Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

This brief moment in my life lingers on in my memory, because it reminds me that a little compassion can make all the difference–when the world is crashing down on a guy.

I know that is so, because at different times in my life, I was that guy.   Because when your luck turns, or everything you’ve tried to do goes south, suddenly, no one has any time to bother with you, as if bad luck rubs off, or something like that.

What follows is true, and this is exactly how it happened:

On a merciless July scorcher of a day, in 1969, so hot that the very air shimmered, I was working the lunch shift in my kosher delicatessen in Hyde Park, which is part of Chicago, on the South Side of the city.

I was looking out of my big glass windows, over the round pale green paper sign that advertised:

Lunch Special!!  

          Hot Dog–Chips–And a Cold Coke!!

                             $2.50!!!

when I saw this young black kid get forcefully tossed out of the drugstore next to me, where he lost his balance and fell to the ground, scraping both hands on the hot concrete walkway.  And there he sat, looking morose, rubbing his sore hands together, and occasionally, wiping tears off his face.  People walked around him.  No one stopped.

He was this neighborhood punk, then about fifteen, whom I’d known about for years.  When I was running my corner newsstand, he’d run up and try to swipe a comic book off the display rack and then run away.  Sometimes I would catch him, and sometimes he was too fast for me, and then he’d run off laughing.

I was only a few years older than he was, still a teenager, and pretty fast myself, except he knew I couldn’t leave my newsstand so, that gave him an advantage to exploit, which…he did.  He was a little, local, pain in the ass, and not just to me.

His neighborhood nickname was “Uncle” for what reasons I didn’t know, or care.   He would run into stores all over the area grabbing handfuls of candy, or a baseball cap, or some toy—whatever he could get his hands on when a busy store owner or manager turned their back.   Uncle knew he was legally a minor in the eyes of the law, and no one was going to bother to call the cops over a thieving kid.  So he tormented many of us and we had no recourse.

But every so often, some manager or owner fast enough or tough enough to grab him, would rough him up a little and throw him out on the street.   But, of course, Uncle wasn’t going to call the cops either.  They already knew who he was and he would receive little sympathy.

I also knew from one of my group of young kids who helped me sell newspapers on the weekends, that the day after Martin Luther King was shot, Uncle and a few of his pals, viciously beat my grammar school helper, then in sixth grade, simply because he was white, saying to him that they were taking revenge for Dr. King’s death out on him.

My employee was twice wounded, because he had black friends and didn’t think in terms of color at all. The beating was a shock to him. But I also know he continued to be friends with the black kids in his group, and I was glad about that.

So Uncle was as unsympathetic a character as most people could imagine.

And that was the perpetual ‘standoff’ situation for the last couple of years, when I saw him sitting there on the ground, in obvious utter misery.  It seemed to me, nineteen at the time, that he was a prisoner of himself and unable to realize what a pariah he was and how bleak his future would soon be, as his age crept closer to it finally being legal for the cops to arrest him.

But for whatever reason, perhaps remembering my own isolated and miserable status in grammar school, where because I was fighting all the time in the playground or interrupting teachers during class with jokes or whatever would get me attention—usually the principal’s office—no one wanted anything to do with me, and I was terribly lonely and confused.

I didn’t steal anything, but aside from that, Uncle and I were fairly similar in our situations: him, now and me, then.

So, on impulse, I walked over to our icy cold refrigerated display case and grabbed a can of Coke.  I was still wearing my long white apron that hung around my neck and was tied behind my back, now speckled with little stray mustard and ketchup stains, when I walked outside into the unbearable heat and over to where Uncle was sitting.

He looked up at me standing in front of him, my body blocking the sunlight and casting a shadow over him.  He said nothing.

I offered him my hand to help him up, which he initially eyed suspiciously, because he was not used to anyone being nice to him, I guess.  Then he grabbed my hand and pulled himself up off the ground.  I saw some small blood stains where his palms had been resting on the ground.

                             “Thirsty?”

I asked him, while he looked at me with disbelief.  Then he nodded once, unsure of me, and I handed him the very cold red can.  He popped it open and took a long drink, some of the Coke overflowing his dry mouth and running down his chin and neck.  Then he looked at me, and said,

                               “Thanks.”

We stood there a moment, together in the heat, not either of us speaking.  Just looking at each other.

Then, on impulse (again) I said to him, with more feeling than I expected,

“Uncle, I’m really sorry things are so hard for you.

I mean it.”

Then, again I offered my hand, but this time to shake his.  He had this stunned look on his face.  But then, like sunlight coming out, a little smile appeared on his young face.  I had never seen that on him before.  He reached over and shook my hand, firmly.

Then, Uncle nodded to me once and walked away, out of the shopping center parking lot, still holding his red can.  He took another long drink from it, as I watched him walking away from me, and then he threw the crumpled empty red can on the ground.

I shook my head, wondering why I did that.  What difference would a cold can of Coke matter to this incorrigible kid?

Well, he remained the neighborhood terror, shoplifting in a steadily wider ring of stores as he tried to find places that didn’t know him and would not be so likely to be on guard when he came around.  Essentially, nothing changed.

But he never came near my newsstand again.  And he never ran into my deli during the lunch rush to grab a Coke or bag of chips before we could stop him.

Rarely, I would pass him on the street, and when we did, he never spoke.  Uncle just slowed down a little, gave me that same little smile, nodded his head in greeting, and then walked on by.

Eventually he grew older and left the neighborhood, perhaps joining a gang—but no one was really sure—whenever his name came up.  Most of the other older shopkeepers in the area were greatly relieved that Uncle had apparently abandoned our shopping center.  But in an odd way, I missed that infrequent little smile I’d see on his face, whenever it happened that we’d meet on the street.

It reminded me that there was still some good, still some kindness…in both of us.

I never saw him again.

Katzman’s Publishing Company site: www.FightingWordsPubco.com
Katzman’s online non-fiction stories: www.DifferentSlants.com

Poetry? For me, writing poetry is not an option.
It’s a response to emotion. Like cigarette smoke,
it’s fast-flowing, shapeless and with little time to capture it.
Writing poetry is an imperative. I say what I feel compelled to say.

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