The Eyewitness

Her apartment smells of soup, from many pots past. Every Wednesday she precariously carries an enormous cast iron stew pot to the fellowship hall at the Jackson Avenue Baptist Church, just three blocks away. Her soup is a favorite among “The Poor People.”

Every day at 8 am, she likes to gaze out the living room window and drink her coffee. She often stands there for hours, drinking her coffee, watching the gulls rummage through the dumpster near the parking lot.

Sometimes it takes her up to 6 days to get through a pot of coffee. She makes a pot and then saves the rest in the refrigerator. She reheats the coffee on the stovetop and fills her blue coffee cup half full. The cup is then topped off with milk (Carnation Condensed) and 6 teaspoons of sugar. Really, it is an au lait, but she doesn’t know what that means.

The braided rug beneath her feet used to be her mother’s. A wedding gift from Sears, bought from a catalog and delivered by a friend, James, who worked there. It is faded blue and yellow and green and brown and almost worn through in one place from hours of standing in front of the widow in her living room. She herself was married once, at sixteen, but she hasn’t seen her husband for many years. “Don’t mean nothin’.” She picked up the phrase during the Vietnam War.

Today, while staring out the window and drinking her coffee, she sees two boys, roughly 10 and 14 years old, and a man, an aging toothless junkie she often sees hanging around the parking lot, approach the dumpster. They are talking. Suddenly and without warning, one of the boys, the oldest and tallest, grabs the man and starts punching him in the face. The oldest then holds the old man down while the youngest repeatedly hits him with his fist. The youngest reaches into his sweatshirt and pulls out a knife and stabs him in the gut. The oldest then retrieves something from the man’s pocket and spits on the man’s face. Both of the boys run away.

The man lies there bloody. His chest continues to rise and fall with breath. His eyes are open and blinking. He is alive, but doesn’t move.

The man sees her staring at him. He doesn’t say a word. He just stares back, occasionally blinking. She and he remain there for at least 30 minutes, staring at one another. She doesn’t take one sip from her cup and he doesn’t move from his slumped position.

She wants to help him. She considers picking up the telephone and dialing 911. But she doesn’t. She knows what happens to people who run to the police. They fall down cement staircases while they’re taking out the trash. Their apartments catch on fire in the middle of the night. They get hit by cars while they’re walking Brunswick Stew to church.

If that were to happen to her, who would feed The Poor People?