Five Days in the Life of a Samaritan

A Short Story

For an old man, a young boy, and a good friend.


Five Days in the Life of a Samaritan


I'm not feeling wholly well today. For some that's normal, but it's a departure for me. I walk up the subway stairs on my way to work and walk past the cripple on the landing which means I'm almost to the street. It seems to sap me today, the brief climb up the stairs, and there's still the hill to conquer to get to work; I probably should have skipped the gym. I'm wondering if it was last night's meal, or the three mocha's I had through the course of yesterday instead of viable sustenance that I'm paying for now.

By the end of the day the initial feeling of being somewhat sub-par vanishes in the wake of work. I walk up the building's stairs, through the halls of closed doors, and into the sweltering humidity of the 28-degree centigrade apartment that I'm calling home for the year, vaguely wondering if I'll be able to continue this plan of trying to live a cost-effective lifestyle until I've overcome the North American debt-culture of living that has been my mainstay the majority of my life. I take another cold shower, the second today, my make-shift air-conditioning alternative, sit down at the computer and play a couple hours of poker while downloading a new movie hoping the pirate kept his (or her) camera still, well-framed, and that the theater stays quiet in rapt appreciation of all the hard work and expense that went into the production of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

I check my email and discover that I'm well on the way to accomplishing my goal of getting out of debt, for the second (and I swear the last) time in my life. I was debt-free before I went to Africa, albeit barely, and still far from living the requisite lifestyle to stay that way, but that four-month milestone proved life-changing in more ways than one. While it succeeding it plunging me back into substantial credit-card debt, primarily due to poor planning on my part, it simultaneously led me to the realization that the privilege to owe, that is the staple of the North American economy, is a wide open door that we're beckoned into by the lure of unnecessary creature comforts before it slams shut with the metallic (silver, gold, platinum if you're lucky) clang of a prison cell.


My alarm wakes me up and I'm feeling better today. I have my cereal for breakfast and head to the gym. I work out for the better part of an hour before heading back to get ready for work. There is a different beggar on the stairs leading from the the subway today, this man bowing, motionlessly prostrate, with a cardboard box in front of him littered with a few coins and I'm vaguely thankful that I don't have any money on me. He's still there in the same position six hours later after a shortened work day and I'm reminded that I need to go to the bank in order to pick up some groceries, just the staples: a couple of cartons of milk, some yogurt, and another box of cereal for the week. Maybe a dozen eggs if the guy on the corner is there.


On payday I send another thousand dollars (USD) home to continue making payments on my credit card debts. Probably three or four months left until I'm free and clear. Soon I'll have to confront my plans for the next stage of life; I'm six months into my year long contract. With a return tour I'll be able to save some money, build up a bank account, maintain a balance, and perhaps be able to afford to do some traveling besides. It's the cripple on the landing today. He's sitting with has back against the wall, one leg, his left, jutting out before him with an odd deformity misshaping the lower part which abruptly ends where it should continue with ankle foot and toes. His left hand is curled, not quite into a fist, more like a claw or a talon, since there are appendages missing that would give it a more human appearance. He's slumped over with wretched posture and as I hurry past him, half-way up the last segment of stairs I'm struck still in my tracks by the thought, the picture, of a little boy's face. I remember that I have some money in my pocket. I turn around and put one of the small denomination bills in front of the man before turning silently, quickly around, and continuing on to work.


The sermon on Sunday touched on the story of the Good Samaritan, in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10, verses 25 through 37. I spend most of the capitulation of that well-known parable thinking. I think about New York City's homeless, I think about Africa, the pastor interrupts my thoughts dropping a statistic that there are an estimated one billion people who go hungry every day, that's about one sixth of the planet's human populace. I think about the old crippled man sitting at the subway on my way to work. I think about the boy. I think about the movie Schindler's List, about the ring he laments owning at the end. I question my motives, briefly struggling with whether or not I should be focused on my bank account at all once I get out of debt, and decide that the debate is one for a long dark night of the soul in the not too distant future. I feel guilty about the previous download so I go to the theater and pay for a repeat performance of a movie I've already (sort of) seen.


I'm listening to the I-pod a friend of mine gave me at the airport when I was on my way here to teach for the year. I'm listening to songs I like about love and loss and thinking about a young woman I used to know. A Rascal Flatts song comes on the shuffled thousand plus tracks, a new one I downloaded just recently, long after the life-defining separation I suffered some years ago now, but that still seems so relevant today for where I am and how I got here, called "Things that Matter". I think about the little boy again.

I'm sitting in a travel agency in Bujumbura, Burundi trying to arrange a flight home from Entebbe, Uganda to Johannesburg, South Africa and then finally to Washington D.C. where I can get a bus to New York. I'm sitting in a chair in front of the travel agent, an attractive young woman whom statistics would say has contracted some manner of STD, who is helping me in broken English because my attempts at some meager communications in my more fractured French proved futile, when I feel a light touch on my leg. It's a boy I passed on the street who has followed me into the agency. He's a cute kid, which is why he held my gaze for longer than I knew he should have in passing, and why I offered up a silent prayer on his behalf while briskly walking past him in the busy bustle of the Bujumbura streets. He has a round head, completely shorn, marked with a few small sores, but his perfectly symmetrical youthful face is mostly unmarred, except for a small scratch on his nose, and with big brown pleading eyes, his pouting mouth is pushing forth whimpering cries of "please mister, please" punctuated by the continual pawing on my leg, of a stump, sealed and scarred, cut short, just below his elbow, one of four, as all his limbs are incongruently missing, making his every movement a sort of writhing hobble, and he's still pawing at my leg and pleading with me but I have nothing to offer him, the crumpled bills in my pocket already part of the vacuum I owe to others, and even if I were to give him money, I know that he is a being manipulated as a tool for another, far more capable, and more hardened man than I, for I'm already on the verge of breaking, who will take what is given to the boy for his own gain. The woman travel agent is coming around the desk. She began by talking, progressed to almost yelling, and is now in the midst of physically removing the child, whose already fallen from being shoved away from me as I sit in numb, disbelieving, discomfort, a sullen, defeated Thinker on a swivel chair, dressed and healthy and whole, but now forever changed by the touch of a child who could have already perished in the filthy streets of a foreign city because I just sat there. But what could I have done?

I stop at the old man on the stairs. I cannot speak his language. I don't know how best to help him. I put the largest denomination of bill I can in front of him, which still isn't all that much, and walk away, not feeling good at all, just feeling like a stranger in this land.