New York Lawyer
November 27, 2007

On a sunless December day, I neared a beggar who was taking shelter from winter’s snow driven fury in the well of an office building I regularly passed on the way to work.

“Spare change?” he asked. I stopped, removed a glove, and fished through my coat pockets. Sixty three cents.

“Thank you,” he said as I placed the coins into his palm and walked on. Begging? How could a human being plunge to such depths? I thought too highly of myself to suffer such fall from grace. Not me, never happen.

The next day the beggar was at the recess soliciting.

“Spare change?” he asked again, the vapor trail of his breath hovered like a frozen aura. As I placed a couple of quarters into his hand, it struck me he had no gloves. No gloves in this weather? I offered my gloves knowing that my hands would soon be wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee in my heated office. Hesitant to accept, he asked if my hands would freeze.

“Don’t worry, I have an extra pair,” I answered, wondering if he thought two pairs of gloves an extravagance in a world with too few gloves.

“May God bless you,” he intoned.

A few days later I saw him at a new location. I gave him a dollar. At that, the beggar volunteered that he believed that the world can be made better through individual effort. I told him that I was an associate in the corporate department of a large law firm and that from my vantage point his theory seems unworkable, if not naive. The beggar just titled his head quizzically like a dog craning to understand his master’s words.

“Giving someone a pair of gloves doesn’t improve the world. It’s no great shakes, no improvement in the human condition, no advancement of society. It’s only gloves,” I remonstrated.

The beggar kept silent and looked at me. His brown eyes were like dancing bears. “Look, you of all people should know there’s too much poverty in the world, too much corruption and injustice, too much violence. Most individuals feel powerless,” I rattled compelled to prove the point.

“I know, I know,” he said, his voice lowering soothingly. “But,” he continued, “you have to start somewhere. You cannot give up because of the enormity of the task. We have to try to do good, to right the world. Every little bit helps. Yes, even the gift of gloves can save the hands that push a child out of the way of a speeding car,” he prophesized.

I could just imagine the conservative bunch in Mergers and Acquisitions listening to the debate and rolling in laughter at the ludicrous sight of the well-dressed lawyer exposing the soft underbelly of his sensitive soul to a street bum. Or, would they be mortified at the sight? Would they avoid me, fearing that the filth of the beggar may have attached to my clothing like a malevolent property lien, then somehow leap upon them?

The next morning the beggar was at the entranceway to the firm’s office building. My firm’s office building! Had the beggar followed me like a stray after my gesture of kindness? What would the partners who held sway over my career at the firm think of my new friend? Surely, the homeless are tolerated so long as they did not hang out near one’s home or place of work. I wanted, perhaps even needed, to control our meetings, to engage him on my terms in my own way. Why couldn't he just stay where he belonged? He risks my future.

“Hi, I’m uh, uh, late for work,” I stammered and walked passed him through the revolving door. I hurried to the elevator and pressed the call button repeatedly to speed its descent from the ninth floor. Finally, the doors opened and I went inside.

Later that day while sitting at my desk reviewing an asset purchase agreement I reasoned that the beggar was making rounds like an intern at a hospital. He needed to change locations so as to not wear out his welcome, and to expand the potential number of donors like a fund raiser. Sooner or later he would beg at the firm, the law of averages compelled it. After all, wasn't he a human being with an inalienable right to self-determination, to go anywhere he wished? Wasn’t the freedom to travel recognized as a fundamental right under the Constitution? Hadn’t great legal battles been fought over this concept?

Remorse washed over me. Was I no better than an animal protecting its turf? Did the level of my compassion extend only as far as the loose coins in my pockets? Did the lofty ideals I learned in law school about truth and justice and American democracy fly by the wayside because I was worried about my future? Really, what harm does the beggar cause? He is peaceful, respectful. Surely, the money he collected was far less than reserved for the collection plate at services.

That night I slept fitfully: where did the beggar live? Who were his friends, his parents? What drove him to the desperation of the street and to beg unabashedly? How did he persevere? The next morning, tired from the lack of sound sleep, I rode the subway to work with the other zombies. The beggar was at the firm again. Was he my personal charity? Did he seek donors to milk in exchange for allowing them to feel good about themselves? Screw him. I didn’t need the approval nor the help of a street bum to justify my existence. I began to detest the beggar. Who the hell did he think he is?

“Where are the gloves?” I asked, noticing his red raw hands.

“I thought you understood. They are keeping a pair of hands warm,” he said eyelids widened in surprise at the suddenness and belligerency of my question.

“I gave them to you.”

“I thanked you, but someone needed them more. Surely you would not deny warmth to cold hands, even the hands of a stranger?”

Rebuked, I walked on. His words flew straight to the heart. I thought of the crazy story of a man who refused to eat because he did not want to deprive someone else of food. As his body wasted, his friends despaired.

“Isn't your life just as important as those you are saving food for?” they asked.

“Perhaps,” he responded.

“So why don't you eat?” they pleaded.

“Because to eat while others starve is a sin.”

Our paths crossed occasionally during the next weeks as the cold washed over the city without respite. We talked under banners stretched over the streets with messages of seasonal cheer. In the distance, a great Christmas Tree festooned with colored lights, silver tinsel, and pulsating stars formed a triangle with a menorah and a Kwanzaa candelabrum. Could one ascend to Heaven from the epicenter of that holy space?

One day the beggar told me a story of a man, a professor of philosophy, whose wife lay dying of an incurable illness.

“A few minutes before her life faded the woman told her husband not to be angry with the world. She died in his arms. He was inconsolable. He could not teach. The youthful faces of his students hurt his eyes like blinding lights. He lost his ability to concentrate and could not study. He doubted his usefulness. He resigned and wandered from place to place trying not to be angry with the world. But it was hard for he had loved his wife so. He fought with fellow employees and was forced to flee every menial job he took.

“One day out of money and feeling the pangs of hunger, he asked a stranger for some spare change. The stranger took one look at the lost soul and gave him a dollar with a plea not to use the money for liquor. It was at that moment of acceptance of this charity that the professor was redeemed. He shed his anger.”

I never knew if my beggar was the professor. He never discussed his personal life. He did not mention where he was from or how long he had been on the street. Was he a member of that ancient order of friars who shunned ownership of property and subsisted on charity? Was he one of the thirty six just men whose justness keeps the world alive?

Christmas Eve day and the firm closed early for the holiday. I spotted the beggar amidst the sea of workers scrambling to get home. Who was he that walked the streets fighting against immutable mortar and brick and the sneers from the ranks of the employed and the anxious faithful? I needed to know who was this man who beguiled me, who jogged my soul and prodded my being. I resolved to follow him discreetly. As daylight waned, the beggar went to a soup kitchen located in a maze of side streets. Crouching behind the passenger side of a parked car across the narrow road, I watched a man wearing my gloves let the beggar go before him on that long line of the needy who were about to receive the only decent meal of the day. A senior litigator at the firm was fond of boasting that there is no mercy in the bread line to justify his trial strategy. No mercy? My God what have we wrought?

As darkness wrapped the city, the beggar emerged grooming particles of food from his thick gray beard grown long like an Old Testament patriarch. I resumed the tail and walked deeper into a world I had not known. Would I be able to find my way out of the labyrinth and escape the monster of poverty? The beggar walked towards a group of street people huddled in front of a four story hotel for transients that looked like the victim of flesh-eating bacteria. Some had their hands thrust deeply in pockets and stamped their feet to beat back the cold. Others appeared immune from the weather. The group said their hellos to the beggar and parted like the Red Sea as he walked through them into the hotel. People live like this? Had I been asleep my whole life?

Snow began to fall. The gang in front looked with incredulity as I walked around them and entered the hotel. The lobby stank from backed-up toilets, unwashed bodies and booze.

“If he could handle it so can I,” I muttered, and urged myself forward like one of the six hundred riding into the valley of death.

Walking down the hallway, I peered into a room and saw an amputee sitting upon a bed roll staring at a prosthesis. His hair was long and greasy and his clothes filthy. In an adjacent room, two men were taking a swill from a bottle of Thunderbird, too preoccupied to notice me. Shouts and curses filtered through a closed door. As I continued through the corridor of horrors, the beggar’s voice, vibrating like the omnipresent ohm guided me like a beacon. He was sitting on a couch among other men in a small, dimly lit alcove at the end of the hallway.

“Come on over sit down,” he said patting the cushion. Two men moved over to make room. Sagging into the couch, I was overpowered by the enveloping stench of dried urine, vomit, and mold. Declining a bottle that was making the rounds, I wanted to retch but held firm.

“We were discussing Marx's Dialectic,” the beggar said. The men laughed from the shock on my face. “Actually,” he continued, “we were talking about everything and nothing all at once and one at a time. No one listens and everyone hears. Care to join us?”

“My name's Burt,” one of them blurted. “I used to be a boxer. Pretty good too.” He walked over to a wall, assumed an awkward boxing stance, and pounded it several times. After the thudding subsided Burt showed me his gnarled fingers and swollen knuckles. “Hit me in the guts and I'll die,” he said out of breath regaining his seat.

“You see that man over there?” another asked. I turned to look at a clean shaven man with hair freshly cut seated by himself.

“They took him to the detox center at the hospital. They did him a big favor and cleaned him up. Now he'll freeze for damn sure.” I remembered my father telling me not to wash the family dog in the winter because he needed the coat of dirt and oils as a shield from the cold.

“My name's Willie, ha, ha, ha, ha . . . . . . . .” Willie's mind was gone. Then the beggar spoke again.

“Begging is an honorable profession,” he started. “True,” he continued, “we pay no taxes, but we make just enough to sustain life. Some of us have mental problems. Some of us have addictions. Some simply have no other place to go. Some just want to be here.

“Beggars become cold-blooded reptiles. If it gets too cold we freeze, too hot we boil. We don't live long. We can't take vacations or respect Sabbath. We are wards of the streets. We are mirrors that reflect man. We are latter-day Diogeneses looking for truth with outstretched palms instead of lanterns. We are measures of the level of civilization.

“Beggars are your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, your fathers and mothers with hearts and minds. Without us charity couldn't exist. Alms could not be transferred, souls assuaged, nor consciences cleared. Beggars make the world feel good. So you see my friend we are good investments, needed commodities. We are useful, we have purpose. Give to us and set your soul free,” he concluded.

I sat transfixed in the hoary light of that stinking cesspool longing to hear more. But the beggar was finished with the sermon and sat with a serene smile like Siddhartha attaining enlightenment under the Budhi tree.

“Merry Christmas mista,” said one of the disciples.

“Merry Christmas,” I replied. Looking into the mass of eyes I knew then that people can rise above circumstance and manifest a certain nobility even under the harshest of conditions in the worst of times. I learned that wisdom can be found yes even in squalor and that people should not be judged by their appearance or environment. I bowed my head, gave thanks, and prayed for the strength to sustain the gift of the appreciation of the indomitable human spirit beyond Christmas for as long as I shall live.

“Night kitchen's open mista. You wanna join us?” asked one of the disciples. All of the beggars looked at me.