Two homeless men sat in an alley hugging their knees. One of them was smoking. They looked out across the broken street to the link of rusting boxcars in the rail yard across from them. Except for the lazy rhythm of the man smoking as he brought the cigarette to his mouth and exhaled, the men hardly moved. The sun was setting beyond the boxcars, behind the distant jags of the mountains.
The man without the cigarette said, “I've got to get out of here.”
The other man said, “Where are you going to go?”
“I don't know, but I never want to sit in this alley again.”
“How come you didn't say, 'We've got to get out of here.'?”
“I meant we.”
The sun disappeared and the men were shadows, playthings for the corner streetlight.
“How come things seize up when they die?” the man with the cigarette said.
“Why are you asking questions about dead things?”
“That pigeon over there.” The man with the cigarette pointed.
Across the alley by a trash can, just beyond the glow from the streetlight was the body of a pigeon. Its head, legs and wings were curled into the center of its body, but the man without the cigarette did not see it.
“What pigeon are you talking about?” he said.
“Right by that can.”
The man without the cigarette squinted.
“See it?” the other man said.
2010