God's Orphan

It was noon on Saturday in downtown Pueblo.  Although the winter sun had reached its zenith it hung strangely low in the southern sky, its light was pale, soft and filtered.  The day was pleasantly warm except for the occasional breeze that cut me sharply as it blew by.  It was a needling reminder that the Queen of Summer had made her graceful exit long ago.  Her luminous sister, Dame Winter, was our sovereign now; ruling us with her chill and her coldness that was sometimes white, sometimes gray.  What struck me odd was the absence of the traffic that moved through the city and the cars that usually snuggled next to the sidewalk, bumper to bumper, patiently waiting for their owners to return.  The traffic signals turned red to green to red like a conductor leading an imaginary orchestra and playing to a non-existent audience.  I could smell the evergreen trees that grew out of the sidewalks like weeds in a majestic, silent garden of glass and steel, cement and asphalt.  And in the stead of the people who moved to and fro on mysterious errands and the ones who leaned against the buildings or hid in little alcoves smoking, there was one lone man.  He wore a coat that was the faded black that comes from much use and exposure to the outdoor elements.  His hair had the waxy sheen of a worn leather shoe; smooth, satiny, but not shiny, and it hung in greasy strings.  Somehow I knew that if I was near enough or if the breeze blew in the right direction I would be able to smell him, that stale odor of a body that hadn’t had the luxury of a bath or shower in some time.  One of God’s orphans, he traveled with a gait that was an odd cross of a march and a shuffle.  It wasn’t what I would call a walk but more of a series of broken falls.  It seemed as though he managed to get a foot beneath his body right before he plunged head first to the ground.  His head was down and his eyes were focused blankly toward the sidewalk.  Unaware of his surroundings it seemed as if he was pulled along by an invisible, magnetic force that he could not resist.  I tried to pretend I didn’t see him while keeping him in my peripheral vision and I listened intently to the drag, slap, drag, slap of his very stylized walk just in case he approached me.  Calm and nonchalant on the exterior I was poised for flight on the inside.  But he continued along drawn by his own puppet master to the destination that only he had knowledge of and he ignored my presence altogether.