Twelve months is a long time to go without
seeing your best friend, and seeing Eddie Washington walk through the door of
St. Arbuck’s was like, well, seeing Eddie Washington walk through the door...by
which I mean that no one can pull it off quite like him.
It’s the entrance, followed by the dramatic
pause to survey the landscape—more like surveying his domain, if you want to
know the truth—then it’s the slow rhythmic stroll that most people would call a
“walk.” However, what Eddie does is more like gliding to a subtle, slow groove
that only he can hear.
The occasion of his return was to attend the
wedding of a friend. Eddie, being Eddie, found a way to stretch it into a long
weekend.
His eyes finally focused on me causing his
handsome face to light up in a pure Eddie smile. Now, if you’ve never
experienced the full force of an “Eddie smile,” well, let me tell you about it:
Guileless, joyful, completely transparent and genuine that carries with it the
sense that it’s a smile reserved only for a select few.
“RG,” said he in that deeply burnished urban
brogue of his, which, for the record, he turns on and off as the occasion
demands.
“Brother,” came my reply as I stood to
embrace my friend.
We probably hugged longer than is socially
acceptable for two straight males, but we don’t really care about stuff like
that.
Let ‘em talk.
Heck, let ‘em eat cake, whatever that means.
“Good to see you, RG.”
“You too, man,” I replied as we sat down at
our usual corner table. “It’s been way, way too long.”
“Indeed it has.”
“So,” I said. “What’s new?”
He laughed. “You mean since three days ago?”
It’s not like there was a lot to catch up
on, for we talk several times a week, but there’s just something that happens
face-to-face that can never happen over the phone or even through video chat.
“Well, yeah.”
A married couple we both knew came in, saw
us and came over to offer hugs and greetings, which then led to several minutes
of pleasant chatter.
After they left to order their coffee he
said, “Dude, I got to tell you about something that happened a few weeks ago on
the subway.”
“You get mugged, or something?”
“No, no, no...nothing like that.”
He lives in a really good part of the city,
but still...it’s New York! I mean, come on.
He said, “Nah, man. I was taking the subway
home after work; it was about two a.m. and, as usual, the train was full. We
came to a scheduled stop, the doors opened and this homeless guy got on.”
“That’s unusual?” I inquired.
“By itself, no, because there are thousands
of homeless people in the city. But this guy was huge! Like six-five and
probably three hundred pounds. And old! Maybe, mid-sixties.”
While I didn’t say it, I thought to myself
that someone in his mid-sixties just doesn’t sound that old to me anymore.
“And the strangest thing happened,” he continued.
“All the people in his end of the car got up and moved down to the other end
where I was sitting.”
“Why? Was he violent or something?”
“No, man. He just...he wasn’t doing anything
offensive. All those people were acting like him being alive and breathing was
offensive—like he didn’t belong in their world.”
“Man, that’s harsh.”
“Did I mention that it was snowing?”
“No.”
“Yeah, it was snowing. And whenever it rains
or snows, homeless people get on the train and ride it out to Coney Island and
back, staying on as long as they can until the cops kick them off.”
“And that’s what he was doing?”
He said, “That was my guess. But you have to
picture the scene: Here’s this one old, huge homeless guy down at one end of
the car and about forty people all crammed together down at the other end and
all of them staring at him. It was surreal!”
“He stare back?
“Nah, man. He just kept to himself. Sort of
staring at the floor. I looked down at his feet and, dude, he didn’t have any
shoes on! Snowing outside and the boy didn’t have shoes!”
“So, he was barefoot?”
“No, he had newspapers wrapped around his
feet. And his ankles...it looked like elephant skin; like, I don’t know, maybe
something you’d see after frostbite, or something.”
All I could do was shake my head as I tried
to picture this man’s condition while imagining all of the thousands of people
in this country who would fall into the same category.
He continued, “Eventually everyone got off
except me. So there I am at one end, and the dude at the other. So I got up and
moved down to his end and sat across from him.”
“And you started up a conversation, didn’t
you?”
“You know me well,” he chuckled. “Yeah, man.
I just started asking him questions. He was almost, like, I don’t know, either
he suffered from some mental handicap or had done a lot of drugs or something.
I didn’t learn much about his history because he just wasn’t very conversant.
But the more we talked I just couldn’t get past the fact that the man had
newspapers wrapped around his feet...and there was snow on the ground! And it
just broke my heart.”
“Pretty graphic witness to the strength of
the human spirit when it comes to survival. Crazy what people will do.”
He was silent for a minute as if trying to
control his emotions. “We were getting close to my stop and I looked at his
feet; looked at my feet with my brand new Puma’s that I had looked all over New
York City to find; felt my dress shoes in my backpack and asked him what size
shoe he wore. He said that he wore a size thirteen. Same size as me.”
“So, you gave him your new shoes?” I said
with a knowing smile.
He nodded his head in silence. “I mean, what
else could I do? I took them off and told him to try them on. He kind of stared
at me like, ‘Really?’ He put them on and they fit. I put my dress shoes on,
stood, shook his hand and got off at my stop. When the train left he was kind
of turned around staring out the window at me, gave me a little wave and then
he was gone.”
“That was an extraordinary thing to do,” I
said.
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had an extra pair of shoes in my
backpack.”
“So?”
“What if I hadn’t had that extra pair? Would
I have still given him my new shoes and walked home in my socks?”
“That doesn’t
seem—“
“Relevant?” he said, completing my sentence.
“I beg to differ. It is entirely relevant because it’s all about what we’re
really willing to give up when faced with overwhelming need.”
I thought about that for a few seconds and
realized he was right. Here in the land of plenty, where so many have so much,
there are still people, just like this man on the subway, who have little or
nothing with absolutely no way to better their situation; desperation and
hopelessness their constant companions.
“Still,” I said. “There aren’t many people
who would’ve done what you did. I mean, come on, there wasn’t even anyone
willing to occupy the same space as the guy.”
“True, true,” he replied slowly. “But I
should’ve done more.”
“You did what you could.” Then, after a
brief pause I added, “You most likely did more than you knew.”
A couple more friends dropped by to say hi
and then Eddie had to go.
As we walked toward the parking lot, making
plans to meet up for dinner later on that evening, I thought about what Eddie
said about not having done enough. And what is
enough? And when is too little? I must confess, I had no answers.
“See you about seven?” I said as we shook
hands in parting. I mean, come on, we hugged once. Twice would’ve been pushing
it.
“Yeah, man. Looking forward to hanging with
you and that pretty lady you live with.”
And it started to rain.
I looked down at Eddie’s feet. He was
sporting new Nikes.
I love Nikes.
“Forget it! I ain’t giving you my shoes,” he
said with a smile as he turned to go.
“But—“
“No way, Jack!”
Sometimes the man can be downright selfish.
