Bench Man
I walked the neighbor's dog in the morning. We took our usual route through a big park with athletic fields, trees, a creek, homeless encampment and a man-made mini lake that long ago used to host the Rose Festival milk carton races, an event and a Portland that today seem like from prehistoric times.
As usual, a man was practicing his fly fishing casts from the lake. He's there every day. Ducks floated here and there and paid him no attention.
I approached a bench that rested at the edge of the lake. Behind, it flowed the creek. All and all, a superb bench in a superb spot.
It was the same bench where I have seen an elderly black homeless man sleeping in the mornings. He was not asleep this morning. He was reading a book and drinking a tall coffee.
The dog and I stopped near him. I asked what he was reading. He smiled and showed me the cover and said it was a book about doctors. I noticed he had a pen in hand and was obviously annotating the book.
It is quite a sight to see a homeless man reading and annotating a book about doctors while sitting on a bench in such a bucolic setting. It was yet another one of those jarring juxtapositions that I seem to encounter on a daily basis and can make absolutely no sense of.
He was a fine looking, man, short hair, trimmed gray beard. He wore clean clothes His red sleeping bag was rolled up. His red rolling luggage cart rested upright near him. That was it for his possessions.
I asked him if had somewhere to cool off later. He asked me how hot it was supposed to get today. I told him 100 plus degrees. He said he'd find shade in the trees and pointed toward a grove of Douglass firs.
I remarked he traveled light. He said that was the way to live. I agreed. I had no money or book or water to give him. I was woefully unprepared to assist a homeless person when opportunity struck and I guarantee that won't happen again and so should everyone reading this.
As we conversed, I was struck by his highly articulated speech and deliberate manner of talking. It occurred to me that he might have been some sort of professional in a former life. Or maybe not, but he radiated intelligence and there was certainly nothing deranged or addled in his face.
I told him to take care. He told me the streets would take care of him. I wasn't sure about that, but I didn't say anything. He did have the park and the lake and trees and ducks, though.
An hour later I rode my bicycle back to the bench. I had assembled a care package of water, energy bars, raisins and one of my books with a $20 bill tucked in for a bookmark.
Bench Man was still there, reading. It was getting hot, hotter than the hinges to the doors of hell. (I ripped that simile off from Vonnegut.)
He set the book down and greeted me. I presented the package and he thanked me. It was then I noticed he was reading a history of medicine in America.
It is atypical of me to ask anything personal of a homeless person in these type of encounters. I want to ask questions but it usually feels intrusive so I desist.
But today, for some reason, it felt necessary. The man seemed so friendly and composed and entirely out of his element.
In short order I learned he had been camping out in the park for a few days. His wife had recently died from cancer. Someone had given him a ride from Eugene to the area, where he discovered the park. Someone had also bought him the sleeping bag and luggage cart. He was a minister of some kind, and acting on faith and a vision, that he could enroll in nearby Reed College and begin his journey to become a doctor.
I asked if he'd been up to Reed yet to inquire about enrolling. He said he had not but would soon. I tried imagining him wandering around that leafy campus looking for the registrar's office and presenting himself during a Pandemic as a candidate for undergraduate admission because he'd had a vision to serve humanity as a doctor and that vision specifically mentioned Reed College as the place where his new life would would begin.
It occurred to me that had it been in the 1960s Reed College might very well have enrolled this man.
Nothing like that happens in America today unless some billionaire philanthropist or celebrity pays for it (while getting a tax break) and then promotes the gesture on social media, which of course enriches the billionaire or celebrity monetarily in some way,
It was time to leave.
I was saddling up on my bicycle when the man asked if I was coming back around in a couple of hours. He thought maybe I could charge his phone at my house. I told him errands demanded my attention (I lied) but suggested he try the baseball stadium at the far end of the park. I had seen power outlets outside the concession stand. He thanked me for the information.
We said goodbye. I wished the man good luck and bicycled away. Thirty yards away I chided myself for not getting his name. I would the next time we met.
The next week, I didn't see the Bench Man on his usual bench and I assumed he'd moved on. I had no doubt he'd visited Reed College and wondered what had transpired. Maybe I'd been dead wrong about the institution and he was about to become the oldest freshman in Reed history.
It was a weekday afternoon and I was sitting in the lounge of a restaurant writing in my journal and waiting on a to-go order of halibut sandwiches.
The lounge is an irregularly shaped space and I couldn't see all the customers from my vantage point.
When the waitress came over with the order, I stood up from the table and stepped forward a bit. Now I could see around a corner to some other tables.
There was Bench Man sitting at one, with another man, white, older, and they were eating a meal and drinking ice teas. They were smiling and laughing.
I did a little double take at seeing him, socializing and all that.
But I figured the other man had met Bench Man the same way I had, and that man invited him to the joint for a meal and perhaps other assistance. At least that's the way I imagined it, and perhaps it was nothing of the kind and this was some kind of Grinder hookup.
Either way, or somewhere in between, there was hope.