For sixty-nine, he was awfully thin.
At the restaurant, I asked him how he liked the hotel. He said, “Son, I have been on the streets for more than twenty years. You walking by was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” he paused and thought. “Walking here, cleaned up, no dirt, people didn’t move away from me, on the streets I’m no better than a stray dog. I’m feeling like I took a breath of air again, I’m back in the world. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll get a nice job and a home.” His eyes twinkled.
I asked him about this job he was looking forward to having. He smiled, and said,
“Tomorrow, shaved, washed, and clean, I’m going to City Council. I’m going to ask permission to commandeer one of the old warehouses for the sake of making a brand-new Halfway House on the lower end of Pittsburgh. Three blocks away from where you found me.”
My jaw dropped. How, I asked him, did he propose to do this? He had no money, supplies or helping hands, and he was still, after-all, just another homeless man.
He let rip a huge belly laugh. He said he would take any donations available, and looked forward to failing a couple times before the Council saw he was going to fight to make a difference. I said I would add my help, whatever I could do. He gave a crooked grin.
“Report the meeting.” He said, “Get the word out there that people are suffering on the streets, and that there is a way to help them.”
I swore that I would. The next day, we walked boldly into the City Hall, Ian was wearing another old shirt of mine, and walked straight and tall with battle in his eyes. He was recognized by an old woman in the Chair, and he walked forward to the podium.
“Hi.” He said, “My name is Ian Carrigan, and I am homeless. I would like to propose aid to the homeless of this town.”