I got a new job at a convenience store recently. There’s been this weird homeless guy that’s panhandling out in front of our store. Despite the ‘No Solicitors’ sign hanging in our window, we don’t even enforce it anymore. Not on him, anyway. Before I had started working here, back when we used to, he never stayed away long, they tell me. He just moseyed down the street and presumably set up somewhere further down the line.
When I first started working here not long ago, I had taken the initiative to shoo him away. He just looked at me, or through me rather, and complied. Never said a word. He just picked up his bag that held everything in this world that he owned, along with his chicken scratch cardboard sign and his dented and faded coffee can that contained his donations, and slowly walked away.
When my manager got back from her break and noticed he was no longer out front, she asked me where he went. I told her that I told him to take a hike. I was reminded of that time I had done something stupid and got in trouble, how my dad looked. He had told me “I’m not angry, son, just disappointed…” That was how she looked now. When I asked her what the deal was, she merely told me that next time, and there WOULD be a next time, just leave him be. He wasn’t hurting anybody. I could tell by her body language and by the way she was acting about the whole situation that that wasn’t it though. No, there was more that she wasn’t telling me. Not wanting to press things though, I simply apologized and went about my duties.
It was only a few days later that I saw him again. My manager was right, he was back. Feeling a little bad about getting rid of him the other day, I slipped a ten dollar bill in his can. He muttered a ‘thank you’ and then stuck out his hand to me. I thought that he knew I felt bad about making him leave earlier, and was offering a handshake, as if to say ‘no hard feelings’. I looked down at his hand, it was dirty and calloused. His nails needed a trim, and they were long and yellowed looking where there wasn’t dirt under them.
My father taught me plenty of respect, especially to my elders. This man definitely fit that category, and who would I be to judge somebody because of their situation? Life is tough, especially as we get older. Reluctantly, I shook his hand. Instantly, my entire body went cold. The guy’s eyes rolled up into his skull, exposing the whites of them where they weren’t bloodshot. Frozen in place, I stood there for I don’t even know how long. It’s not like I wanted to just stand there and watch an elderly man have a possible seizure. No, I couldn’t move. It was like the world around us stopped, and he and I were the only two things in it. I couldn’t take my hand away, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even blink or breath, nor did I need to. The only thing that showed any passage of time was my train of thought.
He finally released my hand and his eyes rolled back down to normal, and even though I felt I could move again, I was stunned.
He looked up at me and said “Mind the pickles”.
Caught completely off guard by his words, hell the whole occurrence, I gave him a quick and awkward “Yeah, you too” and walked inside.
I thought to myself, “What in the hell just happened?” as I clocked in and got to work. I kept trying to focus on my work, but my mind kept going back to it. My entire shift, I just couldn’t drop it. I chose not to mention it to anybody else, lest they thought I was crazy.
Then, it happened. I was on the tail end of my shift, doing some mopping, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about the interaction I had with the old man. I wasn’t paying full attention, and by a slip on my part I knocked something off of the shelf behind me with the mop handle. Before I could even react to whatever I had just hit, it crashed to the floor. Glass and yellowish green juice came rushing at my shoes as I looked down.
“You gotta be shitting me…” I muttered to myself when I noticed what it was. It was a jar of pickles. Goddamn pickles.
I cleaned it up, I already had the mop after all, and as soon as I was finished, I went outside. The old man was gone. Whether he KNEW that was going to happen, or had just been mumbling crazy old homeless man gibberish, I didn’t know. Part of me thought that he had somehow caused it to happen. If I hadn’t been only halfway paying attention to what I was doing, would I have even knocked it over in the first place? I was glad when my shift was finally over. I had to pay out of pocket for the pickles I destroyed, but I didn’t even care at that point. Something phenomenal had possibly just happened.
I looked for the old man over the next week, but every time I was scheduled to work he wasn’t there. I finally decided one evening to ask my manager. She seemed to know something about the man, I could tell by how she reacted to me that one time. I wasn’t going to flat out admit what had happened when I touched his hand, no, that would be crazy. I settled on simply asking her if she had seen him lately.
All the expression drained from her face. “You didn’t hear? Poor Mr. Mike…”
“What happened?” I asked.
“He got a little bit of money the other night, about a week ago. Nobody EVER gives that poor old man money. He decided to treat himself to a sandwich from across the street and…” She took a moment to compose herself. She was genuinely sad. “He choked to death on a pickle.”
I’ve thought about it a lot since then. I thought the guy might have been psychic or something, but then I remembered what I said to him. He had told me “Mind the pickles” and I, not knowing what else to say to that, absentmindedly responded with “Yeah, you too…”
Am I psychic too, or just stupid?