GOOD PEOPLE

The landlady discovered me sleeping beneath her porch at half-past seven.

I’m wearing two pairs of pants and several t-shirts beneath a sweater and coat, curled on the dirt beneath the boards, still shivering—head throbbing.

I’d coughed, I guess.

She came hobbling over, a woman in her fifties with steel-grey hair, broad shouldered, dressed in jeans and sweater, wearing her lips diagonally across her face, eyebrows raised, in an expression of puzzlement. She knelt and touched my shoulder.

Hello.

I woke up then, frantically—as if her finger had triggered an alarm—scattering dirt and smacking my head. I mumbled a lame excuse and climbed into the open, dragging my pack.

Here eyes were old and wise, encased in loose-skin lids that blinked like accordions, opening and closing as they examined me.

You didn’t spent all night there did you?

I then opened my mouth—No, Mam, I did not—and explained her away. She was a character of my own devising, a small part of an elaborate written scheme, conceived to say, simply:

That I am okay, and
Thanks, by the way,
To those who sent messages
And offered me help

I’ve spent the past few days relying on the kindness of good people, and they did not let me fall.

Many thanks to Robert Petersson, my Swedish friend, and thanks to the generous staff at Te Anau Lakefront Backpackers—I couldn’t have done it without you.

Good people—they really do exist.

Thank you.