It’s a warm night, the first warm night in a while. Spring in the Ohio River Valley is a taciturn, seemingly indecisive bitch: makes you not want to trust the little bit of warm, makes you wonder if the rain that’s surely on the other side of this welcome bubble will be the one to incapacitate the sump pump, seap up through the basement, and carry the whole house out to the river and away.

Here on the river, warm nights mean more people: tourists and others. The guys here who work the Watch off season refer to them as characters. “You see some interesting characters down here at night,” they tell me in warning tones. When I started here two weeks ago, I made a point of telling anyone who said that to me that I used to work at a homeless shelter and that I did street outreach in Louisville for three years. I may not know the details now, but I know the landscape. This city is shitty to it’s unhoused population. Anything they do that might seem to help feels like a public relations campaign aimed at a prospective mother-in-law.

Had my first of the folks tonight. He was going through one of the garbage cans on the wharf. I didn’t bother him. He noticed me and said the man who owns the boat told him to come down and that he could get food. Of course this isn’t the case. He asked me if I’m the skipper.

No, I said. I’m The Watch.

I did give him some water. He’s a kid, probably younger than my daughter.  You have to be careful with folks, especially these new young ones that are all anger and opportunism. I knew I could tell him where all the meals would be in tomorrow. I also knew he probably already knew. He had that hollow-eyed look that give a certain tone to his basically polite demeanor. When he spoke he put his hands behind his back: trying not to look agressive. I didn’t particularly find him to be aggressive anyway, but he’s learned a few tricks to offset his anger.

I don’t know that it’s really working. But I’m The Watch, not a remedial How-To in panhandling.  He didn’t argue when I told him I couldn’t let him on the boat.