Of Beetles and Angels by Mawi Asgedom Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or from something else. We went to him and asked him if he was hungry, and he said, “I lost my job and never got another one, and I don’t think I’ll ever get one again. I’m done.”
    We couldn’t tell if he was the address-book brother from long ago, but we knew in our hearts that it did not matter. Maybe every stranger was an address-book brother, sent to test the goodness in our hearts.
    Whatever the answer, Tewolde’s heart spoke: “We should give him our sandwiches.” I nodded my head and took the sandwiches out of my backpack. I offered them to the man. “I hope you like Aldi ham, bro.”
    I went inside then, but Tewolde stayed outside and braved the cold with our friend. A few minutes later, Tewolde and I left.
    I forgot about the man for about a year, and I thought that Tewolde had, too. It turned out that he hadn’t.
    By the time my brother reached junior high, he had mastered the art of getting things for free. Even though we had an annual budget of less than forty dollars, he still finagled Nintendos, Segas, and other rich-boy treasures from his friends and other sources.
    We wanted to lift weights when we entered high school, so he set out looking for a bench and some weights. He found both at our free mall, the Dumpsters of Wheaton College.
    In the past, the Dumpsters had given us everything from bikes, desks, and school supplies to couches and even TVs. Why go shopping? It was graduation time, and our free mall was stocked, as the middle- and upper-class students threw away most of their belongings.
    A year later, a friend gave Tewolde another bench and more weights. We had more than we needed. So Tewolde asked me to help him: “I have a friend who needs these weights,” he told me. “He’s trying to get in shape but cannot afford workout equipment.”
    Hoping it wasn’t far, I followed Tewolde. It was across the street — in the nightmare apartments I had visited in elementary school. I’d had a friend who lived in the building’s cellar; it was the kind of cellar that made me think of turn-of-the-century factory workers. No lighting. No air. No life. How could such a place exist in Wheaton?
    We dragged the bench, the bar, and the weights upstairs and knocked on the door. A malnourished man answered, and I tried to remember where I had seen him. But I couldn’t place him.
    When he saw my brother, his gaunt, joyless face burst wide with laughter.
    “How did you get these?” he asked us, and my brother said we had an extra one. We stayed and talked for a few minutes, and he told us that he was trying to make it, trying to keep his job. But it was hard, so hard, to have confidence and hope.
    As he talked, I came to realize who he was. And as we left, I asked my brother: “How did you know where to find the address-book brother from the library? Did you run into him again?”
    But even as I asked, I knew the answer.
    My brother had found him housing and a job, encouraged him, and even given him money when he could — even though my bro had so little himself. All of this, without telling anyone.
    The second memorable trip to the library arose from earlier days, when my brother and I had worked like indentured servants. We had been too young to work real jobs, and even if we had been old enough, we would have been deterred by my father’s declarations.
    C OMPUTERS RUN THIS COUNTRY; YOU CANNOT DO EVEN ONE THING WITHOUT THE HOUSE OF AUTHORITY KNOWING ABOUT IT . S O IF YOU WANT TO WORK, YOU HAVE TO WORK CASH JOBS. I F YOU WORK CHECK JOBS, THEY WILL TRACE YOUR MONEY AND YOU WILL HAVE TO REPORT IT, AND THEN THEY WILL SIMPLY TAKE THAT MONEY OUT OF YOUR WELFARE CHECK AND YOU’LL BE BACK TO WHERE YOU STARTED.
    To avoid the all-knowing computers, we worked cash jobs for a shifty brother who lived down the street from us on Route 38. He paid us five dollars an hour cash to restore damaged driveways.
    He would pick us up in his junky, rust-colored pickup — the