by Patrick Corcoran

Created on: May 19, 2008   Last Updated: July 03, 2008

He was old I think, it was hard to tell. He seemed happy but how could he be, standing in the street, hawking newspapers? He was part of the intersection that he stood in. It was normal to see him there, just like the light standard and the fence along the parking lot it borders.

His diligence and tolerance for the mundane caused me to stop getting the paper at my early-morning coffee stop and buy it from him instead.

I usually gave him a tip and he thanked me every time. Otherwise he didn't talk much; he had to hurry before the light changed. On bad weather days he would be drinking coffee and hiding behind a worried face as he carried several papers under one arm. Sometimes, not often, he would smile, adding more creases to his wrinkled face.

Then one day, not too long ago, my morning routine was broken up, it was a morning when nothing went right and I was far behind my usual schedule. I coasted to a stop at the intersection and wondered why I always caught this light. I saw the man coming toward me with my paper, he was familiar with my face and car by now I'm sure. The light changed and being in a hurry I didn't buy a paper from him that day. As I drove by he looked at me with a surprised look on his face. "There's something wrong with this entire day," I thought. Regardless of everything else that happened that morning, not getting the paper from this man was the real yardstick to measure how different this day was going to be.

A short time later, business concerns put me on the other side of town having to spend some time waiting for a co-worker and I couldn't stop thinking about how unusual the day had been so far. I decided to buy a newspaper to pass the time reading the sports and work on the crossword. I started out to buy the paper from the same man I always have, maybe it would put my day back on track. I only drove two blocks on an unfamiliar street when I saw a different, slightly younger man selling the paper there. I bought one, no sense driving farther if I can get a paper right here, my usual paper-man whose name I didn't know anyway wouldn't miss my measly tip for one day.

I stopped in the first empty lot I came across and read the entire newspaper, finished my chore and then things seemed to finally merge into its usual schedule, finally.

Back in the office I caught up with my e-mail and jumped over to the internet. There was a breaking local story about a traffic accident not far from my office. A man selling the newspaper had been killed, struck by a vehicle, I noted the time. It was the same time, give-or-take a minute when I was buying the paper from the other hawker. The old man who may have been younger, it was hard to tell, had passed on from this world. I immediately recalled his look when I passed him that morning and the strange way we looked at each other could have been my sixth sense telling me that I'll never see this man again. Surely there was something amiss about this day.

There is no paper-man at that intersection any more but there are flowers and a 1940's era photograph of a young man in a military uniform near a street sign. They seem like they are permanent parts of the scenery, like the light standard and the fence along the parking lot that it borders.

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