We Could Have Done Something, but We Didn't

           It was two in the afternoon as we walked along the city sidewalk, heading home with the food in our hands. Bums and the homeless lined the streets, some standing, eyes expectant, whole body hopeful and wanting. Others sat and didn’t care for any particular thing at the moment. Maybe they had just gotten paid and found their high somewhere.

            Across the street a man stumbled close to the road. He had a red beanie on, an acid washed jean jacket and was stumbling drunk at 2pm on a Wednesday. We stopped and watched him because he was edging closer and closer to the road, where the cars drove past without much care for pedestrians or drunks.

            Eventually he fell and his head bounced off the road but there were no cars around to run him over. She reached out from a few hundred feet away, as if some telekinetic power would save him. He got back to his feet and stumbled along again, seemingly with nowhere to go.

            He fell a second time and then a third. The third time his head landed perfectly as a dirty, yellow taxi drove by. I’m sure the front wheel killed him, but the back wheel made his head explode. The cabbie slammed his breaks and leaned his head out the window. “Jesus Christ.” He yelled. There was blood all over his taxi and the sidewalk around him.

            We could have done something, helped him along to a bench or into the grass so he could sleep it off, but we didn’t. A few cops came, checked the dead man’s pockets for ID, but they just found change and lint. An ambulance came, took the body away and we went home with our food, ate it and watched a movie until bed time.