Rainy Day Oranges

HUNGRY WITH TWO KIDS

ANYTHING HELPS

GOD BLESS

Miguel was wearing a green raincoat and slouched over the sign he was holding, trying not to let the black marker wash away in the chilly rain. It was the first day of November- after the hops harvest season had ended, but before the winter shelters his wife's cousin Yoselin worked at opened for the season. Not that he usually needed the shelters- he typically lived with one of his cousins in Portland during the off-season. But this year, all of his cousins had moved away, and his wife decided to take the kids with her to the Tri-Cities after the incident in September. It was always his wife who asked the family to stay with Yoselin while they sheltered in Portland- he never really got on with Yoselin, and he certainly wasn't going to reach out to her on his own. The voice in his head was telling him her spiky blue hair and tattoos were the mark of the devil.

So Miguel spent his days and weeks wandering the streets and freeways of the Rose City, begging for whatever spare change passerby in their vehicles might bring him. They didn't need to know about who he was or how he got there. He was just an untethered soul blending into the background amidst the pine trees and the tents of the hollowing out urban landscape. When it got dark outside, he curled up on a park bench or under a bus stop, closed his eyes, and waited for daylight to come again.

Most days, he planted himself near one of the bridges across the Willamette River, hoping the people passing by on the highways would stop to pay him some attention. He was pleasantly surprised at how many motorists turned their heads towards him as they zoomed past. The best place to be for alms was along stretches of I-5 during rush hour traffic jams, but dodging the cars to and from the middle of the traffic island was challenging even to well-fed and well-hydrated humans. Nevertheless, Miguel found himself stationed there on the Wednesday, not too far from the I-5 bridge, on Dia de los Muertos.

It had been five days since he had swallowed anything other than the drinking fountain water of Peninsula Park or his own saliva. Miguel had occasionally gone hungry before as a kid and a young man, but he was always surrounded by loved ones- whether his parents, classmates, or family. This time, he was completely alone, and as the rumblings of his stomach faded into the background noise of raindrops hitting pavement and cars whirring by, he started hallucinating a floating bridge of marigold petals across the freeway. Was this what death felt like, he asked himself. He grimaced silently as he remembered seeing the same thing at least twice that morning, and gripped his cardboard sign more tightly.

As he shifted his sitting stance along the concrete divider, he gradually noticed a small silver car changing lanes towards the middle of the freeway. He tried not to look expectantly at the driver of the vehicle, focusing on the middle of the road. But as the driver veered further from the bridge and closer to Miguel, he noticed that they had pulled up right next to him and stopped. He shifted his gaze to the driver, who had rolled down the window. He was a young man with a five-o-clock shadow, wearing a black and blue raincoat. Curiously enough, he had a bag of something in red mesh on the shotgun seat of his car. The man grabbed the bag with his right hand and passed it through the window, to Miguel.

"Here you go sir" uttered the driver of the silver car. Miguel barely had time to say thank you before the driver rolled the window back up, but he caught the young man's eye and saw that he was gazing directly at him. Maybe it was his hunger-riddled delusion, but he almost felt like the man gave him a nod as he met his gaze before speeding away. It was a 3 lb bag of navel oranges, the kind his wife loved getting when they lived in Salem.