That homeless guy

My favorite diner, Mrs Rigby's, is in a low-rent, kinda scuzzy-for-Seattle neighborhood. There's usually a homeless guy hanging around the parking lot or down the street, and it's the same man, every time. I've sorta gotten to know him, but not well enough to know his name.

He's black, looks about fifty, but maybe he's younger; street years are rough. He's quiet, walks around by himself, and he doesn't often ask for money. I've given him thirty bucks or so over the years, one fiver at a time, but he usually forgets me from one "Here ya go" to the next, and I appreciate that.

We've spoken a few times, briefly, only a sentence or two. It's obvious he's not entirely present, and I ain't chatty, so I soon walk away, or he does.

It wasn't a plan or anything, but I'd vaguely thought about maybe buying him breakfast some time. What a mensch I'd be! It would probably never happen, but it was an idea.

Yesterday I had a burger and fries and strawberry shake at the diner, and when I walked out and looked around the lot and down the block, the local bum wasn't there. Huh. 

Almost always he's there, but I hadn't noticed when he wasn't. It flashed in my mind that weeks had passed, maybe longer, since I'd seen that tattered and tired man walking around the diner's neighborhood.

In the parking lot, I stood for a minute, wondering. That man was always in the neighborhood, for as long as I've been coming to Mrs Rigby's. When you got there or when you left, you'd see him. Or you'd be eating your meal and glance up as he walked by the front window. Sometimes he came into the diner to use the men's room, and the staff never objected.

He was known, so maybe they'd know. I re-entered the diner, and waited at the register until the waitress had finished ringing up a customer, before asking, "Hey, Rita, have you seen the neighborhood homeless guy?"

"Bucky," she said, so now I know his name, but she said it slow and sad, so before her next sentence I already knew I'd never say 'Hello, Bucky.' "I'm sorry, Doug. They found him a month or so ago, in the bushes off the sidewalk, by the bus stop."

"Well, hell," I think I said.

"Yeah, it's sad. He never caused any bother, and we always made him a sandwich to go at closing time."

I stood there but said nothing, so she patted my shoulder and whooshed past me to greet and seat an old couple who'd walked in. When she'd finished that task, she came back to me, and paused. "You OK?"

"Do you know... what happened? Did somebody...?" Kill him, but I couldn't say those words.

"No, the police said there was nothing suspicious. They think it was natural causes."

I didn't have anything pithy or profound to say, so I only said thanks and walked out again... across the parking lot, where I'd seen Bucky so many times, not even knowing his name. Then I waited for my bus, at the stop where he'd died in the bushes.

8/15/2024   

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