On my run down the trail by Minnehaha creek this morning, I found a man asleep in the shade of a tree, with his backpack as a pillow. I guess I didn’t know it was a man when I first saw him. He looked like he had taken pains to cover every inch of his skin, drawn his hood over his head and stuck his hands in his pockets. There was no reason why it couldn’t have been a woman or a kid. I thought he was a mannequin when I first saw him, like when a kid in a movie pretends to be asleep by stuffing enough junk under his covers that it looks like he’s still there, when actually he’s out fraternizing with aliens or having whimsical hijinks across Chicago. I wondered why someone would want to fake being under a tree. Maybe it was all part of some sort of elaborate social experiment, to see who would help a random person clearly in need of a place to stay. Maybe I’d be counted among those who passed him by without helping and end up as a data point in a graph that makes people see a decline in common human decency in the modern era.
It’s embarrassing that it took such a convoluted thought process for me to realize that I should help him.
When I came back, he was still there. He got up slowly when I asked him if he was all right; I couldn’t tell if he was groggy from sleep or in intense pain. When I asked them if there was anything he needed he said, “Yeah, I kinda need an ambulance.” When I asked him what was wrong, he said, “Don’t worry, I’m not dangerous,” then mumbled something about drugs that I couldn’t quite make out.
I’m ashamed that I didn’t run faster, that I didn’t dart across traffic or pound on doors to try and find someone with a phone. If this were a story, that’s what the character would have done. After all, for all I knew a man’s life was at stake. But still, I kept up my easy tempo pace until I found a woman mowing her lawn who lent me her phone.
The 911 dispatcher asked me to stay by the creek until the emergency services got there. She seemed a frustrated that I couldn’t give her a clearer idea of what was wrong with this guy. Or maybe that’s just me reading too much into her voice, because I wish I knew.
When I got back to the creek the man was leaning up against a tree a little closer to the road. He looked almost relaxed, almost happy. I worried that I’d put out a frivolous 911 call, since there didn’t seem to be any life-threatening problem, and that worry kept at me until I saw the red and blue lights flashing over the hill and the sirens getting louder.
I wasn’t quite sure whether to go with the police officer or not, since the dispatcher asked me to stay but the police officer didn’t ask me to accompany him down the trail and it seemed like a violation of something private to gawk at this guy meeting with a cop. So I stayed at a good distance, nearly hiding.
There wasn’t much I could make out of what the guy told the cop, partly because he mumbled and partly because what he said didn’t make much sense. What I could understand made me realize just how serious the situation was. At one point the guy said, “You don’t have to worry about me, I threw my weapon in the river.” A while later he made a gun with his fingers and put it up to his head.
The officer took the guy up to his car and told me I could leave, seeming a little surprised I was still there. I was worried that the officer would chew me out for jaywalking as I crossed the street, but he seemed more with concerned taking pill bottles out of the guy’s pockets.
I’m probably never going to get the full story on this. The woman whose phone I used might get a call back, but the police have no way to contact me. Probably getting taken in by the police was a key moment in the life of the guy sleeping under the tree, but I’ll never know in what way, because odds are I’ll never see him again.
I’ve tried to work out some sort of meaning from this. I could parse something out if I tried. Something about the guilt of not reaching out to him the first time I saw him, maybe. But really this is a story because I just had a bit role in it, a character without a name, an extra. Something fascinating and painful and deeply emotional happened to get him lying down under that tree. Odds are, I’ll never find out what. That’s probably for the best, since it’s not my story to tell.
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