Written in Chicago at the Swissotel: 3/31/24
I sit on the fourth floor of this resplendent tower of mÕ½latto decadence, more wicked towers rising in the soft morning light, where last night I limped past many a golden hued Ishtar, ignoring the withering corpse among them even as it wondered what Shamahat would think of their Easter Eve’s revel…
I do not suppose I will ever be here again. I outline a half dozen travel articles and think of Randy…
The Land Lady and I had taken Dad to the hospital the night before. She, Mom and Son had returned early morn. I squared away my clothes and stacked them in the garage, watered the dogs, and left a text that I had done so and was “gone.”
…
10:00 A.M., Sunday
The five block crutch uphill to Holgate and 104th took a half hour in the soft rain. I was sad, marriage having eluded me a second and final time. The driver was young, pretty and kind, a big golden-hued girl wearing her Sunday smile.
The #17 takes one down through the Foster-Powell area where I had spent four previous winters as Baldy Locks with the Three Bears. I missed them too, recalling the looks of accusatory abandonment that both of the Injun dogs had sent my way as I left them for good. They are telepathic, you know.
The back was holding up… okay, barely, the small pack overloaded by the techtarded writer that needs a backup laptop. My mother in law of a mere 5 months had told me the night before, as her daughter slept out in the cold car rather than with a creature born the pallor of evil, “You are so busy—a good cook—I think we’ll starve without you!” and we laughed across a generation, a continent and the ever yawning racial abyss.
She is a lovely old girl. The slave in me will miss her ready approval.
How much of life is simply trying on a leash, feeling for a tolerable fit, wondering when our owner will yank upon our collar?
As the bus stopped behind the 7-11 where, two Thanksgivings ago, I stood up to a ghost-taxing Kang and drove him from the door to the applause of the two homeless girls from the shelter next door, I sat now lame in the first forward facing seat, propping up the collapsing frame.
Up stepped one of those frightening Caucasians of the west, wind burned, six feet four in his socks—if he had them, torn clothes, a fit 200 pounds of raw sixty-something bone, and asked, a black tool bag in one hand and a cup of noodles covered by a napkin in the other, “Miss, I do not have bus fare. May I board?”
“Yes sir, of course,” she said and he sat in the first eastward facing seat as the street graded down to the river. I observed him:
-His hands had recently, and long ago, done heavy manual work.
-Perhaps 58 years, maybe as young as 50, his Gaelic/Nordic skin burned a ruddy pink.
-He was not hung over.
-He was not a tweaker or a junky, something Portland taught me how to divine.
-He sat in humility, spooned some noodles, checked his hunger, recovered the bowl, it being against the rules, and rested.
I recalled Omar, a man of 39, who had come over to the U.S. with his parents from Afghanistan in the 1990s, who helped me when I was first a crutch in utter agony, last June, shaking like a leaf on the train from Lancaster to Pittsburgh. He was selling off his ruined trucking business and going to Pittsburgh from Connecticut for work. He told me his story and spent money pouring whiskey down my throat at $11 a shot and helped me off the train, even guarding me against being bumped as I crutched off the platform.
At the Elders Powwow in Northeast Portland I had been given a stack of mass transit day passes. I was using my last one. This was the guy. I had taken a lot of disrespect over 8 weeks because I feared living like him, could not, I knew survive on the wet streets among his giant kind [1], and was too proud to phone one of my benefactors for financial help escaping the wedding bed.
I skittered crab like across the isle and handed him the stack, “Sir, I’m not returning to Portland. Here, I used to get these from a community center for living with a native family.”
He looked at the tickets, then looked at me, then looked over at my rig and crutches [the a latter strapped together] and said, as he took them between two big digits, “Thank you, where are you going?”
“Back to Baltimore.”
“Is it cold there?”
“Warmer and wetter in the summer, colder and drier in the winter. Too dangerous to live on the street. But I have people there. I turn the corner down in San Jose—lovely place, but can’t even afford food there.”
“Randy, name is Randy,” as he extended his large hand gently.
“James.”
“Thank you James. This, this is a real big help—helps a lot, really does. I live in a tent down there under the bridge [he nodded as we approached the river]. Unemployment barely covers food. I grew up in the Bay Area [names town, forgotten by author]. A hay farming area. Beautiful, nice weather. Got too expensive to pay rent and my family is gone. Came up here for work…”
Shrugged shoulders in resignation. Looked wonderingly ahead, at nothing visible to my eye.
“I want to save up for a one way ticket to some place warm, maybe in Mexico. I’ve been researching it at the library, trying to learn Spanish. That would be it, someplace warm, if I could speak the language, get some work that pays the rent…”
Returns from his reverie and looks me in the eyes, down over his big shoulder.
“My stop is coming. James, thank you. I will say a prayer for you.”
We shook hands and I rejoined, “I will pray for you, Randy, I will.”
I skittered back to my place as the bus came to a stop.
Randy did not pocket all the tickets. He took one out and hit the touch screen with it, paying before getting off, stopped, looked down at the driver and said, “Thank you, Miss. And I am sorry for the food. Have a blessed day.”
She waved, and would help me in my turn…
It is time to pack this lap top up again and continue this eight day return.
Please, say a prayer for Randy.
…
Notes
-1. So called “white men” are so big in the west, it still astonishes me, and terrifies the honorary African American within.
