Jerry dreams he’s baking cookies. The smell is peaceful and inviting but as he unwisely rushes to open the oven he gets too close and the heat backs him up enough to make him quickly check the status of his eyebrows. Awake now, he peers through his fingers at the brutal west Texas sun already threatening to make a gingerbread man of him. It’s grocery day, and the clock is running.
He earned a little cash the night before by sweeping the sidewalk and a few parking spaces for a nearby restaurant. The owner caught him hanging around the dumpster in the back and decided to put a broom in his hand. As Jerry collected the ten spot he’d earned the owner also handed him a dinner to go. It was a pretty good night and Jerry thanked him in an overly enthusiastic way that made the restaurateur’s eyes cast about for an exit. “Cool it,” Jerry warned himself a little too loudly, “don’t screw this up.” Jerry got home with his meal and forced himself to eat slowly. He opened a rusty tin lunch box and pulled out a pencil. Tearing off a bit of the bag from the restaurant he carefully noted as much as he could remember about the time, day of the week, and the owner’s name from his plastic tag. Hunger made it hard to retain details and Jerry wasn’t even as sharp as his pencil these days. The pencil and scrap of paper went into the box and became part of the file that kept him alive.
This morning Jerry realized he couldn’t remember his last bath or haircut. He looked worn…feral. Unlike the crazies he often met, he was aware of how unpleasant his presence was to the soap and deodorant crowd. He kept his distance and stayed down wind when possible. He is a gentleman, which is rare for any station of life. He grabbed his two canvas bags, decorated with the pretty logos of those ever so slightly pretentious little grocery stores, and shuffled down the street: proud, because plastic is so down and out looking. He made his way down an already hot sidewalk, the heat reaching up onto the soles of his feet and prodding him to move a little faster. His normal route would take him past three churches, all locked, not to keep Jerry out necessarily but to discourage the city’s spoiled and frustrated offspring from trashing their worship space as a form of nihilistic expression.
Ten dollars won’t get you very far, even at the big box discount places that specialize in processed foods that make the poor fat, so Jerry frequents a tired old grocery store that peaked with Studebakers and movies that featured morality as a desired character trait. The checkers and baggers, who look as worn and weary as you’d expect, know him and hold back the expired, damaged, uneaten, and unsellable. They fill his bags with all they can hold and accept whatever he brings. He feels good about paying something; they feel good about feeding someone. The smiles are genuine. If it weren’t for the background noise of deep sadness the song they sing would be sweet. Nevertheless, an ancient grace attends their transaction and sings its own song:
What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. ~Ecclesiastes 1:3-11 (NIV)
Jerry doesn’t think much about work and toil; or even about being remembered by anyone. He does think about that scorcher of a sun waiting to liquefy him like a dropped Popsicle on an uncovered porch so he leaves the safety of the frozen food coolers and strikes out for home. Along the way he waves at drivers (who try hard not to see him but do anyway), pets dogs (who like the way he smells), and inadvertently scares children (who’ve been told they’ll end up like him if they don’t add threat here ). Jerry is not a saint, or a prophet, or even a token symptom of a broken world. He’s just Jerry; living life, waiting on God, avoiding the sun, and knowing that walking for groceries today was a blessing.
Copyright June 2011, John P. Van Dusen
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