Don't Let It Bring You Down

Don't Let It Bring You Down

Old man lyin' by the side of the road
Where the lorry's rollin' by
Blue moon sinkin' from the weight of the load
And the buildings scrape the sky . . .

Sarah chose the rolled up newspaper. It was old and dry, and there was a lot of it. She headed toward her usual spot underneath the bridge, leaving the rest of civilization and its lights behind her.

She stopped halfway down the pathway to her favorite place. There was someone else there tonight. It was a man. He was gaunt and pale, and his dirty black hair hung around his face, making him look menacing in the light from the fire he had already started.

Sarah thought for a few moments before approaching him. For all she knew he was dangerous. Couldn't trust a stranger down here.

Of course, then again whom could you trust? She went down quietly. Maybe she should have made as much noise as possible, just to see if he would run. Guilty men ran.

He looked up when she came within earshot. There was an almost fearful look in his eyes at first, but it passed quickly.

Cold wind rippin' down the valley at dawn
And the morning paper flies
Dead man lyin' by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes . . .

"Hullo," she said neutrally.

He stared at her for a moment. "Hullo," he replied. Sarah examined him further. He was a tall man. She could tell, even though he was crouched on the ground, because his legs were entirely too long for him to be of an average height. But maybe they only seemed so because he was so thin. He had large hands with long, bony fingers and wrists that stuck out of the ends of the frayed gray sleeves of his long coat. Looking at what she could see of his face, Sarah could tell that he was handsome, or that he had been once, long ago. His pale eyes watched her approach the fire.

"Mind if I sit down?" she asked him, nodding at the flames. He shrugged broad bony shoulders.

Sarah sat. He was still watching her, but he did so in such a way that she got the feeling that he didn't want her to see his face.

Blind man runnin' through the light of the night
With an answer in his hand
Come on down to the river of sight
And you can really understand . . .

"So, what's your story?" Sarah asked her silent new companion. The man stared at her again for a moment, tearing his eyes away from the flames and his thoughts from wherever they had gotten to.

"Beg pardon?"

Sarah gestured to the bridge above them. "There's a reason you're here," she said matter-of-factly. "Wanta talk about it?"

He snorted quietly. "Not really," he said.

Sarah shrugged. "Fair enough." She pulled her tiny tote bag from her shoulder and began to rummage through it.

After a moment, she felt his eyes on him. She met his gaze with a curious look. "What?"

"How old are you?" he asked her. Something about the way he asked the question kept her from being offended. He seemed surprised by something, or perhaps worried.

"Seventeen," she said.

"Bollocks."

She laughed. "Naw, it's true."

What had seemed like worry in him became something else that Sarah couldn't identify. "You ran away from home."

It should have been a question, but it wasn't.

"Yep."

Usually people asked her why. This man didn't. He only nodded and turned his eyes back to the fire.

"I was sixteen when I ran away from home," he said after a few moments of awkward silence.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "That's a long time to be on the street," she said.

He frowned, puzzled. "What?" Then he seemed to understand. "Oh! No, I haven't been . . . not until more recently. I went to live with a friend."

"Ah. Lucky for you, eh?"

"Right." Sarah frowned to see the look in his eyes. There was something deeply disturbing about them. She could see how some women might have found them attractive, same as the face around them. But to her, there seemed to be too much damage there. There was a wrongness to this man; she wondered how long it had been there.

"What's your name?" he asked her.

"Sarah." She waited for him to give his name, but there was a noticeable hesitation in him. She watched his blank expression as he processed her name and tried to decide what name to give to her.

"My name is Sirius," he said finally.

She smiled. "Nice one. Parents dog lovers, then?"

He laughed. Not much of a laugh, but it was comforting to hear that kind of sound from him. "Not exactly."

"So, Sirius," Sarah said. "You traveling, or you where you're trying to get to?"

"I have a friend in London," he said. "Going down to see him."

Sarah nodded. "Nice. Never had any mates I could crash with, me," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

"I'm sorry," Sirius said, frowning.

She let the pity roll off of her back. "No big deal really. There are shelters. And mostly, I do all right. I can beg a bit and get cash that way. I know the best places to sleep. And I'm free."

He seemed to ponder this. Again, he didn't say the kinds of things that most people said to her. Is it really worth it, though? they asked her. No family? Isn't that lonely? He didn't ask her why she'd left home. He didn't lecture her about responsibility. He had to be at least forty, so he was old enough to be her father . . . and he didn't act like it. It was so strange to talk to an adult who didn't seem to want to change the fact that she was a teen age girl living on the streets.

Red lights flashin' through the window in the rain
Can you hear the sirens moan
White cane lyin' in a gutter in the lane
And you're walkin' home alone . . .

"You hungry?" Sarah asked Sirius. He eyed her, confused.

"What?"

"You know: hungry. Do you want any food?"

"You have some?"

Sarah pulled a small bag of potato crisps from her bag and tossed them to Sirius. "Not real food, but take what you can get, huh?"

Sirius eyed the crisps dubiously. "Thank you," he said. He sounded more sincere than he looked. Of course, he probably appreciated the fact that she shared her food with him.

"Welcome," she said, smiling and pulling out another small bag of crisps for herself. She ate half the bag before she spoke again. "I got these from a vending machine."

He looked curious.

Sarah raised a hand and waggled her fingers. "I have nimble hands," she said, grinning. "It's a bit of a trick anymore, though. These new machines they put places now are a lot harder to get anything useful out of. Gotta throw yourself against 'em to budge anything."

He wasn't listening to her. She could tell, because his expression had gone blank again.

She frowned deeply. "Hey." He didn't respond. The faraway look in his eyes didn't change. "Oy! Sirius!"

He snapped out of it, and stared at her as though she had just appeared out of nowhere.

"What?"

"Are you all right?" she asked him, genuinely concerned.

"I'm fine," he lied. "I was just thinking."

"About what?" she demanded incredulously. "You looked like you were reliving a funeral in your head." She didn't realize she'd thought that until she said it.

He seemed startled. "No," he said. "Not a funeral."

She rolled the bag of crisps closed and put it back in her bag. "You've seen some shite, then, haven't you?"

Sirius laughed a hollow laugh. "You could say that."

She nodded, understanding a little, she thought. She had enough memories of her own that made her lose sleep some nights.

Sirius didn't say anything else. He just curled up on the ground and closed his eyes. Sarah watched him for a little while. She thought about leaving him there. She didn't know if he was safe. She knew better than to trust strange men. She thought about the knife she kept in her knapsack.

She thought a little while about her father and his harsh hands. It didn't take her long to decide that it wasn't worth thinking about. Her mother's disbelieving, accusatory eyes stuck in her mind, though.

Sirius's troubled eyes overpowered the memory of her mother's. It wasn't a threat that she sensed in him, she realized. It was pain. The agony of loss and guilt were some of the heaviest things on his heart. Any malice there was not for her.

Sarah decided that she could risk sleep. She'd done stupider things.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning
Find someone who's turning
And you will come around . . .

Sarah woke the next morning to find that Sirius had gone. He'd left her things for her. There was barely a trace of him left, except flattened grass of the place on the ground where he'd slept. As she gathered her things and prepared for another day of wandering the streets, she followed a set of dog's footprints up the worn pathway.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning
Find someone who's turning
And you will come around