When I saw the homeless man casting something out on the corner of 23^rd St. and 5^th Ave. I slowed down but kept walking. He was throwing change at a cab idling on the street in front of him. I moved west towards the subway figuring that he had some quarrel with the cab driver. When the cab pulled away he didn’t stop. There was no traffic close enough for him to hit; quarters landed near the middle of the road a few feet from the eastbound cars waiting for their light. I decided to go back and talk to him, he was down to throwing nickels and I remembered who he was.

A month or so ago I saw him on the same corner burning money. Squatting on a duffel bag, he held a burning dollar bill in one hand and kept a flame to the paper’s unburned corner with the other. His face leaned in to the fire, the light rusting his grey beard, his eyes stayed on the bill as it twisted and disappeared. When its tender burned away he dropped what was left of the singed note. I remember looking around to see if it was making an impression. No one much noticed, the walkers kept moving towards work or school, and the standers, people who had business on 23^rd St., leaned on the buildings or scaffolds outside. It could be that the burning money didn’t create more interest because the man burning it didn’t seem to care. The act was essentially private, carried out only on that part of sidewalk where he lived. He didn’t solicit any attention, only looking up after the flame was gone to cast a long stare across the street away from the people just in front of him. The homeless man looked like he was locked in a reverie, something between him and the fire and the money. I too kept going that day, I went to work and mostly stopped thinking about him once I got there.

Today, watching him throw his coins, a month after the dollar bill sacrifice, I went back to talk with him. Again it was rush hour, people on their way home, and the sidewalk never slowed to take in the scene. When I reached him we both stood at the curb. He was heavily layered for sleeping in the cold, on top was a long blue coat frayed at the bottom. With a few feet between us I stopped and said excuse me, he looked up, I asked, “Why are you throwing money in the street?” his mouth moved quickly but his eyes didn’t shift or blink. It was hard to understand his reply. Without teeth to bite off consonants he gummed the words out, skipping or swallowing the hard sounds. The words rushed out in a mush without pause or separation, he sounded almost Cajun. I thought he said “I believe in witchcraft” and I repeated “Oh, you believe in witchcraft?” HHfddsklnsae said it again without any change in intonation or affect, and then we passed the same words back and forth between us once more but what I meant as a question he didn’t really answer.