When I worked the opening shift, I would see them sorting through our dumpster, looking for coffee cups to pretend they needed "refills". Both they and I indulged the refill fantasy in a kind of silent ballet of mutual understanding. Then they would sit in our lobby and drink coffee. I always wondered what they talked about, protected from the cold. They were living in a culture entirely foreign to me. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't begin to understand.
I'm not sure if Floyd lived in the homeless shelter or not. I saw him all over town at strange times of the day during my nine months in Anchorage. He was notorious for walking through drive-thrus and picking up the change that had fallen on the ground. He was the grateful collector of broken transactions and apathy. All the change that was not worth the time of our customers was a gold mine to Floyd.
He had a bicycle that he rode around town. It had flat tires. Sometimes he would just stop in the middle of intersections and start dancing. Or dance in the medians of major roads with a sign begging for change. He was really quite mobile. It always surprised me to find him far on the south side of town. Or way out on the east side.
He showed up at the store one day with long scrape marks up and down his arms, neck and face. I asked him what happened and he said, "Floyd was bad." I pushed him a little further and he explained, in broken English, that he had been arrested for public intoxication and they threw him in the drunk tank for a night. Floyd didn't like to be caged. He made motions that he had scraped his entire body up because he hated it so much.
Another day he showed up with an electric can opener. He wanted to plug it in to a corner of the store and open a can of coffee. I don't know what he was going to do from there. I was in the back doing the dishes when my assistant manager came back and said, "Shawna, there's someone here to see you."
I was less than thrilled to see Floyd and his big grin standing at the front counter. It had already been a long day. I was not equipped to deal with his craziness. But I was still rudely shoved into his world, the current primary focus of which was that electric can opener. And the fact that he couldn't make it work. I tried to tell him that I didn't have time to open the can of coffee, but he kept saying, "Floyd can't fix. YOU FIX. YOU FIX." He started to make a scene in the lobby, so I took him over to the homeless corner, plugged in the can opener and tried to open the coffee can. It wouldn't open. I tried and tried. And the more I tried, the more agitated Floyd became. He kept screaming, "YOU FIX. YOU FIX." But I couldn't fix it. I was powerless to best that can of coffee. I became a crusader, desperately trying to reach my caffeinated holy grail.
By this time, people in the lobby were starting to stare. And I just wanted to melt into the floor.
Suddenly, one of the homeless men came up and gently took the electric can opener from my hands. He smiled at me and said, "I can fix it." After pushing on the coffee a little, he managed to open it far enough that he could pull the lid off.
Floyd clapped his hands and stopped screaming.
I haven't seen Floyd since the incident of the unattainable grail. He disappeared into the ether, or the drunk tank, or the morgue. Maybe he landed himself in a halfway house. I really couldn't tell you. But I like to think that someday I'll go back to Anchorage on a bright summer day and as I'm driving down the street, I'll see him.
Dancing for me.