Chester

Life on the streets was getting harder each day. Used to be a man could climb into a dumpster and find about anything, breakfast, lunch AND dinner. Nowadays, with this blasted economy, it was a dog eat dog world - in more ways than one.

Months before Winter approached Chester had stocked up. Anything extra he could find, socks, scarves, gloves, shoes, all of it was shoved into his rickety old grocery cart to be used later when the temperatures dropped, and now that day was here. Only thing was, it was getting harder and harder to find food, and he hated soup kitchens. Who did they think they were trying to shove some kinda God down his throat in exchange for a lousy bowl of soup and some stale crackers? The way he saw it, there couldn't be much of a God for folks to be livin like this.

The bitter northern winds chiseled away the calluses on his hands and froze the dirt beneath his nails, and Chester wasn't as young as he used to be. Climbing into a dumpster used to be easy, now he struggled with age and arthritis. But he was hungry, so climb he did...every day, every dumpster, as many times as it took to find enough food to get by. He'd found a couple of apples and a half a tuna fish sandwich three days earlier and had made them last as long as he could. Now he was hungry, really hungry, and he knew if he didn't eat it would be harder for his ailing body to generate heat and ward off the cold. If he could just get through tonight, maybe tomorrow would fare better results.

His hands were stiff with cold and it was time to bundle up and hunker down for the night. The only decent thing Chester had found that day was an old pair of rubber gloves, probably tossed out by the kitchen staff from the restaurant near the dumpster. Anyone who'd ever lived on the streets knew that rubber gloves were a street sleeper's best friend. They kept in the heat and kept out the moisture and cold. Chester retrieved them from his grocery cart and grabbed the gloves, eager to bring some warmth to his hands. As he slipped the first one on, he felt something cold, hard and bumpy inside. He dumped the contents into his lap, and there before him was a pile of tater tots!

Maybe there was a God after all.