Christmas Eve, Chicago, 2020, mid-pandemic

Corner of Clinton and Adams.

Even with my warm leather gloves on, my fingers are still starting to feel numb. My woolen cap keeps my head reasonably warm, but I should have remembered my scarf to keep my face warm. The dogs need walking or I wouldn’t be out here. It’s as simple as that.

Snowflakes whirling around are feathers from a giant pillow fight some choirs of angels have had in the canyons of this tall city. Originally from California, I have never gotten used to the cold. Snow is pretty for a few days, but that’s it for me.

Standing in the dancing snowflakes is Mike. Despite the cold, he still gives me that strong toothy-white-smile-incased-in-his-black-face. We are almost friends by now, if a white guy with a job can ever be a friend of a Black man with nowhere to lay his head. Just like the Christ child who will be born tonight.

Mike removes a worn glove to shake my hand. Standing six-foot-two and wearing size-13 boots and a large jacket, he is someone I have to look up to, even if I am somehow looking down on him. He did wear extra-large when they let him out of prison in August, he tells me, but living on the street he has lost weight.

We talk a bit; I give him a couple dollars like I usually do and ask if he has any shot at getting a job from Safer House, one of the places where people spend their days giving a hand to people like Mike who have fallen out of the system entirely. I haven’t asked him why he was behind bars. I once said I don’t care, but then I asked him how long he was inside and he told me he was just a lookout so they only gave him ten-fifteen. The others on the job got thirty.

Once, when the weather was a lot warmer, I saw a couple deep ugly scars on Mike’s arms. They are probably nothing compared to the scars on his soul. Three doors down is the sheltered doorway where he usually sleeps. One night, he told me, someone brought a blanket and laid it over him. Wasn’t me.

A hard part for Mike has been getting the medicine for his bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He said that at least when he was on the inside he got his medicine, but he doesn’t ever want to go back, even if he has to sleep on the street.

Recently Mike did connect with an organization that got him an appointment with a doctor at a medical center downtown, and now he gets his medicine regularly. Sometimes he rides around on the train--the “L” as they call it in Chicago—all night. The conductor leaves him alone.

Mike knows more about survival than I do. A lot more. I have wondered why I am where I am and he is there where he is. Mistakes I’ve made a-plenty. Never had any serious confrontation with the law, though. In kindergarten, my buddy and I were talking in class and the teacher sent us to the principal. In my mind he was like a giant Dwight D. Eisenhower: both the General and the President. We sat there — odd how clearly I remember it all. He scowled at us, trying to scare us, asked what we were doing there. “We were talking in class,” I mumbled. “Well,” he threatened, “Should I spank you? Should I shake you?” Spanking really scared me, so I was on the verge of suggesting would he please shake us, but he said, “You boys go back and don’t talk in class again. If you are sent here again you will be in trouble!” That was my biggest run-in with the law. The principal didn’t have us arrested, but I guess his method worked. I never talked in class again unless called on to do so.

Maybe I could have been arrested for smoking pot in the Army, which I did. Now it is legal. But none of the things I’ve done likely would have earned me a night in prison. Of course, I am also white. Like the snowflakes that night.

As I was leaving, feeling helpless and somehow guilty, I give Mike another ten spot. Say to him “Hang in there, Buddy, good luck.” Tell him keep the faith. Don’t wish him Merry Christmas.

Is a big man in a red suit and white beard going to come down his chimney tonight? Mike doesn’t have one. Maybe the Christ Child is going to save him? Maybe MIKE is the baby Jesus. I know nothing, except that the world is cold.

It is eleven pm. Trying to sleep. Too tired to go out to Christmas Eve Service. But I am warm in my bed, my dogs curled up like furry little rugs beneath my feet. Outside snowflakes swirl. Somewhere, Mike/baby Jesus is asleep.