A Stray
The Rolls-Royce opens its back door and the old man steps onto the sidewalk. His straight and haughty posture belies his age and his expensive suit shimmers in the nebulous twilight. He walks through the people encamped in the dark and smelly alleyway, where they huddle by trashcan fires and shelter beneath cardboard boxes.
The old man’s ringed fingers hand them sparkling coins and crisp bills, while he asks about the whereabouts of his only son. He is lost, he says, lost and astray. But no one knows, no one has information to give.
Anger boils his blood as the old man scans the smudged and weathered faces looking for his own handsome features. His proud and stony visage hides the wrath that gnaws at his insides. He thanks them with pursed lips and raging eyes, then returns to the Rolls-Royce and roars away.
A young man in a raggedy suit, which long ago shimmered in the twilight, steps out of the shadows and joins the others. They welcome him with warm smiles and laughing eyes.
He would spend his life in this alleyway with these outcasts rather than return to the horrors of that gilded prison.
