Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

“This for me?” said the beggar. “It ain’t even spelt right.” “You’re right about that. But this one is more effective,” Sam said.

“Oh,” said the old man. “Why’s that?”

Sam’s reasons were many. New to vancuver suggested only a trip gone wrong, a more temporary impoverishment; the spelling errors hinted gently at mental dysfunction; and the God Bless of the old sign had seemed too obvious, in addition to the fact that Christians were now in the minority, statistically speaking. Overall, Sam had gone for a simple plea from a guy who’d just shown up in town, who’d fallen on hard times and was looking for an honest meal. He’d also added the cryptic medecine to imply a mysterious chronic illness and potentially expensive treatments. Cutting the drug/alcohol free part he’d wavered on, but in the end he’d figured it was best not to mention these matters explicitly. Most important, Sam had concluded, was that people believed their contribution would go toward something rehabilitory, not just serve as a reward for sheer laziness or be flushed down the thirsty drain of addiction.

“How much do you make, a day, would you say?” said Sam.

“Weekday or weekend?”

“There’s a difference?”

“Oh, yes sirree there is, people are more generous in their leisure time, that’s a known fact. A weekday? I’d say about fifteen. Weekend about twenty-five. That’s sitting all day, mind you.”

Sam made a note in his pocket account book and paused for some calculations in his head.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said. “Shoot.”

“I want to be your manager.”

The old man was quick to his feet and hoarsely yelling, “I ain’t doing no fighting of nobody—”

“No, no!” said Sam. “Please, not like that! I mean more like a … well, a financial adviser.”

“Ya don’t say,” he said, sitting slowly, wincing, like he was lowering himself into a hot tub.

Sam sat down on the sidewalk beside him and was bowled over by the unruly stench of animal and vinegar. He swallowed hard and made his proposition. Sam would offer the panhandler advice, at no charge, on how better to ply his trade, and the beggar would agree to follow his instructions, however odd they might seem.

The beggar looked miffed. “Why are you doing this if you don’t get no cut? Ain’t you got better things to do?”

For the first time that day, Sam’s thoughts touched on his absent family, and recoiled from their memory with the sour bite of a tongue put to a nine-volt battery. “Not really,” he said.

Then, as a show of good faith, Sam leafed five 20s from his wallet into the cup. “Consider this a signing bonus,” he said.

The beggar regarded the bills with wide, blinking eyes, turning his lower lip inside out. “That’ll work,” he said.

They agreed the beggar would keep a twelve-dollar per diem, which Sam saw as ample, and the rest Sam would deposit in the bank and give to him whenever he requested it. They would start right away with the contents of the beggar’s yoghurt cup.

When he returned to his desk, Sam opened a special high-interest savings account available only to bank employees, then walked to a branch across the street and slid the cup of filthy change to the teller, who greeted it with a tired shrug.

Weeks steamed past with all of Sam’s waking hours occupied by this new partnership. He conducted an exploratory interview with the panhandler over gourmet burgers, two of which the beggar devoured in quick succession while Sam took scrupulous notes.

His name was Isaac. He slept under an abutment of the train bridge near the old sugar refinery. He was from Vancouver, and in 1964, at nineteen years of age, had left to work as a faller in logging camps in the north. After some years up there, he was working alone one rainy day on a big spruce that was all rotten inside. He’d already done the backcut and had only just started the undercut when the tree, with no good wood to hold it, cracked, twisted, and leapt from the stump, catching him just above his groin, snapping his pelvis, and pinning him to the emerald moss. He was found hours later by his crew boss, having screamed his voice to a whisper. They brought him down in a wooden floatplane and he spent almost a year at St. Paul’s learning to make his legs work again. When he stepped out onto the street, he had no savings or family or inclination to find a job, so he just slept where he could and had done so ever since.

It pained Isaac to tell the story, and more than once tears had threatened in Sam’s eyes. It was as if Isaac had entrusted him with a thing of great value, a sort of artifact that Sam felt honoured to possess.

Sam met Isaac each day after work, collected the change, paid him out, then went and deposited the money, tracking the growth of the account on a spreadsheet that could produce line graphs, though Isaac didn’t seem to understand them when they were displayed on Sam’s laptop.

Though he’d found the subject deeply uninteresting, Sam had sat through numerous marketing courses as part of his MBA. He soon realized that Isaac was essentially in the business of advertising; that his product was his story, the authenticity of it, the emotional power it brought to bear on those who heard it; and that this story was conveyed by his demeanour, his dress, his attitude. Isaac’s job was simple, to win pity, and Sam knew he had to improve his product if Isaac was to be more generously and regularly compensated for his services.

“What are my services, exactly?” Isaac asked when Sam explained this.

“To tell the truth,” Sam said, handing him a sweaty hotdog purchased from a nearby cart.

“That’s what I always done.” “That’s what I mean.”

The first thing Sam had Isaac do was hide his shoes while he was working. A shoeless old beggar with beaten, dirty feet resting on the sidewalk was all the more pitiful for passersby to behold, and Sam saw big increases from this immediately, especially among older women. Next he coached him on the humble yet not overly articulate manner with which he should converse with patrons, and on the necessity of lowering his eyes, snatching only brief but friendly glances at the faces standing over him. Sam considered a more radical change in dress, more tatters and filth, to convey a greater need, but the acid burns he’d noted on his own designer jeans reminded him that real wear was difficult to imitate credibly. Finally, Sam considered doing away with the sign altogether and drafting a pamphlet that succinctly detailed the narrative of Isaac’s sad life, which he could hand to customers. He suspected that no matter how poorly produced or pitifully worded, it would raise questions regarding how a beggar could pay printing costs. They’d just have to keep with the sign.

Sam soon observed that while they met, the flow of change dried up. Nobody wanted to donate to a beggar conversing with a well-to-do man. Perhaps Sam was a cop, or a drug dealer; either way, he only ratcheted up suspicion, so they agreed to meet a few blocks over in Oppenheimer Park, where drug dealers convened and a few old men threw a bent Frisbee around. What Isaac did with the money was the only aspect of the scheme in which Sam would not involve himself. He was clearly in need; the depth or texture of that need Sam had no business investigating. Occasionally, Sam smelled alcohol on his breath. But Isaac was discreet, and this Sam appreciated; it was better for business. He nipped from a jam jar he carried in the coat he wore in all weather and must have refilled it when Sam wasn’t around. There were really no negative effects, aside from some mornings when for the odd fifteen-minute stretch his eyes seemed to function independently.