The Bum

"That’s odd," I said, "why didn’t you just hitch rides? Much faster, you know."

He looked at me with that same smile, acknowledging the "you know", because of course he did know that.

He smiled again and looked out to the side now, towards the trees that were flying by. "I just love to be in nature," he said, "it just gives me a feeling of inner peace."

Well, I thought, I suppose that explains that. Sort of . . .

"So why did you choose to hitch a ride now?"

"The back roads ended. I could’ve just kept on walking alongside this main road, but I must admit I was getting tired of walking."

"Ah," I said. I suppose all of this made sense so far.

But even still, this was a most mysterious figure. I was getting impatient as to finding out where he really was going and so on and so forth. But this guy was slow moving, and flat out asking him all of the things I wanted would probably intimidate him. He might even ask to be let off. My monkey mind would just have to refrain from swinging on so many branches, just until I could gradually find the answers I wanted.

"So what were you doing in Lexington? Were you working or trying to get a job or--"

I cut myself off. That was way too bold of a thing to ask.

Nevertheless he answered as if it were a normal question. "I don’t do much work with direct pay," he said with a mildly proud and triumphant look on his face. "Though occasionally I do."

"Really . . ." I said while swallowing just a bit of anger. It just struck me as kind of surprising; this fellow was as poor as he was and he didn’t even try to get a job? And he was so happy, and, oh how unhappy I was.

"Yes. In fact in Lexington I was a gardener."

I thought about this and decided that it could be a sufficiently rough job for someone of his class. Planting seeds in the sun all day isn’t always so much fun. "Well that sounds quite interesting."

"Yes, indeed. I specialized in flower arrangement. Many people think that this seems boring in a way, but there is a certain art to it in many ways."

I looked at him trying to seem intrigued. I didn’t know whether or not I really was.

He continued. "You have to set up the flowers in just the right way, so as to balance the yin and the yang. Of the infinitely many combinations that there are to arrange them, only a few of those are truly balanced enough to create true beauty."

All right, I thought, rather odd. He wasn’t finished though.

"But, anyway, I was a professional in this field at Lexington. Believe it or not it is a very difficult task; few have the patience to spend the time arranging flowers in just the right way."

Arranging flowers, I thought, sounds like a job for indoors in the air conditioning. And here I was running around madly going to meetings and making dark music on the city roads with my horn, never even thinking about the relationship between flowers and the yin yang.

And this fellow was just a bum. He wore gray rag like clothing. He must’ve been good at whatever it was he did if he could get hired looking the way he did.