It was the work of a moment, an unplanned instant of action. I was walking downtown, heading for a lunch engagement with the owner of a small local bookstore that was going to host a reading slash book-signing for me in a months time. I had been looking forward to the meeting as it seemed like the perfect distraction to lift my thoughts out of the slump they’d been in since I’d seen Jonah. The owner of the bookstore would certainly treat me with more respect and deference than I was actually due, and my ego was already quietly purring as I walked along the sidewalk toward the restaurant. It was then that I saw him again; the man and his red wagon turned the corner in front of me and began heading my way.

He was on the opposite side of the street, and while I was trying to inconspicuously keep my face averted while studying him, it certainly did look like Jonah. He was smiling that same crooked smile I’d once known very well, and despite the obscuring beard, all the features looked right. I didn’t stop to think about what I was going to do next; I just turned to follow him.

It’s amazing to watch a crowd part around a man and his little red wagon; nothing overt mind you, there is something that borders on the miraculous in the way a horde of pedestrians will synchronize their movements to allow clear passage for those who appear insane. I could hear the axles of the wagon making a long slow song out of the general din: birdsong, distant oriole perhaps – pigeons certainly; speech, three conversations – two of them on cell-phones; footsteps; cars; wind. Staring at this man’s back there was absolutely no way of knowing if this was my friend or not, and since I could not see a reasonable conversation beyond the moment where this man acknowledged that he was Jonah, I just followed and watched. What could I say; “So good to see you again, I always wondered if you’d go insane. Do you remember your old theory on the best way to get your grocery shopping accomplished if you find yourself thrust in with hordes of the common herd?”

Jonah had held a lot of theories; grocery shopping was one of my favorites. In a Meijer Thrifty Acres, I’d once watched him part crowds like a hot-knife through butter, all he’d do was mutter; throw in a twitch or two, bring the sub-vocalizations up to the level of exclamations for the stubborn- “Soup! God, I love soup! But what kind-“ followed with a continuation of muttering, perhaps a bit of frenzied scalp scratching; and there was no one who wouldn’t smile politely and get the hell out of his way.

Once, when we’d happened to venture out into the world for a bottle of scotch, somehow failing to realize that since it was the day following Thanksgiving; the crowd would be without mercy. There were these three white-hairs, old ladies dithering lightly amongst themselves in contemplation of the cordials, aperitifs, and other such alcoholic ephemera. Jonah seemed to swallow the scene at a glance, understood it and took up his role; he slid up next to the white-hairs, set his face in a smile and directed his gaze at the one section of alcohol he could not politely reach until they had finished their business.

A white-haired head came out of the huddle; Jonah stretched his smile for a moment and did his best non-threatening nod. Despite their occasionally stereotypical demeanor as antagonistic toward youth, the elderly are suckers for polite, respectful, people. When a wrinkled hand made a sudden stab for a particular bottle, Jonah made his move.

“Excuse me, I really don’t mean to intrude, but you see this right here-“ he said, crossing the distance between himself and the women, putting his arm into their personal space, his fingertips coming to rest lightly on a bottle next to the one that had been hurriedly removed in the instant before he’d begun his lunge. “Although this is less expensive, it is actually the tastier bottle.”

Six elderly and two young eyes danced out all the possible connections between the four people involved, the elderly distinctly tightening when they met the gaze of Jonah; who just kept smiling and didn’t seem to move a muscle until an elderly hand made a motion in the direction that would bring the bottle it held back onto the shelf. Jonah pulled down his chosen bottle, and handed it over like a waiter in some upscale restaurant might. “I just couldn’t bear to see you make that choice. I imagine you ladies aren’t used to purchasing alcohol. Is there someone new on the Christmas list?”

It was amazing to watch how he could win people over. The one who’d been handling the bottles thanked him, and Jonah smiled and made the sort of gestures one is expected to make in polite deflection of praise accepted.

“Of course,” he said. “If you really want to win points on a budget you can’t get any better than this-“ he took four sudden steps to the right, a quick bend at the knees and then he held aloft a bottle of the cheapest rot-gut gin available. “When it gets to be four o’ clock in the morning and you can’t seem to stop questioning whether your personal take on reality is coherent and valid; nothing will bring you back down off your messianic pinnacle quite like one of these.”

The flurry of ruffled feathers that flowed out as reaction to that speech is almost indescribable; in their hurry to vacate his presence, the trio of white-hairs wound up (unless of course they gave up on the idea of alcohol as a present) purchasing the bottle that Jonah had recommended.

“That wasn’t terribly nice, thanks to you; some noble drinker is going to receive cheap- whatever the hell that was.” I said after the laughter brought about by the image of lips pursing in direct proportion to widening eyes had faded.

“I think that was some sort of coconut aperitif” Jonah said, “and as far as nice goes, I’m simply performing a public service here. Those three ladies had a brush with one of their worst nightmares; the alcoholic. You could see that the one in the grey coat had blamed alcohol for all of her late husband’s faults.”

“You’re talking shit out of your ass right now.”

“Perhaps, but you cannot deny that I gave those women a moment. I had an impact right there; for better or worse, those three ladies have been forced to think; they have been swung out of their normal existence. It’s harder for us to attain moments like that because our beliefs aren’t as rigid- well maybe they are, but they’re harder to hit- or maybe that’s not true either, because my fucking beliefs are assaulted pretty much continuously, and so maybe I do shit like that purely out of revenge; damn that’s sad.”

Shit like this is supposed to happen only in the movies, but that last phrase; “Damn that’s sad” became an echo as I followed this man and his red wagon down the street. I kept following him because I believed that the punch-line was coming; I kept following him because he was Jonah, and while I didn’t know what to say to him yet, I wasn’t about to miss whatever he did next.