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The
Face….
By:
Dean Anthony Jean-Pierre
The
face looked at once familiar, but beneath the mask of furry tangled facial hair,
and thick vine like hair that matted his head like a wet mop being dragged
across a dirty floor; it was hard to tell.
In fact, it had been uncombed for so long that they had woven themselves
together looking like serpents braided together in a revolt against grooming.
As I waited for the stoplight to make up its mind, stuck somewhere
between indecision and releasing its captive audience of angry horn blowing
cars; I mentally shaved the furry stranger's face. His face remained a mystery,
but as the light changed, releasing us to walk on with our lives, through the
throng of pedestrians we made eye contact.
His eyes were the colour of rainwater coloured by dirt.
They reminded me of puddles of water I had seen on sidewalks that turned
brown after being splashed through by Walkers.
Light snow had begun to fall, and before long the city streets would be
covered in a blanket of white. Snowflakes
appeared to be frozen in mid-flight as if on pause, and waiting for the other
little snowflakes to catch up. With really nowhere to go, except home to an
empty and cold apartment I did an about face and followed the face.
The crowd of pedestrians parted for him without hesitation.
He looked like the kind of guy that you just didn't mess with because if
you did, it could quite possibly be your last act on this earth.
He would occasionally stop in a crowd of people and just stand there, not
doing anything except staring straight ahead.
Walkers would put enough space between his body and their life, just in
case he snapped. They would then
stand a remote chance of escaping his wrath with their life.
When these madmen lose their minds everyone caught in the vicinity of
their maddened rampage usually dies. Your
best bet of survival is to be one of the lucky ones to miss the carnage because
either your train got delayed, or you were stuck on line in a bookstore.
On that day, being late for work or waiting impatiently on a line in
Barnes & Noble will have saved your life.
He came to such an abrupt stop in front of Century 21 on Dey Street that
I didn't have time to stop. So I
stood about a foot away from him as he stared into the showcase window.
Something had caught his attention because the angry look he wore on his
face was replaced by what could only be assumed to be something of a smile. I
followed the trajectory of his gaze to see what could have softened his features
making him seem half human.
In the window knelt a young black woman undressing a female mannequin.
The bottom half of her body was already fully exposed to reveal a
perfectly sculptured round buttocks, and
her top was in the process of being unbuttoned. He stood there, unblinking, for fear of missing anything.
This was probably the first time in years he had even come close to
seeing a woman naked-even though it was just a mannequin.
The mannequin was now facing us, and her amply sized man made configured
breasts were resting against the window; while the young lady chose her new
wardrobe. She hadn't given him a second look because she was accustomed
to Walkers stopping by and watching her work.
At first, she wasn't aware of why both men and women stood silently in
the cold, as she would undress these lifeless mannequins.
But
one day as she was making her way to work, she stopped by a Macy's window to
admire a fellow window dresser hard at work.
In that moment of voyeurism, she became aware of how the Walkers felt as
she undressed her mannequins. It
was as if a real person was being disrobed and the anticipation of seeing them
naked for the first time left a lump in your throat the size of a plum.
Margaret had stood there long after all the Walkers had walked away and
the window dresser had moved on to another mannequin.
She stood there waiting for something more, but it was after all, only a
mannequin.
He was still standing there; his face and open palms pressed up against
the window. With the tips of his
fingers he traced a circle in the window where her red-stained lipstick lips
were pressed up against it. He
hadn't as yet become aware of my presence, and the fact that I was bearing
witness to his innermost thoughts. Something
must've have broken his train of thought because he wheeled around as if to
confront some unseen dementor. Surprised
that there wasn't anyone around, he turned to face me.
His
long dirty brown hair hung heavily over his forehead partially obscuring his
vision. He brushed it aside to
stare at me. His stare was so
intense that it rendered me motionless, not from fear but from something deeper
and stronger-compassion. His eyes
were huge and bright like two beaming headlights of an oncoming car.
But in them I saw a sadness that made you forget about his appearance,
and the fact that the stench emanating from his body made you pray for a sudden
blast of cold air to whisk away his vile smell.
"You've
been following me," he finally said. His
eyes were looking everywhere except directly at me as if eye contact would be
too much for him to bear. I sensed
he was accustomed to Walkers looking at him as if he was an animal unfit to be
acknowledged or spoken to directly. The
fear I had of him doing bodily harm to me had dissipated once I stared into his
eyes. I now only wanted to at least
try to indulge him in conversation.
"Yeah,
I've been following you," I bravely said.
You seem like an interesting sort of fellow.
Where are you headed?"
My
question appeared to have fallen short of his ears, and it went unanswered.
He crossed the street oblivious to the traffic, and a litany of profanity
and screeching tires broke through the quiet of the moment.
I followed him as he took a seat on the cold steps between Starbucks, and
Sandella's Café. Starbucks
seemingly occupies every corner in New York City in the year 2000.
How much caffeine does one city need?
Starbucks aims to make sure that we have more than enough.
"Mind
if I sit here," I motioned to an empty spot in his vicinity.
He ignored me, but I went ahead and sat down next to him.
The two of us sitting side by side brought a lot of stares from Walkers
by who were probably wondering what could an old white homeless man possibly
have in common with a young, well dressed black man.
"You
ain't one of them sicko pervert black boys that jus' out looking for some
trouble?"
"Nah,
that's not what I'm about. I just
figured you might need a friend or something so here I am.
I would imagine not too many people stop to engage you in
conversation."
"The only friend a man needs is this right here," he said
pointing to small bottle of half-empty Johnny Walker that was buried in his left
coat pocket. It quickly disappeared back down into a coat pocket that had
seen one too many winters, and was ready to retire to the trash heap.
Not having much to call his own, he was probably fearful that I would
want a taste of his poison.
"I only have enough for me. So
you better not ask me for any. I
know how you young folks like to get drunk, and carry on when you get a little
taste," he said as if remembering a wild scene of drunken behaviour he had
happened upon recently.
Walkers had dwindled down to a precious few.
Most of them walked by speedily, pretending that we were invisible: a
homeless man and a black man. How
much more invisible can you get than that in a society that would welcome our
genocide? The walkers were afraid of being accosted for a handout of spare
change, like us, was only an afterthought for them, easily discarded and
forgotten.
"Heh man let me buy you a cup of coffee. It's getting kind of cold
out here, and by the looks of you, you need something hot."
"I got all that I need right here," reaching into his coat
pocket to produce his best friend, Mr. Johnny Walker.
"You should slow down on that stuff," I tried to warn him,
"before you end up dead in a gutter somewhere with mice rummaging through
your pockets."
"Listen young man, I don't know who you are and why you're even
bothering trying to talk to me, but I've been doing fine without your help.
So you can be on your way now. You've
done your good deed, and now you can get into heaven. NOW GO!"
The strength of his voice carried up and down the empty street and
reverberated like a boomerang off the tall buildings.
He got up to leave, but something must've occurred to him and he turned
to me.
"You wanna know why I was staring at that dummy in the window,"
he said pointing to the window with the now fully dressed mannequin.
I nodded yes.
"It just seems funny to me that people would take time out to dress
up a an old lifeless mannequin, and the stupider ones will stand outside in the
cold winter in awe. I'm a living,
breathing human being, but they won't even acknowledge my presence when they see
me on the trains or streets. I'm
sure most of them would rather see me dead than come anywhere near them. Ain't that something," he said chuckling as the irony
hit him. "Anyway…thank
you."
I stood up to follow him, and he turned his head to face me while still
walking away. He wanted to be alone. He
wanted to make some sense of this world that had forgotten his existence, and
had left him stranded on its highway to the future. I suddenly remembered where I had seen him, but his hair was
shorter then and his face was clean-shaven.
He was a security guard at a Red Apple supermarket I used to frequent
about eight years ago, and now here he was living on the streets.
I quickened my walk to catch up with him.
I wished him well and slipped a couple bucks in his pocket.
He wouldn't have accepted it if I had given it to him.
Even homeless people have their pride, and sometimes that's all they have
left of who they once were.
I stood on the corner of Dey Street watching him as he slowly disappeared
into the night wondering if he would make it through this cold harsh winter.
A week later a homeless man was found dead in Central Park on what was
the coldest night of winter. The
description fit him right down to the possessions he had in his pocket: an empty
bottle of Johnny Walker and $50 dollar bill.
His name was Harry Partners, and he had no known living relatives.
He had died on the streets he had called home. No one would miss him or
shed tears that he was dead. The
city still moved along as New Yorkers prepared for another day in the city minus
one of its citizens.
The End…