A beautiful Beatnik story about bums

I met someone special once. It seems like some beautiful Beatnik story, about bums congregating to exchange jokes and sad stories, but it all happened. It began in the stew of a golden afternoon, as heat permeated the dying of the light. I was at a bar—drinking, as was my custom, decadent glasses of Belgian Beer—when I was approached by a homeless, indigenous man. He had everything he owned in a school backpack that looked stolen. There was a faint light in his eyes; he had dark skin from sleeping on the sidewalks of the most liveable city. The first thing he said is, “Can I sit with you and drink some tea?” Of course, I obliged him. He was very polite, and I felt depressed and lonely. But it quickly became apparent he was out of jail and finding it hard to adjust. I was amazed, since he was so polite and soft spoken, but he had spent 28 years in jail, with long stints in solitary confinement. He thought it was ironic that he spent more time in jail than my own age.

Over beers, we discussed his life and what fatal mistakes he made. “I shot the sheriff,” he laughed. “But I did not shoot the deputy.” He was a Rasta fan; like all Rasta fans, he exuded a certain placidity and peacefulness. I did not know it at the time, but Rastafari are opposed to the colonial machinations of Babylon. And this homeless man, this cop killer, seemed to reflect that in my mind. The scene sounded violent; it began when an on-duty officer came to arrest him over a more-than-reasonable amount of marijuana, and I am partial to marijuana, but he had an indictable amount of marijuana. The story goes that when the arrest ensued, the homeless man reached for a gun. “I shot the sheriff,” he sings again. “And I did not shoot the deputy.” Still, 28 years is a long time. And you can tell the grief had already set in.

It was a tragedy, he said, and it was not right for him to take the life of the policeman who was just doing his job. And we are supposed to hate and condemn and scorn cop killers, as any healthy society with mass incarceration dictates. I believed him—mainly because he was living on the streets and had no reason to lie about something so forbidden. He had no options, no wealth, no job, no prospects. Society hates him for the 30-year-old mistake he made. But I wondered how he survived jail. I asked, “You’re a strong person… no one can deal with solitary for that long. How did you not kill yourself?” He said I was the first person to “ever say some shit like that,” after he fell over, almost struck blind.

The only thing that took me off-guard was how little he cared about my credentials! My precious degrees! None of my enlightened university learning impressed him; he did not care about all my grand pronouncements about colonialism, capitalism, and carceral society. This was lip service to him, and his reality was his own, not mine to philosophise over. He just wanted a friend, and I was his friend for the night. He wanted someone who was honest and real, and we can be that for others when we decide to kill the cop in our heads. We finished the night by drinking on the sidewalk and talking with other homeless guys; his cousin, wheelchair bound, kept a machete under his wheelchair. But he kept it for emergencies. And these bums taught me much more about life than any book. It sounds like a beautiful Beatnik story about bums, but it really happened.