Transient Witness (A True Story)

(Written for the "Not As It Seems" competition, this is a true story from my high school days, back in the early 1980's)


“Be careful”
“Avoid him,”
They said…
Lenny
The Bum, downtown.

“He’s a sly one, you know”
“He’ll weasel you out of your money”
“He lives on the railroad tracks.”
The jeers,
The hate,
Because Lenny was the Town Bum.

But he used to escort me,
And my girlfriends,
Across the tracks
To our after school jobs
At the grocery store…..
How can he be that bad?

And Lenny would pick up the trash
In the parking lots
And collect the shopping carriages
That people took all over the city,
And we would pay him in food
From the grocery store.
How can he be that bad?

“He smells”
“He’s a dirty old bum”
“No good, homeless man”

But Lenny had great stories to tell
As he escorted us girls,
To the care of our male co-workers
Across the tracks.
“Make sure you marry this one,”
Lenny told my boyfriend
“She’s a keeper”

But he didn’t marry me,
And Lenny died one day, many years later.

The newspaper revealed that Lenny was a devout churchgoer,
And that he was rich,
His fortune made from misering away
Every cent he earned from driving the trash collection truck
For years.
He had no family
Save for the church
And his mention of God, made sense now—
Lenny was witnessing
To everyone he came across, as a Transient.

“But Lenny was a—”

Lenny was a good man who just rarely showered,
And didn’t want to stay home alone.

“But how could he—”

How could he what?
Be happy just leading a simple life
Collecting carriages and trash,
Making sure the girls were safe?

St. Bernard’s Church is $75,000 richer,
Because of Lenny
And his bequest,
His entire savings,
To the house of the God he loved.

Lenny was no bum.