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The Corner

Carlo Frank Calo

    Before dawn breaks, the men arrive at the usual corner. This one alone, others in groups of two and three and four they are drawn to this same place each day. They wait for the trucks and vans to come. Patience is rewarded for some, the regulars, who are canvassed before they even stop for coffee. The young bucks joke about this game, a ploy to avoid the truth of their circumstance. For the rest there is no ambiguity. This is their job, this is their life, and if they are to feed their children they must take what comes. The sun is in its descent, low in the cloud-scattered southern sky. As the shadows stretch, the bones chill and the crowd dwindles.
    The last three gather at the corner, familiar these many years. Bouncing in place their skin is pricked, again and again, by stinging specks of earth and sand borne by the approaching nor’easter. Alien to the cold, huddled against it, the man elbows his remaining compadres. They call him the smiling man, always laughing. The jostling is as much for his warmth as for theirs. His friends accept this absent complaint. They are used to his nudges. Returning his smile they welcome the incursion, sun and sweat having long ago bleached away any remaining competition. Whether they are among the chosen today has less to do with talent than with luck.
    The smiling man crosses the road performing his customary traffic dance like a matador, dodging the cars honking from both directions. Walking a bit more he arrives at his bicycle and reaches under the seat to access his stash, glancing back to be sure that no one is watching. His stomach churns as he sees a van pull up to the corner. He curses himself for jeopardizing yet another opportunity, scarce as they have been. Rushing back across the road, smiling and waving – too late – the van passes, saluting him with the mocking beep of its horn. Inside, his friends – heads bowed and hands pressed to the windows in apology – turn to him, their Mayan eyes meeting and sharing regret. As he looks into their eyes he grins, baring his teeth while shaking his head, and thinks about that beeping horn. He is surprised that it bothers him more than the occasional cries of “Go back where you come from spic!” He is amused and at the same time angered. It is easier to accept the truth of hatred than the hypocrisy of mockery.
    Now, with even more pretext for his vice he sits at the corner’s curb, alone, in an ongoing battle with the shifting winds to ignite. The winds prevail and he is out of matches. On this day he has shown neither talent nor luck. Arms resting on his knees, frozen hands release the matchbook. It flutters unnoticed to his heels joining the charred remnants previously bound to it, each spent, one by one, none having fulfilled its purpose.
    His smile is gone, replaced by a vacant face, a mirror of the hungry emptiness inside. Taking a deep breath, and then another, the man gazes down the road toward the van as it shrinks, slowly, into the distance. Eyes never leaving the van he shivers – feeling a new chill – and thinks only of another corner, back home where he was born, where he first experienced a smile and a laugh, where he knows he will find warmth.

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