~ an urban vignette ~
Old Black man sat bundled up in the sun with a ragged, cardboard sign propped up on his knees begging for help. He sat on the sidewalk with his back to the brick building of the Walgreens drugstore. The sidewalk was stained with gum. Torn candy wrappers and cigarette packs and bottle tops and wadded up tissues littered the area next to the store and out in the parking lot next to a line of trees and bushes. A dusty Subaru Crosstrek with a mud-encrusted mountain bike locked on top sat in the back of the lot. Some traveler looking for a place to pull over and nap before pushing on to the next adventure. The old gentleman sitting on the sidewalk wore a large, helmet-like hat with big, fuzzy earflaps. The outside of the hat was a dark-grey, and the fuzzy fur on the inside was an orangey yellow. He never spoke. Nor did I. All kinds of humans ambled by, either lost in their own worlds or staring all around on the look out for crazed, desperate folks lacking emotional self-control but possessing guns, knives, syringes, and drugs.
My prescriptions were ready for pick-up. As I walked across the parking lot to enter the store, the Walgreens in Shoreline immediately north of the Seattle border, a car almost ran over the sidewalk and into the old guy sitting silently with his big, Elmer Fudd hat on. A sedan with WA plates lurched in from Aurora Avenue, slammed into the high curb of the Walgreens sidewalk, bounced with a jolt, and stop. Was a hard park. The beggar man on the sidewalk didn’t even seem to flinch. Maybe he wasn’t all aware. Or maybe he was astutely aware.
A whole bunch of drunk White people spilled out of all four doors and talking like buzzsaws all at once. They were dressed in clothes I associate with colorful folk outfits from Central or Eastern Europa. They staggered about like they were goofing around on some black-n’-white, slapstick comedy show. All looked to be in their 70s & 80s and were drunker’n hell. The only exception was a White woman of about 25, maybe 28, tho, good lord maybe she was a worn out, exhausted, fed up 17 year old. She stood off to the side, sober, with a colorful crocheted knit hat pulled down over her head. Gazed away looking embarrassed. She was as silent as the old Black man on the sidewalk. The others were drunk and babbling loudly in a mix of English and … something else. Usually pretty good at identifying languages and accents despite being profoundly Hard-of-Hearing, but they were drunk talking. Speech so slurred I was unable to recognize the lilt, accents, and cadence of their language.
“Great-Grandma” was the oldest. She sported a head of messy white hair sticking out like she been rolling around in the woods all night. Grandma wandered about and shuffled around in circles wearing slippers. Those old slippers look like she wore little, blue, red, and purple psychedelic reindeer on her feet. Her robe hung open as she pouted at being told, apparently, to get back in the car.
The driver was a bossy fella, but bossy in a kind funny way, so kind he might as well stab you to get the mystery over with. The first thing he did after stumbling out of the car was to lay a brown paper bag with a liquor bottle in it out against the windshield with the bottom nested in the vents below the glass. He sat his bottle-in-the-bag down with the care of laying down a sleeping infant.
Everybody talking all at once with arms churning and pumping like pistons, all except the young gal who stared off pretending she wasn’t there with her rowdy drunk demented family. Assuming it was her family. And Granny balked. She did not wanna get back inside the car. She pumped her arms around in the air like a drunk boxer punching at ghosts. I couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but she was mad. Mad!
Sometimes I have a bad habit of giggling at sad sights of people in distress. It’s a shameful habit rooted in my own traumas of childhood alienation and fear of loss and abandonment. No giggling this time! All felt so surreal. After a moment, I shot on into the store. Glass panes on the door had been replaced with plywood from stupid vandals. The manager was fuming over a snatch and run thief. He was waving a handful of locks at the pharmacy staff and bemoaning he needs to hire extra staff just to lock, unlock, and relock merchandise for customers.
When I came back out the store, the drunk family were all gone. The old man sitting on the sidewalk holding up a cardboard sign had also vanished. Did he flee? Run off into the woods behind the Subaru with the bike on top? Or squeeze into the sedan with the mystery family? Maybe they offered him liquor to go zoom along together. Gosh, in hind site been wise and proper to note the license plate number, model, and make of their car and report it to the police. Zounds! I don’t know what to make of this situation. Do you?
William Dudley Bass
Thursday 19 October 2023
Friday 20 October 2023
Shoreline/Seattle, WA
USA
Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.