human dignity

"Would it be possible, after you have closed up, for me to get into the brown boxes, there?" The finger he used to point was trembling.

I turned around and looked at where the old man was pointing. "You want some boxes?" There were stacks of empty banana boxes at the edge of the parking lot behind our pantry.

"Those boxes are locked," he continued. I turned back toward him and could see that his shoes were splattered with dried mud and his sleeves were soiled and frayed. "Can I please come back tonight?" He reached out for my hand. "Would you leave them unlocked?" He spoke politely--respectfully--but it seemed as though he were censoring himself. Behind his courtesy I got the sense that he was pleading with me, that he was begging.

Next to the stacks of cardboard boxes were two squat, wooden containers, the pair of which looked like a rusted washer and dryer with padlocks dangling from their doors. Only gradually did I begin to realize what he was asking.

A few times each week trucks pull up to these wooden containers. We unlock them and the contents are removed and taken to farms--where it is fed to pigs: wilted cabbage, bread black with fungus, potatoes half devoured by swarming insects, apple pulp, carrots covered with white fibers, onions soft and shriveled. The smell is sweet and awful and with the onset of the summer heat, it can be nauseating.

"Please."

I looked into the eyes of the man before me. He was doing his best to maintain some level of dignity. Having  someone considerably my senior beg me for something was itself discomfiting, but when the object for which he is begging is so pitiful ... I felt ashamed. 

I did my best to offer alternatives. It was evening and we had already closed up for services. Eventually I told him to wait at the gate for a moment. I walked over to our pantry refrigerator and was thankful to have found a few of our brown bag lunches that had not been distributed. Each had a sandwich, orange, and brownie. I gave the man a couple of the brown bags, for which he thanked me (this is simply what any of us at Sacred Heart do in such circumstances). And then he departed.

I had always wondered why we kept the slop boxes locked. Now I wondered how this elderly man knew about their contents.