thin pants

Pavarotti sings in the background, while a homeless man walks slowly over to the nearest open chair to peruse a magazine for a few hours, until the staff escorts him out the door. 

It’s routine; everyday he comes and picks up this month’s Sports Illustrated or whatever else catches his eye and reads it through as many times as he can before closing.  Mundane… yes.  Boring… maybe. But, it’s better than spending the whole night outside.

He spent the last couple dollars he begged a couple days ago, not sure what he dropped the cash on, the days start to blend together.  He has a stash of teabags he picked up from the soup kitchen; he gets free hot water from the coffee corner by the magazine shelves. 

His body aches, the chill goes right through his pants and freezes his bone marrow…they are thinner than they were last winter. 

He feels the stares, stupid high school students….maybe they’re in college, he is too old to know anymore.

He was in high school once, so long ago.  He won valedictorian before being expelled, or best smile in the yearbook.  One of those.  Whatever it was, it was a good thing.  Those kids would respect him if they knew.

The store clerk with tight pants tells him he can’t bring his bags into the café.  They don’t realize.  He went through a puddle yesterday and the wheels of his cart are frozen. 

A smiling man told him there was soup kitchen nearby and handed him a tract.  The soup kitchen’s already closed.  The tract says something about winning, at least, it had some athlete on the front.  “Sheesh,” says the man to himself, “I haven’t won a thing since valedictorian.”

People try to help him sometimes.  Most of the time they avoid eye contact.  They know he’ll ask, and they only have a twenty.

A voice crackles over the store speaker, “Please make your final selections and make your way to the register.”

Tight pants grabs the man’s arm.  “It’s time to go.”

Outside the store there is a nativity scene.  “See that shepherd over there?” says the man.

“Sure,” says Tight pants.

“That’s me.  Living off the land, living outside.  They just took all my sheep.”

“Right,” says Tight pants, dropping the man’s arm.

The man wanders with his bags towards the nativity, pauses, and then walks off toward the road.

Tight pants never saw him again. 

The man passed away during the night, it was too cold… his pants were too thin.