The Gesture

It was a cold wintry morning. I was walking along the side-walk of a busy road. As I walked on a few steps, a car stopped ahead of me. I shrugged and walked on, passing the car without glancing at it. No car driver would have anything to do with me. They had no reason to.

A few steps onward, and a lady’s voice called out, “hey! You…can you stop please?” it wasn’t an unkind voice and I figured that since I was the only one walking, she might have been calling on me. I turned; she locked her car and walked towards me, carrying something bulky in her hand. It was a large coat. “Here, I think you could use this…I was looking for someone who could wear it this winter. Oh,” she said, while producing a little brown bag, “here’s some food too”, as she handed me both things. I shrugged, took them, and without saying a word walked off, a little awkward at the sudden burden of having to carry these things. I think she stood there watching me for a while till I turned the corner. I could never be sure.

Anyway, since I hadn’t eaten in two days, I figured that stopping somewhere and looking into the brown bag would be a good idea. As I looked for a secure place to sit, the arm over which the coat was draped grew warm…it was then I realized what coats do. I was wearing a thin torn t-shirt and jeans. My shoes had holes in them and so did my socks. I quickly donned the coat and pulled it tightly to my being. Yes, it felt nice. I walked to the stairs of this vacant building where I knew no one would bother me and opened the packet. There was two of everything, cupcakes, stuffed chicken sandwiches and croissants. I didn’t know the names of these things then but what I can tell you is that on that freezing January day of my birthday as I now know, this was the best meal I had had in a long time.

As soon as I’d devoured the last bit of it, another boy of roughly my age walked up to me and sat next to me. He looked tough. I wrapped up my coat around me now, tighter than ever as the wind started howling. He had a jacket on. He stared at me for a moment then looked away. From his inner pocket her produced a cigarette and a lighter. ‘He must be rich’, I thought. He lit his cigarette as we watched the people on the street disappear into nothingness, as the wind took over all else.

I was never happy nor sad. I just always did what had to be done. I was tired. The food made me feel drowsy, so I curled up into a corner and slept. My companion too deciding that sleep was the only thing to do, found himself a corner.

When I woke up in the morning, the still chill or the air nipped at me, stronger than the forceful winds of the night. Something was different, that’s for sure. I woke up and looked out of my coat, I could see that the trees on the sidewalk had lost their leaves in the nocturnal battle with the winds. The branches lay strewn all over the place. Again, not a soul was up and about. I wondered why. I suddenly remembered my taciturn mate, I looked over to his corner to find him slumped in the exact same position as I had seen him last before I retired. I walked over to him and touched him. He fell motionless upon the floor. The wind had taken his life. His lips were blue and his body was cold and hard. Something inside me shook.
I realized it could have been me. I didn’t want to shrug and move on. All sorts of thoughts began running through my mind. The cold, the pain, the confusion, the alcohol, my parents hitting each other, striking with words and hands with unabated fury.

I had run as far as I could. The emotion had drained out of me completely; I had decided never to feel again. To feel is to ache I reasoned. Today, to feel was to be grateful. I could lament over his young death; he was only 14 like me.

Yet, I felt deeply thankful to be alive. I could feel again, his pain and misery and the beauty of how I had been saved by a person who would never know that.

I smiled, picked up my coat and walked to the nearest church to inform someone of authority of the demise of my mate.

No, I was never going to look back on life again.