Walk On By

“Let me ask you something,” she said, “How’s this look working for you?”

One morning, walking with my dog, I met, unplanned, a woman who walks the road like a devotee. She’s made an art of it, wearing fluorescent green from head to toe: leggings, shirt, windbreaker, sneakers, and she’s put signs up, at her own expense, “Be Safe. Be Seen.” She tops out at 97 pounds and she’s seen, even at a distance, a streak of neon. Walking beside her is good for me because tending toward black and brown, I don’t stand out. Anyhow, this woman, I think, is an unusually kind person, and that morning she shared a story with me which I told her I wanted to write about. To me, what she did was such an example of simple, not in a bad sense, spontaneous kindness, which I’m not so good at manifesting. I’m generous with friends. I’ll go out of my way for them, but that’s different.

Here’s her story: She was walking on the same road where we usually walk, a local country road, bordered by woods and occasional houses. She sees a “kid” in a driveway beside a ‘piece a shit’ car. At least 6’ tall, wearing grungy black clothes, a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, baggie pants and a heavy chain on his belt. The ends of his hair were dyed pink. He was covered in tats, even across his face. She’d no idea how he ended up there and she stopped and watched, as he was throwing “all this stuff out of his car—blankets, clothing,” you name it—it looked as though he had been living in the car. She asked him if he needed help.

“I can’t find my phone.”

He gave her his phone number, but when she called it she got the recording that it was out of order or not working.

“What’s the matter with the car?”  

“I ran out of gas.”  

He had an AAA card but his membership was expired, and he’d be charged 99.95 if they brought him gas.

What made her stop? He was like a big Baby Huey, she told me, big and dopey. It was a judgment call. I didn’t think I was in any danger.

He had a gas can, so they walked to her house where her car was parked. And they talked.

Turning and eyeing him up and down, “Let me ask you something,” she said, “How’s this look working for you?”

“It’s a fashion statement.”

When she asked him about the tattoos he said he’d been young and stupid. He’s 26 years old. She didn’t stop there.

“What’s with the pants falling off your… how do you even walk like that?”

“I dunno.”

She drove them to Stewarts where she put $5.00 worth of gas in his can. He didn’t have two cents to his name. He kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Don’t be sorry.” She wanted to know where his mother was. Even Baby Hueys have mothers.

He told her he was an auto mechanic. “Do you show up at work like that?” Anybody would look at him, she said, and they’d run the other direction. But my friend didn’t. “There was something in his eyes…,” she said. “If I didn’t help him he’d end up sitting there until someone called the cops.”

I thought of something that I heard Zadie Smith say on a podcast, “Being poor is a denuding of the self, a narrowing…,” for all involved it seems to me—both the poor person and the observer.

“I can’t believe you’re helping me.” 

“Let me ask you something, do you vote?”

“Yeah.”

Are you going to vote this year?’

“Uhhh.”

“Who you going to vote for?” He didn’t answer.

“This is how you’re going to repay me. You’re going to vote for Kamala Harris. Donald Trump can’t be an option for this country. So you and your friends are all going to vote for Kamala Harris.” She figured it was worth a shot. He had these big puppy dog eyes and tears were welling up. Maybe he’ll remember her on Election Day.

I don’t know how many years ago, the holiday season, and as I was coming home from a party with my husband, I saw a woman hit by a car, her legs obviously broken. I ran over to her and I stayed with her until help arrived. I’ve no memory of how we got help. There were no cell phones then. Did my husband go upstairs and call 911? What I do remember, is that when I arrived home Gigi was a rerun on the television. Leslie Caron in all her innocence, Maurice Chevalier’s “I Remember It Well,” Robert Jourdan “Oh Gigi,” the soft G shushing and calming, a sharp contrast to the experience I’d just had.

There are times where running away is very difficult. Seeing the woman unable to move in the middle of a wide avenue was a situation when I couldn’t walk away. But my friend, that was a different story. She could’ve walked on by, and she didn’t.

How many of us, open ourselves up to someone who we perceive to be so obviously different from the way we see ourselves? Which brings me back to Zadie Smith. She talked about radical humanism, the idea that you don’t ever dismiss people. That’s a difficult principle, albeit admirable, to live by, I think. What would I’ve done if I’d seen this boy-man—he does sound like someone of both worlds—on the road? Being honest with myself, I’m pretty sure I’d have walked on by. What I hope is that maybe now I’d have a different response, be less quick to judgment. I don’t know.