Vagrant.

Vagrant.

Paul J. Braun--1953

 

He sat upon the street corner, silent as could be, trying not to make any disturbances, lest the police come and either arrest him or move him long.  This city had been his home at one point, but now he barely even recognized it, bomb craters, broken bricks, half destroyed burned out houses still littered the layout.  All of it was cruel memories from so long ago, merely looking at it made him want to break down and cry.  Yet there would be no one to hear him in his sorrows.  As far as he knew he was alone in the world at this point.  Eleven years in captivity had brutalized him and probably killed everyone dear to him. 

 

He sat aimlessly on the street corner, his tattered coat doing nothing against the chilling wind that wove its fingers across the city.  He had every mind to move to the Bradenburger, there were more people there that might help him out.  Or just incarcerate him, he did not know and as of right now at least jail would give him a roof over his head.  One that wasn’t leaking hopefully, it would be the first since the start of the war.  He shifted slightly, his right knee paining him.  It always pained him lately, the ghost traces of numbness sprouting downwards where there was no more limb.  It was pitiful.  The only means of mobility he had now was two poorly fashioned crutches that helped him drag his near useless leg around.  The almost complete sever in his lower spine made long periods of walking impossible. 

 

Right now he was just resting.  His good leg pulled towards him, the stump put out in front.  He held the two crutches across his lap.  Blinking slowly, he leaned his head back against the crumbling red brick of the building behind him.  His fingers were going numb, both from the cold and from his illness; He prayed he would be able to beg enough off of the passing crowd that would afford him a decent meal, he had run out of insulin long ago and had been caught in a half-haze ever since.  He could not think of the damage that this was doing to his body, constantly going without his medicine like this.

 

The light on the other street corner changed to a little green walking man.  When the group of pedestrians came he held out the cup hoping to hear the clang of metal in it as someone put a coin or two into it.  Nothing.  He begged, “Please...?” he held the cup up to each person and yet nothing.  The crowd completely over looked him and bustled on their way.  He leaned back against the brick wall, a defeated sigh issuing from his mouth as he closed his gentle brown eyes.  It looked like it was going to be anther night in some bombed out, unused building, shaking violently from the cold and sucking on water and sugar cubes in an attempt to not go into a coma.  The sounds of the city lulled his mind almost into a trance.

 

Suddenly he heard the clank. 

He raised his eyes.

 

“Hey...” Braun called to the man who had just put the lone coin in his cup who was just starting to leave after getting a good long look at the wreck Braun had become.  The man stopped to turn back at him.  “Thank you...” he said, his voice trailed off as he looked at this man who was kind enough to give him money.  “You look a lot like someone I know,” Braun said sadly as he looked at the man in his navy overcoat.  The man was listening to him with a tilted head.  “You look like him, except .... your face is still actually in tact.” 

 

The man raised an eyebrow a bit at this last comment.

 

“We fought in the war you see.”  Braun just kept talking as he ran a blistered and cracked finger around the edge of the cup.  “... you know...” He muttered quietly, the sadness creeping into his voice as he dropped his eyes to the stump of his leg.  “I don’t even know if he’s still alive...” He let out a small, strained and choked noise that almost sounded like a chuckle to break the tension that seemed to be growing to him in the air.  To his surprise the man still stood there listening to him.  He had moved out of the middle of the walk way a bit to listen to Braun talk.  “We got separated when we were at Normandie.  Retreating from the beach we managed to loose our column and ran into a party of American soldiers.  They pursued up right into a river and that’s.... when I lost him.”  This last part put a vice grip of pain on Braun’s heart.  The corners of his mouth dragging downwards as his voice became meek.

 

“Can you swim sir?” Braun coughed and then paused in his rambling to look at the man, he waited for an answer.  The man nodded as he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall listening.  “My friend can’t swim.”  Braun said frankly.  “And I threw him into a river to escape the American’s and that’s where he slipped through my hands...” He let his arms rest in his lap as his fingers when limp around the handle of the cup.  All of the painful memories flooding into his head, the water, the yelling, the choking feeling and then his friend’s hand flying from his own as he was thrown against the rocks in the rapids.

 

“I ...” he wheezed as he put his head back against the bricks of the building.  “I want to know if he’s alive... or if he’s... he’s... where he’s in the ground or if he’s at the bottom of a river...” Blinking his bleary eyes slowly he dropped them back to the few coins in his cup.  “I’ve been away for a long, long time...  this city looks so different.  Sir, what would you do if... if everyone you knew is dead?”  Braun looked as though someone had just hit him in the face.  His eyes becoming blank, like a dark tunnel, the once bright, friendly fire that had burned there all by blotted and sputtered out. 

 

“If... if Albie’s still alive... he could help...” he stopped, a sudden thought coming into his head as he blinked once, trying to banish the fuzzy edges around his world.  “Sir, would you hap...” He looked up to find the man gone.  For how long he had been gone he had no idea, now he probably looked like some disturbed old fool.  When he thought of it, he probably was.

 

He sighed, returning to silence once again.

 

The little green man lit up again at the cross walk and another hoard of people came his way.  He held out the battered tin cup out again in hopes that someone would have the heart to help him.  He doubted it by the way that everyone seemed to overlook him.  That man was probably going to be the only lucky break of the day.  TO the public he was just another person in a city of vagrants.