Commentary : Risking Some Kindness to a Down-and-Outer : The homeless: There was something about his eyes that intrigued me.
Despite our similar ethnic and religious connections, I really couldn’t find much to identify with the grimy man sharing the front seat of my car.
He was a little older than I, and wore a full beard that couldn’t seem to decide between black and gray. It was flecked with crumbs, and a blotch of dried saliva hadn’t quite been carried off by the gentle breeze. Gray trousers were shapeless, bagging at the knees; a rough-and-ragged jacket was frayed at the cuffs and collar. Star-patterns of cotton long-johns poked through the elbows of his shirt.
He seemed like a character out of “The Grapes of Wrath,” I thought, a throwback to the 1930s. But there he was, sitting at attention, under a faded Padres cap. Not really a threat, just one of those homeless I’d been reading about.
Still, there was something about his eyes--the hazy blue I’d seen in a hundred dreamy Irishmen near Cork several summers back--that intrigued me. They held a soft look that seemed to say, “I trust you. Don’t put me down.”
As our short drive began, I made some inane reference to the light traffic. My passenger wanted no small talk, and quickly brought the meeting to order.
“My name’s Mort McCorkle, but everybody calls me Corky,” he said. “I sure appreciate the ride. Got me a bus pass, y’know--but on a Sunday, buses don’t run very often. And I don’t like to hang around, especially on a warm day like this.”
I liked this guy’s attitude: he was grateful, but he held onto his pride, letting me know he had his own resources. Obviously, he wasn’t totally dependent on me.
We had seen each other at church on several earlier Sundays, but never spoke. This time, as before, there were the usual post-service greetings, the nodding and polite hand-shaking--all well out of Corky’s range. He stood, ignored, only a few feet away from the smiling parishioners.
I thought about that Itinerant Preacher 2,000 years ago and wondered why nobody seemed willing to stretch the hand of Christian fellowship to the tall, slightly bowed figure with bulging plastic bags in each hand.
“You seem kind of bogged down,” I said, ignoring advice that panhandlers and homeless were to be avoided. “Need a lift somewhere?”
“Sure do. You going toward Pacific Beach?” he asked. “That sure would beat walking in this kind of weather. But what I really need are a few bucks for something to eat.”
I fumbled in my pants pocket, retrieving a couple of dollar bills. “That’s not much, I guess. But at least it’ll get you a bowl of soup, maybe some pie.”
On the way out of the parking lot, Corky asked a lot of questions.
How did I like my foreign car? (Great around town, but tough on a long freeway trip.) Had I lived here long? (Naw, just moved down after a lifetime in the Bay Area.) What did I do for a living? (A little free-lance writing, just finished some research for a TV game show. But mostly, I’m sort of retired after 37 years as a reporter and sportswriter.)
It turned out Mort McCorkle was more than a good listener. He may be a self-styled “non-conformist,” but this guy had opinions of his own:
He always liked the old Chevys and didn’t know much about these imported cars. . . . He knew the Bay Area, had lived in Frisco for a while--Seattle and Portland, too. All nice towns, not as good as they were before the war. But you can’t beat San Diego on a Sunday in October, huh?
He used to be a pretty good baseball fan in the old days, Corky said. “Used to take my son to see the old Seals and the Mission Reds in Frisco. I was married then, and had a pretty good job . . . before my wife and I split up, though. Ever since, I just kinda been on the bum . . .
“I remember when Joe DiMaggio played for the Seals, and Ted Williams was a skinny kid with the Padres. In those days, some of those Coast Leaguers were as good as the big league guys who play here now,” he laughed. “They weren’t paid all those millions then, o’ course.”
Before long he asked a strange question: “You got a business card?”
Maybe I needed to prove I hadn’t lied to him. Or maybe subconsciously I wanted to reach out further to this male bag-lady. Before I knew it, I handed one off. He examined it briefly, then stuffed it into a well-worn jacket pocket.
Near his stop, Corky dug into a bag and retrieved a red, ballpoint pen--still in its plastic wrapper and hermetically sealed to a piece of cardboard. “If you’re a writer, maybe this’ll come in handy,” he said with a shy smile. The price tag from Thrifty read $1.98.
I felt a little guilty, but accepted Corky’s gift. As he left, I realized he still had his dignity. Maybe somehow the books were balanced, at least for that day.
But I still had a few doubts. Had he shoplifted the pen, or was it one of his few legitimate possessions? On Thanksgiving, would he suddenly knock on our door for a free meal? Would he use my card, phoning in the dead of night to ask me to bail him out of the slammer? How would I explain this guy to my family, anyway? In short, what had I gotten myself into?
My new-found friend might be a drunk, a doper or--even worse--one of those crazies I’d seen on the TV news. He could become a real problem, I realized. Maybe all those pink-cheeked churchgoers who looked the other way knew something after all. You didn’t see them sticking their necks out. . . .
Nobody likes to get played for a sucker. So I parked half a block away, secretly watching Corky pace up and down the sidewalk. There was a fast-food joint across the boulevard, and a supermarket at his back.
He seemed undecided for several minutes about where to go. But, as a hard-boiled cynic, I was betting on the supermarket and a bottle of cheap wine in a brown paper bag.
Corky waited for a green light. Then, gathering his strength and those white plastic bags, he plunged across the intersection--toward a Denny’s restaurant.
Yeah, I thought, you sure can’t beat San Diego weather on a Sunday in October. And Thanksgiving will have a special meaning for me this year. . . .
