Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Sometimes the Good Lord Lets the Sun Shine Down Upon You Again

Fall came, and found me sleeping in a park close to the bar I cooked at. I would come to work every night with my sleeping mat and all my stuff on my back, saying that it was a yoga mat and I had just gotten done with class. I would fall asleep under the lights above the spot next to the storage shed I had deemed most safe from being spotted by cops, yuppies walking their dogs, and the occasional, random, homicidal maniac. I would wake around six every morning, with the next twelve hours to spend walking around the city, at the library reading every newspaper in stock, at the coffeeshop writing my book, at friend's houses, anywhere, until work that night. I could at least get all the food I needed at work, and surreptitiously stock up on various foodstuffs while there.

I finally found a room in a punk house on the northeast side which cost $250 a month, an amount I was able to pay as I had gotten paid as soon as it opened up. I moved in there, to great delight. It was nice to sleep inside, especially as it was getting quite cold and wet in the Pacific Northwest, being October. It was me and a couple of other kids that lived there, all potheads with no jobs, just sitting around watching old horror movies and listening to NPR all day.

In a couple weeks after I was living there, the house was foreclosed on, and its ownership was returned to a bank. We got an eviction which said we had to be out in two weeks, or the Sheriff would remove us. By this time, my friend Jesse, also homeless, had started staying there, in the living room. My other two official roommates moved out, but Jesse and I stayed and squatted the place for as long as the coast was clear, which turned out to be longer than we had been told, as the gears of beurocracy turn slowly with such matters.

It was December first that we had to be out, and I remember laying on my stained mattress in front of the TV, watching Barney on public television, now out of a job, smoking pot with Jesse. We didn't know what we were going to do. We had to be out by nine in the morning, and had nowhere to go, and not enough money to get anything between us but a shared, fleabitten hotel room downtown with crackwhores and other bums for neighbors. Despair hung heavily in the air, despite our wanton attempts at wafting it out of the room.

There was a knock at our door. We both flinched, figuring it was the cops, and that we were going to get into some kind of trouble. Army crawling over to the window, I crept up onto the couch to see who was parked outside. No squad cars. I rose and went to the front door, peeking out of the peephole. It was our next door neighbor, Noel. I opened the door, relieved.

"What's up, Noel?" I said, as Jesse emerged from the darkened kitchen, where the back door was.

"Nothing much. I was wondering if you guys had any grass? I'm all out and I'm freaking over my day at work today," she sighed.

"Of course we do! Come on in," I said, waiving her into the living room.

She plopped down on the couch. Noel was an old hand from the Portland crust/metal scene. We were both kind of in awe of her. She had run away from home and hopped trains at the age of like fifteen, and had tattoos all over her face, crummy dreadlocks, and a very warm presence. I had hung out with her only a couple times, but I didn't know her as well as Jesse did, and he barely knew her. I walked over to the other couch and plucked a mangy bag of nuggets off of the coffee table. Searching around for my pipe and finally locating it, I jammed several pieces in.

"Thank you so much, guys. I am so stressed out I could pull the bumper off of my car with my bare hands."

"No problem. You know you're always welcome here."

She lit the pipe and pulled in a hefty load of black smoke, allowing it to just waft out of her mouth for several seconds of its own volition, then collapsing in a coughing fit. Recovered, she passed me the pipe, grinning. I took a pull off of it, passing it to Jesse.

"So when are you guys out of here?" she coughed. She knew our predicament. Her and her roommate had been scheming to steal the dryer in the basement for several days, before the cops came.

"Actually, we gotta be out tomorrow morning. 9 am. And, we don't know what we're gonna do. Jesse might have a closet he can sleep in in St. John's, but I don't know where I'm gonna go at all. Probably go back to Fremont Park for a little while."

"Well, there's an old RV parked in my backyard that we're not using right now. Nick was staying in there last month but I kicked him out because he was always up in my shit, never respecting my space, always wanting to sleep in my room and shit. Pissed me off."

Jesse and I crept closer, shivering, our breath hanging in front of our heads momentarily in the freezing, trashed, Victorian living room.

"Are you serious? You wouldn't mind? We could pay you money and everything," Jesse said, rubbing his hands together and brandishing the pipe to his lips.

"Yeah, actually. I would like someone to be living in it, and I could definitely use a little more cash right now, with Tieren's school supplies and everything." Tieren was her eight year old son, who I had watched a couple times while she was out at the bar. He was uncannily bright, once correcting me that "a spider is NOT a bug, you dummy! Its an ARACHNID!"

I looked at Jesse, and he nodded approvingly. "Well, let's have a look-see," I said, setting the pipe down on the coffee table, stuffing the bag in my pocket.

We walked next door, to her backyard, to see our new prospective home for the next month. It was a 1970s Ford RV with a bed above the driver's and passenger seats, a sink, cabinets, another space in the back for someone else to sleep, rugs, and a power hookup that ran into her house. Turning on the lights, and surveilling the place, we looked at each other, thinking "holy shit...we've got a place to stay in december! Hell yes!"

"We'll take it," I said, scoping the place out, beaming.

"Ok, well, you guys can decide what you want to pay me, but I would like $100 total for the month. I don't know what's going to happen with it in January. There is a chance you could stay, but I think Dumpy's coming back from Minnesota and needs a place to stay then. Its not that warm or anything, but the power should support a small space heater, and maybe a radio or something. But you can have it."

We stood there silently, looking around, and told her we would give her $200 in the morning, after cashing our checks.

It was a cold December, sharing that RV with Jesse. But the Lord was with us, and there was much late night laughter, bent over a Scrabble board, with the all-night classical station on the clock radio, and the vague idea that something out there was watching out for us.

Why, or what, we have yet to figure out.

No comments:

Post a Comment