There’s this guy who sits under the trees across the street from my office. He has a bike with a dirty yellow backpack lashed to the back. He wears a dark blue baseball cap, and he’s often shirtless. Sometimes he’s barefoot too. I notice him at about nine o’clock in the morning, and he’s there the rest of the day.
I usually know he’s there because I hear him. In the summer I open my office windows, and he declaims from the dirt under the trees. From my office, I can’t always make out what he’s saying except for a word or two. I can tell that he’s passionate. Sometimes he sounds angry or desperate, but it might only be that he’s yelled his throat ragged.
When I walk over to Peet’s or down to the credit union or to a nearby restaurant for lunch, I can get a whole sentence. It’s easy because he repeats himself, sometimes for hours. One day he said, “That’s not oxygen therapy. No, it’s not. It’s not oxygen therapy. There’s no oxygen in that smoke. Maybe it’s Ritalin.” Interesting theory. Other times the refrain is more sexual or sinister. One day he shouted, “I saw you. I saw where you put your fingers, on your own daughter.” Another time, from nine until about twelve-thirty, he yelled in the ragged-throated voice, “How can I make you understand?”
He tries not to yell at people who walk by. I’ve seen him put both hands over his mouth and rock back and forth until they pass.
Some weeks he’s quiet. He sits on the bench or unrolls his sleeping bag and reclines under the trees, guarding his bike. I’m guessing that those are weeks he can get his medication. I’m guessing, too, that toward the end of the month, the money and the meds run out.
If I were to continue to guess, I’d say that he sleeps at one of the shelters in town and rides his bike here, to a place a little less public than downtown. And I wonder what he’s going to do in the winter, when the rains come.