Patch up these souls, please

He was wearing a top hat the last few days, jaunty atop his greying curls, a perfect image from Alice in Wonderland, dashing about the streets of this town, finding places to curl up and sleep in the bushes, raging at the stars.

"One of these days" said the blonde who works sometimes at the laundromat nearby, "someone will put him in the back of a pickup and tie him and beat him and no one will find the body. Good riddance, I say."

"That would be murder, and that would be wrong" I said, mildly, putting some blankets into the big washing machine.

"But no one would miss him"

"His parents might, you know they live down the street"

"Yeah, and he tried to kill them"

"Well, I don't know about that. You know, he's hard to take, but I might miss him"

The conversation wasn't going very far. I got the machine spinning and went back to my store. And it's not that my friend the blonde is fully unkind. After a very rocky start to our relationship, in which she tried earnestly to convince me that it was best to have folks freeze in the hills than try to help, she now and then slides into the bookstore when no one is around and hands me a bag of clean socks, or some wool sweaters. "Someone will need 'em. Don't like waste."

The thing is, there have been deaths. Murders. Beatings. Knifings. All in the beautiful little towns, in the forest lanes where the ravens look on, beside the green river.

The thing is, there are a lot of broken people. No, not all of them are without homes either.

My friend with the top hat once had a home, a kid, a family. He had a dog too, a yellow Staffordshire much like my Champ. I don't know his whole story of descent into whatever hell he is mostly in. I do know I felt very pleased the day, years back now, when he stopped for a moment to watch me plant petunias and said the first whole sentence I 'd ever heard him speak. This was after 2 or 3 years of my daily "Good morning, how are you doing?"

He said "My mom likes petunias too."

His mom does. She shares my love of flowers; I've always meant to ask her for some seeds of her broken-color four o'clocks; the sort my grandmother grew, which are so hard to find seed for these days. I grow yellow and fuschia and white ones, but all self-color. I have gazed enviously at her splotched and patterned flowers for many a summer now.

I went back to put my laundry in the dryer. "You know," I said, "it's not that folks like that guy really want to annoy or scare you. Think about..well, suppose someone had a broken leg and walked all slow and got in your way. Would you blame him? You might get all irritated, but you'd know he couldn't exactly run, right?"

She nodded.

"so, this guy had kind of a broken--I don't know, heart, mind, soul. And he gets in the way. "

I doubt I convinced her. Ah, but there are days I simply want to call down divine healing or choirs of angels, or devas, or whatever would work--I'm not even fussy about the name or the tradition. Just send some divine healing, okay? Patch up these souls. Free them.

The checker at the market said today "you know Sean? The one with the leafblower?" Yes, I do. The guy has driven me nuts for a few weeks. He has the loudest leafblower in the universe and has decided to make the world neat, being at the top of his manic cycle.
Well, he's in jail. Or with luck, being evaluated at the mental health hospital up north. But probably in jail. Broke out all the windows in a vacant restaurant. To free the air. I knew he was spiraling out--but there's no one to catch him. His sister owns a shop down the road, his parents are fine and well known and compassionate. No one could help.

I made a little trip--I don't have to go far--to the place a young guy enroute to his mom's house was beaten to death one thanksgiving some years ago. He'd spent his last day with me, listening to Mozart in the shop. We'd given him the blanket he died in. I was the last person to hear his breathing.
There is still a stain on the cement. I pass it nearly every day, but tonight I went there, and stood a moment, and said again "I am so sorry".

"I didn't plan on being homeless" says the tall dude who has asked for some raingear for weeks--and finally got some. "I know" I say, "life is odd, you just never know" "Got that right, sister" he says.

"Did you know some homeless people have dogs?" asks little Jessica, who is six, who has spent several days now hanging out at the shop. I affirm that this is so. "And some, like me, have kitties" she says, brightly. Right again. She's living in a van with her very young mother and father, and a kitten she dresses in doll clothes. The kitten has also spent a lot of time visiting, much to the interest of the store cats and Champ the pitbull. Jessica has instructed Champ very sternly in the best way to treat kittens. "You must never ever eat a kitten" she says. She was running a fever yesterday, but came by for early Halloween treats. Princess, the kitten, was dressed as a fairy princess.

"Do you ever just want to fly away?" asked Jessica, leaning her hot head against me. Sometimes I do, I said. Sometimes I do.