Friday Night Phillip

        It was a pretty day with an unseasonable cool on the air due to our recent bouts with Hurricanes Ivan, Jean, and Karl.  I crept passed my friends from Mobile sleeping soundly on the couch, away from 80mph winds and destroyed apartment complexes; taking  refuge in my one bedroom apartment located on the brink of a downtown, tired from torrential rains and weather sirens.  It was about 5:30, and after brewing some coffee and having a cigarette, I put on a flannel shirt and went for a walk with my hands stuffed deep into my pockets.  The way a man burdened with thought staggers toward conclusion. 
        A 350 lbs homeless man named Phillip asked me for a quarter, and when I told him I didn't have any change, said, "How 'bout a five?"  Philip comes by and God-blesses me for the five spot I gave him that following Monday, and has become regular fixture on my front steps.  He cleans the street in front of my house, picks the cigarette butts out of my flower garden, and he's washed my car a few times.  Each task earning a five dollar bill, cigarette, and a ride to the Salvation Army, or his "mamma's house" as he likes to lie about.  A neighbor of mine, a local evangelist, also employs the man power of homeless Philip, promising to pay him on Sunday AFTER he attends church service.  Philip would rather have the immediate five spot, but can be seen making his way, sweaty and out of breath, to the preach's porch around 8:30 every Sunday morning. 
        I sometimes have visions of Philip turning and killing me, coming at me with a lead pipe or breaking through my flimsy door and tossing me from my roost on the balcony with no rails, huffing away with my clock radio and some Creedance tapes-the only thing of mine with any real value.  I am not as concerned with it as I probably should be, leaving the door open when I go inside to get the cash or the glass of water, testing his patience, his limits, his rehabilitation.  Yet there he is, sitting idly on the porch, the beginnings of his large a$$ facing me as he stares off into the trees, thoughts of cheap bourbon and possibly, hopefully the Holy Spirit, wandering in the heat.  He takes the glass of water and God-blesses me as though I've sneezed, as I drop him off in a field near my house.