The Thin Man

by Donna Poole

“Ask them; maybe they know,” John said.

I rolled down my window and asked the young couple getting in the car next to us. “Can you help a couple of old grandparents? How do we put money in those…things?”

I pointed at the parking meter in front of us in downtown Lansing, Michigan.

The young man smiled. “You have to download an app.”

“Download an app?”

“Uh huh. Or I think maybe there’s something on the other side that tells you how to pay. I’m not sure; I’ve always used the app.”

I thanked him; he got in his car, and John and I looked at each other. John pulled out his cell, not to download a who-knows-how-to-do-it-parking-meter-app, but to see if there was another Firehouse Subs we could go to that wasn’t in downtown Lansing.

The young man got back out of his car and came to my window.

“You know what?” he said. “Don’t worry about paying. It’s after five on Friday, and you don’t have to pay for parking on weekends!”

I thanked him with more enthusiasm this time, and he and his girl smiled at each other and drove off.

I expect you’ll raise your eyebrows about our choice of food when I tell you why we were in Lansing.

We’d just left John’s cardiologist office. A recent stress test had showed a small area in the front lower part of his heart that doesn’t get enough oxygen when he exercises.

Earlier that same morning, John’s beloved family doctor, Doctor Kimball, had asked him, “And I take it you’re eating a healthy diet?”

Well, Dr. Kimball, that would be a “sometimes.”

John’s instructions from the cardiologist’s office that afternoon didn’t mention diet (they’ve said that before), but they did tell him to double his Ranexa medication, not to go outside when there’s an excessive heat warning, and never to work until the point of exhaustion. They think his blockage is in a small vessel, probably too small for a stent and better treated with medication but warned him that even small vessel blockages can cause a heart attack if the person pushes too hard. He has another appointment in two weeks, and if he has any more symptoms on the double medication, they’ll schedule another hearth cath.

Those Italian subs from Firehouse Subs were delicious! We’d heard of them but had never eaten them before. We ate without guilt; lunch had been a heart-healthy salad, and besides, we had lettuce on our subs, so that helped, right?

We devoured our food, happy to be together, happy to still have each other.

Suddenly he appeared on the sidewalk right in front of us. The Thin Man. He was Black and wearing a worn, shiny black suit and a bright pink shirt. In that miserable heat. When he smiled I noticed missing teeth. I squinted to read the penciled printing on his cardboard sign.

“What does it say?” I asked John.

“I can’t read it.”

The man came up to John’s window. We didn’t feel at all threatened.

“I had to use a pencil,” he said. “It’s hard to read.”

In crooked, faint letters the sign said, “Anything you can do. God bless.”

Contrary to what you might think, we weren’t born yesterday. We know the rules; never give cash, offer to take them somewhere and buy food, don’t enable an addiction. We know cons harvest the streets and probably make more money than we do.

But there was something about him.

“I just want to get home and get a bath,” he said.

And I remembered C.S. Lewis had written something about he’d rather be taken advantage of a hundred times than get to heaven and find out he’d refused to help one honest person who’d really needed it.

I touched John’s arm. “Honey,” I whispered, “can we help him?”

John opened his wallet and put cash in the man’s hand.

And then the Thin Man gave a speech. It was obviously memorized and had been used many times before. The first line made me grin.

“May you always be as healthy and happy as you obviously are now.”

Happy? Yes! Healthy? If you read this blog often you know better. I did manage to wipe the grin off my face and listen to the rest of his canned speech delivered in a child-like sing-song fashion. I wish I could remember the words exactly, but it went something like this.

“This is my blessing for you. May health and happiness and money return to you twenty-four-fold. God bless.”

He said more. It was a long speech.

Meth Head? Maybe? He was so very thin, and missing teeth….

Still, he’d miscalculated us as healthy; who were we to misjudge him as an addict?

He wasn’t just concerned about the money. He went back onto the sidewalk and kept looking back at us, smiling, and waving with the money in his hand. And then he blew us a kiss.

And I blew one back.

His face lit up with glad surprise.

Meth Head or angel; I don’t know.

Right or wrong to give him the money? I don’t know, but I know what our kids will think when they read this. We’ll probably be grounded until we’re eighty years old, but hey, that’s not that far away!

All I know for certain is that for one second in the millennia of time I blew a kiss and a lonely man looked as happy as a child with a birthday cake.

We drove home, John and I, marveling at the beauty of the formation of the clouds in the sky. They were unusually lovely, and perhaps because of the Thin Man, we had clearer eyes to see them.