Homeless

It was early morn­ing when I arrived at the bus stop. I sat down on the bench and glanced down at my watch. It read 9:30.
I sighed. No sur­prise, I thought, the morn­ing com­muters always made it run late.
I looked around and noticed that there was nobody else here. Yes, peo­ple were pass­ing by on the side­walk, but nobody else wait­ing for the bus. With no one to pass the time with, I fig­ured it would be a while before the bus showed up, so I pulled out a book and began to read.
No sooner had I fin­ished the first page a man sat down besides me. It was noth­ing unusual so I kept on read­ing, but then it hit me: a smell of dirt, fish, and onion all rolled into one unbear­able smell. My eyes started to water. I looked to see who this per­son was, and I nearly regret­ted it.
He wore a raggy jacket, worn out through the years, with an old t-shirt, torn in places, with faded blue jeans, also torn. His beard was untidy and long, and He looked like he just got through tak­ing a bath in sewage and took a trip through a shredder.

He turned his head to face me. “You know, star­ing is very rude.”
This took me by com­plete sur­prise. Since when do you hear a bum speak so calmly, so, so, sophis­ti­cated?
“Excuse me?” I replied, still get­ting over the ini­tial shock.
“Star­ing, it’s quite rude you know,” he answered. “I know I don’t look like much, but you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
I turned my atten­tion back to my book and he just stared straight ahead, lost in thought. Finally the silence got to me and I turned to face him again.
“So, are you here for the bus too?” I said, want­ing to break the silence.
He faced me again and flashed me a toothy grin. “No, just tak­ing a break from walk­ing. The last time I tried get­ting on a bus, they kicked me off. They said I made peo­ple ner­vous.”
He chuck­led. “It’s quite funny. There are far more men­ac­ing peo­ple on that bus than me. Thieves, pimps, mur­der­ers, and peo­ple don’t get ner­vous about them.”
I pon­dered this for a moment, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. How much do you know about the peo­ple around you? But the rea­son they don’t mind them is because of their appear­ance, but I wasn’t about to point this out to the man. Then some­thing struck me as odd.
“You seem like a smart per­son,” I said.
“I sup­pose I am.”
“But you look ter­ri­ble. What got you here?”
He chuck­led again. “It didn’t have any­thing to do with the IRS, or me squan­der­ing my money, or an all in bet in Vegas, I chose this life myself.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would you choose the life of a home­less per­son?”
“It’s a long story,” he said, look­ing down. Appar­ently he didn’t want to talk about it, but I just had to know.
“I have time,” I said. This was a lie; the bus was going to show up any minute now. I hoped that there was a crash today.
“Well if you want to know that badly,” he said, look­ing at me right in my eyes, “I’ll tell you.”
“I was once a very pres­ti­gious sci­en­tist in Col­orado. I had a wife and a beau­ti­ful daugh­ter…”
His voice trailed off and he raised his head to stare at the sky. There was a tear rolling down his cheek, glis­ten­ing in the morn­ing sun.
“If you don’t want to talk about it…” I told him.
“No, no, it’s about time I got this off my chest,” He said cut­ting me off. “After all, who else will lis­ten?” So he wiped his tears, took a deep breath, and started over.
“I was a sci­en­tist in Col­orado who worked to cre­ate new med­i­cine for peo­ple. I was good at it, cre­at­ing sev­eral flu shots and pills over my fif­teen years there. But dur­ing my time there, I never felt happy. It was as if a part of me was miss­ing, like I was miss­ing out on some­thing huge but I had no clue what it was.
“One day, when I got home, I talked to my wife about it. I told her how I felt and asked her what it could be that I was miss­ing. She said that she didn’t have the slight­est idea either, but she listed all the things that I did have: a job, friends, a roof over my head, lots of money, a Fer­rari, and of course, her and the baby. My wife and my daugh­ter were the only two things that made me happy any­more, but to me, every­thing else she listed was triv­ial. Other peo­ple had those things too, but I bet they were just as mis­er­able as me. But there was one thing that sep­a­rated me from them. I was going to find out what I was miss­ing.
“I thought long and hard, every day for about two weeks. Every­thing that came to mind was unap­peal­ing and mate­r­ial, and that’s not what I needed. Then one day, when I decided to take a walk in the park, it hit me. I was look­ing at lit­tle things and not the big pic­ture; I was miss­ing out on the world. Every­thing in the park looked so beau­ti­ful and peace­ful in the sun, and just being able to walk, look around and admire that beauty was absolute bliss. So that’s when I made my deci­sion.
“I rushed home, eager to share the good news with my wife. I found her in the kitchen, cook­ing din­ner, and I said, ‘Honey, I’m going to travel the world and I want you and the baby to come with me!’
“‘That’s great honey, and where did you have in mind? Egypt? Paris? If you want to go to Paris you have to buy your tick­ets soon or else they’ll run out.’
“I shook my head. ‘No, you don’t under­stand. Fly­ing by plane is too expen­sive and we’ll never see the whole world that way.’
“She gave me a baf­fled look. ‘Then what do you mean?’
“‘I mean just leav­ing this dump and go travel! We’d have com­plete free­dom! We could go any­where we wanted and see every­thing!’
“She shook her head at me and said I was out of my mind. She told me how I could just leave her and the baby. As much as I tried to con­vince her to come with me, the more she hated the idea. Finally, she snapped and told me that if I wanted to leave that I had to leave now and never return.
“It wasn’t an easy deci­sion to make, my hap­pi­ness ver­sus my fam­ily, but in the end I was self­ish. I made sev­eral phone calls, made sure that they had plenty of money to last them at least twenty years, packed some clothes, food too, and I left.
“It’s been five years since I left, and since then I’ve trav­eled to forty-nine states. I’ve met peo­ple, made new friends, ene­mies, and have enough sto­ries to enter­tain a crowd of peo­ple for hours. And you know what? I’m happy now, hap­pier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I have no regrets.”
“But what about your wife and kid?” I asked. “Don’t you miss them a lit­tle?”
His smile dis­ap­peared from his face and he sighed.
“That’s the one thing I regret. If I did it all over again I would con­vince her one way or another to come along. If I had one wish I would wish for my wife and daugh­ter to be trav­el­ing with me too.”
“And you never tried vis­it­ing them?”
“I did actu­ally,” he replied. “How­ever, when I got to my old house, there was a giant SOLD sign on the door. When I took a peek inside, it was empty. Where they are now, I have no clue.” He sud­denly looked relieved, as if he just stopped car­ry­ing a heavy load on his shoul­ders.
I heard I giant honk from down the street. I turned to look and saw the blind­ing head­lights from the bus. I didn’t have much time now.
“One last ques­tion,” I asked hur­riedly.
“Any­thing.”
“Where will you go now?”
He looked toward the ocean.
“Prob­a­bly smug­gle myself onboard to a ship, go to Hawaii. From there I’ll go to Asia. Hope­fully I’ll make it to Paris before my time is up. It’s the place my wife always wanted to see.”
The bus made a screech­ing stop and the doors opened with a loud hiss. I was out of time.
“Well, have a safe jour­ney and good luck in your trav­els,” I told him.
“As with you,” he said.
With that I stepped into the bus, dropped a dol­lar fifty into the coin machine and took a seat next to a win­dow. As the bus pulled away, I watched him get smaller and smaller until I could no longer see him. I then looked around at all the peo­ple around me and pressed closer to the win­dow. They could all be mur­der­ers, I thought. And on the way to the office I kept replay­ing the con­ver­sa­tion I had just had, and sadly real­ized that I for­got to ask him his name.

• Photo by Bartek Kuzia / Used with Per­mis­sion

Related Arti­cles:

1. I’m Com­ing Home
2. Mon Corps
3. Moon River
4. Star that Could Save this City
5. That’s Funny.

1. 

   Meghan Vercammen says:

   May 23, 2009 at 6:51 PM

   After read­ing this, I had this bitter-sweet feel­ing in my heart; the kind of feel­ing I always look for­ward to after read­ing a qual­ity story. Good job. I applaud you.

   reply