It is difficult to write this bit without being emotional. I am not sure why, as it does not appear so on the surface. So, I will write and we shall see what becomes of it.
There is a beach along the edge of town in Quepos, Costa Rica. It isn’t a nice beach. In fact, you cannot lay in the sun there because, when the tide comes in, it comes with a roar, swelling and rising against the sea wall. At high tide, the fishing boats can motor over the sand bar and into the harbor there, but at low tide they are stranded, some listing sideways, their hulls in the sand.
There is a park—a nice park as far as Central American standards go—along the sea wall. School kids practice drum-lines there in the evenings and two days a week the feria (farmer's market) erects its row of white-roofed fruit and vegetable stands.
I love the feria.
You can buy fresh-pressed sugar-cane syrup, and mangoes in all sizes, and sweetened oatmeal smoothies, and potted basil and rosemary, and yucca roots with the dirt still clinging to them, and red spikey mammon chinos, and grilled meat-on-a-stick, and bananas so sweet and ripe and... well, the list is never ending.
We parked the van and wandered down the boardwalk. I filled bags with produce for the week and we bought chicken and cheese filled empanadas to munch on.
But this story doesn’t really start until we climbed back into the van. That was when we saw him. He was sweeping. He was sweeping an empty lot across the street from the feria. Well, it wasn't exactly empty. It was filled with stuff: an overstuffed chair with the stuffing falling out, a pile of discarded tires, empty cardboard boxes, rusted and barely recognizable small appliances, and a crib...a pink baby crib.
And there he was sweeping. Or maybe dancing. I am not quite sure. But he definitely had a broom in his hands and he was swirling around with it.
I climbed in the van, stuffed my bags behind the seat, bit into a lukewarm chicken pastry, and watched him. Lee didn’t bother to turn on the van. The show was far too entertaining.
This is where it gets hard to write, and I really don’t know why.
He was wearing a thin coat, pulled up on only one arm and hanging down around his bare knees like a one-sided, royal cape. His shorts were striped and loosely tied about his waist, drooping a little more than I would personally have been comfortable with. On his other arm was a radio—the big boom box kind—with one speaker removed. Somehow he stuck his arm through the space and he had it pulled up almost to his shoulder like a lady might wear a handbag. On his head was a basketball hoop. (This is not made up, I swear!) The basketball net was hanging down over his face like a fancy veil. And in his hands was a straw broom with which he was sweeping and dancing.
I think I stopped chewing.
He was lost in a reverie and, afraid I would break it, I found myself becoming as still as a manikin in a nice clothing store. Still, somehow he noticed me, or us. Lee was sitting in the driver’s seat, shushing me even though I was silent. He, like I, understood we were watching something spectacular.
The dancing, sweeping man noticed us even though we were half a block away sitting manikin-still behind the glass of a minivan windshield.
That was when he got angry.
He came at us with the broom, now a lethal weapon, a javelin. He ran into the middle of the street and held it high and threatened us like a warrior on a battle field. And then he did the unthinkable.
He threw his dance partner/javelin to the ground, dropped his loosely tied shorts and waved his you-know-what at us as if to say the most insulting, degrading things a modern street warrior could say.
I turned my face away.
Lee started the van and we had no choice but to drive right past him. He grabbed his broom up off the pavement and ran at us, butt end of his weapon aimed at my slightly opened window. Lee swerved and we sped away.
We named him Juke Box Hero.
A little post-show research turned up some interesting information about the hero of the play. He had apparently fried his brain with too many magic mushrooms in his early days and he wasn’t really homeless. His family owned the house next to the not-so-empty lot and they let him use the space. At a later date we actually saw him sleeping in the pink crib and several times we saw him relaxing in the overstuffed chair. After his riveting performance, he was definitely on our radar.
In fact, I was sad the day I saw the garbage truck haul his crib away.
And in truth, I cannot blame him for being angry with me. How would I feel knowing someone was watching me from behind closed van doors? I would probably feel as violated as he did.
It is hard to get inside the head of a man whose brain has been fried by mushrooms. But regardless of what was going on in there, he obviously still felt a need for some decency. I watched him from a distance and much more carefully in the days to come, hoping for an opportunity to get into his world, but I never did have much of a conversation with him. Well, there was that bit about the frozen fish, but that is another story.