Too Late

For many years a man lived in the Meadowport Arch, a pedestrian underpass near the main entrance to Prospect Park. It boasts a rare double arch, the arches at right angles to one another, one facing south, with a view of the Long Meadow, and one facing east, with a view of a tree-lined path. The man slept on a curved wooden bench built into the length of a curved wooden wall, in a corner formed by the arched stonework of the southern exit.

The Meadowport Arch sheltered him from rain, snow, and wind. I would see him in his corner when I walked through the arch at the conclusion of my daily constitutional. Sometimes he was sleeping, wrapped from head to toe in blankets, his back to the eastern arch, his head towards the meadow. More often, he would be sitting on the bench, his blankets folded beside him with such precision that I wondered if he had served in the armed forces. About four feet away from his sleeping place, a dozen or so paperback books were stacked up on the bench in two piles, but I never saw him reading.

For most of the length of the Meadowport Arch, a wooden barrel vault forms the ceiling, but at the southern end, where this man lived, the ceiling is formed by an elegant cross vaulting, the intersection of two barrel vaults. The elegance suited him because he was an elegant man.

He was a slim, very dark African American, with a neatly trimmed black beard, who looked as if he were in his forties. On the few occasions when I spotted him outside his cave, when he was walking along the western side of the Long Meadow, his old dark clothes would appear well-cared for and his shoes well kept.

In the way that one creates histories for people one sees but never talks to, I imagined that he was an army veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps, I thought, he received an army pension, not enough to rent a room, but enough to buy food, razors, used clothing, and paperback books sold for 25 cents on the street. Was he lonely? He seemed walled off, enclosed. What would be his response if I greeted him one morning with a simple "hello" or "good morning"? I must have passed him hundreds of times but I never said a word to him, although I was sometimes tempted to do so.

It appears, however, that it's too late now, too late to ask him where he used to spend the coldest winter months (he would abandon his lair in January and February), too late to ask him how he obtained his books or what he read, too late to try to penetrate the glass cylinder in which he seemed to have enclosed himself. I've seen neither him nor his blankets nor his books for at least six months.

Where is he now? Perhaps he's receiving treatment at a VA hospital or at a municipal or state facility. But wherever he is, I'm unlikely to see him again. He may, in fact, be dead, the victim of his unwillingness or inability to request medical attention. Now that he is gone, I regret never having greeted him, but I must admit that were he still in his corner under the arch, I would probably continue to pass him by without a word.