Wheelchair Man
Several lifetimes ago I lived in Portland. It calls itself a city but is really just a village that huddles around its downtown along the Willamette River. Its culture looks south to San Francisco and north to Seattle. It presents the usual tribal underclass of the pierced, the tattooed, the sexually degraded, and a steady supply of vacant-eyed homeless. The cool and hip tribes are there as well, all REI clad and Birkenstock booted.
On one fine and early Spring day I took my usual seat at a breakfast joint that boasted huge windows on two sides. One could sit and smoke and wade into a ham and cheese omelet while looking out onto Broadway, the main street that sliced through downtown. From such a perch one could see the lifeblood of the city walk on by as it rushed here and there for work or for play or while en route to some act of moral turpitude.
I saw him again. I never got his name but I knew him. He lived so it seemed in his wheelchair. Every morning he sat in his chair at that corner. He was stricken with multiple sclerosis or cystic fibrosis or other such curse. He was always clean and reasonably dressed in the uniform of Portland, jeans and tennis shoes. He wore a long sleeved shirt with a sort of bib attached to it. Wheelchair man drooled a bit, and that bib caught most of it. His too-thin legs and hands were turned at impossible angles, while his body arched away from the back of the chair. He looked for all the world like some crazy form of the letter ‘L’ with a bizarre set of limbs attached.
Wheelchair man could not really speak outside of a few rote sentences. But he could laugh. I know this because I joked with him. Or rather, he laughed at my jokes. I would stand with him at times on that corner and just look upon the passing scene of Portland. When an unusually disturbed piece of humanity shambled by I would look at wheelchair man and both of us would grin. He was always in on the joke, though his sense of humor was imprisoned in a shattered wreck of a body.
He liked to smoke. One day I was standing next to him and I pulled out a Marlboro. As I lit up his eyes looked at me with an odd longing. I got the hint and put the cigarette in his mouth and held it there. He took a long draw, keeping the smoke in his lungs awhile and savoring the nicotine as it rushed through his blood. As best he could he arched his neck so that he could blow rings of tobacco smoke. He almost succeeded.
Wheelchair man was in the retail business. He sold pencils at one dollar each. Stuck to an arm of his chair was a coffee can full of shiny new #2 pencils. Pinned to his shirt across from the bib was a carefully written note: ‘PENCILS. ONE DOLLAR.’ I never saw anyone buy a pencil from him but I knew that some did. The coffee can usually was empty by early afternoon.
On that day as I had my coffee and Marlboro while gazing at the street life of Portland I saw banners and tables being unloaded from a bunch of new vans. On the sides of these vehicles were magnetic signs that said: Run For Humanity! Broadway and been closed off to cars and tables were being set up in the street. Run For Humanity! banners were stretched across Broadway and a bunch of athletic types were scurrying about. It seemed that there was to be a 5-mile run ‘for humanity’ and it was being organized as I smoked and watched.
Then they began to appear, slowly at first but then in hordes: the runners of Portland. They always appeared at such events, all North Face clad and Nike shoed. Some lined up by the tables and forked over the $40 entry fee while others strew themselves on the ground and went into a painful series of stretches. The hard-core runners were whip-thin Calvinist-types who looked as if they survived on tofu and tea.
There must have been 1000 runners gathered about. Each got a number stuck to his chest. They lined up in several groups—first were the tofu eaters, then came the triathlon dreamers, then the mere joggers, then the occasional outdoor types, and last came the wide bottomed and spandex clad. All were there to give their all for humanity. Then they were off. The tofu eaters were soon out of sight. The other groups disappeared in their own time and at their own pace. The last of them—the wide bottomed—made a great show of it, all huffing and puffing for a good cause. Soon even they were lost out of sight down Broadway.
Curious onlookers stood at each side of the street. The media were there with cameras and microphones. Wheelchair man was there too. A true capitalist, his chair now sported two huge coffee cans full of pencils. For there was action on Broadway on that crisp and clear day. He might make a few extra bucks.
I sat in in the restaurant with my coffee and Marlboros. A newspaper had been left at the next table. I picked it up and read idly. Some 25 minutes later there was a great clamor in the street. The tofu eaters had finished the race first and the crowd was clapping. The runners were still all leg and arm movements as they pranced like Lipizzaner Stallions. The media swarmed about them. They all marveled at this display of fleetness of foot.
I could just make out wheelchair man through all the people. He may as well have been invisible. All the attention was on the runners as they finished. Each got an ovation as he hobbled in due course across the finish line. They were pleased at themselves for sure: They had got their exercise, they had got to hang out with their tribe and they had done their part for humanity. It was a day well spent.
Groups of runners came into the restaurant and filled it. Orders were made, coffee and tea were served, and soon hot plates of eggs and pancakes were being carried from kitchen to tables. The talk was of the run of course. I felt a bit odd smoking while these weekend athletes sat a few feet away. I tried to shrug it off but couldn’t. I waited until these runners for humanity had all left before I reached for my pack of smokes. I paid up and wandered outside.
Wheelchair man saw me and so I crossed Broadway over to his corner. Most of the detritus of the run was gone now. The vans had been packed up and the banners were all gone—except for one stray that slowly blew down the street. It had been a good day for humanity, as the organizers of the run had cleared maybe $40,000 all told. I saw that wheelchair man’s coffee cans were still stuffed with pencils. None had been sold on that fine Spring day.
We shared a cigarette without really looking at each other. When it was almost all ash I said goodbye and headed off down the street. A few blocks on I saw the stray banner. It had been flimsily made and so had torn in two. Each piece had a mind of its own. It had ripped between Run For and Humanity! One—the part that had Run For—had become snagged on a fence. The other blew with the wind in the direction I walked, following me almost to my doorstep. I stopped at my apartment building and turned to the door. The broken banner lingered for a bit before being carried off by the breeze on its journey to nowhere.