it's supposedly spring now, greenish, wettish, head-shaving weather when you don't necessarily have to take a jacket when going out (but it's still not a bad idea; you never know). but the tale i'm about to tell begins long ago, when plows & primitive salts ruled the earth, in an ancient time we once called winter.

there'd been a rather big storm, coating everything in a thick layer of cold white stuff that some called snow, others called ice, & still others called cruel vulgar unspeakable names as they stumbled & slipped their way through it. those with enough foresight & determination managed to clear some of this thick coating away from their sidewalks & walkways. but most gave up, the stuff being thick & heavy (& it also had a way of returning, in a dirtier uglier form, after it had been banished). at our house we couldn't even attempt to remove this thick layer of precipitation, lacking a shovel or any other tools which might aid us. our walkway was a slip&slide, one big banana peel, where if you didn't stumble over a large surprisingly solid lump or slip on the slick patch next to it you'd sink in like it was quicksand, startled at how far down the real ground actually was.

during this dark age a man came to our door, offering to shovel our sidewalk. he had a shovel, which was more than what we had, so he seemed fairly equipped to battle the ground covering. he set his price at $7 & i accepted, knowing full well he wouldn't win the war, but thinking that any progress he made would be progress we couldn't have made ourselves. perhaps it was a mistake. if i'd known then the ramifications of my decision i almost certainly wouldn't have let him continue, but the white stuff was impeding my psychic abilities & i was left unaware. when he was "done" ( i use quotes because he barely seemed to have done anything at all; he was out there 5 minutes & i could only tell he'd done anything because i remembered how it was before) i gave him a 10, the smallest bill i could give him, & thought that was the end of it.

a month or 2 later the plague of falling white stuff was over, the ground clear & dry. my memories of that icy period & the mysterious ineffectual stranger had faded. then he showed up again.

he told me that he was a poor neglected homeless man with no means of supporting or feeding himself. his only method of earning money before had been shoveling sidewalks, but now that there was nothing to shovel he was left stranded. all he wanted, he said, was a little money for food, & he had returned to me, who had been so kind as to employ him before. he had an eery, not-quite-there quality that unnerved me, a trait that we later realized was him intentionally trying to be intimidating. i'm intimidated by strangers anyway, so i guess it worked. i gave him a 5 mostly because i wanted him to leave, & he did. but not for long.

later that night he returned, & as soon as i realized he was back i hid, leaving one of my roommates to deal with him. he told my roommate that now that he'd eaten he needed a little more money to catch the bus home. he gave his name as "joe smith", referring to me as "his friend", who'd helped him earlier. my roommate denied his requests, stating that we were poor also & had nothing more to give him (i might mention that this entire conversation took place through my roommate's upstairs window, with all the doors locked). eventually "joe" left, thankfully not attacking the house or trying to break in. since then he's come back at least thrice more, most recently last night, with similar results.

i'm not sure how much of "joe"'s story to believe. of course it's all possible; he might well be a homeless man seeking only food & transportation. but he could just as easily be a deadbeat dad crack fiend, struggling to acquire more rock, coming here only when he can find nothing easy to steal. but then i doubt a crack fiend would shovel snow to support his habit, so maybe that's not as likely. the point is that i have no way of knowing he's sincere. the name is awfully suspicious; someone was very unoriginal to come up with "joe smith", whether it was he or his parents. the whole intimidation act is suspect as well. if he's really just a poor man down on his luck, why try to scare us? & finally, if he spent half the time that he spends coming here for handouts looking for honest work instead, he would've found something by now.

it's not that i'm against charity at all. i'm pretty much pro-charity, in fact. but we have trouble paying all our own bills. we certainly can't afford to adopt a homeless man (& if we could, i don't think he'd be the homeless man we chose). this isn't a shelter. i see no tacky "jesus saves" sign outside our door. so why are we a magnet for this man? & why does he keep returning when we obviously aren't going to give him anything else?

i'm not sure there's a way to deal with this situation. even if we had a phone, we wouldn't call the police on him. we tend to have an anti-police mentality around here, & after all, what has he really done wrong? my father occasionally mentions one plan for dealing with the "hungry" homeless; buy them or give them the food instead of money. if they really want it they'll be satisfied; if not they'll leave. but we're all too creeped out by the guy to go anywhere with him, & we're not very good about keeping food in the house either. & we don't have plans to move out anytime soon.

it's all a bust. if we're lucky, "joe"'ll quit coming around eventually. but we're never lucky. so he'll keep coming, & we'll keep avoiding.eventually we'll move or he'll die or the world'll end. this can't go on forever.