The ghost of Sacramento

Fresh off yesterday’s rant, I stopped at the gas station on Alhambra & P and met a ghost.

Not a real ghost, of course, but one of those crazed homeless guys that we’re seeing more of these days. It was hard to tell his age, but he didn’t look all that old. I guessed late 20s, early 30s, but some rough ones. Reddish hair, blue eyes, and skinny. He had an old blanket wrapped around him and that look that tells you something’s just not wired right. He was aggressively panhandling every driver at the station.

He headed toward me. Usually, I don’t give handouts on the street, but I sometimes waver. It’s not a hard and fast rule. If they get in my space, it pisses me off and I’ll usually tell them no. Other times, I give because I just want them to go away and stop bothering me. Sometimes, I’m just in a mood and I give because it just feels so shitty to be standing there in clean clothes with a shiny car and a cozy home. You know?

I pulled a dollar out of my wallet, and then stashed my purse out of sight under my car seat. I got out of the car to start pumping gas, the driver’s side door between me and him. He rapped on the window, holding out his other hand to show me a quarter. And then he just whimpered. I think he may have been trying to speak, but it just came out as wordless whimpering. It killed me. Just killed me.

Someone so lost that they can’t even make words any more?

I handed him a buck, which he took with filthy hands, and I noticed his very long, black-with-filth fingernails. He reeked. He immediately set off for the next car. I pumped gas and watched him do the rounds. Some people gave him change. One woman shouted, quite firmly, ”No. Now go away!”  He was a little threatening, invasive. Feral.

 What can you do for someone like that? It was hard to tell if it was mental illness, a serious drug problem, maybe even just an act. I don’t know. I grabbed a $10 bill out of my wallet. I’m not sure why. A song came out a few years ago, with a guy telling a story about meeting a beggar and not wanting to give him money because he’d just blow it on booze and smokes; then the singer says he realized he’d just blow it on booze and smokes himself, so he gave the guy the money after all. It was kind of like that.

He disappeared before I could give it to him. I circled the block, looking for the guy but didn’t find him. Honestly, I don’t think I’d have had the courage to step out of the car to hand it to him anyway.

What can you do for people like this? Are they beyond all hope? I have no idea. Sometimes I think so, but I don’t like that answer.