The Old Crow Book Club (Part 1)

Some months ago, I walked to the post office to mail three copies of my book about dogs. It was a fine weekday morning and the last of the cherry blossoms fell like so many poems about falling cherry blossoms.

Across the street, a man with the appearance of homelessness captured my attention. He was sitting on the sidewalk surrounded by his possessions. He was drinking malt liquor from a can and smoking a cigarette. Cherry blossoms fell on him as well. Didn't Jesus say something about that? Or was it about rain or mercy or justice? No, that was Portia in Merchant of Venice, who gave the greatest soliloquy in the history of literature. Are there any Portias left in contemporary America?

The man was reading a very large hardback book, a real door stopper. I said to myself: if he's still reading when I return from the post office, I will engage and ask him what he's reading. I just can't be that person who always walks by this kind of human being and says nothing if something distinctly human is going on with that person, such as reading a fat book while sitting on a sidewalk as cherry blossoms fall on him. Something like this is a human poem in motion and cries out to be observed.

I'd seen the man before. He was a regular on this sidewalk with two other homeless men. From time to time, I'd eavesdropped on their conversations as I passed them and chuckled at the outrageous profanity that accompanied their stories and insults. They were more like a comedy troupe than a trio of vagrants.

I mailed my books and walked home. There he was.

“What are you reading?” I said.

He looked up at me with an expression of joy. He pushed the book toward me.

“It's by Jean Auel, who wrote the The Clan and the Cave Bear. This is the sixth in the series. I've checked them out of the library.”

I didn't catch the title but knew the series and that each volume ran to almost 1000 pages!

“I know the books,” I said. “I've read The Clan and the Cave Bear and loved it.”

This was true. I'd found a paperback edition in a dive bar library six months ago and read it over a three-day stretch trapped inside an RV while it rained 10 inches.

I said goodbye and wished him a good day. As I walked away, I overheard him explain the series to another homeless man who had been standing nearby and edged closer after I left. The last thing I heard was excitement in a man's voice. About a novel!

A few days later, I saw the same man on the same sidewalk, near the convenience store. He was reading another book. I stopped.

It was a hardback, big and blue. Old. Very old. No title. It was frayed around the edges. It had spots. I asked him what he was reading.

“Ivanhoe,” he said, “Sir Walter Scott.”

I said I'd never read it.

“It's a little slow,” he said, “but great.”

“Writing was so different then,” I said. “More ornate. There was nothing else to do. Why not describe everything?”

He ran me through the list of characters: Ivanhoe, King Richard, Robert of Locksley, Prince John and others.

I asked him where he found such an old book. He told me he dug it out of the recycle barrel of a nearby bookstore. He'd saved it from death. In his hands, Ivanhoe still lived. He said when he was finished, it was going into a street library.

A few weeks later, I was pulling my car around the front of a grocery store, where the line of homeless people waiting to deposit cans and bottles into the machines was seven or eight deep. I noticed the book-reading homeless man sitting on the sidewalk waiting his turn. He was leaning against the store and reading a book. My book! The Great Birthright! Earlier that morning, I'd stocked it in a half dozen nearby street libraries. And there he was reading my novel about Oregon's socialist ocean beaches and the evil California developer trying to privatize them.

I smiled. I laughed. I said, “Hell yeah!”

Then it hit me. We'd have to chat up the book on our next book chat. It very well could be this afternoon! What if the reader who loved Ivanhoe hated my book? What if he gave me a bad review right there on the sidewalk while he was drinking malt liquor or smoking a cigarette?

I relished that negative possibility, almost more than I relished the possibility he would love the novel.

A week passed. I told the universe it was going down this very day. Reading Man would be there sitting on his usual sidewalk reading a book while drinking malt liquor or smoking or both. This certitude meant the $20 gift certificate I procured from the local bookstore was stuffed in my pocket, ready for presentation to him.

The idea was to award the gift certificate in appreciation for his reading my novel and delivering a review of it to my face without me first revealing I was its author. It was kind of like a parlor game!

Why would I presume he finished reading the novel? Because he told me he always finishes books!

It was a pleasant overcast morning. I rounded a corner on my bicycle and there he was! I pulled over and got off my bike. He recognized me and said hello. I said hello.

He was reading The Sea Wolf by Jack London. He was drinking a can of Smirnoff Ice Smash malt liquor and smoking a Lucky Strike.

I asked him about a book I saw him reading in front of the grocery store. It had a bluish gray cover with a dog on it.

“The Great Birthright!” said Reading Man with so much fervor it braced me.

“What did you think of it?” I said.

“I loved it! What a read! I finished it earlier this morning and gave it to a barista at Starbucks.”

I revealed myself as the author of the book.

“Oh wow! I can't believe it! I loved that picture of you as a kid on Cannon Beach.”

We discussed a few particulars of the novel. Clearly he had read it all. I can't say that about most people I know.

“I found it in a book nook,” he said.

“I put it in there,” I said.

I presented the gift certificate and told him the reason for the award. Reading Man's face lit up. He thanked me. He told me he appreciated me. I hadn't heard that in a long time. I gave him copies of my two recent clandestine publications, got on my bike, and rode away.

His name is Mark and it occurred to me as I bicycled home that I have had the most interesting and unique literary conversations of my life with a homeless man while he either drinks malt liquor or smokes or both.