Tom Meitner

I sat down on a park bench and started scribbling in my notebook. My nose detected the unmistakable stench of sadness, and I looked up to see exactly what I expected: an old, homeless-looking guy. He was clad in tennis shoes that must have been 15 years old, purple-checkered flannel pajama pants, and a dirty white t-shirt covered by an army jacket.

The jacket had a couple of chevrons on the shoulder, and looked pretty war-torn. I couldn’t tell if he bought it from a surplus store or if this was actually worn during some kind of battle. He ran his hand through his dark grey hair (or at least, the hairs that were still clinging to his head), scratched his long, scraggly beard, and sat down next to me.

Clearly not seeing that I was disinterested in talking, he spun this little yarn:

“I was lying in the trenches in Vietnam. Clutching my gun close to my chest, I shuddered helplessly while explosions were going off all around me. It felt like I was in the middle of a fireworks show. I poked my head up long enough to watch my buddy Steve Raynard take a bullet to his leg. He crumpled into a heap in the middle of the battlefield.

“I liked Steve, so my fears all of a sudden disappeared and I climbed out of the trench to go get ‘im. I hunched over to check his wound and wrapped it up quickly. As I moved to my knees, a bullet came screeching through the air and sliced right through my shoulder.” He slid part of his jacket down to reveal the bullet hole in his shoulder. Then, he turned around to show the exit wound.

He continued. “It hurt like hell, but I couldn’t just leave Steve there. This was the guy that took out three Viet Cong soldiers that were poised to take me out. If it wasn’t for Steve, I wouldn’t be here telling this story. I grabbed him, threw him over my good shoulder, and let my other arm dangle at my side. Bullets ripped through the ground around me, peppering us with dirt and mud with every step. I finally got him back to the trench.

“When the bullets died down, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and gave one to me. There, we shared a peaceful moment, knowing that we had saved each others’ lives. That’s what the war was about, man. It was about lives. Lives were at stake, and we respected the hell out of each other.”

He sat for a minute and stared at me. I could feel the muscles in my body shifting anxiously, as I grew increasingly uncomfortable. As he finally got up and walked away, I wondered about the bullet hole. His story made little sense and had even less of a point. The bullet hole was probably from some other guy that he happened into on the street, or it could have even been from a cop. I certainly don’t know if it really did come from a Viet Cong gun, or if he’s just another homeless dude.

But I liked his story. He was entertaining, if nothing else. And for that brief moment, an otherwise-completely irrelevant homeless guy had my attention. That’s probably all he wanted.