I didn’t mean to disturb the sleeping homeless person.
Last night was my last Harrisburg Senators game of the year — the season ended today, and I was in Lancaster instead, where they clinched the second half division title — and Harrisburg pulled off a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the tenth to take the game, 1-0. After the game and the fireworks, I walked across the Walnut Street Bridge and walked along Front Street to let the crowd traffic on City Island to empty out, but also because I like to linger after the last game of the year. I don’t have a lot of reason to go to Harrisburg in the off-season — though I have applied for (and been rejected from) a number of jobs in Harrisburg over the past few months — and I like walking along the riverfront. I would walk to State Street, look down the street to the state capitol building, then walk back, that was what I would do.
I stopped in front of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Cathedral. It stands on Front Street directly opposite FNB Field on City Island, and its red door and English Gothic facade are recognizable in the many photos of downtown I’ve taken from the ballpark concourse over the past twelve years. I took a few photos of the facade in the dark from the park across the street, paused to let a couple pass, then took a few more. There was absolutely no need for the photos — I could go in my folder of photos from 2013 and find a half dozen near-identical photos, no doubt — it’s just something I do.
Traffic passed, and I crossed the street. There’s a grave in front of the church, and if there’s a truism about me, it’s that I will look at random graves. Again, I have looked at this grave, just as I have taken photos of this church, in circumstances exactly like this. There was nothing special about this, I’ve even looked up the 19th-century person to whom the grave belongs.
I approached the grave, bathed in a spotlight, and in completely obliviousness I noticed with some small shock that there was someone laying on the concrete handicapped ramp that curved behind the grave marker. I had quite literally been about to bound up that ramp to get a different view.
I froze for a moment, looking at what I saw there — the lower part of the body, feet covered in white socks — and trying to process it. I don’t know for sure, but my intuition tells me the person sleeping there was a woman.
The person stirred, turning and stretching. I felt that I had woken her up, or perhaps she hadn’t been asleep at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I hadn’t intended to disturb you. I was just looking at the church. I’m sorry. Sleep well. I’m sorry.” I backed away.
I continued down Front Street, reached the State Street intersection, and looked at the capitol building. I crossed back to the other side of the street, and there were several more homeless people in the little park across from State Street.
As I took the asphalt path back to the Walnut Street Bridge, I found myself thinking of how Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said this week that the homeless should be executed — “involuntary lethal injection,” if I’m remembering his words correctly — and how these few people I had just encountered were people. Life had just dealt them a bad hand, and nothing about that merited death. How can Kilmeade be so bereft of empathy to see the homeless as people? How could he think that the only help society can or should offer them is death?
I saw another person, this one in a wheelchair, navigating the asphalt path. I gave him a wide berth because navigating this path on foot is hard enough — it’s not level, it’s cracked, it’s pushed up from tree roots underneath — and I didn’t want to be in his way. Only as I passed him did I noticed that he’d dropped something, or something had fallen, and he was trying to pick it up from his chair.
“Let me get that,” I said. I reached down, picked it up, and handed it to him. It was a towel.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I almost didn’t see it in the dark.”
I noticed then that he, too, was one of Harrisburg’s homeless people. His wheelchair was loaded down with life’s essentials — a sleeping bag, bags of clothes, etc.
“Do you need any help?” I asked, not knowing what I was asking but feeling it needed to be asked.
“No,” he said. He started on again. “God bless you, sir. God bless you.”
“Have a good night,” I said.
I looked down and felt I should have, could have done something more.
I walked back to the parking lot on City Island in the dark, lost in my melancholy.