Column: Part 2 of 2

DAY IS A LONG, HARD TIME FOR THIS MAKE-BELIEVE NOBODY

This is the second of two columns about being homeless for a day. I am in
direct violation of advice I was given earlier in this experiment.

Stay off your feet as much as you can, the homeless man told me. Take a
load off. A day is a long time.

I tried to do what he said. I went to the library and read a book on Larry
Bird. I sat on a bench and watched what looked like a doghouse go down the
river. I sat in a fast-food restaurant and devoured every word of two
newspapers.

And it isn't even 2 p.m. yet.

Almost three hours left in what doesn't scare me as a make-believe homeless
person.

Daylight.

After that, well, I'm not so sure.

I don't know what someone who has cast himself in the role of a nobody is
supposed to do.

So I walk.

The idea is go to where I've seen homeless folks before.

The cheap motels around Fares and Morgan.

And then a few miles south to the myriad of used-car lots around Kentucky
and Riverside.

I don't see anyone who looks so down on his or her luck that there isn't
likely a dwelling of some kind for them to spend the night.

So I study the neighborhoods, some of the city's poorest.

It's an eclectic mix of sights and sounds.

Guys drinking wine. Children playing football in the street. An elderly man
planting a "Ten Commandments" sign in his postage stamp of a yard. Young
girls on a stoop laughing and doing each other's hair.

Guys smoking marijuana. A woman baking a cake and ushering the smell out
the open window in her kitchen. A little boy playing with a train set on a
porch that looks like it could collapse at any moment. A man sweeping
leaves off the steps of a church.

A young man of about 20 jumps away from the pay phone and comes toward me.

"You the dope guy?"

I shake my head.

"Aw, man," he says disgustedly. Then he returns to the phone and hurriedly
dials a number.

Night.

It doesn't feel good, even when I get back to the well-lit riverfront.

I'm tired from hoofing it at least 10 miles and probably more.

But the shadows bring on a condition worse than aching feet.

Constant dread.

Two interminable hours pass.

Every antennae in my body is on full alert. I analyze every movement around
me and conclude nobody is up to any good. My head snaps around so many
times it feels like it's on a swivel.

Then I remember what the homeless man I talked to earlier in the day predicted.

That I'd see the boogeymen behind every bush. That I'd get paranoid. That
I'd get the shakes.

I look at my watch. Not even 7 o'clock. Feels like it should be midnight.

The homeless man suggested I find a dugout on a baseball field and sack out
there. Along about Mile No. 4, I found one.

But it isn't going to happen.

Not for this make-believe nobody.

The homeless man was right when he laughed and said I'd be back inside my
nice warm house before the late news.

A day is a long time.

Hard time.