the stroller

There's an old guy walking down the street in this city. He's tall and thin and he pushes around this baby stroller. Everyone steers clear of him on the street. Everyone knows there's no baby in the stroller. The stroller is old and the wheels spin around out of tune with one another, the awning drawn down nearly shut, and he keeps the rain cover on rain or shine. He's a quiet old man, keeps to himself and occasionally he straps a tow-rope to the rear axle and drags a four-wheeled wagon behind with his belongings.

He sleeps under an over-pass where a bike path is the only traffic he sees...or sees him. A passerby will stop on the rare occasion to see what he's built his dwelling from. Mostly pallets and cast-off boxes from the furniture warehouse department store a few blocks up from the over-pass. He's been forced to remove his place a few times. It will happen again, but he still re-builds. He's got a gas stove, but no gas. He's not deformed or hideous around the face like most homeless people you see. He's got all his teeth, his hair is full, and he wears a dark five-O'clock shadow somehow. It never gets to be a full beard, yet it retains it's full shadow over his face...he's handsome in this way. His hands are dirty and he never wears gloves and the first thing someone notices if they happen to walk up to him and talk to him, or walk along side him in conversation--his dark rimmed fingernails. The knuckles are battered, cut. He never wears gloves, which is why they're so noticeable. 

Everyone knows there no baby in the stroller--he knows it too. He's not sad--per se--but he's definitely not happy. He smiles to people as they pass by. He's learned to do this. He never used to have to smile or carry in his natural demeanor the kind of thing he does now. Now he recognizes that when people see him, he's got to put his best foot forward. People are scared now-a-days, and rightfully so. He's the first to agree...best foot forward. When he was younger he just walked down the street. He had a home to go to. He had a job, a good job working for the bureau of motor vehicles. 

His son, the one who would have occupied the stroller many years ago, is still alive--it's not so tragic a story as all that. In fact from his point of view, hardly tragic at all. He never hears the street kids laugh and make fun of him...they're all tatted up, pierced, young and full of acrid sarcasm because they're living life the way they want...not the way society says. They still think you have to look like a freak to be one. He lives across state--the son, who would have occupied the stroller many years ago. He's doing well--goes to college. The old man doesn't know what his son is doing, he vowed to have nothing to do with him. The kids on the street are falling over themselves joking about how pathetic the old man is, but they have no idea. They devise a whole back story that looks like a Hollywood movie because unfortunately that's all they've ever paid attention to. They were raised on television and youtube videos. 

One time when the old man was young--relatively young--33, he was pushing his stroller along the park down on the waterfront. He was just off work, it was a beautiful spring day. He unloaded the stroller from his van and put the diaper bag on the handles making sure he had everything he needed in any situation, it took him extra time of course, but he didn't mind. He grabbed a book in case he had the time to read a bit. He'd told his wife before their son was born, "I really can't wait to push him along in the stroller and find a quiet bench down on the water and read a book while he sleeps or drinks his bottle, or just looks around." That was before he'd gotten mad at her and swore he didn't want anything to do with the boy. Now he had no more wife, and the stroller he was pushing along the waterfront had no baby boy, hungry or otherwise inside of it. So, he had everything in his stroller and walked along on the beautiful day, nodding to passersby and smiling. He felt as if he belonged...he seemed happy and the people would smile and glance into the stroller to catch a glimpse of the baby boy...it figured to be a boy because the stroller was baby-blue with dark navy-blue trim. The old man, then a young man of 33, would never turn and see their expressions. Most people just figured they couldn't see the boy snuggled up inside the warm comfy blankets... "Oh, he's so adorable," they'd smile and nod. Some actually even stopped to look and he'd say, "Just got the little devil asleep." And a joke about how when they're sleeping they're all angels would pass between them and a soft laugh or a stifled snuffle before moving along. 

In reality the boy would have been only a couple months old at that time and the young 33 year-old man wouldn't have been able to have been long on a walk like this without having to tenderly pull him out of the stroller in efforts to comfort him because he was hungry, or cold, or needed a fresh diaper. He would have had to have been with his wife so she could feed him under her shawl as they sat on a bench enjoying the day. But the young 33 year-old tried not to think about this. He tried not to think about walking out on his wife and son because she made him angry. 

Now, the old man hardly thought about those days. Now he pushed his miserable stroller along, protected from the rain, with his four wheeled wagon carting his belongings behind him. 

He would be sitting in his pallet and cardboard dwelling reading a book and he'd hear a young child asking his father who lived there? Or, why does that man live under a bridge daddy? And he would twitch inside. He'd remember and he'd shut his eyes tight in order to squeeze away the tears and prevent any burning of his eyes that might occur. He told her to go to hell...and to take that fucking kid and toss him into a dumpster for all he cared...and he would cry again. He would remember her crying and the sound of her soft, broken voice telling him to go but at the same time begging him to stay and hold their beautiful baby boy. To not do this. To please, don't take it out on the boy. And he remembered how so long ago, how easy it would have been--to simply forgive her and take his boy into his hands and feel his soft warm head against his cheek--how easy it would have been. But he didn't. And every child he overhears asking about the man who lives under the bridge he has to relive these memories. 

When he still had his job and apartment, his wife would call him, leave messages, texts, and emails urging him to come back and he swelled up in this power he had and yet he wanted for all the world to stop this and all he had to do was go to her. When he was still young, people at work all knew how much he looked forward to the boy coming...how happy he was when he announced to the entire bureau his wife was pregnant. When the boy was born and soon thereafter he'd gotten mad at his wife and left them, he never told anyone at work. When people would ask him to see the boy, bring him into work, he'd make easy excuses..."ah, the boy's spending all his time eating, sleeping and pooping...the kid's living my dream." As the months passed, he became withdrawn and by the time the moment had passed wherein people stop asking about your newborn baby, he was no longer the same colleague they'd all been accustomed to. His boss, the director called him into the office. "Are you alright?" "The family?" "How's the wife?" All these questions he would make up answers that were skin deep because in reality he could only imagine what these answers might actually be. 

The director talked with his supervisor about him. They were both concerned. 

Occasionally the old man will be pushing his beat-up old stroller down some boardwalk or city park path and notice a new couple with a baby in their own new, top-of-the-line stroller and how the young beautiful wife's eyes dart from carriage to old man and back again and then whisper something so only her husband can make it out. The husband's look of pity would give away what she'd said and the old man would lean down and check on his boy; make sure he's sleeping ok and stroke his pudgy cheeks and then just as the couple passed by the old man would nod and smile apologetically. He remembered when his boy was still only a couple weeks old and his family was still together they'd gone for a walk in the park overlooking the city. It was still winter and the boy's cute little face peeped out from a bundle of warm soft blankets from deep inside the stroller. He hugged his wife and they both seemed to smile from within. He pushed his stroller and smiled at every passerby and watched as they walked by to see what kind of reaction they'd have...he doesn't do that anymore. When he first left his family and started taking the stroller out for walks he still imagined the boy was buried deep inside and he would look. He would watch as people walked by. He wanted to make sure they believed there was a baby inside. He stopped doing that once, when a middle-thirties couple was walking by with their little four year old girl. And little kids this age can be bold and forward with strangers, especially on a warm summer day, and the girl reached into the stroller before her mother could stop her and pulled back the fluffy blanket discovering nothing at all. The stroller was still new, the diaper bag full and half-unzipped revealing a bag full of diapers and other assorted baby stuffs, and underneath was his book and water bottle...all perfectly settled save for the baby wasn't there. The mother's look of concern, the father's pitying stare and the daughters oblique laughter as if the man were merely pretending. "Are you practicing for when your baby comes mister?" The girl asked and of course he had to play along but the parents understood what was going on. After that instance he learned to appear to be "minding his own business," and not pay too much attention to people as they either looked or didn't look to see the baby inside the stroller he was pushing.