Robert sat on the bench between Luke and Stuart. The stitches over his left swollen eye still had the flakes of dried blood, betraying how fresh the wound was.
Across the street, a liquor store was about to close. They watched the store closely as a steady stream of vehicles filled with tourists passed in front of them, leaving the waterfront for the day. Between them, they didn’t have enough money for a pack of cigarettes, which was the most pressing immediate need. They had eaten several hours earlier at a communal meal served by the local Catholic church, and there was still a little vodka left in a half-pint bottle that they were sharing, which Luke kept in his pocket.
“You probably just fell down and hit your head” Luke said to Robert. “You fall down all the time”. Robert calmly replied “True, but this time I was sleeping, and some kid started to kick me in the face. He kicked me ten or twelves times. The police say they know who he is”.
Violent incidents in the homeless community are infrequent, but not unheard of. Sometimes, it is the escalation of a squabble among such men, to whom small things, like a pay-as-you-go phone, or some stockpiled water, are precious commodities. It is rarer still to have an unprovoked attack on an elderly homeless man.
As the lights turned off in the liquor store across the street for the night, the hopes of getting a pack of cigarettes faded. There was a collective sigh. “Do you have any cigarettes at all, Stu?”.
Stu reached into the pocket of his sweatshirt, and pulled out five partial remains of previously smoked cigarettes. They had between 10% and 20% of the cigarette left above the filter, having been smoked by some passerby, and discarded. They were trash to the previous owner, but a nicotine life-line to the three gentlemen.
“They are still a little wet from the rain”, Stu said.
Today had been sunny early in the morning, and looked promising for the whole day. However a brief, but heavy shower moved through in the middle of the afternoon. With no protective gear, and no shelter, one simply gets wet. Clothes, shoes, cigarettes, and all. What made it a bit worse for Robert is that he had his only sleeping bag out in the open in a grassy area at the time. That meant he would be squishing around in the moisture all night. Hopefully he could get it to dry out during the day tomorrow.
“The doctors say I might have had a concussion” Robert said. But I’ve had that before, and I don’t think so. They want me back tomorrow to check me out.”
“We got your back buddy”, Luke said to Robert. “We’ll make sure that never happens again.” Luke, a navy veteran, is always the guy to want to protect his fellow vets.
“I’m going crash for the night” Robert said, after acknowledging Luke’s pledge. He got up from the bench and started meandering back towards the Catholic church. At the parish hall, there was a concrete patio at the entrance, with a small overhang. A low wall extended out from the entrance on both sides… just enough to provide shelter from any wind, and the overhang gave a modicum of protection from the rain, should it return while he slept.
Approaching the entrance, he lowered himself onto his wet sleeping bag, to the right of the door, directly beneath a “No loitering” sign.
To the left of the door, Trudy had already made her encampment about an hour earlier, making use of the same protective aspect of the wall and overhang. She watched quietly while Robert laid down on his side of the concrete patio and fell asleep.