Free The Ghost of Christmas Present by Scott Abbott Page B

misery and instead embraced the pain that living brings.
    But the day that had started out with Rebecca’s promising words in his mind had ended with a criminal Kris Kringle. Perhaps Patrick should just go to another corner, find another part of town.
    But that was his corner. Those people were his regulars. And he didn’t steal their money with a forged badge. He earned it. He was providing a service. A good fifteen or so folks whom he now knew by name came up to him every day with requests.
    There was Mindy, who worked in the café across the street. She had a son serving on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. Patrick had offered up T. S. Eliot for her one day on her way home from work. “At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives homeward, and brings sailors home from the sea.”
    She’d wiped a tear from her eye, dropped a five in his cup, and every day after that asked him to quote the same line until she didn’t need even to ask. It was simply their daily farewell to each other.
    Then there was Kent, who worked in public relations. Patrick had overheard him tell a colleague on the street corner that he was planning to ask his girlfriend to marry him at a hockey game that night on the public video monitor. Patrick had not been able to help himself. “O, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do! Not know what they do!”
    â€œExcuse me?” Kent was annoyed with the green-robed panhandler who had intruded on their curbside conversation and stood uncomfortably close.
    â€œAs all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.”
    The young man’s face grew even more confused. “What is that supposed to mean?”
    Patrick shook his head with exasperation. “Ask her to marry you in private.”
    The next week, Kent came up to the beggar with a buoyant gait. “She accepted my proposal! But afterward, when I told her what the original plan had been . . .” Kent handed Patrick a fifty. “Thanks for the safety tip.”
    And then there was George, the stockbroker with whom he’d had the Charlie Brown exchange. Patrick had taken to memorizing Psalms just for George, who relished the biblical passages spoken with a trained tongue. “Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”
    â€œPsalm 13, verse 3.” George had never yet been stumped.
    â€œA man well-schooled in both the King James Bible and its benevolence.”
    George dropped his customary bill into the cup. “Here’s a fiver for a man well-schooled in the art of malarkey.” George studied Patrick for a long moment. “I can’t figure you out. What’s your story?”
    It was a question that people had begun to ask, and Patrick had wasted no time in looking to the Bard for a comeback: “I am a true laborer. I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness . . .”
    â€œAll right, all right,” George said as he stuffed another bill into the cup. “I’ll pay you to put that story out of its misery. See you tomorrow.”
    All the questions he’d begun to get about his life story he’d been able to keep at bay with the As You Like It comeback. But again, there was this thug in the Santa getup. Would he come back? And would he come after Patrick again?
    If he did, Patrick would just reveal him to the police as a fraud. Even a couple of the cops who worked that beat had taken a small shine to the harmless robed nut whose only trespass was filling a corner with clapping laughter.
    â€œYo! Jolly Green Joker!” the cop riding shotgun would always yell to him from the open patrol-car window. Patrick could think of wittier nicknames, but any officers deciding to leave him alone were as clever as he needed them to be.
    â€œHow’s business today?” the cop driving would add.
    â€œBooming, just