Steven Cornelius was born and raised in Northeast Mississippi and is married to a beautiful, auburn haired second generation Irish woman with deep roots in Galway and Sligo. His love of books began at a very early age. When night fell on the farm and chores for the day were complete, he and his family sat around the fire and read until bedtime. Many of his childhood adventures are featured in his writing. He attended the University of Mississippi, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees while participating in Air Force ROTC. Steve completed more than thirty years Air Force service in the US and overseas. For the Distant Traveler Trilogy, he drew upon experiences and memories collected during assignments around the world. After retiring in 2015, Steve decided to get serious about a lifelong passion for writing. His most recent work has been published in Mississippi magazine (October 2022) and Louisiana Living (November 2022). He just finished a multicultural novel set in Cuba and Houston Texas featuring Hispanics as the main characters. Steve has written one hundred and five short stories collected in two volumes and posted stories on the Mississippi Folklore and True Appalachia webpages and has a following of more than 3,000 regular followers on each page.

Seattle Street Life

By Steven Cornelius

About twenty-five years ago I worked for a time in downtown Seattle.  I loved being in the city and walked everywhere, regardless of the weather.  There are countless wonderful sights and smells unique to Seattle.  Along the waterfront, a stiff breeze off Elliot Bay washes you with briny salt air, delivering an unmistakable tangy essence of freshly caught fish, harvested clams and oysters.  Just away from the water, other delightful aromas entice locals and visitors alike; the sharp, earthy perfume of freshly roasted coffee beans baptized in boiling water, transforming Ethiopia and Columbia’s best into scalding hot coffee wafts from dozens of small shops.  Locals crowd into their favorite shop or kiosk for a large steaming cup, cradled between cold hands and quickly downed to deliver a wakeup jolt of caffeine.  Freshly baked bread is my thing, so the most tantalizing aromas came from a favorite breakfast and lunchtime eatery.  Early each morning, Specialties Bakery on Third Avenue swung doors wide, and the delicious aroma of crusty and warm sourdough goodness could be smelled for blocks.

            Walking downtown Seattle also meant frequent encounters with panhandlers.  The more established ones staked out a particular street corner hoping sympathetic pedestrians would give money, even if they didn’t make eye contact.  Of course, asking for “food and coffee money” was code for buying more booze or drugs.  The “regular” beggars working downtown were always a pitiful bunch, dressed in layers of ragged, filthy clothes and usually stank to high heaven.  However, panhandlers working downtown Seattle were the most polite I’ve ever encountered.  At first, I was creeped out by these wild eyed people, avoiding them at every turn.  As the weeks passed, my attitude softened; I came to believe that most were just lost souls who desperately needed help…and a bath…and clean clothes.  

During my last year working downtown I struck up an acquaintance, call it a sidewalk friendship, with a homeless guy that I saw several times each week.  He staked out the corner of Third Street and Seneca.  I must have walked past this guy a hundred times, before shame and a late arriving sense of decency compelled me to find out what was his deal was…and…finally get a little bit of his story.  As I learned over time, Bill had been clinically diagnosed as a bi-polar, schizophrenic and had been prescribed medications for both conditions., though I never saw any of that medicine.  With very little prodding, he opened up about his mental issues talking frankly, if a bit sadly as one who has accepted their condition and made peace with or at least come to an accommodation with his demons does.  In his previous life, Bill had been a mathematics teacher for more than fifteen years in the King County School District.  He’d never married, choosing to live with and look after his aging mother.  When she died, the structure and order she provided disappeared from his life and his mental state unraveled a bit more each day.  With no one to prompt or monitor him, Bill stopped taking his meds further loosening his grip on reality and ability to function in daily society.  He eventually lost his teaching position, and the family home was repossessed a few months after that, putting him on the street. 

As the months passed, my budding sidewalk friendship with Bill grew stronger as long, golden summer days unique to Seattle faded; replaced by an early autumn bringing the gray and dull overcast days that turn Seattleites a pasty white.  With each sidewalk visit, Bill opened up to me a little more, giving additional details about his life and circumstances.  He was either coming clean or could have sold the fiction he spun out to a national magazine.  As the weeks slipped by, I noticed an odd, yet positive, side effect of my visits.  If I had the chance to buy Bill a cup of coffee on Tuesdays and Thursdays, meetings down the hill with my ogre of a boss went well.  If Bill was a no show on those days, I had a rough time of it.  Once that peculiar fact dawned on me, I fussed at Bill in a good natured way, telling him that I really needed him to be on his street corner every Tuesday and Thursday.  He gave me a questioning look, waiting for an explanation.  I continued, “when you are here on those days, and we visit, I have a good meeting with my boss.  If you aren’t here, I get chewed out, whether I deserve it or not.”  He laughed, “so I have become your good luck charm?”  I shrugged, “something like that…don’t ask me to explain it.”  He grinned, “I’m not used to keeping a regular schedule, but I suppose I can try to be here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”  I repeated my request, “look…please try to make it.  If you can, I will happily buy you coffee and a breakfast sandwich.” 

Bill shrugged, “I don’t own a watch or calendar, but I’ll do my best.”  So began our odd routine.  Through the dark days of that autumn and winter, he was pretty good at keeping up his end of the deal and I was out five bucks at least two days each week.  Fortunately for us both, there was a Starbucks directly across the street from his panhandling spot and Bill welcomed a hot sandwich and coffee, especially as cold dreary fall ushered in blustery winds and persistent rain.  Just before Halloween, a few days into an especially cold and punishing stretch of weather, while talking with Bill, I noticed him favoring his right leg: shifting from one foot to the other, in obvious pain.  Pointing down I asked, “what’s going on with your right leg?”  He pulled up his pants, grimacing as he did so, revealing an ugly half-dollar sized open wound on his right shin.  His leg looked bad; it was swollen with an angry ring of red flesh surrounding a sunken hole crusted with colorless necrotic tissue.  Unsurprisingly, his walking around in dirt encrusted trousers rubbed the sore raw. 

I walked him over to the Starbucks, and as he enjoyed a hot ham, egg and cheese sandwich and large coffee, I urged him to get medical help.  He stared straight ahead and continued munching on the breakfast sandwich and slurping coffee.  Thinking he hadn’t heard me, I ticked off all the reasons why he should head to the nearest ER to get his leg and probably many other lingering conditions looked at and treated.  Bill shook his head, looking furtively around the room, “I can’t do that.  Hospital staff will take my blood and tissue samples and use them to track me all over the city.”  I took a deep breath asking, “Can you repeat that?”  Bill leaned toward me and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “word on the street is the hospital collects our blood and tissue and provides it to the government who uses that information to track us.”  It took a lot of willpower not to burst into laughter at Bill’s wild conspiracy theory.  Instead, I remained silent and turned my gaze outside, watching as a clot of pedestrians huddled under a small window awning, trying desperately to get out of the swirling, wind driven rain.  

I drummed my fingers on the tabletop, racking my brain; there had to be a way to bring Bill around to my way of thinking and have that ulcerated sore treated before a sepsis infection killed him.  Rather than push any harder, I walked across the street with him and stood on the corner, shooting the breeze while he panhandled.  After standing out in the cold with Bill for a couple of minutes, a flash of inspiration hit me; taking advantage of a slack time in passing foot traffic, I fished my Department of Defense ID card from my wallet and shoved it under my favorite panhandler’s nose.  Bill was very protective of his personal space, so he quickly stepped back, but not before focusing on my ID card for a moment.  As he realized what it was, he jumped back like I’d hit him with a taser; eyes wide with fear and surprise, hands fluttering around his head; he danced from one foot to the other…clearly unsure of what to do next.  I leaned forward and stage whispered over the traffic, “Bill, I have some news for you.  The Department of Defense is already tracking you and I’ve been assigned as your case officer.  Why do you think I’ve been spending so much time down here with you over the last six months?”  Bill grabbed the sides of his head and groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.  He stood trembling, a look of utter panic spread across his face as he processed what I’d just told him. 

He stood eyes scrunched shut, his breathing fast and shallow; hyperventilating to the point I was truly afraid he’d pass out.  To calm him down and keep him from literally falling over, I reached out and put my hand on the grimy shoulder of his coat, “relax Bill, we have no immediate plans for you.  Especially with a crippled right leg.  So, take a deep breath, calm down and hear me out.”  Outwardly at least, after breathing slowly and deeply several times, Bill began to settle down, so I continued my adlibbed lie, “go to the ER and get treated, and I’ll make certain that your tissue and blood samples disappear from the hospital records.  No one will track you.”  Bill stood perfectly still, arms hanging straight down by his sides, intently looking down at his dirty Nike’s and the equally grimy sidewalk, obviously lost in thought, ignoring passing Seattleites who dropped coins into his dilapidated old “help me” cup.  After about thirty seconds, he looked up, staring intently at me before asking, “you can make that happen?”  I nodded emphatically, “absolutely.  If the ER staff give you any trouble before I can get down there, have them give me a call.”  I fished out one of my business cards and handed it to him, “this is my cover job and phone number.”  Because it was a busy Monday, I quickly said goodbye, returned to my office and began tackling the first of a thousand thankless tasks.  I didn’t see Bill for several days and was worried about him; his was such a sad story that he was never far from my thoughts.            

Friday afternoon, returning from lunch, I was relieved to see Bill in his usual spot on the corner of Third and Seneca.  He saw me crossing the street and gave me the biggest grin I’d seen in a while, especially from him.  I waved and headed over to see him.  As I walked up, I asked, “how ya doin Bill?”  He didn’t reply, instead, pulling up his right pants leg, he showed me a fresh white bandage covering the terrible sore on his leg.  I looked at it intently for several seconds before clapping my hands together and exclaiming, “good for you!  I’m sure it feels a lot better!”  He nodded, held up his right hand, indicating that I should wait a second, as he bent over and pulled down the bandage far enough for me to get a peek at his ugly sore.  His shin looked much better and seemed to be healing nicely.  Bill spent the next ten minutes excitedly giving me a blow by blow description of his ER visit, how nice the staff were to him, etc.  He obviously thought that I’d somehow influenced how he’d been treated.

            I was pleasantly surprised and very happy for him, “wow, it must be a lot easier to walk on that leg than even a few days ago.”  He nodded vigorously, “yeah, it is a lot less painful when I move around now.  It used to kill me to stand here for hours without a break.”  I paused for a second and then added, “I’ll head down to Swedish General ER and make sure your records disappear.  Bill gave me a big grin and thumbs up as he turned to extend his “help me” cup close enough for a passerby to drop in a couple of quarters.  I waved goodbye and headed north, as if I planned to walk the ten blocks to the Swedish General, before circling back to my office building.  I continued stopping by two or three times each week, escorting Bill over to the Starbucks for “the usual.”  Three Friday afternoons later, we went our separate ways until I next saw him on the following Tuesday.  The first thing I noticed as I walked up was that Bill looked rough.  I asked him about his leg to which he replied, “my leg is fine, all healed up, but I can’t seem to stay warm.  I’ve been sleeping on a sidewalk heating grate near the Y, and I woke up this morning freezing.  Some asshole turned the heat off and the grate was blowing cold air up on me all night.” 

I offered a feeble, “that’s too bad” and after a trip across the street to the Starbucks for his usual meal and very little small talk, I made my way upstairs and got to work.  For the rest of that week, I had trouble getting Bill’s predicament off my mind.  Every time I stood shivering, waiting for my bus to or from work, I thought of how rough it would be to sleep outside.  That Saturday night as we sat watching TV, I talked it over with my wife and we decided to give Bill a spare sleeping bag bought in a fit of optimism, when I thought we’d go camping every weekend.  We’d kept the bag but during one of our many moves around the country, had long since lost its weatherproof cover.  I put the sleeping bag into a black trash bag and sat with it between my feet on the ride downtown that Monday morning.  About ten AM, I came up for air and looked out my office window, which faced his street corner.  I was happy to see that he was already at work.  Making my way downstairs and through the lobby, I strode up to him swinging the oversized, black trash bag back and forth in my right hand.

Bill looked at me suspiciously, casting his eyes down at the trash bag, “what’s in the bag?”  I grinned like a possum and blurted out, “it’s a really good sleeping bag and should keep you warm.”  Bill shrugged, took the trash bag from me and then unraveled the red tie loops and looked inside, paused and then back up at me, “what happened to the cover?”  Astonished, and temporarily at a loss for words, I sputtered out, “we lost the cover a few years ago.  It’s a really good sleeping bag though; I’m sure you’ll like it.”  Bill shook his head and as I walked away, was still muttering about the missing cover.  I was disappointed and offended.  I suddenly felt like the good Samaritan to an ingrate.  Why should he care whether a perfectly good sleeping bag had a weather cover?  His lack of gratitude put me off for the rest of that day.  Later that evening, I told my wife about Bill’s reaction to our generosity. 

We were both bewildered and in unfamiliar territory; I had forked over almost a hundred bucks for that sleeping bag a few years earlier, not to mention countless Starbuck’s meals for Bill.  Why hadn’t he appreciated the gift, if not the gesture?  I sat that evening after supper stewing over his lack of gratitude and then suddenly remembered what my mama told me years earlier, “It isn’t true charity if you expect something in return or to feel good instead of for the benefit of the other person.”  I scolded myself, maybe I needed to rethink my reason for what I’d done to help him and let it go.  To be brutally honest, Bill did well to function independently at all.  Everything else he did at an adult level was gravy.  Monday morning rolled around all too quickly and by nine AM, I was ready for a break.  I made the short elevator ride down to street level and headed toward the Starbucks.  As I walked toward the intersection, I noticed Bill was working his corner, but facing south, away from me. 

I walked up and loudly asked, “hey Bill, how was your weekend?”  Bill turned toward me, and I was shocked to see his bruised, lumpy and unsmiling face.  Before I caught myself, I blurted out, “holy shit, Bill, what happened to you?”  He shook his head, giving me a sad, almost forlorn look, sighing, “I got my ass kicked last night.  Another bum took a liking to my sleeping bag and when I wouldn’t give it to him, beat the shit outta me and took it anyway.”  I was stunned, “you lost your bag?”  Bill glared, shooting me a look that clearly reflected his low opinion of my intelligence before adding, “the bag didn’t really keep me warm anyway.”  I looked down at my feet and managed to mutter, “sorry.  Do you need to see a doctor?”  Bill shook his head, gave me a butt out do gooder look and walked away.  I skipped Starbucks and returned to my office in a subdued state of mind.  Over the next several days, I looked for him as I went about my daily business, but he had disappeared.  Three months after my final Monday morning encounter with Bill another job opportunity moved us to Colorado Springs, and I never saw him again.  I hope he made out okay, but knowing what usually happens to most homeless people, I have my doubts.