The Homeless Game, Chapter 10

Bob

Intro: You may wonder why I call this collection of essays “The Homeless Game.” If you hang on until the end, you’ll see. I interviewed sixteen homeless people for what was going to be a book, but somehow publishers wanted more of a trajectory, wanted me to be a sociologist. . . .whatever. I think, actually, this is a better use of these interviews. I think more people may read them. They were done a while back, but nothing has changed.If I went to the Goodwill Inn today, I’d meet people just like these. These people, by the way, all gave me written permission to use their stories.

Bob

Bob prefers to meet me at the Inn, but said he’d also really enjoy a decent cup of coffee, not the “awful stuff” at the Inn.  Starbucks is in the opposite direction, so I bring what my husband made this morning, and convinced him that Jerry was a wonderful coffee maker. He seems good with that, except he goes back to the kitchen and loads up on cream and sugar.

Bob has a left-over-hippie look to him, slim except for a little pot belly protruding under his blue cable-knit sweater.  His gray hair, halfway down his back, is tied back in a ponytail.  And his mustache, a scraggly little thing, hangs down over his lips. He wears glasses and a fairly large and obvious hearing aid. He says he has only about 20 percent of his hearing left in one ear, and 45 percent in the other.  It’s good that we’re in this windowless little conference room, I guess, for the sound.

He’s alluded to his history of being nasty and abusive, which may be true when he’s drinking, but he seems gentle and polite, to me. Well-mannered. I immediately like him.  I tell him he has a good story-teller’s voice, deep and resonant. He says nobody’s ever said that before.

“I have new teeth, too!” he says. “Just learning how to talk with them.”

Bob started out in Bronson, Michigan, population 950 back then, 62 years ago.  He has two brothers and a sister. “I was born an alcoholic,” he says. Both his parents were alcoholics. When he was five, his dad was driving drunk, with him in the car. He went through a yield sign and the car was broadsided. Bob had a broken collarbone and a concussion.

“In a couple days they brought in a priest in, who read me my last rites. A couple of days after that I came out of it,” he says.  I’m smiling to myself, seeing the priest like a policeman, reading him his last rites. But I know what he meant.

“My mother decided my dad did it on purpose. Tried to kill me. She decided I’d be better off with my grandparents. I stayed with them for a week, bedridden still. I could hear them arguing downstairs. My dad sounded drunk again, yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘He’s my son, I got a right to see him, I'm gonna go up.’ They finally agreed he could come give me my medications.  He was all teary, lovey-dovey, ‘I'm sorry boy, I didn't mean it, it was my fault, I'll do better.’

“The pills he gave me turned out to be my grandfather's nitroglycerin pills for his heart. They sped my heart up three times as fast as it's supposed to be.  So I went back in a coma, back at the hospital. I don’t know if it was his fault, or if they got them mixed up downstairs. Back in the hospital, another last rites were set upon me. After that my folks split up.”

His mother went back to college to get her nursing degree—she’s an RN, now.  The three youngest children stayed with the grandparents. Bob and his older brother were sent to Jackson, to St. Joseph’s Home for Boys. They were there for two years until their mother got a job and got settled.

I ask him about the orphanage.

“I was in a big community, just like this. The oldest was 17. There was a whole bunch of kids from 13 to 9, and a whole bunch of kids from 9 to 3.  The majority were in the middle—baby boomers [laugh]. Every piece of clothing had your name on it. It was like military life, got to make your beds a certain way, dinners are at a certain time. You got dining room, mess hall duties once a week, which I absolutely hated, because when smelt were running, the local Jaycees would donate smelt, in 55-gallon drums.  I had kitchen duty on Friday, and I had to clean smelt all day long.  I will not eat it today.”

I ask him if he was unhappy there.

“Yeah, well, it was a roller-coaster.  I made a couple of friends there. And the Lions Club or something had a NRA BB club where you could get your marksman certificate. And they had a nice hill out back for sledding. But it was always. . . .

“When I was seven, I think, I got in a fight with a guy because he stole my model airplane decals.  We got in a push-shove thing— kids don't fight, really, they push-shove—one of the nuns saw it. I said it’s his fault, he stole the decals. She says okay, then she takes off her rosary belt, with the big wooden beads bigger than gumdrops, about the size of quarters, wrapped that in a loop and says, ‘Hold your hands out.  Palms down.’ We each got about six whacks on the knuckle with that rosary bead.  I'll tell you what, that really put a crimper in my religion beliefs after that -- [laughter] -- Oh!  that hurt like hell. It was so cruel—coming from a nurse! I mean, not a nurse, a nun!”

I note the slip of the tongue.  Then I muse how, with scant information, the mind starts writing its own stories.  I also note how large the rosary beads have grown, how a moment of unfair punishment grows in the mind.

His mom got a job in Jackson, Michigan, got an apartment there and worked her way up to be a floor nurse. She was making pretty good money, he says, and got his brother and him out of the orphanage. His younger sister and younger brother wanted to stay with their Grandma, because they didn’t want to change schools.  Things were okay, Bob says. He was going to school, doing pretty well, had friends.

But his mom was always looking for something better. She changed jobs over and over. They moved from apartment to apartment. When the older children graduated from high school, they moved back in with their mother for a while, too. But “everybody just kind of dissolved and went their own way,” Bob says. One brother went into the Marines. Bob got a job selling women’s shoes in Jacobsen’s—he had his own apartment three days before he graduated from high school.

“That was a high point!” he says, laughing. “I enjoyed meeting people.  But I left that for a better paying job. I’d been taking drafting all through school, and a job opened up at Commonwealth Engineering. They have about 1200 employees.  I  was placed in the pipe and gas division. Every day I'd show up for work at my little bench, and wait for work to appear. Okay, I'm low man on the totem pole.  But I probably had two assignments in two months, each took me about two hours. The rest of the time I was just sitting there with my feet on my desk, reading magazines. Hey, you know, if there's anything you want me to do, you let me know! [laughs]  Well I put up with that for about eight months, and I couldn't stand it anymore.  It was too boring.”

So he joined the army.

“I kept hearing about Vietnam on TV. I decided to enlist, see what it was all about.  And— well, I don't know, I kinda liked Army life, to tell you the truth. It was like the orphanage. I knew all about following rules and regulations, picking up after myself. And  I got physically fit, probably the best shape I've ever been in. I was an infantryman, that was my MOS [Military Occupation Specialty], 11 Bravo but I have a secondary MOS, which is 71L2P -- which is a legal supervisor.  And after basic training I went to parachute school. I’d always wanted to jump.

“They sent me to Thailand before Vietnam. That was one year of vacation. I shared a house, off post, with two other guys. We just had to come in to work 9 to 5, just like a regular job—I was typing in a reenlistment office. But you're in the Orient, and weekends, I travelled all around, up north Chiang Mai, down to Bangkok. We were more or less right in the middle of the country. Beautiful country.  I drank like hell over there, too, it was so cheap! I’d go in to work with a hangover most days. But what’re they going to do, fire me? [laughs]

“Then I got orders to come back to the States, and take a desk job in Washington. I didn't want to be in Washington.  I didn't want to go through all the—in Thailand, they didn’t get on you about your haircut, your mustache, or havin' glossy shoes. So I volunteered for Vietnam. 

“I got shipped to the 101st Airborne Division, up north in the mountains, about seven miles from the DMZ, a place called Camp Tomahawk. They’d been pretty much massacred, bombed out. I was there for three weeks. Then all of a sudden I got orders to report to Camp Eagle, about 15 miles south of us. It’s where the generals stay, and helicopter pads -- real hooches instead of sandbag tents. They made me a Division Legal Ensign. I had like 10 days to train for it—the guy who’d been doing the job was going back home. Basically I did court reporting. I turned on my little Panasonic tape cassette deck, then went back and typed it out. 

“It was 14 hour days. Court in the morning, court in the afternoon, then again at 7:00 p.m., and  then go type everything up, and have it ready for the colonel to sign in the morning. Long hours, but easy.”

 I ask him if there was any fighting while he was there.

“We went out on patrols about every nine days.  But this was 1970, 1971. They were downsizing the American troops over there, trying to let the Vietnamese handle their own affairs. So things were pretty quiet.”

He does have a story to tell me.

“Four of us were in the back of a 2 ½ ton truck on our way up to the 101^st. Canvas on the sides, open in back. We’re back there with three 55 gallon drums.  On the side of one of these big drums it said Agent Orange.  We were joking, do they got little midget Indians in there, or secret agents, or what is this?  The banding was been broken on one can, so we lifted up the lid, this powder just blew all over— everybody looked orange.  [laugh]  You know, we tasted it, we were thinkin' it was Kool Aid. How could somebody have three 55 gallon drums of Kool Aid?  We were wiping it out of our eyes, you know, our clothes are all covered with it, our hair's covered with it. Everybody looked a fright.  [laugh]  Everybody looked like they were rust.  [Cough.] 

“The drivers knew what you were doing?” I ask this.

“Oh yeah!  They saw us!” he says. “They knew -- they were wavin' and howlin'.  It was deliberate. Yeah, it was deliberate.  Ha ha ha haaa [fake laugh].  Nobody knew what Agent Orange was.  They didn't know it was harmful. “

Bob got out of the army in ’71, drew unemployment for a while, then got into Lansing Community College on the GI bill. He took industrial drafting, but got bored and after one semester, never went back. He got a job at Kelsey Hayes, an automotive plant, being paid pretty well. He saved money and bought a car. When Kelsey Hayes went on strike, he bought a little camper van and took off, traveling around the country, sleeping in the van. He visited some old army buddies. When the money ran out, he came back and took a series of small jobs, each usually lasting no more than a season.

“Did you have any relationships during this time?” I ask. It interests me that he hasn’t mentioned this. He smiles, all his new teeth showing.  

“Oh lordy, yes.  I love women, and ah -- women seem to love me.  So I took advantage of it, and -- oh gosh, I was probably 28, 29 years old when I moved to Pleasant Lake, got a job working for this guy in masonry, and there was two girls living next door, both in high school.   I really hit off with this one, she had a voice like an angel.  Claudette. Claudette, yeah.  We wound up living together for about two years.  I'd get her up to go to high school and I'd go to work [laughs], you know. Her parents thought I was a nice guy. But it seemed like she started putting on weight, and I dropped her.  It was hard on her, too, she kept trying to get back. I moved to Lansing. Then I came back to Pleasant Lake, found another gal who I lived with for three years, 'til she finally left me . . . “

I ask if all this time he was drinking.

“Oh, yeah. The girls all liked to drink and party, and do puffin' – havin’  a good old time. I came back to Jackson and met this gal, Judy. She was divorced and had just broken up with her boyfriend. We hooked up in a bar. We lived together seven years. She had a job as office manager for a guy who was starting a company with dried cherry chips.  Put 'em in your grill, smokin' -- smokin' chips. He was gonna sell em' to Jim Beam so they could smoke 'em in their fires. He had visions of grandeur.  He kept it going for about two years and it went kerplop. 

“Judy bought Suttons Bakery.  She started going to Jackson about every weekend, saying she was going to visit her girlfriends. But I called and found out. So I drove down there to her ex-boyfriend’s house. It was midnight. She came to the door in her pajamas. It was all over then, you know, seven years. I loved her right up to the end, so much, so much. This was so long ago, over 12 years.

“I couldn't stand seeing her. But the only place I found to live was an old log cabin right next door that hadn’t been lived in for a while. I didn’t have money, so instead of a security deposit, I refinished the floors, cleaned it up, and got the first month free. I’m over there working every night, it’s August, sweating my ass off, and she invites the boyfriend up to her place next door. We get in a fight and I try to throw him off the balcony. I was a bad guy. 

“She started constantly drinking margaritas, or Southern Comfort. Me, I was either a scotch or a Canadian Mist type a guy.  I like whiskey.  Beer didn't cut it anymore. I been drinking whiskey for 20 years.  Well, I was being mean to her and crap.

“About a year later we ran into each other at somebody's party, and got to talking. ‘I’m not bitter any more’, I said. ‘You hurt the hell out of me, but that was a long time ago.’ Now she calls me on the phone maybe about every other month, and Christmas, and birthdays, and -- you know, she's a friend of mine now.  I really hated her for a while.  I haven’t been with a woman since. Not so much as a date.  I’m kind of scared of getting in a relationship again.”

“How'd you end up here,”  I ask. “What are you doing here?” I mean the homeless shelter.  It flashes through my mind that “end up” is the wrong phrase.

“Well I had a good job . . . ,” he says. “Right after I broke up with her and left Suttons Bay, I came to Traverse City. I finally found a job with Cabinets by Robert. I did cabinetmaking, I'm a woodworker.  It took three interviews but I finally got in.  I had that job for nine years, and then his work started slowing down. He was laying people off. Those of us who were left weren't doing anything.  It was like every day, sweep the floor. I  washed all the windows inside and out. I mean, this is how hard I was looking for something to do. 

“So I got to complaining and bitching, and he laid me off. I got a letter from him in the mail, ‘We're sorry that you don't like it here, but I think it's time for you to move on, it's too bad, you've been such a great employee in the past. Good luck, hope you can find something else.’  [laughs]  So I got fired by letter.   I love that.

“I went to T. C. Millworks, worked with them for a year and a half, got fired because I was drinking all the time.  I don't blame them. I went to work for K. C. Custom Doors, same thing, drinking. In about a year, they fired me. I went to T. C. Cabinets and Countertops.  They had a big contract to make bases for slot machines. We were real busy for busy for four or five months.  I was getting all the overtime I wanted, but eventually, things dried out with him.  My paychecks started to bounce.  I quit him.  

“Then the door company that fired me the first time for attendance went bankrupt. New owner took over, and he hired me. [laughs]  He knew my reputation and everything, and he hired me.  So I went back to work with them for another year before they went Chapter Eleven.

This is the story. And it goes on, hiring, bankruptcy or firing, re-hiring.  Benefits running out. Drinking. Drinking. Crashing at friend’s houses. It’s as if I’m watching a movie gradually speeding up, or rather, getting stuck and replaying scene after scene.  Bob’s been at the homeless shelter for seven months. He has to move out this coming Friday. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do next.

He hasn’t had a drink in seven months—he can’t and stay at the Inn. From here, from the Inn, he says, there’s only a sleeping bag next.  Those people sleeping by the tracks along Boardman Lake, those people curled up on the occasional bench by the river. He says he’s not an AA person. He’s been to dozens of meetings and they make him more uncomfortable than they help him. He’s not a people person, he says. He doesn’t like groups.

So what is it I like about him? I think it’s his transparency. He’s been buffeted and rebuffed. You don’t have to look hard to see through him. He sees right through himself. He knows what’s “wrong” with him. He knows what he’s done “wrong.” He’s not making light of it or making a grand tragedy of it. It’s just what is, and he’s glad to have a good cup of coffee and to sit with me in the cramped little room and talk for a while. 

He’s got the VA working for him, the housing counselor here at the Inn working for him. They have a couple of possible places. He’s applied for Social Security, disability, and the VA pension. He got a letter yesterday from Social Security saying he’s been denied. But in October he’ll be 62. He just has to wait until then. 

And even before then, he says he’s been told to appeal and stay at it. He has handicaps that prevent him from working. His lungs are terrible, he says. He’s been told he has COPD.  And the Agent Orange.  For the past three or four years, he’s broken out in what looks like hives on his arms.  They move, he says. They bounce around, but a dermatologist at Saginaw VA hospital said they’re just bruises. They’ll gone for a couple of months, then return.  “Bruises don’t move like that,” Bob says. “Bruises are yellow, they've got the yellow tinge, and they're brown -- I know what a bruise is. But five minutes later he had me out the door.”

“I also have aches and pains all over, but I figure that's just age. I have a lot of trouble walking.  And standing . But no, no doctor has ever written anything out that says, you know, he's not fit for employment. I've been to hearing specialists, lung specialists, dermatologists . My ears are awful, but the hearing aids have made a big difference.

“I'm not looking forward too much to the future.  I got tremors too.”

“That could be nerve-related, too.” This is me, in here pitching for him. I have no idea how little or how much his trouble is related to Agent Orange, but my old Vietnam-era mistrust of the establishment, whatever that’s come to mean in my personal metaphorical ideology, rises like a fire in my throat. “Too bad that there's not somebody who could do the kind of testing that might. . . .”

“Well I think I needed testing for neurology,” he’s picking up the threads of my thought. “No, no x-rays or -- the legs, nobody's tested them -- I keep telling them you know, I can't walk, I can't climb stairs. I'm   walking real slow the last four or five steps.”

“You used to be fairly physical, I guess, doing carpentry,” I add fuel to the fire.

“Well, I’ve done manual labor most all my life.  Digging ditches, lifting blocks and building supplies, hauling shingles around , hauling doors around—I mean those doors weigh 110 pounds, and you're lifting those all day long, and those slot machine cabinets, I mean, they may not weigh much, 25 to 30 pounds, but when you do 200 a day, it kind of  adds up. [laughs]

“Do you have a place to go when you leave here?” I ask.

“Ah, no.” He laughs.  “They say if I leave for 30 days I can come back, for 90.  I've asked a couple of friends. I know this guy, he’s got an empty bedroom I stayed in once before. Yeah, three or four times I've hemmed about it, and then I finally come out and said, you know, I really need a place to stay, just for 30 days. I’ve got 260 dollars saved up, I'll give you whatever you want of that, I got 200 dollars a month food stamps, I'll fill your pantry up, refrigerator.

“He says if he lets me in, he’ll get charged an extra 50 dollars a month rent, and his landlord doesn’t like me anyway because I got evicted from there seven months ago. I say I could just hide out there for 30 days, but nah, he's not buying it.  A couple of other people I know, they just don't have room . One couple, they got their son moved in with them; others are happily married, and don't want another face in the house. So I’ve got a meeting coming up with Julie who's the housing coordinator for this place and the [subsidized] place next door. Hopefully there's an opening they can stash me over there for a while --

I say, “Maybe something . . . .They're at least paying attention, they're aware you need a place.”

“They have efficiency rooms there,” he says, “three of 'em.  And they're set up with a stove, refrigerator, dining room table, couch, T.V., bedroom. One of those opened up last week. I asked my counselor, how do you get into those, by the way? He says I have to write a letter to the director.  So I worked on that letter for like, four days, you know, rough draft, and another copy, and then draft that, and move things around different places, I had a pretty good letter going, I think -- submitted it to her.

“They’d already given the room to this guy, he’s kind of a brown-noser [laugh]. Anything comes up, he’s there to do it.  Doesn't matter how bad or dirty.  So you know, I mean, he deserves it. There's no bitterness there.

“There's this one gal I know, she's got a girlfriend, who thinks she might be able to take me in for 30 days . . . .”