Kevin Tosca

Grace Street

The man who occasionally peddles fruit in front of the abandoned
lot on Grace Street has the most scarred, disfigured face I’ve ever
seen. Mortar, napalm, stroke. It’s as if he has known them all,
known worse.
Confronting this man proves difficult.
I mean it is difficult to know where, how, to look at him. I
mean directly, honestly, warmly. I mean I who think my perspective
large, my spirit vast.
I fail, but his blueberries are so good I persist in presence
until, one fine blustery day near the end of the season, I see him
smile.

That a blueberry is not all blue inside is one of those disconcerting
discoveries you can have the pleasure of making when you’re
pushing forty and feeding your ten-month-old son and trying your
damnedest to keep him from choking to death.
If the dreaded sudden strikes, however, you hope to be
equal to it.
You hope, that is, not for something as quaint and
bankrupt as grace, but for the raw loving courage to do what needs
to be done, like remembering that deserted Toronto street and
reaching out to the beautiful man who haunts it and giving him
more than correct change, just once, before you both die.