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vet," it read. He held out his other hand toward the stopped cars. His shoulders were hunched as he bent, trying to make eye contact. I knew everyone was looking straight ahead, or in the other direction.

"They're like stray kittens," my neighbor had said once. "If you give them money, they'll stay on that corner, and then you have to give them money every time."

The homeless vet stepped back from the cars. I saw him raise his fist to his mouth and his body began to shake. He was having a coughing fit; I recognized the body language from my own bout with bronchitis. He went around the corner pole and pulled at the fencing. He slid though a hole in the chain link and crawled to the meager shade beneath the tree.

The light changed, and I drove on. There was a Circle K and I pulled in. I bought two bottles of water and two apples. I made a left and made my way back toward the street corner with the empty lot.

He was there, with his sign, with his hand out. Quickly, I slid over to the passenger side and rolled down the window. I held out the bag with the water and fruit. I yelled out. "Hey," I said, and waved the bag a bit.

The homeless vet staggered over, and took the bag. He looked into my car. When he smiled, I saw he had very few teeth left. His eyes were watery, his skin leathery, his fingers scratched and arthritic. "Bless you," he said.

The light changed and I drove on, through the shimmering heat and past the cooled concrete caves until I made it to my own sanctuary. The drapes were drawn, keeping out the damaging UV rays from the sun. The air in my home was conditioned, the artificial breeze flowing from the vents, letting me breath deeply.

It would be two months before I passed that corner again. In two months, the temperatures would be at their highest. The empty lot would be an island of heat, the skinny tree wilted. The fence would be too hot to touch. The homeless vet would need to move on before then. He would probably go downtown. There were shelters. He could find some refuge there. At summer's end, the monsoons would come. The winds could knock a man down, the rains flood the streets up past the sidewalk.

The next day, in the early morning, I got a plastic bag and filled it with two water bottles, a peanut butter sandwich, an orange, and a small bottle of skin lotion. I got my own water bottle and oven mitts and drove down Thunderbird Road. I reached the corner with the empty lot.

The homeless vet wasn't there. A man in a short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants was showing another man in jeans and a t-shirt the hole in the fence. The man in jeans was nodding. His t-shirt had a slogan on the back. "Keep It Safe Fencing," it read.

The light changed. I drove on. I drove home, having nowhere else to go.

Learn more about this author, Shelly Mcrae.
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