Alfonso’s Portrait

Alfonso’s Portrait

                                                     Al Griffin

At 4:00AM Tom parked the car in the pre-dawn glow of mercury vapor streetlights and gaudy neon signs.

“Early-morning sidewalks are always cold and empty,” he thought as he listened to his shoe heels thump, thump, thump walking the half block north and turning into the alley toward the Greyhound bus terminal two blocks west.

He carried a camera in his right hand. One of his passions was photographing urban decay. The clutter of dilapidated doors, cracked concrete, peeling paint and rusted iron drew Tom’s eye and heart. Things that had aged. Things that were broken but still serviceable. These were Tom’s photographic treasures.

This part of town had been a lot of things while Tom was growing up here. But it always had the rundown look of a bus-terminal neighborhood. Working men in greasy overalls, rundown drifters in rundown pants, and occasionally a fashionably dressed older lady off to see the distant relatives with her suitcase and large purse in white-gloved hands. Now, the buses mostly carried rough fellas in a new, cheap suit with a $100 in their pocket. They were usually fresh out of the pen in a neighboring state.

But times were growing harder. The pavement around and in back of the cross-country bus terminal was littered with societies cast-offs, the homeless who just slept where they gave out each evening. This city, like others, struggled with the problem and never found the solution. Some years these people were allowed free rein and other years they were driven out by harsh rules. Neither method had any effect on the actual numbers on any given day. These cast-off people fascinated Tom as much as the squaller of the inner city.

In fact, decades before, Tom had been so fascinated by those who managed to live completely by their wits he considered trying it. He had carefully planned everything. He would buy a one-way bus ticket to New York or Chicago. Leaving from his home in Oklahoma with no suitcase, no wallet, no money, and no way back, he would step off the bus with no safety net and live the life of America’s homeless. He thought about it. But never did it.

Tom turned into the dark alley, let his eyes adjust, carefully moved forward. At the end of the second block, next to the idling busses, sat a blue-plate special lunch joint. Long out of business, empty for months, its window glass covered in thick, greasy dust and dead flys, it drew those needing a hassle-free night spot, a few hours of hassle-free sleep.

 The sky still dark, alley lights broken out, Tom discovered two men sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes. They were wrapped in tattered blankets, each curled into a fetal position. Tom sat down on a gas meter across from them and watched the eastern sky turn golden.

The sun climbed over the tall bank buildings and burned through the alley before the men rolled over. Tom never moved until the older man finally saw him.

“Hello. Is this your building?”

“We will move, Senior. No problem if we are bothering you.”

Tom didn’t stand up. “No. It’s not mine. This where you guys sleep most of the time?”

“Yes. Here.”

Tom remained seated on the gas meter. He smiled and watched the men as they rolled their blankets, run their fingers through their hair, drank water from a plastic jug. Tom spent a few minutes looking around the alley, giving the men some space.

Both men pulled empty five-gallon buckets from behind a trash bin and sat down. Tom walked across the alley and stood by the men. He extended his hand to introduce himself.

The older man shook firmly and said his name was Alfonso. The younger man, Carlos, seemed hesitant, guarded. Alfonso explained how he had been born in a village outside Mexico City and brought to the US as a child. He had followed the harvest and picked fruit for 60 years. For the last 10 he had lived on the street. No retirement, no job, no money, no home.

Over the next month Tom sought out and visited with Alfonso often. One day Tom asked Alfonso if he would mind being photographed, explaining why he wanted to take the pictures. Tom assured Alfonso he would share a copy of the photo with him.

 When Tom returned the next day Alfonso was sitting in a broke down secretarial chair on the sidewalk in front of the shuttered café. Tom parked and walked back to Alfonso. When he gave Alfonso the 5x7 print of his portrait his eyes became misty. After looking at it a long time, Alfonso carefully placed the photo in his duffle bag. Tom gave him $10.00 as a “sitting fee” for modeling services. Alfonso smiled broadly like receiving a “professional fee” was much more important than the amount of money. Over the summer Tom spent hours and hours with Alfonso. He conducted many portrait sessions. Alfonso always seemed to treasure his copies and his new professional status.

As the weather grew colder, and stiff winds stirred empty beer cans and crumpled McDonald’s sacks, sleeping on concrete became much more difficult and dangerous. The chronically homeless men, chronically hopeless men, drifted off to more agreeable places. Sometimes that meant warmer cities. Sometimes it meant shelters where homeless people could live in an actual room with walls and beds and heat. Alfonso disappeared mostly. When spring came so did Alfonso. Tom drove along the street in front of the bus station several times each week. And like the crocus in well tended flowerbeds, Alfonso just popped up one day.

Tom drove by at noon and there sat Alfonso in his usual place at the front door of the diner. The shopping cart, the desk chair, nor Alfonso looked any worse for the brutal winter cold.

Spring flowed into summer as easily as the friendship resurfaced. Tom spent several hours each week sitting on the sidewalk or sitting on a plastic bucket in the alley. Sometimes he would ask a question of Alfonso. Other times he just let Alfonso lead the way in conversation. Either way, it was always interesting.

There were many times that the two men didn’t talk at all. Just sat on a bench or curb wherever Tom found Alfonso. To anyone walking by they appeared to be lost in thought. Maybe they were. Maybe one or the other was about to say something but just waiting for the right moment. After one of these long pauses Alfonso often asked Tom if he had been taking pictures of anyone on the streets lately. Alfonso became interested in the process of finding one of the “guys” as he called them for Tom to photograph. He made recommendations. Pointed out men walking by us on the street, men sleeping on park benches, curled up in alleys. Some of these men became regulars for Tom’s lens.

One day as Tom was driving by the closed café, Alfonso spotted him and waved him down. “Tom,” he said. “I want you to take a picture of me and my stuff. Please. Will you?”              Alfonso waved his hand over his battered grocery cart with two black plastic garbage bags tied up full of his total worldly possessions. “I’m getting too old to live on the streets anymore. I want to remember all my stuff when I check into the shelter for good.

Tom choked back a lump and fetched his camera from the car. He made a point of returning the print copies the next day.

Marveling at the resilience of the human spirit and recognizing how much this friend had come to mean, Tom shook the outstretched hand for the last time.

To this day the portrait of Alfonso both warms and chills Tom’s heart.

Alfonso is gone but Tom had him for a while one summer.