This one is not really a story but I wrote it so you get to read it. The inspiration for it was a trip home at 4 AM after cleaning my father in law's bar after it closed. While stopped at a stop light I saw a person laying in a doorway and seemed to be trying to cover themselves with the old sport coat that they were wearing. I went home and wrote this down.

THE STREET

Raindrops make a pattering sound on the sidewalk in front of an abandoned doorway. A steel door that once provided an entrance to the old hardware building has been permanently bolted so that no entrance or exit is any longer possible. The brick walls that make up three sides of the alcove protecting the door are dirty with the dust that has attached itself to urine stains that start waist high and then run down the walls to the concrete porch. All of this has become the habitat of a lonely creature wearing an old sport coat, black work pants and a tattered pair of tennis shoes who lies sleeping in that portion of the opening that he has designated as his bedroom. But for the occupant of the small man made cave there would be no need for this opening or for the building that surrounds it for that matter. The current owner has talked about tearing it down but that doesn't make economic sense because there is no demand for a new one on the site and razing it would be cost prohibitive. Besides there is still a little bit of depreciation left in it.

A car makes a whooshing sound as it travels through the water on Burnside Street a block away. During the day you wouldn't hear a single car that far away but there isn't a lot of sound in the city at 3 O’clock in the morning. If you listen closely you do hear a lot of little noises. A train whistles from the east side somewhere, some people arguing a couple of blocks away and the occasional automobile on one of the main streets. The bundle in the doorway doesn't care though, his two sedative bottles lay empty on the sidewalk just outside his abode. One is a quart of Thunderbird the other’s label simply says; 'wine'. He moves a little bit trying to put his hand under his head in order to use it for a pillow. But, alas, he can't pull it up far enough; the old sport coat is caught under his hip and is restricting the movement of his shoulder. He tries one more time and then the movement stops.

A lone figure walks out of the adult book store across the street, stopping just long enough to see if anyone is watching, then, satisfied that he has not been seen he walks down the street, with his head down, to his waiting car. He drives down the deserted side street to a main avenue that will take him to his home and his warm, dry bed. His visit to the dark side is over.

The neon sign on the front of the store, the street lights at every second telephone pole and a security light from the furniture warehouse a half a block away provide the illusion that it is still day. The street, however, is empty of traffic and of parked cars, leaving the unused parking meters standing in a uniform row along each side of the street. A motorist would salivate at the sight of an empty ninety minute space if it were daytime, but now no one cares. Certainly not the creature in the cave, but then he doesn't care during the day.

He, there isn't any indication that the pronoun fits, but if one were to analyze the unmoving bundle in the doorway there likely would be no need to assign a name to it no matter how general it might be. There are hundreds of these 'street people' visible during the day. So what happens to them at night? The lady with the Safeway shopping cart walks to the Morrison bridge ramp and pushes her cart between the concrete abutment and the loose wire of the fence designed to keep her out. She carefully parks it at the far side of the enclosure so that no one can steal her prize possessions. She carefully pulls some folded plastic material from the bottom rack of the cart and spreads it out on the ground, taking care that nothing is left under it, and then places a half a dozen paper grocery bags end to end on top of it. The completion of this task constitutes the turning down of her bed. She doesn't need the wine sedative of the doorway person. All she needs is a lullaby, which she provides herself. A few soft choruses of a tune that she used to sing to her children barely gurgles from her throat, a lump forms and a single tear provides the only emotion left in her. And then; sleep.

The man known as 'chief' simply lies on his side next to the foundation of a building nearest to the spot where he gets tired. The other street people call him chief because he is obviously an Indian. No one knows what kind, or really cares. Chief may not remember himself. A sixteen year old boy finds refuge behind the shrubs of the downtown library, a group of men walk down the stairway on the East side of the bridge to lay on the dry dirt under it, and two fellows who have known each other for some time walk down a trail through some blackberry vines in Sullivan’s gulch to their cottage; a conglomeration of boards, cardboard, plastic and paper that they have built surreptitiously over time and under the cover of the brush.

The rain is falling harder now, washing the streets. Streets that have not had a sweeper on them for a week. Rinsing the urine from the doorways and sidewalks, washing the dirt, paper, leaves and excrement down the drains, making them clean again.

Rain, it is the only clean thing that happens to this part of town, the only cleansing that these people can get. But they're missing it, they are hiding from it. Under their bridges, and in their doorways, in their makeshift shelters and under their bushes, they're missing it. They're missing the shower that could make them clean. Well, they don't have towels anyway, how would they get dry? I guess that they'll just stay dirty, on the dirty streets, under the dirty bridges, in the dirty doorways, in this dirty part of town.

So who really cares about them anyway???????

By Everett Ede