His name is Michael, he's 52, and he's sitting in the faint shade of a 97-degree day, pouring Hurricane High Gravity Lager from a can poorly hidden in a brown paper bag into a soft drink cup. The cigarette between his fingertips has been smoked down to the filter but he doesn't seem to notice because he is too busy talking about the savage beating he received, the one that left him with two lurid black eyes and deep, angry cuts on the bridge of his nose and above his left eye. He's pretty sure it happened Saturday night even though the cops aren't.

Michael says the assault happened while he was "canning," wending his way through The Park in the evening collecting aluminum cans because his Social Security and disability checks were mostly gone and he can really use the buck-fifty he makes for each bag of cans he brings to the King Soopers. On days when he doesn't make enough, he might look through a garbage can in The Park and find a hot dog or something.

He likes canning at night because it's nicer then. Yeah, at night "It's cool outside. No lights. It's peaceful. It's quiet. And you don't get much competition."

Michael was canning at night when he says the guy came up from behind and jumped him near the Native American statue. After that, he's not sure what happened - the way he's sometimes not sure about other things in his life and times. Memories are sharp one minute, then they start to blur around the edges. You can tell by looking in his eyes, eyes that sometimes seem to be looking at you as if you are far away or standing behind something. Like maybe an old memory.

Those eyes are a blue so pale it almost isn't blue. The kind of blue you might see if you look into the heart of a frozen river. The only kind of blue he can probably see himself since he's legally blind.

Michael has other problems besides his eyesight. He's spent time in the Fort Logan Mental Health Center, which he figures is why he got rejected by the Marines. If you ask him what was the problem, the almost- blue eyes roll dismissively, and you hear, "Childhood schizophrenic reactions - that's what they said."

In a voice that is both soft and strong at the same time, Michael talks about The Park and how drugs have always been part of its currency. He knows this because back in the 1970s, it was where he went to buy hallucinations. "The Hurdy Gurdy Man and Crab Farm, man, they gave me all my acid in the old days. They used to sell acid to me and Joyce."

Joyce, you find out is his "late, loving wife." How and when she died are questions that become lost in the soft weeping and sad silence that are the only answers Michael can give.

When the wave of emotion crests and subsides, he carefully takes a sip from the cup. The sip calms him. But then a new thought doesn't.

"It's gotten much more dangerous here," he says, eyes scanning the grass and concrete. He drifts for a minute. "Back then I was a flower child; I was a simplistic flower child. They used to laugh at me and Joyce."

The present wafts back up and he says, "But this park, I don't like this park. I don't like being out in this park, even before I got hurt. I don't like this park at all except I can get enough cans here."

"What's made it more dangerous?" he says, repeating the question he's been asked, almost as if he can answer it better if he says it aloud. "Everything has made it more dangerous," he says, talking about "the scary Negro that wears an eye patch and goes around the park screaming and yelling, but I don't think he's attacked anyone."

Like neon lights flashing on and off, his reasoning comes and goes. Now he's not talking about the scary guy with the eye patch. Now he's blaming "the punks" for the meanness in the park. Now he's blaming "Ronald Reagan" because "he stirred up the racial tensions."

Now he's spitting out insults about the man who jumped him. Michael says he knows the guy. Says the guy had hassled him before. Says the guy was "pigeon-toed." Says he was "husky" and " "sort of a nerd" with "glasses thick as Coke bottles." Calls him a "gutless coward" and a lot of four-letter words.

He says the police arrested the guy and took him away for "assaulting a disabled person." The police say they have no arrest record with Michael as a victim. They do have a collection of misdemeanor citations of him urinating and drinking in public.

Michael doesn't know why the guy jumped him. He says he doesn't bother people, not even to panhandle because "I don't spare-change people. I never did."

If people want to give him something, he'll take it. Money? Sure. A cigarette so he won't have to scrounge from public ashtrays or the ground? Sure. After all . . .

It's still molten-hot. Michael puts on a dirty flannel shirt. The shirt covers splinter-thin arms that are milky-white with a spider's web of blue veins. He kills his High Gravity Lager, crushes the can and puts it in his white plastic bag.

"This is one of the best places for picking up cans," he says, as if for the first time. "Even though I live across the street, if it wasn't for the cans, I wouldn't be out here anymore."

He walks off, making his way through The Park. Looking down. Taking things in through eyes the color of a frozen river.

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2606