JUST NEED A WARM ROOM TONIGHT.
He wore a thin brown jacket that had seen better decades, a knit cap pulled down over his ears, and boots that looked like they were made for a different climate. His beard was more gray than black. His hands were cracked and red.
I saw the sign.
I saw the jacket.
And then I saw something else.
On his head, above the knit cap, crooked and faded, was a brimmed cap with two small words stitched in gold.
U.S. ARMY.
I froze halfway across the lot.
A car drove past, music blaring. The driver glanced at him, then back at the road.
A woman in a puffy white coat walked out of the store, eyes locked on her phone, bags cutting into her wrists. She didn’t see him at all.
I knew that cap.
Not his, specifically. But the look of it. The weight it carried.
My grandfather had one just like it.
I told myself the obvious things.
It might not be safe.
I don’t know this man.
My kids are waiting.
My wife is waiting.
It’s not my job.
Someone else will help.
I kept walking toward the automatic doors. They whooshed open in front of me, a blast of heated air puffing out like the house in 1998.
I stepped inside, grabbed a red plastic basket, and stopped.
Somewhere between the refrigerated section and the freezer aisle, my twelve-year-old self grabbed me by the collar.
If everyone thinks it’s someone else’s job, who is left on the bench?
I left the basket on the floor and walked back outside.
Up close, he looked older than I first thought, but not as old as my grandfather had been. Maybe late fifties. Maybe early sixties. It was hard to tell in the harsh parking lot light.
His eyes tracked me as I approached. Not suspicious, exactly. Just… alert. Like he’d long ago learned that not all footsteps come with kindness.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly very aware of how warm my own coat was. “You doing okay out here?”
It was a stupid question. Pointless. But it was all I had.
He gave a small shrug.
“I’ve had worse nights,” he said. His voice was low and rough, like he hadn’t used it much lately. “Merry Christmas.”
“Leo,” I blurted, because that’s what you do when you shake hands, except we weren’t. “I mean—my name’s Leo.”
He almost smiled.
“Name’s Mitch,” he said.
The word hit me like a brick.
Mitchell.
I swear, for a second, the snow got brighter. The parking lot fell away. I heard my grandfather’s voice again, coming from a bench behind a sliding glass door.
My buddy, Mitchell… he saw I was shaking. He told me to take five. Said, “Frank, close your eyes. Imagine you’re home. I’ll take the watch.”
“Mitchell?” I repeated, before I could stop myself.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Short for Mitchell,” he said. “Haven’t heard anyone use the full thing in a while.”
I swallowed.
“Were you… in the service?” I asked, nodding toward his cap.
“Yeah,” he said. “Long time ago. Desert, not snow. Different war, same sand.”
He glanced toward the automatic doors.
“I’m not trying to bother anyone,” he added quickly. “Just figured, lot of folks are traveling, maybe someone’s got enough reward points or whatever to help an old guy not freeze his butt off.”
There it was again.
The easy out.
I could hand him a few bills. I could say I hoped he found a room. I could say something like, “I’ll keep you in my prayers.”
Instead, I heard myself ask a question I hadn’t planned.
“What would it take,” I said slowly, “to get you somewhere warm tonight? Like, realistically.”
He looked at me for a long time, measuring, like he thought there might be a trick.
Then he shrugged again.
“Cheapest place around here is that highway hotel.” He nodded past the strip mall, toward a glowing sign half a mile away. “Forty-nine bucks on the door. Sixty with the tax. They don’t like cash, but sometimes they look the other way on Christmas.”
I thought about my wallet.
About the trunk full of presents.
About how much I had spent on noise-canceling headphones, scented candles, and toys that would be forgotten by February.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me grab what I came for, and then if you’re still here, I’ll drive you over and get you a room for a couple nights.”
He stared at me.
“People say that,” he said quietly. “They go inside. They don’t come back.”
“I’m not ‘people,’” I said, though I wasn’t sure that was true. “I’ll be back. Ten minutes.”
There it was again.
Ten minutes.
The length of a watch. The length of a promise.
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