Part 1: The Old Man

Take a dollar out of your wallet.

What?

Take a dollar out of your wallet.

Wally Bonner knew what the dollar was for. At that moment, he was exiting through the revolving doors onto Wacker Drive. He was on his way back to a Buick parked two blocks away, across the street from Union Station. There would be men and women begging on the streets around the train station. There always were, and this wasn’t the first time Wally had heard the urging of an inner voice.

How will I know which one to give it too?

You’ll know.

As he turned the corner onto Jackson Street walking west, Wally patted his belly quite satisfied with himself. The breakfast meeting at the Metropolitan Club, high on the sixty-seventh floor of the Sears Tower, had gone better than expected even though his heart had not been in it. He was a seasoned actor on this walnut-paneled stage but today his mind strayed far too often from reinsurance. A passerby there on Jackson Street might have seen a momentary panic on Wally’s face when the thought of Jeff came and went. Jeff should be in school, but wasn't. Then again, perhaps there was no noticeable change of expression as Wally closed that cold, drafty door to his heart.

While crossing the bridge over the canal, he spied an old man about half a block up, hunched over a cane so far that Wally was certain the old man was doing it for effect. But for some reason that didn’t matter this morning.

The day was crisp, just a little too cold for the season, but the sun was shining as brightly as it ever shines in Chicago, which is pretty bright, all things considered. Shadows danced in the breeze as pigeons floated gracefully above in the canyons of steel, concrete, marble and glass. A lonely morning dove moaned on the rail of the canal bridge and fluttered away as Wally finished crossing and approached the old man.

Wally folded the dollar into a tiny piece. He never did that before. He sometimes folded money to hide it from himself in his wallet, a kind of inside, personal joke to remind himself that he once was poor. Of course, he was never as destitute as the old man appeared to be, but he had known poverty growing up in working class Chicago. He liked to remind himself of that. Somehow he felt that the folding of the dollar was important. Maybe not to himself but to the old man.

He tossed the dollar into the old man’s empty styrofoam coffee cup. "How are you today?" Wally asked.

"Ok."

He stopped and looked past the old man’s wrinkled black face into his bloodshot eyes. "How are you? Are you ok?"

The old man looked back at Wally and their eyes held together, fused in a stare. Wally saw the love of God in that old man’s eyes and he knew the old man saw the love of God in his. He was being fed and so was the old man. The bread of heaven at work. Wally smiled and walked away.

He was back at his Buick when the thought occurred to him: Despite everything, God still loves you.

He considered that for a moment, before sliding across the fine leather upholstery to get behind the wheel. I should have said that to him, shouldn’t I? God, why didn’t you let me think of it when I was with the old man?

While Wally was driving the Buick on the Eisenhower Expressway after the Sears Tower breakfast and that eerie encounter with the beggar, he realized that the message was not meant for the old man.