It Goes Like This

I hear the doorbell. I scoot down the hall in my stocking feet and slide to the front door thinking maybe Cecilia's come by or perhaps Dely or Laurie to check up on me while I'm "alone" for the week with Ann off in Wisconsin.

I look through the peephole, but I don't have my glasses on so the person outside the door just looks like a bundle with rain dripping off the edges.

Cecilia?

I open the door and there stands a man I think I know, but am not so certain I know. There are lots of homeless folks around the neighborhood. I saw three such men today, huddled in a driveway a few blocks up the street. When I walked by, they got quiet, squatted closer together and eyed me from under their rain-soaked baseball caps.

There's also a number of crack addicts. They wander the streets in sleeveless shirts oblivious to the rain or the wind or the recent cold snap. I see them early in the morning as I walk to school swaying their arms like they haven't got a care in the world. They strut, pacing a street corner in frenetic circles waiting for their dealer to drive by or walk by or once, to my amazement, bicycle by. They shout out nonsense peppered with insults and curses and toss their heads to the sky like god is carrying on one half of the conversation.

So the man at my front door could have been homeless or drugged up, but he was submissive and calm and stood like a wet puppy on the first step of the stairway so it was hard to tell. He looked up, "Hi, I don't know if you remember me, but I used to live across the street and I once borrowed gas from you."

When we first moved into the neighborhood, the house across the street was abandoned. Squatters occupied it occasionally and one night a mid-sized RV pulled up to the front curb and ran an electrical cable to the basement of the house. They sat their for days until the police showed up and moved them on their way -- which happened to be one block over and one block up.

The man on my front porch lived in that RV and to earn money, he mowed lawns, hauled away people's garbage, and busied himself as a gruff handyman. Two boys in the neighborhood worked for him and he ordered them around, cussing and swearing loud enough that the engine of the mower couldn't drown him out.

We did give him gas for his lawn mower, but just once. He always said he's pay us back, but he never did. Instead, he just kept showing up and asking if we could spare some more gas. Eventually, even Ann's midwestern kindness faded.

We haven't seen him around for about a year now, until tonight when he stood at the front step, drenched and deshevled.

"I just need a bit of work," he kept saying. "Do you have anything for me?"

I'm always torn by those who are down and out. Part of me wanted to give him money. The other part knew that giving him money meant he'd be back next week and the week after that like a woodpecker on a dead stump. And he didn't really look like the same guy who used to boss around young kids making them do all the work while he hauled in all the cash. That man was strong. He stood tall and barked his orders with authority.

This man looked lost. He stood hunched, his head down, and he barely looked me in the eye. He was beaten. I don't know if it was drugs or hard times, but he really wasn't the same man we'd tried to help years earlier.

I decided not to give him money partly because, with Ann away until Thursday, I am home alone with no dog to signal warnings. There have been robberies of late -- the neighbor up the street, the neighbor just behind us -- and it's hard to know if this man still has kids working for him. I doubt it, but still...And I didn't give him money partly because, even though he didn't look like the same man, he claimed that he was and the man he was before was not a man I liked very much. He was mean, he was deceitful, and took advantage of kids who were just trying to earn a dollar or two.

"If you don't have no work, could you spare a dollar?"

When the crack addicts ask me for money on the corners, it's easy to say no. I know exactly where my money would end up. But occasionally, when the homeless ask for change, I give it to them. Like the old man who stands outside Walgreens with a cup and his cane and smiles a greeting as I pass by. I give him change and he nods and blesses me. Once he was in line in front of me at the grocery store buying a loaf of bread. He didn't have enough money so I paid for the rest. He blessed me then, too.

Folks in the neighborhood tell me he's not really homeless, that he lives in an old run-down house behind the grocery store. Giving him money seems to have a point, but giving money to someone who just knocks on my door early in the evening doesn't feel right.

When I finally shut the door, I could hear him still asking away. "I don't mean no harm, miss," but I couldn't listen. I don't want to be cold and cruel. I don't want to be someone who turns their back on those in need, but sometimes it goes like this -- you just have to close the door. You have to choose and all the reasons for choosing are screwy sometimes and sometimes it's just a matter of what's in your gut. There was doubt in my gut tonight and I tried to listen to it.

Sometimes it just goes like this.