In the weeks that followed, we came to discuss Moses occasionally.  Nobody had ever seen him panhandle—he seemed to be far too proud for that.  Yet every morning, he had a styrofoam cup of coffee and a cigarette—things that it would have taken money to buy.

We speculated that he must be some kind of minor Howard Hughes, living off money acquired at some previous stage of his life.   Somewhere along the line, he must have just stopped bothering to try.

What could have caused it?  That was more than we were willing to hypothesize.

One day George managed to dispel some of the pall that Moses had cast over us.   George described how that morning he'd seen Moses climbing, sleepily, out of the dumpster bin in back of the YMCA.

—Moses sleeping in a dumpster?  Perversely, the same thought occurred to almost everybody:  Did he put the lid down?  Somehow it seemed like something Charley Chaplin's little tramp would do, like carefully boiling and eating his own shoe.

A motion was raised that we take up a collection to buy Moses a folding chaise lounge and a box of cigars, so that he could sleep on the loading dock, rather than in the dumpster itself;  and for the rest of the day, he could watch the world go by in "style."

Moses left before our idiot plan could come to fruition.

The weather had turned cold, and apparently he'd gone someplace warmer.

Somebody ventured the opinion that, Howard Hughes-style, he was "wintering in Palm Beach.”