Flash Fiction

They said Sam had been sleeping on an old, stained mattress hidden beneath a sprawling yew tree in the grounds of St. John the Baptist churchyard, not too far from Waitrose whose refuse bins he plundered for food. He spoke with a Birmingham accent and joked with anyone who asked that he’d moved up in the world – settled for a more prosperous city: “A much better class of person,” he said with a smile, revealing blackened teeth and gaps where once there had been others in even worse repair.

It was difficult to guess his age. He shuffled like an old man, but as someone pointed out, it was because his shoes lacked laces. He held his ragged trousers up by keeping his hands in his pockets, and walked with a constant stoop, as though chronically arthritic. But some people claimed he was simply scanning the ground for lost treasure. “He found a fiver, last week,” one said.

Sam caused a bit of a scandal in the well-to-do village of Tiddesley when, one Friday afternoon, he appeared, unannounced and uninvited, and set up a makeshift shelter in the hedge next to Mr Giles’ meadow. No-one said much at first, but when, two days later, he began reinforcing the branch-and-leaf shelter with a piece of waste polythene he’d taken from a skip outside the Village Hall, Mrs Spike-Fallows began to lobby her fellow villagers inside the hall.

“It simply cannot be tolerated,” she said, “there’ll be caravans next, and they’ll buy that land up by the copse. We don’t want their sort.”

“What sort is that Ms S-F?” asked Wendy Sutcliffe, “you mean someone who’s not been quite so fortunate as you? Someone down-at-heel and in need of a little compassion?”

Wendy was just winding Mrs Spike-Fallows up – she couldn’t stand her, and was always doing it. But she had a point.

Ms S-F gritted uneven teeth and clenched her tiny fists in suppressed rage. “Wendy, I swear that if you call me ‘Ms S-F’ once more, I’ll…” The sentence was left unfinished. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and changed tack. “Are you going to show him compassion?” she asked? “Take him in and offer him a warm meal and a bed for the night?”

The look on Wendy’s face told us that Ms S-F had a point, too. And a good one.

Ms S-F saw this and pushed her advantage. “I can just see you and Tom and…” – she pointed a manicured finger in the direction we all understood led to the vagrant – “… old Sammy there, getting on like a house on fire. Perhaps Homeless Sam can babysit the children when you want to go out. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Wendy bit her lip and said no more.

That’s how we began calling him ‘Homeless Sam’. It was only last Sunday we realised we didn’t know his real name.

Someone called the police. A fresh-faced youth turned up, bespectacled and wearing a high-visibility jacket with ‘Community Officer’ on the back. He seemed frightened of Sam and possibly more so of Ms S-F.

“I really don’t see what can be done,” the Community Officer said. “No crime’s been committed, after all. But I’ll submit a report to my superior.”

That Sunday, Sam was outside the church. Not openly begging or anything. He was ‘too clever’ for that, Ms S-F said, though not to his face; she looked the other way as she walked past. He was leaning against the tombstone of Sarah Fenton, Loving Wife and Mother, grinning his grin and greeting us all as though he were the one about to deliver the sermon. He didn’t follow us in.

After the service, Sam was lying on the grass, enjoying the sun. The departing congregation had to avoid his feet which jutted out onto the path. Mrs Baker tut-tutted loudly as her husband dropped a coin into his lap. Others followed Mr Baker’s example, but most made sure they were too absorbed in conversation to notice, or simply looked the other way.

I heard that the Vicar gave Sam lunch at the Vicarage that day, and that Sam left looking rather resplendent in some recycled clothes. He became a regular feature of village life after that. Wendy did prove to be quite generous, and even invited him to lunch herself – not at her house, but in the local tearooms where she set about interviewing him with the idea of writing a feature on her Blog, all about the plight of the homeless and how we should be more supportive. I understand Sam wasn’t too cooperative and I never did see the article on Wendy’s Blog.

Homeless Sam began drifting between the local villages. I saw him at Hallet’s Green market one Saturday. As the autumn leaves turned gold and crimson, we saw less of him, and by the time the trees were bare, the skies bleak and our breath vaporised as we breathed, we had forgotten all about him. A heavy snow fell in January, and young Jerry Marsh and his mates discovered Sam’s corpse when their toboggan went off piste and ended up under a hedge. One of the boys tried to wake him up with a shove. Another was sick on the spot when he saw the body remained stiff as it rolled over.

The Vicar gave a sermon about being good neighbours, not judging people by their worldly goods. The Reading, by the reluctant Jerry Marsh, was the parable of the Good Samaritan. Old Sam wasn’t mentioned by name – we didn’t know his name – and no direct reference was made to him, but everyone understood. The Vicar ended the service by playing a song by Simon and Garfunkel: A Most Peculiar Man. Lots of people left the church in tears.

Wendy and Mrs S-F were talking in the churchyard as I made my way back home. Their steam-like breath rose in a common plume. I saw them embrace as I reached the corner of the lane, and reflected that this was where I had first seen Homeless Sam some eight months earlier. He had winked, doffed his cap and smiled his gappy smile. And I had walked by, embarrassed.