Finding Momentum

Mike is a man growing familiar with death. It passes him on the street, he sees it in the faces of passerbys. Nightly he greets its spectre on Durant Avenue. Tonight, as every night, he�s shaking the cup in front of the Asian Ghetto food court.

He usually does most of the talking. �Drew, they ticketed me last night for sitting on these milk crates. Officer came right up and says, �You know you can�t be sitting there.� I say, �Oh yeah, why?� and he shows me the side of the crate.� Mike lifts a nearby crate and holds it against the light of the street lamp to make out the message, SITTING ON CRATES IS A PUNISHABLE OFFENSE. Mike chuckles, sets the crate down and shoots me a grin, �Ain�t that a trip, ain�t that a trip?�

He is a tall African-American man, in nylon warmups and a shirt a few sizes too big. His salt-and-pepper beard is thick and coarse, and every few minutes he brings his hands out of his pockets to rub his palms against his bald head.

Mike always does the talking. �So I was on Durant the other night and I meet this guy I met on the streets, his name is Jack.� Rocking back and forth, he continues. �Jack shows me this check he got�eighty-four hundred dollars, eighty-four hundred dollars he got it off of disability. Took it to Oakland and blew four thousand on a motel and a woman.� He gives me a disbelieving look. �Ain�t that a trip?�

He is silent for a second as a glazed look passes over his eyes. He strikes his chest a few times. �It hits me like a rock sometimes,� he tells me slowly. His heart is giving out on him. �Now my hands are doing it again.� His hands are starting to ache, a result of a history of heart problems and tremors that resurface in the lull between the times when he takes his heart pills.

Mike is shuffling back and forth, on and off the curb as he continues his monologue, dancing, jumping on and off the curb, backing dangerously close to Durant�s nighttime traffic. �God bless me,� he tells me, �God bless me.�

He furtively pulls out a cigarette, lights it and takes a deep, hard drag. �I haven�t had one all day. Just had to.� The butt of the cigarette shines bright against the darkness of the night. He coughs a few times and holds his chest. �Here it comes again, here it comes.� Throwing his cigarette on the ground, he gives it a few good stomps until it is ashes on concrete.

�I�m aight, I�m aight� he tells me.
�Are you sure?�
�Yeah.�
�Mike, is it bad?�

He moves to his leather bag, full of scrawled phone numbers on paper scraps and his heart pills. He is fumbling with the zipper of the side pocket; he�s trying to feel around the teeth for the pull handle but his shaking hands give him a hard time. Finally succeeding, he grabs the bottle of nitroglycerine and pours out the pills into the palm of his hands. I am surprised; the nitro pills are much smaller than I had imagined, about the size of a Tic-Tac.

Mike puts a pill on his tongue and gives me a face. �The nitro pills give me a headache. Last time I was at the hospital they pumped it straight into my chest.� He gesticulates wildly. �Went straight to my head. Like a headache in your sleep. I ripped the nodes off my chest the next morning but the EKG went off. They came right back in and put them right back on.�

A few minutes pass, and he finally stands up to his full height. �The headache�s gone. Thank God that nitro works.� A man with wavy brown hair passes us and calls out to Mike�he obviously knows him. �Hey man, I�ll give you fifty cents for two cigs.� Mike pulls out his pack and pulls out two, then three, then he holds out the entire pack to the man. �Here, you go ahead and have the whole thing.� The man holds up his hands, �I can�t, I�ve only got fifty cents. And I was only gonna smoke two before I went to sleep.� Mike insists, holding out the pack of Kools but the man only takes two and drops some change into Mike�s cup. Mike laughs. �What a trip. And I was only doing myself a favor.�

A few minutes pass, and he finally stands up to his full height. �Andrew, I had a hard life. I can�t count my blessings on one hand.� He is swaying now, one foot on the curb then hopping off, teetering far too close to the edge of traffic. Mike knows his time is coming. �God bless me.� He shakes his head, �God bless me.�

A note: Mike has been a familiar face in Berkeley for the past half year or so, and I decided I would start documenting my encounters and experiences with him. Why? I'm not quite sure myself. But I'll keep writing, and we'll see.

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