Spirit on a Wire

    The city people say a spirit walks their wires. 
    The lonely people are the ones who know him the best. From a balcony, from the street, they see a pair of red and black sneakers pace the power lines, the figure above them hidden beneath baggy clothes and a deep hood. You can see his ankles, they say, confirmation that it is in fact the figure of a man walking the space between the telephone poles, only a single black line between him and falling. They never see his face. They only see his back, see his arm, see a collar and a deep shadow.
    The lonely people love him like one of their own, and the other people love him as their protector. 
    He has an iron grip they say, and feet that walk the air like the steps on a fire escape. He needs no weapon for the men in the alleys. 

    There are stories, you see, stories of old women and young women, stories of beaten men who saw the gray shadow appear behind the men with bloody knuckles and bloody bars, falling weightless to the ground, quicker and lighter than any man who has stepped his path on cold concrete or green grass. 

    There was one girl who said she had seen his eyes. 

    Her own eyes sparkled brightly as she told the tale, though they were lightless before. The circles under her eyes and the grease in her hair and the joints jutting from a body too skinny to be slim told of old shadows. But they were bright now. And she said that his eyes had been gray. Gray with unchanging pupils. But she hadn't been afraid of him. There had been compassion in the gray. He had seen her, and held out his hand carefully.

    He walked with her to her house, not saying a word. And when she had given hushed thanks he smiled in return, and left. 

    Sometimes they see him while they are doing the simple things. Hanging out the laundry, waiting at the bus stop, smoking a cigarette; they see him walking his power lines, or sitting on a telephone pole, always with his hood up and his face in shadow. 

    But they trust him, the man who walks on the wires like they do on the streets. They trust him, and they send him their smiles, even as he paces away with a bowed head and a shadowed face.