IT WAS Christmas Eve Day 2014. Jeffrey North left the bank on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn in a bad mood, as foul as the weather that greeted his exit.The overdressed clerk had rudely denied his request to change 400 pennies into dollars and quarters, advising him that the coins were improperly put together. She gave him a look that incredulously suggested: “You got to be a madman to come in today, of all days, with all those coins.”

He graciously retrieved the eight cylindrical wrappers with their coins, and the clerk ungraciously bade him, “Happy Christmas.” He could almost hear the silent addendum: “And don’t come back to me.”

“Whatever!” he muttered, flushing with embarrassment, as a suck-teeth and a snigger echoed from the customers’ line.

FLAT BROKE
Confronted by the unalterable fact that he was broke, without even a bus fare, North’s mind fought to forestall a guilt-driven paranoia. A friend had planted the seed of bankruptcy in his head, and it was taking root daily. That day, it began to sprout limbs.

Unhesitatingly, he began walking along Utica Avenue, heading towards Avenue D, where he would put on a plaintive ‘Senior- Citizen face’, display his gray hairs, and beseech the B8 bus driver for a free ride to Flatbush Avenue.

An icy wind slammed past the protection of overcoat, ignored the pullover, crept under the long-sleeved woolen shirt, sneaked past the thermal underwear, and bit hungrily into his upper body. The lower part was already without feeling, since he had just sneaked a touch to see if his privates were still there.

The street was awash with people of all descriptions; a multi-cultural gaggle in perpetual motion. A West Indian woman with a purloined American accent; a gender-less figure swishing down the sidewalk, gesticulating wildly while remonstrating with an equally mystifying companion; a loud-mouth yelling into a cell-phone; an obese woman with giant yellow curlers in straw-red hair; an angry father slapping an agitated teen, as only Caribbean people still dared to do.

And with a touch of irony, a drunk lay draped on the door of a newly-renovated church, muttering quotations from the Bible. A fetid miasma of sweat emanated from his body.

Jeffrey North was 69 years old, but on that Christmas Eve Day he felt much older. It wasn’t because the physical demands, though they were many; it was the mental fatigue; the heavy wear and tear on the soul; the constant buffeting of the mind.

UNCERTAINTY
It was 14 years to the day since he arrived to take up residence in New York. At first, he would walk with head held high, eagerly looking to the horizon for the highly-touted American dream. Now, so many years later, he had a more rounded back from scanning the sidewalks, looking for lost treasures.

He was slowly feeling the enervation of his life. Everything he had worked for in all those years of toil had now boiled down to this uncertain existence. An irreverent thought flashed through his mind: Why didn’t he just close the book and go out quietly? But he knew he was made of sterner stuff, and no matter what, he would never make an inglorious exit.

It was not uncommon for him to walk and quietly recite passages from the Holy Book. The one that seemed honed for him was Psalm 102, verse 11: “My days are like a shadow that lengthens And I wither away like grass”.
One year later, Christmas Eve would find Jeffrey North in Guyana having a good time, singing lustily at Wesley’s Hang-Out on Bam-Bam Alley (Orange Walk), accompanied by a mélange of discordant voices as the push cart ‘boom box’ belted out the ever-popular “Santa Looking for A Wife”.

And why was this remigrant so happy? He had just come from the bank, having deposited the promised (and delivered) $50,000 bonus that President David Granger had decreed.
By Godfrey Wray