The Volunteer
9
AT ONE TIME Gerald had a home. But when he left for college, his mother had sold the house he grew up in and Marian finished high school living in an apartment. That certainly wasn’t a home. As soon as Marian got out of school she got married and moved into a real house in Seattle. She didn’t consider the apartment a home. Gerald lived in an apartment while he was in college, shared with Brian. But neither of them considered the apartment home. “Home,” said an old adage, “is where the heart is.” Well, Gerald’s heart lived firmly in his chest. The home that most people talked about always seemed to Gerald to be where their stuff was. His friends were constantly running home to get their ball glove, to eat, to watch TV. The idea of home was meaningless, Gerald had once asserted in an essay in the college newspaper. “The idea of ‘home’ may actually be the root of all conflict. If you have a home, you have to protect it. Even nations war over boundaries in order to protect their homeland. The notion that a nation, a people, a culture, or a race might have a home means that they have something to fight for. Home is what is threatened by different ideologies. Home is what people establish to provide a safe environment to raise their children. But our increasingly transient population is laying waste to that concept of home. Where settlers once put down roots and children grew old and died in the same house that they were born in, today the world is shrinking and people move hundreds of miles simply to take on a new job or marry a lover. Perhaps one day the world will become so small that we will all consider it our home and join together to protect it rather than spend our lives fighting over it.” It was a good, if controversial essay, Gerald thought. Of course, he would never actually give up his own home. When he and Lori were married, they would raise children in their home and those children, while they might occupy a different building, would always have a place to come home to.
Now the concept of home seemed completely foreign to G2. His heart was in his chest where it belonged, and all his “stuff” was in the canvas bag he slung over his shoulder. That seemed to be all the home he ever needed. Some hundred miles down the track, Mad Max showed G2 the video that was cut together from what they had filmed. Mad Max narrated and Mary’s video cut to scenes of G2 flying in the wind, his tag on the car, his puzzled look, his cardboard sign. Following the closing remark, the camera zoomed in on the heart tag of the pair and then cut back to G2 who was smiling and nodded to the camera as he said “God bless.” The train pulled into Omaha and Mad Max and Mad Mary jumped out. “Gotta find a place to plug in and recharge the batteries,” Mad Max said. “We’ll find a WiFi hotspot and upload the video, too,” Mad Mary said. “God bless you, G2.” G2 kept on the train to Atchison, then jumped off and headed further south toward Kansas City. Maybe he’d go on down to Texas.
Technically, Nate wasn’t a panhandler. He told folks that, including police who happened by. Nate was a street musician—an entertainer. He was often seen near the public market in one city or the city square in another. Nate was always careful to set up where people did not have to step around him to pass on the sidewalk, but had easy access to the small guitar case that he set out to collect donations. Technically, Nate told the police, he wasn’t asking for money at all. He was simply performing for the joy of making people happy and some of them saw fit to tip him. He played on his ukulele and sometimes his harmonica—occasionally both at the same time. Sometimes he sang. Nate also told stories. Usually funny stories. Sometimes stories that he made up on the spot about a little boy or girl who happened by and in the story had a great adventure flying on a dragon or battling pirates on the open sea. Nate was a busker with a bicycle and traveled all around the country playing his ukulele or telling stories.
Some places in the country require licenses or permits for busking, but these are more often required for playing on private property, like a shopping mall, than in public parks, streets, or centers. A busker is more likely to be arrested or told to move along if he blocks a thoroughfare, is too loud, or aggressively solicits money. Nate was none of those, and so he got along pretty well with the police in most places. Since Nate had a bicycle, he was also likely to spend some of his hard-earned money on a room at the Y, but the pack on his bike included a small tent.
The other thing of interest that Nate’s pack included was a coffee pot.
“I used to drink the finest espresso,” Nate told G2 one night when they shared a campsite. Nate couldn’t help but tell a story if he was able and G2 didn’t interrupt. “A 4-shot Americano. Now that’s real coffee. I couldn’t go a morning without a cup of coffee, I tell you. I could drink a double-espresso right now and sleep like a baby all night long. It wouldn’t bother me at all. I just like coffee. It’s not like an addiction or anything. It doesn’t really affect me. But a day is so empty without it. I know everyplace that serves free coffee. When you’re out on the open road, you look for those rest stops where the local Kiwanis are serving coffee to keep drivers awake. If you are in town, you go to Trader Joe’s or Cost Plus. They always have a sample pot of their best brew for people to try. If you’re careful, you can get two or three of those tiny cups they serve without people getting mad at you. But times have been hard, G2. Sometimes you are just too far away from a free cup o’ Joe. And that’s why I have this.” Nate reached into his pack and pulled out a coffeepot. It was dented and fire blackened, but G2 could still read the words marked on the side that said “Nate’s Pot.”
“The problem is that coffee’s got expensive. Just can’t go in and buy a pound of ‘8-O’Clock’ anymore. But I got a deal. I went over to Whole Foods and they give away coffee grounds from the espresso machine. Every time they fill up the tray, they dump the grounds in a bag and give it to people for their gardens. I told them I’ve got a garden and would like some grounds. They give me this bag of coffee. So I just scoop up a bunch of the used coffee grounds and dump them in the pot, cover it with water and let it boil about ten minutes. You’ve got to let it sit for a while after you take it off the fire. Gives the grounds a chance to settle. You’re still going to end up chewing your coffee, but won’t be that bad. You pour the coffee off the top of the grounds and it’s just as good as Starbuck’s.” Nate had been preparing a pot of coffee all through his story and offered G2 a taste. G2 didn’t have a cup, but Nate let him sip out of his. The coffee was strong and bitter and left bits of grounds between G2’s teeth. But, he guessed that if he were alone in the cold, a cup could warm you up after a cold night on the ground.
“My granddad loved coffee,” Nate continued. “Lived up in the mountains in West Virginia and still had a wood stove that heated his house and on which he cooked all his meals right up till the ’80s when he went to live in a home. I remember as a kid going to visit him and seeing a big old porcelain coffeepot on the stove. It was always there. Granddad would make himself a rasher of bacon and an egg for breakfast on that stove every morning. The eggshell would go right into the basket with the coffee grounds. That’s where I learned you could reuse the coffee grounds. Granddad would add a scoop of fresh coffee on top of yesterday’s coffee grounds and just set the pot on to perk away. When the preacher came over to visit, it was occasion for fresh grounds. Granddad would perk up a pot on the stove and then the preacher would fill his cup with hot water and put just a couple spoons of Granddad’s coffee in the cup. Then they’d laugh about the preacher coffee and play gin rummy all afternoon.”
Nate lapsed into silence as he sipped his brew. G2 took a tiny sip of wine from his bottle. Nate nodded his head. He understood.
G2 sat outside the baseball stadium with his sign held in front of him. Sports crowds were good. He had walked through the parking lot on his way to his favorite entrance gate and inhaled all the delightful aromas coming from the grills on the backs of truck beds. Men and women were cooking hot dogs and chili. The coals were sizzling. The air was filled with excitement and laughter. People had come before noon for the 4:00 game and a few were already pretty drunk. As G2 passed a truck with a crowd of men and women, he couldn’t help but turn toward the smells and grill. His step must have hesitated because in a moment he felt a hand on his arm. He turned, startled, to look into the face of a man whose eyes were bleary with drink. G2 was prepared to run as soon as the man loosened his grip, but the low gravelly voice, though slightly slurred, was not antagonistic.
“You eat today, man?” the man asked. G2 thought for a moment. No, that had been yesterday. He shook his head. “Dolores! Get me a plate with a dog and some tater salad and bring me a bottle!” There was a stirring on the bed of the truck and a redheaded woman moved to the tailgate to look down. “Who’s your mommy, Buddy?” she asked to the entertainment of the group. “You are, darlin’!” he said. “Who’s your little friend, then?” Dolores hollered back. Everyone looked at G2. “He followed me home. Can I keep him?” Buddy called back. “Only if you promise to clean up after him,” Dolores responded and then passed a plate of food and a bottle of beer down off the truck to Buddy. Buddy handed the plate and bottle to G2. “Can’t go to a ball game on an empty belly, feller,” Buddy said, patting G2 on the back. “Tuck in.” G2 didn’t wait for a second invitation. He scooped up the hot dog and ate it in three bites. He swallowed a bit of beer to wash it down.
Beer was different than wine. Wine was meant to be savored. G2 always let the wine sit on his tongue, no matter how cheap or bad the wine was. It was drinking the wine that comforted him, not the result of being drunk. Wine was sometimes sweet and sometimes sour and some were so dry you needed a drink of water to wash them down. But beer was bitter by comparison. Beer was made to wash food down with. You drank it on a hot day to cool off, or after a bite of hot food to quell your tongue. Beers could go down one after another and never be noticed until you were passed out under a freeway overpass somewhere. G2 didn’t bother to savor the beer or hold it on his tongue. He swallowed it after every bite and had an empty plate and an empty bottle in minutes. He looked up at Buddy with a smile on his face and said, “God bless.” Everyone on and around the truck had been watching him eat in silence and let out a bit of a cheer. “I think he likes you, Buddy,” Dolores called. “You run along now, old man,” Buddy said taking the empties from G2 and patting him on the back again. G2 bobbed again and turned to hurry away. “Aw, weren’t that nice,” G2 heard someone say as he moved away. “Buddy’s got a big heart.”
G2 belched and realized that he didn’t dare breathe on anyone while he was panhandling because unlike wine, beer left a telltale reek on his breath. G2 chose a submissive pose and sat against a light post about ten yards from the gate. He propped his sign against his knees and put his cup in front of him and lowered his head to his knees. This way no one would smell his breath and G2 could depend on the sign to give each passing stranger a good God bless. G2’s position also enabled him to keep an eye on the cup. You had to watch for little kids, especially, though occasionally another bum would try to slip a bill out of your cup, too. Whenever G2 had a bill in his cup, he slipped a hand out and moved it into his pocket. People could look at a cup completely full of change and still figure you hadn’t made anything, but two dollar bills in the cup and people stopped giving. Too many people thought bums on the street made more money panhandling than “honest people” made working their jobs. When the crowds had passed and the game had started, G2 stirred to gather his things together. He was stiff after sitting on the pavement for so long and he needed a bathroom or a convenient wall to piss against. A few feet in front of him, a ticket scalper was looking at the half a dozen tickets he hadn’t been able to get rid of before the game. He looked around, but no one was waiting for a last minute bargain. “Fuck,” he said softly. He walked over to G2 and stuffed a ticket in his cup. “Enjoy the game,” he said as he walked off.
G2 didn’t know much about baseball games and players these days. Occasionally some fellow would talk about the damn Raiders or something, but G2 wasn’t sure if they were talking about baseball or some other sport. He hadn’t been to a baseball game since he was a kid. But what he did know was that baseball stadiums had bathrooms and he could clean up a little without having to go to a shelter. So he packed his sign in his bag with his cup and took the ticket to the gatekeeper. The ticket taker looked at the ticket and at G2 and squinted regarding what to do. She called another ticket taker over to her. “He can’t have a legit ticket, can he?” she asked. “Why not?” her companion responded. “Scan it and see.” She pointed a device at the stub of the ticket and her machine beeped. “See?” said the other ticket taker. “Nothing wrong with his ticket. “But he’s a…” she started. “He’s a bum,” the other responded. “But look at him. He’s an American bum. Baseball’s an American sport. Any American with a ticket has the right to see a game.” He waved G2 through the gate. “Second tier, 211 Section.” G2 headed for the stairs.
Gerald won a trip to see the White Sox play ball in Chicago by delivering newspapers. It was a big deal. Jason, the distribution manager, had a van and loaded eight carriers in the back of it and he and his wife drove them to Chicago early in the morning. They barely made the first pitch at 1:15 after the drive and finding parking. They were great seats for boys, as high up in the stadium as they could get and right over the top of one of the entrances to the lower tier, so there was no one in front of them. Ted Wills was pitching and Bill Skowron whacked a homer in the third. The game was exciting, but by the 7th inning, it was just another long sit. Gerald and his friend Salvador went out to buy popcorn while everyone else was singing “Take me out to the ballgame.” They’d already had way too much to eat, but the popcorn gave them an excuse to get up and leave their seats. When they got back to their seats, Sal had the brilliant idea that they should see if they could toss a piece of popcorn into a guy’s beer on the next level down. The boys got into this game more than the baseball game, laughing as each kernel of popcorn flew through the air and landed on a different person. They were suddenly startled by the appearance of a face directly in front of them. A cop was standing on a ladder in the entrance below them staring right into their eyes. “You think people come to a ball game to get popcorn thrown at them?” the cop snarled. “No sir,” Sal said. “We’re sorry, sir.” “Give!” the cop commanded, holding out his hand. The boys handed him their bags of popcorn. “Now sit there and watch the rest of the game quietly or I’ll throw you out of here.” “Yes sir,” both boys answered. They sat back in their seats without moving for the last inning and a half of the game. Gerald couldn’t remember who won.
There were certain camps that were always risky to stay in, but sometimes the risks of staying on the streets alone were worse. Police downtown were on a rampage to clear the business district of people sleeping in doorways and on park benches. They were arresting people for vagrancy. That meant that after a speedy trial in the morning, if the bum couldn’t come up with the money for a sizable fine, he’d be sent to a labor camp for 30 days. G2 had been in a labor camp once. They were sent out to pick up garbage along an Interstate highway every day. Sundays they were forced to stay in their dorms all day, but the county didn’t count Sundays as part of the 30 days. Once every two hours, a truck would drive up the berm of the road and collect the black garbage bags the laborers left by the side of the road. They would offer a ladle of water to each laborer as they went. If you missed your water, you had nothing to drink for another two hours. They brought you a peanut butter sandwich at lunchtime, but you didn’t get a break to eat it. You had to keep working. At night, after ten hours or more of picking up garbage, you were picked up in the same truck as the garbage and driven back to the dorm. There you got a bowl of watery soup and some bread and had to stay in your bed the rest of the night. G2 watched carefully all through the first week, but found no opportunity to escape. Thursday the next week, he saw his opportunity and just after the water truck had come and the guard’s attention was focused on the next man up the road, G2 slipped over the berm of the track they were working next to. He could see the freight train approaching, just picking up speed as it left town. When it pulled up next to him, G2 ran beside it and caught hold of a side ladder. It almost jerked his arm out of his shoulder, but G2 hung on and quickly dropped down out of sight between two tank cars. He pulled off the yellow striped vest they wore along the road—bumblebee jackets, they guys called them—and the county issued coveralls. He stuffed the vest into the crack between the tank and the bed of the car. The coveralls he turned inside out and put them back on so people couldn’t see the “property of county jail” stenciled on the back. The problem with escaping instead of serving out your term was that you had to leave with nothing. If you served out your thirty days, they paid you $30 and gave you your “personal effects” as they called them. If you skipped, they didn’t come looking for you. You just didn’t have anything when you left. G2 had been with nothing before. It didn’t mean that much to be with nothing again. But he didn’t ever want to get caught and sent to a labor camp again.
It was different with the labor whores. Cops left them alone and the ladies aid society at the church brought them coffee where they stood on the street outside the Home Depot. They gathered there every morning, but especially on Saturday and Sunday. Most of them weren’t homeless. They were just unemployed or on strike or laid-off. They’d stand out there in their sturdy Red Wing work boots and leather gloves, posing like they were ready to lift a heavy object. Even in cold weather, some of the labor whores would wear T-shirts with the sleeves ripped off to show off their muscles. The women who sold their bodies near the theater district were often told by police to move on, their johns were arrested, or they were coerced into having sex for protection or to keep from going to jail. But no one bothered the men who sold their bodies. Every so often a guy with a truckload of lumber would pull up in front of the group standing on the sidewalk. He’d roll down his window and say, “Two guys, two hours, fifty bucks. Heavy lifting.” Those who were willing to take the contract would step forward and he’d point to two and say “You and you. Get in the back.” They’d hop in the back and he’d drive off. They would get to a construction site where they unloaded the truck, helped lift a stud wall into place. Load the truck with scrap for the dump, go with it to the dump and unload it, then be dropped off back at Home Depot with $25 each in their pockets. They’d nod at the others who were still their trying to sell their bodies and get in their cars and drive away. $25 might get them milk for the baby, or keep their wives from selling themselves in the theater district.
G2 sat at a small fire and took a careful sip from his bottle. Jess the Mess sat across from him. “We gotta get outta here,” Jess said. “They chase us out of downtown. They keep us from sleeping in doorways. You think they won’t chase us out from under the railroad bridge? Only reason they haven’t been here yet is because they’d get their shoes muddy. They’re gonna come.” Jess had a good scheme going. He panhandled with a sense of humor. There was a small cut on his forehead that he opened every morning with his pocket knife—just enough to have a little fresh blood dried around what was a pretty serious-looking scar. Jess was a verbal panhandler and didn’t have a sign. He’d just call out to folks who passed by. “I need money for an operation,” he’d call. “Can you help a guy who needs an operation?” Inevitably someone would stop and ask what kind of an operation he needed. “I need a brain transplant. Look here,” he’d say as he pointed to the scar and fresh blood. “They already took out the old one, but I don’t have the money to put the new one in.” People would usually laugh, but they’d also usually give the guy a buck for the entertainment. Problem was you couldn’t stay in the same place with that kind of line because in a day everyone had heard it and you had to find a new place or a new pitch. Jess usually moved on. Tonight, Jess seemed more agitated than usual. “I’m not going back to the workhouse, I’ll tell you that. Bitches want free labor to clean the chicken farms. Not going back there. I’ll fight them first.” With that Jess pulled a gun out of his pocket and showed it around. G2 started edging away from the fire.
Gerald’s mother and father were radical non-violence people. From the time Gerald could remember, no guns were ever allowed in his home. His father had served alternate service during the Korean Conflict, having refused to touch a gun. He never spoke of that time, but Gerald understood that he’d served as an orderly in a tuberculosis sanitarium. Of course Gerald had watched The Lone Ranger on television and wanted desperately to have a six shooter with silver bullets and a white horse. His father said, “No guns is no guns. No real guns. No toy guns.” Kids being kids, when Gerald got together with his friends in the neighborhood in the summer, they played cowboys and they played army. Some of the kids had toy guns, but Gerald made do with any handily shaped stick as his weapon. The kids would run up the street dodging between parked cars and popping up to yell, “Pow, pow. Got you Jeff!” At which time Jeff would enact his death scene in the street and be out of play until one of his team could tag him and bring him back to life. The games, while simulating violence, were innocent and no one actually got shot or died or was hurt.
Not until Gerald was in high school. Jeff disappeared from the neighborhood that summer. He’d begun running with a pretty tough bunch of kids who were always looking for trouble. One night after basketball practice, Gerald was getting a ride home with Jan and Ron. On the street outside the school a carload of toughs pulled up beside them. Ron dove for cover in the bushes, but Jan turned to face the toughs as two piled out of the car. Gerald never really heard the conflict, but he saw Jan hit in the mouth and start to bleed. Gerald stooped slightly to drop his book bag and go help his friend. Just as he moved, the boot of the other tough grazed his head as the kid jumped for him. Assuming Gerald was down, both toughs jumped back in the car and it sped off. As Gerald watched them getting in the front seat, he saw Jeff in the back seat lean forward. Jeff pointed his index finger at Gerald and pulled it back like he was pulling a trigger.
“You owe me for the dentist!” Jan shouted at the car as it pulled away. He was still bleeding, but refused to let Gerald drive his car. He dropped Gerald and Ron off a block away from their homes and continued driving.
Jan was out of school for a few days and his face was black and blue when he returned. The dentist had managed to straighten and wire his teeth in place, so he didn’t lose them, but he didn’t eat meat for two months afterward. They never talked about the event. The one time Gerald brought it up Jan cut him off and said not to mention it. Maybe Jan thought Gerald wasn’t going to help him. After all, Gerald was hardly touched. The kick to his head had all but missed him. Gerald wondered about that. Why didn’t they hit him, too? It was easy to see why they would ignore Ron. He was half their size and hiding in the bushes, but both Gerald and Jan were fully standing on the sidewalk. Why the missed kick and nothing else? They had identified four of the six boys in the car, but of course the police just sent a warning over to the boys’ homes and nothing was ever really done about it. They wrote it off to an interschool rivalry that got a little out of hand. Gerald came to believe that he was protected, maybe even charmed. There were bad things that happened around him every day. Not as bad as having a friend get beat up, but bad things. An accident occurred just after he’d passed the intersection. His car spun out on ice, but came to a stop facing the right direction and he was able to continue. Another car on the same patch of ice crashed into two parked cars and the driver was put in the hospital. But bad things didn’t happen to Gerald. He thought that maybe his father had used up Gerald’s quota of bad things when he was killed in the auto accident when Gerald was almost thirteen. Maybe Gerald’s father was still “always there” when Gerald needed him.
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