Spin Cycles. Charles Coe K.

he has a disease they are afraid to catch. They try to stay as far away as possible when they walk past him. Through it all, the serene king sits, as though nothing that people around him say or do can affect him.

      He reminds me of a lion I saw at the zoo when I was a child. My mother took me. I don’t think she really wanted to go, but she probably heard somebody say it was a good way for a mother and child to spend time together. I hated it. I hated seeing the animals shoved into those tiny spaces. The lion had been captured in the wild and spent his entire day, every day, pacing back and forth. He ignored the endless parade of people with their cameras.

      King Leonard is the same way. He pays no attention to the swirl of people around him, never notices their stares. As I stand watching, he rises slowly from his bench. He’s a huge man, and yet his movements are graceful and precise. He picks up a push broom that leans against a tree, a broom with long, thick bristles. Then with slow, careful strokes he starts to sweep the trash and leaves around his bench.

      When he has a pile gathered, he uses a torn piece of cardboard as a dustpan to dump the mess into a trash barrel. Then, like a tape running slowly in reverse, he leans the broom back against the tree and resumes his seat on the bench. No one sits next to him, or on the benches on either side. He seems surrounded by an invisible force field that keeps people away.

      I walk over to his bench and sit. He doesn’t turn his head, but of course he knows I’m there. He has felt my energy. We sit quietly as life in Copley Square moves all around us. Boys on skateboards practice their jumps and spins. King Leonard and I are silent, watching and listening. I am always pleased and a little surprised that he doesn’t mind my presence.

      He doesn’t call himself King Leonard, that’s the name I use for him. Of course, I have never spoken it aloud, not even to him. I don’t know what name he was called in his former life. Most street people around here just call him “Bagman.” I call him “King” because of the way he carries himself. And I call him Leonard because he reminds me of my favorite high school math teacher.

      I would never presume to ask King Leonard how he came to be sitting on this bench, dressed in plastic bags. I try to imagine him in a former life, a thousand years ago, standing at the top of a hill. He is talking to his army before a battle, telling the soldiers to be strong and brave. His voice booms out over the valley, and each man believes the king speaks to him and to him alone. He raises his sword and the air is filled with a cheer that roars like thunder.

      King Leonard seldom speaks. Most of the street people who roam Copley Square have probably never heard his voice. Sometimes he speaks to me, saying something like, “The days are getting short.” Sometimes, if I ask him a direct question, he’ll answer. I ask him if he thinks he might have been a king in a former life.

      For a while, he neither speaks nor moves. I am not sure he heard me. He keeps staring straight ahead. Then he says, “Everyone who talks about past lives was always a king or a queen. Nobody ever cleaned toilets.” He turns to look at me and nods slowly. “You’re still looking for balance,” he says. “Not easy to find in this world.”

      I have never said anything to him about being out of balance. About how my moods chase themselves around my head like dogs chasing a rabbit. But clearly he knows. “How do you find balance,” I ask. “In a world like this?” This time the king does not answer. His plastic robe crinkles loudly as he shifts his weight on the bench.

      Three

      A little girl with long blond pigtails ­wearing a pink Red Sox jersey is pushing herself along on her scooter. She stops a few feet from our bench and stares at King Leonard, wide-­eyed. He stares back, hands on his knees, until a woman calls the girl away and the two of them continue down Boylston Street.

      “That little girl thought you were interesting,” I say. “But the woman was afraid. What happened to her? What happens to all of us? Why do we become afraid?”