He was beaming. It was one proud moment for a homeless man.
He did it by selling the fish he caught one by one off the pier or the seawall every day. He did it by sweeping some floors, by emptying trash cans, by asking both acquaintances and strangers for $10 here and $5 there.
He did it between trips to the nearby hospital emergency room, where they take those without health insurance, where he often was treated when his diabetes flared up, or his blood pressure spiked, or his depression got the best of him.
He did it when the nearby storage facility was auctioning off his possessions -- the nice clothes he once wore, the good furniture he used to sit in, the bed and the bike he no longer used -- because he hadn't paid the rent there in nine months.
He did it when he had nowhere steady to sleep, moving from a park bench one night to a shelter the next, to the rusty old broken-down Buick he found, to various people who offered a spare room with a temporary stipulation.
He did it when his only showers were cold ones, outdoor and under the pier, ones designed for the tourists to wash the sand off their feet, using those little motel-room soap bars given to him by a Haitian woman who cleaned rooms nearby.
He did it because he had hit bottom.
And it was time to start the climb back.
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