The Man in the Street

Keita called my attention to the man on the street. I recognized him immediately as one of the homeless who regularly beg along Conway Street, a large vein of city traffic. He ranks among the walking dead, the collection of hungry and gaunt persons too poor to even afford government housing. Winter and summer are brutal in this region, especially on the homeless, and many are gone after only a few months on the street whether by exposure, murder, or overdose, hence the rather morbid title.

Last time I saw this particular man, he accidentally threw himself into the side of a large black Mercedes SUV parked along the curb, crunching the passenger side mirror off and to the ground. He had tried in vain to pick it up and reattach it, but had only succeeded in jamming the jagged bits of plastic against each other repeatedly, further damaging the vehicle's paint.

I watched him now, seemingly dancing by himself on the sidewalk. Keita and Michelle laughed as he struggled to pull up his pants which hung from a broken belt around his thighs. "Oh my god! His thing is hangin' out!" Keita shouted, pointing to his flaccid member flopping impotently against the crotch of his clothes. It seemed when his pants began to fall, his shorts had also taken a dive.

A moment later, half of the females in the office came to watch the spectacle, standing around my desk while pointing out the window. The man had apparently been wandering up and down the street for some time, wobbling, stumbling, and dragging himself around the short block. This was the manner of his movement the last time I saw him, only it was more exaggerated now. He was clearly not in a fit state of mind, throwing out his arms for balance only to throw himself further out of sorts and trip over his own feet.

A young couple walked past him, giving a wide berth to the wild-eyed stranger who reached out at them, yelling something utterly unintelligible. Other citizens made their way around him in turn, including a mother shielding her daughter's eyes from the ghastly display of flailing partial nudity. Security from the hotel across the way began to take notice, watching the fellow shake and spin, unable to keep both feet on the ground. No one dared approach him though, as if he carried some contagion which might leap to a new host if the proximity was right.

"Oh he's on sumthin'. I know that. That ain't normal." Janet was speaking to nobody in particular, clutching the gold chain around her throat like a charm. "Somebody needs to call the radio car. He's gonna hurt himself out there like that. Did you see that? He almost fell in the street!"

"Go ahead and call them, Janet." She looked at me, shocked. "Do you have the non-emergency number for the police? Would you like me to get it for you?" She frowned at me, turning her eyes back to the man whose pants now hung around his ankles.

"Somebody needs to call. Poor man, behaving like that. He's on sumthin', I know that."

I turned my eyes up from my paperwork to watch him; I wasn't going to get any work done with the gaggle of whispering, laughing, shrieking women standing around. I stood up and walked to the window, spying him there, trying so desperately to grab his pants from the pavement, failing so thoroughly as his body betrayed him, convulsing and pitching out of his control.

"He's probably suffering a mental illness, a lot of the homeless do." Keita looks at me, shaking her head.

"I don't know about that. Janet's right, he's on something." She looked back to the street. We watch him, trundling about in circles, his uncomfortable and unstoppable dance jerking him this way and that, tearing his pants out of his grasp again and again. He flops, spins, and tries to steady himself, squatting low over wobbly knees as if he means to have a bowel movement right there on the sidewalk in front of Baltimore's finest hotel.

"I wonder if it's mercury poisoning." Michelle looks at me, pronounced confusion in her face. "In Minamata Bay, the people were poisoned by mercury. It first presented as 'the dancing cat's disease' when the local cats were eating contaminated fish. The same thing was seen later in the local fishermen and villagers. The next generation was even worse off, serious mental and physical defects." The girls frown; they don't see any connection.

"Oh, did you see that?! He fell in the street again! Did you see him walk out there? That car almost hit him!" Janet is somehow more concerned than any of the others, but hasn't lifted a finger to help. I watch her, watching him. She is waiting for the inevitable, we all are. I know it's coming, and it's coming in the form of a Dodge Sprinter Van taking the ninety-degree turn onto our street at a speed so fast the whole container on its back begins to lean.

3

2

1

Impact.


We can hardly hear a thing through our hurricane proof windows; the hotel manager's shouts are completely muffled, as are the screams of two nurses wandering down the walk from the hospital. We cannot hear the sound of the nameless man's body being smashed across the grill of the van, nor the thumping of his arms and legs as they clatter across the metal and plastic. All we can do is watch in silence as his body is tossed dozens of paces down the lane, sprawling and tumbling to rest like a broken doll. Every girl in my office gasped simultaneously, as if to leave a void hanging in the air, a room suddenly shocked and empty. I'm not shocked, only saddened that it ended this way. That was somebody's little boy.

There he remains, motionless. Still, no one has moved to help him, no one will touch him. Now of course, for a different reason. He is no longer among the walking dead, he is dead; and death is another thing to be feared.

It only takes one minute, twenty three seconds, a very good time to be sure. Three police cars, one ambulance, and one Red Alert Emergency Response vehicle round the bend and take over the scene. Machines are pulled out, attached to the motionless body while cups of air on chords are offered to the broken face. A moment later, an arm jolts. A twitch. A stir. A coughing, shuddering body begins to move on the pavement. The man on the street is brought back to life, amidst the cheers of the hotel staff and passersby. The girls cheer too, and hug each other. It's a happy ending after all.

You're going to think I'm a monster for what I'm about to say, but I've been honest with you so far and I feel compelled to finish this honestly. If it had been me that was responsible for saving his life, I wouldn't have. I would have let him die. I would not have taken great pains to assure his survival, though I should think I'd be merciful enough to give him a plug of morphine for the crossing. It's a terrible thing to say I know, but you weren't watching him struggle. He was alone, embarrassed and isolated in this civil world, starving on the street without shelter, trapped in a body that would not follow his commands. You did not watch his mad tango on the pavement, you did not see the pain in his face when he reached out for help. You did not hear what all those onlookers were saying, what they were thinking.

All I could think about in that moment, watching him spring back to life was this: Pity. I would have rather died.