Heavenly Mike

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He came into our lives at the right time. My husband needed a watchman for our home here in Mexico. Due to immigration problems it had become necessary to live elsewhere for awhile and due to land disputes we could not leave our property unguarded or it might get jumped. So it was a dilemma.

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One day as we were driving down the highway pondering on what to do we saw an old man walking down it. My husband said I wonder who that is, not being that many walking on that highway. I told him, its our new guard. He pulled to a stop and asked the man, a hobo and an american, where he was headed. Mike, because it said Heavenly Mike on his baseball cap, said Argentina, I have been walking since I left Florida.

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I told him jump in, I will give you a meal and a place to sleep, I could tell he was an honest man. All he had in the world was in two plastic sacks and he had white hair and clear blue eyes. He stayed almost a year. The only thing he asked of us in return for his guarding was the promise to not overload him. He would look a little shakey and worried when he said it. He said he might turn into a revengefull jackass if that happened.

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So he took over the guard shack and just came out to make the rounds and prowl at night. He never changed his clothes the whole time. He had a warm musky garlicy smell about him, not bad. I gave him new clothes once, but he kept them pressed under his mattress wrapped in plastic. He saved everything, even all his empty cigarette packs. He told me many things about his travels, how everyone was good to him and the police let him pass. House wives feed him, even McDonalds gave him a free hamburger. How he slept on benches and drain pipes and cooked on wood fires. He shared his recipes with me. Flour fried in garlic with catsup, a favorite. And how to use ground coffee six times before giving up on it. He said he was a man with a skillet and to not talk to him about anything that could not be cooked in one, that would be useless. He also told me that most people are pushy crackpots and to beware of the handshakers. He spent lots of time straightening his shack and writing things on tiny pieces of paper that when I saw them never made sense.

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Then we moved back in to our abandoned home, to repair and replace and set it up again. He watched, but stuck to his rule, don’t over load me, so we asked nothing of him. A brave handsome man with a beautiful smile. I did not mind him there. Until he started to answer my questions before I asked them. I would think, who took my dishsoap, and he would say, the kids have the soap to wash the car. Then one day I felt my mind a little invaded, and I thought to myself, that is creepy, I wish he would go away and leave my thoughts alone.

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So he came into the house when my husband returned and said, Well, it is time to get walking, before I turn into a revengefull jackass, again. Argentina waits. He packed a plastic sack, refused money, put his new clothes on and carefully packed the old, laid out all the cigarrette packs on the cot and counted them, then walked away forever, turning back just once, to take off his Heavenly Mike cap and tip it at my husband and I in farewell.