No Destination

A brief moment in the life of a homeless man in America

  John dragged his feet down the quiet street. His right shoe, which was barely a shoe anymore had almost no sole left. It had only a hole where his toes now shown through. Dirty, black, unwashed toes. He could feel the cold rough pavement under his shoeless left foot. He could not remember where he had lost his left shoe. He could not recall when, or how. The bottom of that foot was rough and calloused now. He thought that he must have lost it long ago.

  He slowed his shuffle periodicaly to peer into a shop window. Leering at items that he knew he would never have. He would never hold. He didn't need them anyway. The street was lined with these little shops full of things he loathed. "How pathetic", he thought. Though he was not at all sure why he thought it.

  The people inside these shops would turn to look at him. Only briefly. When their eyes would meet they would quickly turn away. He saw them whispering among themselves. They did. He was quite a sight. He was six foot tall from his scraggly dirty black haired head to his filthy unwashed toes. If you could manage to measure him while he was laying passed out on a sidewalk. Or a park bench before the police came to roust him out. The suit he wore under his black crusty trench coat was a pin striped dark navy blue made of the finest silk. He had been wearing it non stop since finding it nearly eleven months ago in a dumpster in an alley just behind this very street. The holes and stains on it were numerous. It was dirty and threadbare, with a very distasteful unclean odor.

  He shuffled down the street with no real purpose. He had no particular place he was trying to get to. No destination.

  People would step aside to give him room to pass. Their noses involuntarily wrinkling at the stench that clung to his body like the odor of a dead animal left too long in the hot sun. His grey and matted beard hung in dirty strands down to his chest. He did not look at them. His watery brown and bloodshot eyes did not make contact with their eyes. "They might see", he thought. He shuffled silently along.

  John smelled the coffee long before he saw the final shop on the street. Little tables with little chairs, arranged so quaintly on the sidewalk in front of him. Little umbrellas to cover the little tables. People with coffee and sandwiches sitting in those little chairs with the umbrellas covering them. People with money. People with things. With food and coffee.

  He sat in one of those chairs. Unconciously picking at a scab on one of the toes that protruded from the hole where more of his left shoe ought to be. He smelled the coffee. He wanted some. He knew he would not have any today. The people glanced at him. Then they quickly looked away. He heard them whispering.

  A woman in a red dress and red high heel shoes passed by him. She had dark brown hair tied up in a tight bun high on her head. Her legs were long and she wore light colored stockings that very closely resembled her fair skin. He thought her skin must be very smooth to touch. It looked smooth to him. Clean.

  She gave him a very sincere and beautiful smile. Her eyes were the brightest green color John could ever remember seeing. He thought he should know her. He could not remember why. He could not remember where from.

  She smelled nice to John. He could smell her rich fragrant perfume long after she had passed by. Like a place he should recall having been to before. A place full of flowers and sunshine. A home. He could smell it through the almost overwhelming smell of coffee.

  John stood up from the little chair. He began once again, to shuffle his way down the street. He had no real purpose. No particular place he was trying to get to. No Destination.

Author's Note

Just experimenting with my skills (or lack thereof). Please feel free to review, rate and comment. Thnx.

Reviews

[cleankitchen]

A very decent little story. I liked the description, I liked the idea of how much the food and coffee meant to him and the dichotomy of how little it meant to the people with food and money. I like your (what I call vamping, not sure what it is really called) with...people with coffee, people with money, people with food. It is kind of lyrical.

Suggestions would be to watch out for the short choppy sentences (I am a fan of them too, just read my writing) but I felt they were a bit much here. Use a semicolon or a comma here and there to chunk together separate sentences into something with a little more continuity. e.g He was six foot tall from his scraggly dirty black haired head to his filthy unwashed toes, if you could manage to measure him while he was laying passed out on a sidewalk or a park bench before the police came to roust him out.

Oh, and P.S the above grammatical suggestion might be totally wrong, but it looks and sounds better to me.