It’s a beautiful night — the kind that just seems to bring people out of the woodwork.

All up and down Hillsborough Street, people stroll leisurely in the darkness. Some are getting food, some drinks. They’re mostly college students from N.C. State or Meredith, although occasionally a few are simply members of the Raleigh community.

But one guy here just doesn’t seem to belong.

Everyone reacts to him a little differently. A few couples quicken their pace in his vicinity, only resuming their stroll out of eyesight. Others look down on him with concern. Some ignore him altogether.

He looks harmless enough, sitting on a curb of one of the thoroughfare’s side streets, legs crossed. His collared shirt is tucked in and a red duffel bag sits at his side. Ignoring his surroundings, he’s so intent on the cigarette in his mouth that his entire 5-foot-4-inch frame seems hunched around its remnants.

He smokes it down to the filter.

Recovering from his trance, his dull, glassy eyes evaluate his surroundings quickly, instinctively — they find their mark.

“Excuse me ma’am, I’m real hungry,” he says in a meager voice. “Do you think you could buy me a piece of pizza or something?”

A 20-something woman in a short skirt and a sequined tank top, who had shifted her gaze to the ground as she approached, now looks at the man on the curb.

“Nope. I don’t have any change,” she says, as she reaches in her skirt pockets.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the man says.

His face doesn’t fall. This isn’t a big disappointment. For 43-year-old Howard Smith, this is just the routine.

And he’s not alone.

There’s more to this street than pizza shops, bars and convenience stores. On these crumbling sidewalks, the future destination of $3 million worth of renovation funding, the homeless, like Smith, fight to stay alive.

A troubled past

Things weren’t always this way for Smith. Growing up in Pinehurst, N.C., he lived with his mother and father. He was even a Boy Scout.

But that’s not to say that things were perfect for his family. According to Smith, his father often abused his mother.

“All my life I’ve been on my own,” Smith said. “I grew up fast.”

He was in and out of fights as a kid, then in and out of prison when he was older. Smith said he didn’t want to give details.

“You know what they say — back then I was young, dumb, full of come,” Smith said with a grin.

He eventually married and lived in Pinehurst with his wife, three sons and a dog, but in 1991, Smith said he and his wife divorced. He accused her of cheating on him, but after Social Services investigated allegations that he abused their children, she received custody.

Smith said he hasn’t been the same since.

“Since ’91, I went down,” he said. “My wife just broke my heart.”

Although he said he hasn’t been homeless for the last 15 years, this current stint, which has lasted about five months, isn’t the first time.

He likes it around Raleigh he said, because it keeps him close enough to his three sons, who eventually moved to Wendell, N.C., with their mother. Although he hasn’t spoken to them “in a while,” he said Wendell police officers often update him on the boys’ status.

Every day, he says as he stares off into space, he thinks about them.

Getting by

He snaps back to reality, looking around.

It’s been about 20 minutes since his last smoke. Giving up his pursuit of a meal, he changes goals. He asks a man for a cigarette, but the man says he doesn’t smoke.

Normally, Smith said he tries to get work at a local temp service, but sometimes he is forced to beg. It’s something he said he’s not fond of doing.

“You know what hurts?” he asks. “Asking people for something.”

His search through the garbage earlier yielded nothing edible, and he hasn’t had anything to eat all day. He said he would much rather find his own food than ask someone else. Even picking up and finishing half-smoked cigarettes off the street is often a better option.

But he is thankful for the weather tonight. On nights like tonight, he can go pretty much anywhere he wants to sit or sleep. He normally stays where he feels the most safe — and one of those places is on Hillsborough Street.

“The people around here — they’re good people,” Smith said.

Even here however, things aren’t always completely safe. He points to a fresh, purple shiner, glistening wetly under his left eye. There’s a glint in his eyes as he tells the story. In a nearby park, he had gotten into a fight with another man, whom he didn’t know.

“I think he was into drugs,” he said.

There is a difference between those working toward a better life and others who are not, said business management senior Erin Bergstrom. Bergstrom spends her time volunteering with the nonprofit organization Passage Home, and is one of the officers of a student group called Hope for the Homeless.

The “invisible homeless,” she said, often don’t necessarily look homeless.

“They appear on the surface like you and I — they just have no place to live or go,” she said.

The chronically homeless, however, are the kind often associated with the “stereotypical homeless” — often with clear ties to drugs or alcohol.

“A lot of chronically homeless have made a choice that this is the lifestyle they want to live,” she said. “Most people on Hillsborough are chronically homeless, and that’s a smaller percentage.”

Sgt. Jon Barnwell of the NCSU Campus Police has noticed the trend as well. A bicycle officer for more than a year, Barnwell said he’s seen what happens when people give money to those who ask for it.

“A lot of the money given goes directly to alcohol and drugs,” he said.

But Smith contends that’s not the case with him. He said he does drink occasionally, “just to get me up,” and he pointed out that he did have another vice.

“I smoke a joint once in a while,” he said with a smile. “Who don’t?”

Nevertheless, Smith does recognize that alcohol and drug abuse is a problem, pointing out he’s seen many other homeless men and women go down this route.

“There’s a lot down here people don’t know about,” he said.

He’s ready for sleep. Smiling at the thought, he said on a night like tonight, finding somewhere to bed down isn’t difficult for a man of his stature.

“I ain’t but 5’4,” he said. “I’ll curl up anywhere and just go to sleep.”

But before he does, he said he would like to get something to eat.

“I hate to ask right now, but I’m about to starve,” he said. “It’s only when I need something.”

He’s said he’s so embarrassed of his situation that he hasn’t told his mother, now 63. Every time he calls her, he simply tells her he’s “fine.”

“I don’t want to hurt her,” Smith said. “She’s been hurt enough.”

The mantra

He still needs a cigarette. He asks a few more times, but everyone gives him the same answer.

“God, nobody smokes in this town,” he says. He frowns. “Bunch of liars.”

Finally a pair of young women oblige him. They’re just light cigarettes they say, and they don’t taste very good. He doesn’t mind. He’s been a smoker for 25 years — and surely not about to stop now.

He lights up as they walk away.

They’re attractive.

He notices.

Relationships however, aren’t exactly his thing right now. He’s got to get back on his feet, he says, he’s got to be able to take care of himself first.

“I don’t touch no one and no one touches me,” he said. “I got to have it together first.”

There’s a big job coming up in about two or three weeks, he says, and he thinks he’ll be able to get himself straight after he takes it. After saving money for a while, his plan is to get enough to rent an apartment. The plan consumes his thoughts. He spends a lot of his time on this, thinking of ways to better his situation. It’s one of the reasons he doesn’t like going to the shelters in town.

“Too many people want to talk,” he said. “I’ve got to think, concentrate.”

Bergstrom doesn’t know this man — but she knows his story.

She works with people like him all the time and said tales like his are all too common.

“A lot of people in a situation of homelessness are working hard to overcome these obstacles,” Bergstrom said.

According to 2003 U.S. Census Bureau data, about 61,700 people in Wake County fall below the poverty line, about 8.7 percent of the population.

Getting out of this situation, Bergstrom said, isn’t always easy. She said she once worked with a homeless woman, a single mother of three, who rode the bus an hour and a half every day to find work.

“When you’re homeless, everything’s harder,” Bergstrom said.

It’s a demolition job, Smith says with a smile. This kind of work has always been his specialty: carpentry, construction. He’s a working man he says, he can get straight.

“I’ve got to get up and do it on my own,” he said. “It won’t be long.”

But until then, he’s living day by day.

“I do the best I can,” he said.

“I do the best I can.” He says this again and again as he speaks, as much to himself as to anyone else. Its applications vary widely. From where he sleeps, to how he finds food, to whether he gets work at the temp service: I do the best I can. His own personal mantra.

“I go day by day and I worry,” he says. “I pray to God tomorrow is gonna be better.”

He releases the cigarette smoke from his lungs, and flicks the spent butt onto the street.

It’s time for another.

Back to reality

Most people will never see so deeply into this side of Hillsborough Street.

They’ll keep strolling down the sidewalk in 70-degree weather, or hurry if it’s rainy or cold. They’ll all react a little differently to people like Smith. Some will quicken their pace. Others will look down on them with concern. Still more may ignore him altogether.

And every once in a while, someone may offer a cigarette. Or some change. Or even a sandwich.

Maybe one day, Smith will get that job and that apartment.

But in the meantime, Smith, and others like him, will just keep doing the best they can.