O. Henry.
Soapy, a homeless drifter, was freezing on a park bench. Winter was coming, and we had to think about housing. He wanted to go to a hospitable prison, where there was food provided and a roof over his head for three months. He had spent the winter there for several years. There were charitable institutions, but Soapy was too proud to receive gifts from the hands of philanthropists.
There were many easy ways to get to the prison. First, Soapy went to a good restaurant for lunch, and then declared himself insolvent. The maitre d’, seeing his frayed trousers, put Soapy out on the sidewalk. Soapy then smashed a shop window with a rock. Soapy confessed to the police officer who came running, but the police officer did not believe that the person who broke the window would remain at the scene of the crime. The guard ran after the other man. Soapy went to a cheap restaurant and after eating, refused to pay. Two waiters carefully laid Soapy on the asphalt. Then Soapy decided to try his luck by brazenly accosting a well dressed woman, but the woman turned out to be a lady of easy virtue, looking for a cavalier. Soapy was dancing on the sidewalk, yelling, making faces, but the police thought it was the students celebrating the victory of their sports team, and the police had instructions not to touch them.
Soapy saw a man leave an umbrella at the entrance of the store as he entered. Soapy grabbed it, hoping that the man would call the police, but it turned out that the man himself had taken the umbrella by mistake that morning. And if it’s Soapy’s umbrella, he’s sorry.
Suddenly, Soapy heard beautiful music coming from the church. Under the influence of the sounds, he decided to change his life: he would find a job, get out of the mud, become a man, he…
But then a policeman grabbed him by the shoulder and sent him to prison as a tramp.
A short story about a homeless tramp
Դավիթ Խոջոյան բլոգ 