The Raincoat Man is Often Hungry

The Raincoat Man is Often Hungry

Sarah Walker spent the afternoon watching her kid run circles around the playground just steps from her condo nestled in Uptown New Orleans. She'd ended her shift at Children's Hospital earlier than expected, and the babysitter was thrilled for an early release. These late October days filled with occasional falling leaves, chiseled by the brush of a cool breeze, offered the perfect dose of encouragement. Finally, Sarah began to trust that everything was going to be okay. Every day represented a triumph, for she was more determined than ever to thrive following her divorce.

Yet within moments, Sarah winced after spotting an older man grip the buttons of his rumbled raincoat while he slumped on a tattered wooden bench near the high slide her nine-year-old son flew down.

Oh, God. What do I do? I can't call out Shepard's name. I can't run over there and grab him, demand that we go home immediately. Can I? What if we're followed?

Sweat gathered on Sarah's upper lip as her heart pounded loudly in her chest. She convinced herself the other moms on the park bench heard her heart's hurried rhythm. Might they demand to know what worried her? Sarah closed her eyes for one second and began her count to 100, the only thing she'd discovered as effective in staving off a panic attack.

Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen…Open your eyes, woman!

"Mommy, are you watching me?" Shepard yelled.

He'd completed his fifth or sixth plunge through the monkey bars before Sarah even realized Shepard had advanced past the high slide.

 "Mom, you're not watching me!'

"I see you, baby. You're getting so strong, my little man," she answered, praying that the tremor in her voice was indiscernible.

One of the older moms, seated at the end of the bench, chuckled, then briefly looked up from her cell phone.     

"You’re braver than me,” she said. “I’d never get away with lovey language like that. How old is your boy?”

Though Sarah heard the woman speak, her voice sounded like it originated at the end of a long tunnel. Sarah’s focus remained locked on the odd man who now stood. He watched Shepard’s monkey bar antics attract the attention of several boys who loudly challenged him to a contest. What appeared to Sarah to be a swift step in her son's direction turned out to be a soft shuffle back to the bench. Sarah tried to turn her audible exhale into a cough. No need to react any further. Not now.

“Honey, are you okay?” the older mom asked.

“Oh, my goodness, I totally ignored your question,” Sarah said, turning to answer the woman. “Shepard is nine years old. Going on nineteen some days of the week.”

“Most of us here have kids who are nine or ten,” the woman said. “And, girl, all of them are going on nineteen!”

Her comment prompted enthusiastic responses from the other moms seated in the same section. They nodded and hurried to share details about their children, talking over each other’s words, completing each other’s sentences.

Sarah didn’t hear the women’s comments, for she’d stopped listening. Again.

Instead, she drifted back to Cherokee Park in Louisville, Kentucky. Thirty years ago, nearly to the date. Nine-year-old Sarah didn’t listen to Mrs. Dotherly when she announced to the class of third graders that everyone must board the bus back to Bloom School immediately after the picnic. Or be left behind.

She didn’t hear her teacher’s instructions because she was playing hangman with David Westinghouse. Somehow David got back on the bus after the picnic in the park.

Sarah did not.

She’d stayed on the swing set long past the time her friends returned to the park’s largest fountain, Bloom School’s perennial meeting spot. But, since no one had come looking for her, Sarah kept swinging, thanks to an older man wearing a tattered raincoat. He was more than happy to keep pushing Sarah on the swing.

I was just a kid! A teacher, an aide, even the bus driver should have looked for me. Then scolded me to ‘come along now.’ They shouldn’t have left the park without me. I shouldn’t have been left behind.

It wasn’t until darkness began to fall that Sarah realized something was terribly wrong. She finally asked the old man in the tired raincoat to stop swinging her. Then, she started to cry.

“I don’t know where my friends are,” nine-year-old Sarah sobbed.

“Well, girlie, damned if I know. Why would your friends leave you?”

“Did I make them mad?”

By now, the raincoat man began to look around and sum up his situation. It’s entirely likely that a passerby may have assumed that he and his granddaughter were closing out their day in the park, still in no rush to be on their way. Perhaps in 1965, this wasn’t an unusual sighting.

“We need to find a payphone. We need to get you back to school.” He reached for Sarah, beckoning her to leave the security of the swing set and walk with him toward the fountain.

“School’s closed, mister! It’s almost dark,” Sarah yelled.

“All the more reason to find out where you’re supposed to be. Come with me. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Sarah accepted his hand, wondered why it was so scratchy and rough. Then, gazing at the raincoat man, seemingly for the first time, she saw that he was very tall and terribly skinny.

“I remember seeing a payphone under the pavilion, up near the fountain. Let’s you and me head in that direction,” the man said.

“What’s a pavilion?” Sarah asked, scampering around to his other side.

“A safe place,” he answered, extending his hand out to her again.

Once they found the payphone, he explained the next steps.

“Do you know your phone number, the one at your house?”

“Of course, silly.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I can’t tell you. You’re a stranger, mister.” With her hands on her hips, Sarah stood beneath the phone positioned considerably higher than her and stared upwards.

“I don’t read minds, girlie. Tell me your phone number.” He jabbed deep into his pockets in search of a dime while Sarah weighed her options.

Holding tightly to her grammar school ethics, Sarah refused to tell the raincoat man her phone number.

“There’s only one solution here, baby girl. I’m gonna put a dime in the slot, then hoist you up so you can punch in your number. Got it?”

“Okay.”

“You can’t mess it up, ‘cause I’ve only got one dime.”

“I can do it.” Sarah nodded her head vigorously up and down, more to convince herself than anything else.

The man gingerly glanced around him before picking Sarah up by her waist and held her close to the payphone. Then, when she hesitated with one of the numbers, he softly said, “be careful.”

He shifted Sarah’s weight to his hip, for he was growing weary of holding her, not having had a good meal in several days. When he heard the phone ring on the other side, the raincoat man held the receiver for Sarah to speak.

Click. “Hello, who’s this?”

“Mommy, I want to come home.”

“Oh, my God, Sarah. Where are you? Everyone from your school is out looking for you.”

The man could hear Sarah’s mom crying, screaming to others in the background that her girl was alive, she was okay.

When it finally registered that Sarah was calling from a payphone in the park as night was falling, Sarah’s mom demanded to speak to the raincoat man.

“You’re at the pavilion? In the park, right? That’s the only place where I remember there’s a phone. I’m on my way.” She didn’t give the man a chance to respond. Before she hung up, she added, “Thank you for helping my daughter call home.”

Sarah and the raincoat man sat on a bench across from the fountain and waited. Momentarily, there was sufficient light from the fountain, so they weren’t entirely in the dark. Within ten minutes, Sarah’s parents pulled up in a Buick station wagon. She remembered her father offering a reward and her mother chattering about how the teachers at Sarah’s elementary school could never be trusted again.

Later, Sarah worried about the raincoat man and how he’d been left in the park. She wondered if his family ever thought about him and wondered why he’d run away from home. She hoped he would eat a good dinner sometime soon.

A thick and resounding thud beneath the monkey bars brought Sarah back to the present. The raincoat man sprung from the bench he’d sat on for hours and raced to the boy’s side. By the time Sarah realized that the child who’d fallen was, in fact, Shepard, she was the last adult to reach him.

In-between blood-curdling screams, Sarah heard the raincoat man yell, “It’s his arm, ma'am, I think he has broken it. Your boy needs to get to the emergency room as quickly as possible.”

Sarah didn’t hesitate to allow the man to help her, didn’t think twice about the raincoat man posing any threat or danger. Here was her son, writhing in pain. The man picked Shepard up, balanced the boy in his arms, and kept pace with Sarah, who raced to her car parked on the street outside her condo.

“Do you need me to ride with you?” he asked.

“No, thank you. I’m good,” Sarah answered. “I’m so grateful for your help. If there’s anything I can ever do for you…” Then, she slammed her car door shut and spun out into the night, secure with the short route to her own hospital.

Later that evening, after Shepard’s arm had been x-rayed and set, he asked his mother about the raincoat man.

“We have to help him. He did a lot for me today,” Shepard said as he began to fall asleep. “Let’s make him some food, Mommy. His tummy growls a lot.”

“I don’t know, Shep. When will we ever see him again?”

“He’ll be at the park. You already know that. Make him some spaghetti, Mom.”