Rachael and I have been in
The cool and rainy weather we’ve been having these past few weeks has reminded me of a man I knew for a time in
He was fifty-five years old, but you might guess his age at seventy, if you bothered to look at the bearded little man with the shy smile and bright blue eyes, wearing a ragged Santa Claus hat.
It seemed he was everywhere. Sitting on the seawall along
Dougie was sprawled on his back, snoring. An empty bottle was close at hand, its threaded snout peeking from a rumpled paper bag. His head and shoulders were resting beneath the bus, where there was shade, but his feet, one of them shoeless, were off the curb and in the path of traffic.
I knew him from the
Inside, Dougie cleaned up without effort. After a week of no alcohol, regular meals, medical care and frequent baths, he looked the part of an elderly uncle or that retired bachelor teacher everyone liked in high school.
That is what he claimed to be, a teacher, at least once upon a time. High school history, he said. He was vague about where he taught. “Up north,” was all he ever would say, but he was certain how long he had taught.
“Seventeen years,” he would say. “I taught for seventeen years and then the booze got the better of me.”
He had been in
And there was always a bottle, somewhere, to be passed around. For Dougie, the bottle was the best part. He was a man for whom a bad habit had become vice, and he just wanted to be left alone with his demon.
On one of those rare rainy days in
“We was crossing the road, right there at Sears,” Dougie’s friend, Terrence, told me later. “Me and Heather and Dougie. He was behind us, and when me and Heather got over to the bike path, we turned just in time to see that truck clip him. Jeez, he went flying.”
The paramedics pronounced Dougie D.R.T. Dead Right There. His remains were taken to
There were no services and the only eulogy spoken was said over shared bottles, so I offer these words to Dougie’s memory. His parents named him Douglas James, and he is gone now, but still remembered by one wandering soul who, thank God, never lived under the bridge.