Redbeard carries a backpack and a sacred calling
I once saw Redbeard riding his skateboard along Otay Lakes Road . It was close to midnight, there were only a few cars on the road, and the light from the streetlamps was dim. As he snaked his way down the slope, hands in his pocket, moving toward the Sweetwater Valley —where he sleeps against the wall of the Circle K, or holds his signs along the 805 exit for spare change or spreads the good news to the people of the jungle — I thought of a verse he once shared with me, a Psalm of promises from God: For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot. When I first met Redbeard he was sitting still on a patch of grass, legs outstretched, under the shade of a large clump of bamboo-like Arundo donax , alongside a drainage ditch next to the southbound 805 freeway exit onto Bonita Roa...