--today. I had just left home and walking toward me, he moved to my side of the street and as we came closer he began to speak. The leg cast was the conversation starter.
He is tall, quite good-looking, silver hair and beard, 58, dressed well in dress pants, shirt, tie, cardigan, nice wingtips and his socks didn’t drag below his pants legs. He began by telling me about breaking his leg,. It is quite the story from 1986.
He fell off a cliff and broke the femur in his right leg which was bent right up to his boot hanging over his left shoulder. He righted his leg with screaming pain and splinted it and crawled for two days when he fell into another hole. He was out there alone for 2 days and felt like once he died, saw the tunnel and the light, anyway. Finally a dog came upon him and snarled as though he would eat him, ’Honey’ has a master and he heard someone call the dog. He had no voice and there had been nothing to drink for all this time, but finally made a noise.
To cut his story (over half an hour) short, Trisha, the dog’s owner, saved his life.
He is an alcoholic and homeless. He had 4 years sober, went to AA, received his pin, then went out to celebrate, got drunk and that’s when he fell.
In there somewhere he gestured up and down saying, “I don’t normally look like this, but I came into a bit of money.
He spoke about the homeless and the crack dealers downtown, and an awful fight with a ‘dealer’.
Red flags all over the place, eh? Interesting to talk with one and note them all when he doesn’t really know. He cut a charming figure and appeared the very best of gentlemen, and something special in the way he spoke--almost British, but not.
Izzy
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