The man returned to town. He shouldered his bag and stepped out of the station and past the shuttered hotel, towards the big house on the side street. Then for a time he stood in the rain, in the street, in the dimming light of day, silent and gaze fixed on the backyard gate, while all around him workers ended their shifts, shops closed their doors, and restaurants prepared tables on the patios, under the lights, out of the weather.
The man stepped under the eaves of a darkened storefront. Suddenly he began to sing about the past. About the nights in the cellars of the houses sprinkled beyond the main road, of the west side of town where the potholes were fixed and the street lights never burned out, where there were swept sidewalks and flowers on every table and gardens trimmed and tamed to perfection and where the hands that provided care were brown were black and blue.
And the fear then. His voice trembled briefly as he sang about that.
The loneliness of the wait, of trembling in the outside, of daring to pray for upstairs lights to go out sooner, faster, of the shame of knowing what windows to slip through, then the relief of a roof, of a room, for a little while. And always, afterwards, of the misery of daybreak.
