9 minute read
EYE CONTACT by Micah Ward
EYE CONTACT by Micah Ward
They usually won’t make eye contact so it’s easy to ignore them. They stare into space, maybe at the ground or your car door or over your car and into the distance. They carry a sign, “homeless and hungry”, “will work for food”, “stranded and no money”. Most are dirty. Maybe they have a pack or just a sack of some sort and some look two steps from death while others look healthy and you wonder why they are standing at the corner and not at a job. “Get a job,” you want to shout at the young ones. At least take a damn bath. Or maybe you feel sorry for the old ones. But you can’t help everybody. So you don’t help anybody. You don’t make eye contact. You adjust the radio. You pretend to be on your smartphone. You are relieved when the light turns green.
She had a dog with her and she made eye contact. Brilliant blue eyes, they hid nothing and evoked no pity. Her hair was shoulder length dreadlocks and her clothes were dirty. Her sign said “help me feed my dog”.
The light turns green before you have to really look at her. You are able to pull away and turn before you have time to guess what breeds made the mix that was her dog. You sigh with relief. You go on to work like any other morning. You answer emails and attend meetings. You check the stock market and worry about your investments. There is an argument around the coffee machine about a football game and you give your opinion too. At lunch you and some others go to the trendy bistro around the block from your office building.
She is sitting on a bench one building down from the bistro. The dog lies at her feet and the sign is propped up against a dirty backpack. Everyone in the group seems to talk at once as you walk by so that everyone will think everyone else doesn’t notice the girl. Don’t look at her and she won’t exist. She makes eye contact again and you notice that she looks older than you thought she was. That bothers you. You notice that the dog has a blue bandanna around its neck and there is a bowl of water by the sign. That bothers you too.
The food at the bistro is just good enough that you think the place will stay open for a year or two. Your group continues the dissection of the football game and you don’t have the appetite you thought you had. So you ask for a to go bag and half your lunch goes into it even though you know you will catch hell from the other guys.
She’s not on the bench when you walk back by. You are relieved until you notice her walking ahead of you. The dog is on a rope leash and they will pass the door to your building before you do. Unless you walk faster. You stop to get the imaginary rock out of your shoe.
You curse yourself and a rock that does not exist.
She and the dog are around the corner and gone when you arrive at the door. You can’t help everybody and besides, the damned old dog doesn’t look that skinny anyway.
You leave work and you tell yourself that you are looking for her and you will give her the bag from lunch but you don’t look real hard. You look just hard enough to tell yourself that you are looking but yourself says that’s a lie and you really don’t want to see her and those brilliant blue eyes again.
You are driving under the overpass when you catch her out of the corner of your eye sitting on the concrete under the bridge with that damned old dog.
You curse the apparent futility but you turn around anyway and park by the overpass. She stares at you with those blue eyes and when you have lowered the window to hand out the food her head is turned away. You yell at her but she doesn’t seem to hear. Oh hell, that means you have to get out of the car and walk the twenty or so feet to her. The dog is staring at you.
So you get out of the car and walk to within a few feet of the girl and the dog and you say a few fumbling words about the food and reach out to hand her the sack. She smiles but says nothing as she takes the sack. Some of her teeth are missing and most of the others are a dirty yellow. Those brilliant blue eyes lock onto you and you can’t seem to look away. You fumble a few more words about something you won’t remember and she says nothing. You walk back to the car and you are sweating. You feel foolish. Why the hell did you just do that?
You drive to work and home and to the other usual places for the rest of the week. You tell yourself you are not looking for her and you look anyway. She isn’t there. What would you do anyway if you did see her? You don’t have any more leftovers from lunch for the dog and you sure as hell aren’t giving her money. She would just spend it on crack or meth probably. So you keep on driving.
Two weeks later she is walking through a park with the dog on its rope leash. You are running along the trail in the middle of the park with a new girl you met at the gym. The homeless woman turns her head and looks at you and the girl as you pass. Her brilliant blue eyes lock onto yours and she reads your soul.
You drive by the park every day for the next week and tell yourself that it really isn’t out of the way and you are not really looking for her and that worthless damned dog. But you eventually see her sitting on the edge of the park fountain with the dog at her feet. The damned sign and water bowl are there. Her nasty backpack is there. You feel stupid but you pull over. You get out of the car and open the trunk and take the bag of dog food that has been in there for the last few days and walk toward the woman. She watches you. The dog watches you. Her dreadlocks still look nasty. She smiles with her yellow teeth and the gaps between them but all you notice are the brilliant blue eyes. You don’t say anything as you put down the dog food and she doesn’t say anything to you. She just looks into you with those eyes. The dog sniffs the bag and wags its tail.
You walk back to your car and you feel like you’ve been had. You don’t even like dogs that much and especially not a flea infested dog of a homeless addict. But at least you didn’t give her money that you know she would spend on drugs and you hope she won’t eat the dog’s food. She might trade it for crack you think.
You don’t see her for a few more days. You look but you don’t look.
It’s a normal Thursday morning. Your coffee is cold and you don’t get out of your cubicle for more because you have a deadline and you can’t get the damned spreadsheet program to work the way it should. You are annoyed by the noise in the office. More noise than normal. Finally you listen and hear “in the alley”, “dead”, “looked homeless to me”.
You are walking toward the door to the staircase that goes down one floor to the alley door. You tell yourself that it’s none of your business and yourself keeps you walking. Stop and go back. You have a deadline.
You step into the alley and see the police car and the yellow tape. You walk across the alley and you can see her behind the dumpster. The backpack is open and the contents thrown in every direction and the bag of dog food is half empty and laying by the dumpster with the water bowl and you try to look at everything but her but you can’t not look at her and her eyes are still blue and they make contact with yours but they are not brilliant anymore and the nasty dreadlocks have blood seeping through them and you want to be sick so you just turn around and walk off.
You don’t look for the damned dog but you know it’s following you. So you walk toward your car and you notice that most everyone in your building is either staring out windows or drifting onto the sidewalk to see what they can see. To hell with the deadline as you walk toward your car and think that no one will notice you gone for the time it takes to drive to your house and leave that damned old dog in the garage.
You should never have made eye contact.
“When you do it to the least of these you do it to me.”
