Sitting in church this morning, I heard yelling from up on the steep hillside behind the parking lot... mid-sermon.  Later some said they had thought it might be boys horsing around in the bushes.  Singers in the choir heard.  Others in the congregation heard.  The pastor heard... What I heard was yelling, but I couldn’t make out the words; so I went out from where I was sitting near a transept door and walked toward the voice... not voices, just one voice.  Someone was yelling, “Why me?  Why me, Lord?  Why me?”

Everybody knows a homeless man and his dog live on the hillside behind the bell tower.  At first I thought he might be the one yelling, but the voice sounded young.  I had to go up.  The steps at the west end of the parking lot leading to the bell tower made the going easy up the hill a quarter of the way to where I knew I would find the voice.  He had stopped yelling, so I assumed he had seen me coming up.  I climbed on up through the brush and among the pine and scrub oak trees thinking that if I found a demented person who was aggressive, he might run at me and we’d both fall and roll down the long steep hill.  

What I found was a young man, perhaps twenty years old, sitting cross-legged with palms up on his lap and his head in his hands. He was no longer yelling... not even crying.  When I was a few feet from him I asked, “Are you all right?”  

He said, “No. I’m not all right?”  I asked him if we could talk about it, and I sat on the bent trunk of small tree to wait.  He looked up.  I reached my hand toward him and told him my name. He took my hand and said, “I’m Ross.”  We talked for ten or fifteen minutes.  I learned he has recently come to San Diego. He has no job.  He had been staying with a friend at the top of the hill in University Heights, but he said he shouldn’t go back there. It would be an imposition.  He said he knew of someone in National City where perhaps he could stay. I offered to go with him down to the church to meet a counselor there.  He said he didn’t want to go today... perhaps he’d come to the church tomorrow.  

I had noticed a bicycle leaning against a bush behind him and wondered how he got it up the hill. For an old man like me, getting a bike up there would be difficult.  I could see it was in good enough shape to ride. I gave him the information he’d need to see my friend the counselor.  I hoped he's remember. I had come up the hill without anything... not my wallet or a pen or pencil or paper.  Ross and I shook hands.  I told him I’d check with the church secretary tomorrow to see if he’d called.  I asked, “Are you O.K.?”  He told me he was not O.K. and didn’t expect to be O.K. for awhile.  He thanked me for coming to find him. I held out my hand again.  He took it and I told him I wouldn’t forget about him.  He looked at my face... into my eyes, and after a minute he said, “I know you won’t.”  

Going down was slower than coming up.  When I got back to the parking lot, I looked up and saw him making his way through the brush up to the top of the hill, carrying his bicycle on his shoulder.  I don’t expect to see him again.