Last Wednesday morning, as I returned from setting up the coffee pot in the kitchen upon first rising, I had a bit of a start—as in, a moment of being startled. On the front porch sat a hooded stranger in the dark of the pre-dawn hour.
One option in that situation is to storm out there and tell him to get off my porch, to point out that he had to pass the No Trespassing sign in order to reach that chair. Another option is to share some of the coffee with him that I'd just made...along with two sugars.
After I set up another chair beside him, I warned him I'd be coming back out with a very friendly pooch who would take great sniffing interest in him.
His name is Alonso, and he told me from glancing in the windows of this fine house that he thought it was a museum or something and that he did not think he would be bothering anyone while he waited for the cab that he had called. He told me he'd been working the bottle ring toss game at the local Carolina Classic Fair and was preparing to head over to Raleigh for the NC State Fair. He showed me his ankle monitoring bracelet, worn as a condition for his parole from a prison term. He talked about his distrust of the COVID-19 vaccine but he'd gotten the Johnson & Johnson jab anyway before starting to work the fair. He told me of his Trinidadian lineage and we did not resolve the debate between whether all women were dangerous or if he was only interested in dangerous women.
Eventually it became the brighter light of dawn and Alonso said he'd best be heading out and letting Sumner and me get our day started.
He gave me his empty Four Loko can but kept the plastic sack and headed out into the morning, but not before asking me to make sure he had my cell number.
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