Giving and Receiving

Jason slowed his late-model Ford Explorer as he approached the entrance to Fred Meyer to do his weekly grocery shopping. Next to the busy thoroughfare in the outskirts of the Freddy’s parking lot is a Schucks auto supply store. The hedges surrounding Shucks provide camouflage for the local homeless population who are known to dart into the street without warning. Jason has an aversion to striking pedestrians, since that one incident, so he always slows and does crack-head recon before turning into the parking lot.

Beauregard sat in the back seat of the Explorer and did his own recon. Jason and Beau saw the strange form tucked between the hedges at about the same time. The form shifted and moved and shaped itself into a dirty thin man in his late twenties who stood and walked toward the street. Beau was the first to notice that behind the man was a dirty thin golden retriever. Jason immediately sped up slightly and avoided eye-contact but Beau leaning his head out the window and barked at the emaciated dog. Beau, it should probably be explained at this point, is Jason’s black lab / pit bull mix.

Jason doesn’t like panhandlers and made the conscious decision to drive to the opposite end of the parking lot to avoid a face-to-face with the skinny guy and skinnier dog. As he made the SUV comfortable for Beau and locked it up, he turned to find both subjects just a few yards away and approaching closely.

“Hey, um, I was wondering if you could spare a few dollars so I can feed my dog,” the man asked.

“Sorry, I don’t carry cash on me,” was Jason’s standard reply.

“Oh, well thanks anyway. I saw that you are a dog owner too and I thought maybe you could help me out. Um, thanks anyway,” said the stranger who started walking, slump shouldered, back toward the hedges.

Jason walked into the store and could not stop thinking about this panhandler. He’d been hit up hundreds of times but never by a guy with a skinny dog. He trusted his first reaction - the one that said never to give money to strangers, the one that said that panhandlers will spend the money on beer or crack or crystal meth, the one that said charity is best given to charitable organizations who have rules and complex ways to make sure money goes to the truly needy.

But this guy seemed different. The guy was so dirty and thin that it was obvious that he lived on the street. The guy did not speak in the machine-gun pace of the cracked-out or the slurred ramblings of the perpetually drunk. The guy did not seem like he was acting; that he was smooth-talking panhandler by day and devious criminal by night; that he was Marshall Mathers one day, the real Slim Shady the next day, and Eminem on weekends and bank holidays. This guy seemed the real deal.

Screw it, Jason thought, and he screeched his shopping cart toward the pet section. There he picked up five or six foil pouches of Pedigree dog food, no can opener required. He then went to the deli and selected two sandwiches, a bottle of water, and a bottle of soda. He took these items to the customer service desk and placed them on the counter. He identified himself as a Fred Meyer employee, asked to ring these items up, and asked to use a Sharpie pen. The customer service clerk looked at him like he was from another planet but rang up the items and, after Jason paid, gave him a pen.

“Watch me. I’m blacking out the UPCs on all of these. There’s a guy outside panhandling who is very skinny and has a seriously malnourished dog. When I leave the store I’m going to find him and give him these things without the receipt. I want to be crystal clear with you that I do not want you to take any of these things as returns.”

Jason then turned to the store security guard / loss prevention guy standing behind the customer service desk and continued his speech, “If he tries to return the food or if he keeps hanging around harassing customers, I would like you to trespass him.” The security guard nodded and said, “Sure, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Jason, still churning inside with the conflicting emotions of probably being taken in by some con-artist but maybe doing a good deed, did his own shopping and left the store to look for Mr. Skinny Dog.

He found the man and his dog by the can recycling stations on the side of the store. Sometimes people will give bags of recycling items to the panhandlers so that the panhandlers get the can and bottle returns and the shoppers don’t have to deal with the hassle of waiting in line to feed the cans and bottles into the machines.

The skinny man saw Jason and gave him a “Hey” in greeting.

“Here,” Jason said, handing him the grocery bag and trying to sound firm but not lecturing, “I bought you some dog food and a couple of sandwiches and some water and soda.”

Mr. Skinny Dog looks at the bag, looks at Jason, then sits down shakily and rips open a package of dog food and gives some to the dog. He gave Jason a stunned “thank you,” then did something Jason was wholly unprepared for: he hung his head and started crying. Not the ‘single tear down the cheek’ kind of crying but ‘barely holding it together, not able to speak for fear of really sobbing’ kind of crying.

Jason turned and started quickly walking to his Explorer, getting a little misty himself. By the time he’d packed his groceries into the SUV and had taken the empty cart to the nearest cart cage in the parking lot, he was feeling pretty good. No longer overwhelmed by the incredible emotion of the moment, he had the glow of one who has done a good deed as he walked back to his SUV to drive home.

Just before he reached the Explorer a shabbily dressed young woman stumbled out of the bushes and walked toward him, asking for money.

“Sorry, I don’t carry cash,” Jason said, then added, “and, funny thing, I just bought some food for a homeless guy and his dog up by the store.”

Twice in one day Jason was wholly unprepared for a response.

“FUCK YOU!” she shouted, “You don’t have to give me any fucking money but you don’t have to fucking LIE to me, man. You BASTARD!” she spat out and stomped off.

Jason, dumbfounded, looked upward and said aloud to God, “I was doing so well, what happened?”

Beau heard him and gave Jason a look which was the canine equivalent of “The Lord works in mysterious ways, Jason, but you’re still a good guy.”