This guy my dad knew from the neighborhood growing up used to stop by our house sometimes.
I remember getting that knock on the door, often on Sundays after Mass. It would be Burkey, looking for food or money. I don’t know how he found out where we lived. He would walk over from somewhere in the town next to us. My dad would say hi and tell him we had something we were preparing for him. Then Burkey would sit patiently on the bench out front and wait.
For awhile he was coming around pretty regularly. My mom might make him a brown bag lunch with a couple of sandwiches in it. Or if he came by while we were having a meal, like this one time we were eating waffles, she would give him some.
He never said much. When he did say something, it was usually unintelligible. It didn’t help that he had sustained head injuries over the years, possibly from falling while drunk. I remember the fresh scabs on his shaved head when he came by. Even as a kid I could tell he was fighting the demons of alcohol. By all appearances and the accounts of other people, he had been for decades.
He had a rough life growing up from what I remember my dad saying. He used to do some construction and other odd jobs over the years but that tapered off as he got older and his body gradually began shutting down. By the time I first met him, his ability to speak and walk was diminishing. I genuinely felt bad for him and was glad he could at least count on some food and a kind word when he stopped by.
I saw Burkey less and less as the years passed. When I did see him he was usually sitting on a bench in the next town over, gazing blankly into the street. Eventually his sightings stopped altogether and like most of the people I once knew from around here, old and young alike, they just disappear altogether one day and that’s it. Sometimes you find yourself wondering how someone is doing. Maybe these kinds of fleeting questions are answers in the infinite information dump you get when you die.
A couple streets away a soft wind carries to me the jingle of Mister Softee and the petals of Dogwood trees. Spring is unmistakably here.