Unlikely Heroes
December 1, 2007
There is a clerk in a convenience store in Tucson who used to believe that I was homeless.
I can see now that there was no other possible assumption he could make. After all, it was 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve; I came in wearing old jeans which were torn at the knee and a baggy brown sweater much too large for me. You could say I had failed once again to Dress For Success.
To make it worse, I came up to the counter with only one item in my hand, a small can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew.
The only other customer had just left and I was reaching into my pocket for money when the clerk asked very quietly, “Do you have a place where you can cook/”
I answered, “Yes.”
And he said, “Then let me give you a suggestion. If you get a small package of instant rice to mix with that, then you’ll have two good meals instead of one – maybe even three.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll try it.”
He went to get the rice and came back behind the counter, I had money in my hand, but he was already reaching into his pocket, saying “Merry Christmas.”
Maybe you think I should have said something, but if I had embarrassed him by turning down his kindness, he might not ever take that chance again with someone else.
I’ve thought about it many times. I still believe the only thing I could have said was, “Thank you, Henry.” (The name was printed on a card pinned to his shirt.)
The truth is that I am a vegetarian and I do not eat Dinty Moore. However, I had an old dog named Kate who was not a vegetarian and whose favorite holiday tradition included a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew on Christmas morning.
Actually, the Dinty Moore tradition was started by my mother who served beef stew to Kate not only on Christmas morning, but also on Texas Independence Day, Robert E. Lee’s birthday, and Cinco de Mayo.
That is why, tho9ugh I had been lying around the house all day with a cold, sniffling and drinking hot tea, I had to go out at night for Kate’s treat.
Several weeks later, I stopped by for cigarettes. I happened to have a plastic zip lock bag of quarters because I was going to the laundromat.
I asked for a pack of Benson & Hedges, Henry glanced at my bag of quarters and shook his head.
“These are way expensive,” he said. “I bet somebody gave you half a pack and you liked them.”
He looked over the cigarette assortment and finally selected a pack of Dorals. “You might want to try these,” he said.
“They’ll be just fine,” I said.
Instead of handing me the cigarettes, he put them in a paper sack. I saw later that he had given me a handful of matches, several plastic forks and spoons, and five or six paper napkins.
It was several months before I stopped there again. That time I was driving my old white Toyota truck which had recently been wrecked. The front was smashed and the hood was badly dented.
Henry happened to be outside leaning against the wall, taking a break.
“Good for you!” he called out as I was parking. “Good for you. You’ve got a truck.”
He took a closer look at the damage even as he was congratulating me, but all he said was, “Toyotas are so good, a couple of little dings don’t matter.”
He was waving as I drove away, and I knew that he was truly pleased by my good fortune.
I have not seen Henry in a long time, but I think of him and wish him well.
He is no one you’d ever notice, slightly pudgy, thinning hair, not much of a smile, probably in his late fifties. There is absolutely nothing about him to suggest that he might be an unexpected hero in an unheroic place.
But there he is, touching the lives of the homeless and the near homeless, those down on their luck, or just traveling light and needing a little encouragement.
Of course, only these lost ones themselves will ever be aware of his compassion. To the rest of us, he is just a clerk at a late night stop.
He will never be interviewed on NPR, or be Tucson Man of the Year, or be on a committee to address the problems of the homeless.
Still, he is a hero. It makes you wonder how many other unlikely heroes walk among us. They don’t belong to important organizations. They don’t even know that what they do is unusual, but they know what it is to be human in this world.
Copyright 2007 Byrd Baylor
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