A Dog Called Homeless

That Saturday, Dad takes Cally and Luke to town and asks them to wait outside the bank. Luke goes into a game store, leaving Cally sitting on a bench alone. She notices an unhoused man with a split sneaker and “a purple puffy jacket sitting on the other side of the street” (41). He holds a cardboard sign that says he is hungry.

Just then, a group of young boys approach the unhoused man and start to harass him. They throw paper balls at him until a woman who works at the bakery nearby comes out and yells at them to stop. Cally goes over to pick up the man’s hat, which was knocked off his head while the boys were bothering him. The woman from the bakery hands Cally a bag of pastries and tells her to give them to the unhoused man, whom she calls Jed.

Jed smiles at Cally when she gives him the bag of pastries, but Luke comes out of the store and pulls her away. He reminds her that Dad doesn’t want them to give anything to unhoused people and claims that they chose the life that led to their not having a home.