Early Spring by Ed Davis

 

Image | Alexander Zair

EARLY SPRING

 

In pre-dawn April darkness, I see a blanketed figure lying on the grass. Beside it sits an upturned floppy hat. It’s the girl who’s haunted downtown for at least a year, her head bobbing as she mutters to herself, smiling and laughing, in a world of her own. Now here she is sleeping in my park, cold as it is this morning. I shake my head, cringing at having called it my park. 

Recently, the girl’s turned to busking, no doubt noticing how the guitar and violin cases of the talented attract dollars in our tourist town on weekends. Her hat, the one I’m looking at, made of multicolored quilted patches, mostly remains empty. I’m ashamed to say I’ve been too embarrassed to tip her. My gut reaction the first time was pity, then, to my horror, anger: why doesn’t somebody do something? Somebody—not me.

Turned on her side, she has her back to me. Reaching for my wallet, I remove several twenties. Leaving the sidewalk, I enter the dim moonglow of her “bedroom.” 

As I reach the cash toward the hat, her body turns, an arm snakes out from her nest and I’m clutched tightly by the wrist. What remains of moonlight makes her irises gleam with something like recognition. But maybe it’s just me seeing myself: a guy whose pity leaves him feeling guilty.

After what seems minutes but is probably only seconds, she releases my wrist, finds my hand and squeezes my fingers closed on the alms I’d intended to pay. Then, drawing back beneath her covers, she shifts onto her side, facing east, where the sun is rising. I’ve been dismissed, sent back to my world where I can’t see clearly the difference (if there is any) between pity and empathy. 

I lurch back to the sidewalk. Wasn’t this my familiar place only a couple of minutes ago? I inhale deeply. At least I’m back where I think I belong. 

Beyond the park’s boundary, my feet have found the street when I realize my hand still grasps the bills. I consider feeding them to the wind but stop myself and walk on into a streetlight’s waning glow. I get it now: with pity, you’re in your shoes; with empathy, you’re in theirs. 

I stuff the bills back in my wallet. Next time I see her singing on the bench downtown, I’ll stop and listen, give her in the light what I couldn’t in the dark.   

© Ed Davis

Ed Davis

Ed Davis has immersed himself in writing and contemplative practices since retiring from college teaching. Time of the Light, a poetry collection, was released by Main Street Rag Press in 2013. His novel The Psalms of Israel Jones (West Virginia University Press 2014) won the Hackney Award for an unpublished novel in 2010. Many of his stories, essays and poems have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Write Launch, The Plenitudes, Slippery Elm, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Bacopa Literary Review. He lives with his wife in the village of Yellow Springs, Ohio.

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