Two dumb kids

Keep in mind I’m still the new guy on the block. I’m still investigating. Asking questions. Watching more than socializing. The homeless can tell I’m in between. Not quite one of them, but yet, they can tell I am. It is the same on the other side. They can tell I’m not quite one of them, but they can tell I am. This is precisely where I love to be; no one can pin me down with their thoughts.

Who is that guy? What is he doing?

In my eyes the homeless are moving in around the garden. Over the past couple weeks more and more of them are posting up. Ever since I signed the garden leader papers a couple has been living on the railroad property at the back of the lot. They are always around. For the most part they don’t litter, and haven't messed with the garden, but their actual camp looks like a small landfill.

Change is coming though, and they can all feel it. They know I am not lingering around for nothing. They may not be able to describe it, but their unconscious knows I’m charging the location with my personal power.

I usually roll by the garden early in the morning to check on things. I usually pick up the dangerous trash first; broken glass, needles, metal objects. One never knows what it will be.

I eat a few of the newly ripened black raspberries, check to see if anyone missed a strawberry, then meditate for a few. High harmonize.

Over the past month I’ve been steadily imbuing the garden with my energy. I read there a lot. Reading is a great source of power. I like to go there to take a piss, instead of wasting water at the library.  It’s only a couple of blocks away.

On this particular morning I find someone has set up camp right in the garden lot, behind the mulch piles that have not been leveled yet. I knew this would happen eventually, because the large piles create a haven on the back side. Their shit is everywhere. They even made a little stove out of bricks pulled from the garden bed borders, with a cast iron skillet for cooking. This is cool in itself, but they just leave all the trash laying around.

My issue is, I’m volunteering at a youth center. I am not volunteering to clean up after grown ass adults. I’m doing this to help kids like myself. I’m lingering today to make sure this person cleans up their own mess. I’m going to let them know what I am about, why I am there, and why they can’t trash up the place without some grief from me.

The Rare Breed director was around. We talk for a minute. He’s always busy with meetings and administrative stuff, so he’s never in the back. He likes to hear my stories. I let him know, it seems to be getting worse. He told me that he had to come down on Monday, Memorial Day, and there was a huge party going on, on the deck. I agreed, and told him they’ve been living there. He said he’s been coming in earlier and noticing that sometimes there are almost ten people sleeping on the deck. None of them are youth. None of them are under twenty one.

I finally see someone at the back of the lot. I start walking down the tracks. I’m still wanting to know who posted up in the middle of the lot. As I approach, I realize it’s two kids. They shouldn’t be there. They don’t even give pause at my approach, but continue to go through a backpack lying on the ground, in the middle of what is obviously a homeless camp.

I’m thinking how dumb are these kids? For all they know that backpack is mine, and they didn’t even stop pulling stuff out of the pack.  

I waste no time. “What the hell are you doing?”

One smirks, one looks afraid.

I say, “You are going through someone’s stuff. How old are you?”

They say, in unison, “I’m thirteen.”

They look so young. They didn’t look thirteen to me. The one is so small and thin I could pick him up with one hand by his curly hair. The one smirking, he’s fat, he wouldn’t even be able to run away if he needed to. It’s summer and school's out, but these kids are nowhere near their homes. I start telling them that they are putting themselves in danger, because if the people who live at this camp catch them it isn’t going to go well. I’m telling them they are in danger.

The brave, or dumb, however you think of it, one keeps smirking at me. That never goes well with me. I start heckling them, because they weren’t wanting to leave. They wanted that backpack. I finally see their bikes. I realized they are actually being clever. They hid their bikes, before approaching the camp. This isn’t their first time.

Now, it gets turned up. I’m heckling. They are getting the man voice. I started radiating my energy to get them to flee. I tell them they won’t be the first kids I’ve followed all day, until they go home, so that I can make sure their parents know they are not intelligent enough to be out on their own. They get their bikes, and ride off down the tracks. They must of knew I was bluffing; I didn’t follow them home.

I’m starving. It’s my third day without food.

As they are riding off on the north most set of tracks, I lost sight of them behind rail cars just sitting motionless on the rails.

Coming down the southernmost set of rails, as they are riding off, is a person I’ve seen many times hanging out on the porch of the Breed. I’ve never talked to him directly, but today is the day. This guy is super shy. Introverted like me, so I just go direct. I explained my situation, about the homeless guy setting up shop in the middle of the garden lot, and ask him what he thinks I should do.

This kid is smart. A genius. He says, “They are staying around the Rare Breed because they don’t know where else to go. If you want to solve your problem, solve their problem, and find somewhere else that they can go.” I tell him thanks, and let him know that is exactly what I needed to hear.  Why didn’t I think of that?

We kept walking together. I started asking him personal questions, but the non threatening kind. Where do you eat? Where do you shower? How long you been on the streets? Where else have you been homeless? After all, my real mission is to have first hand experience living on the streets here now. I want to know, not think I know. I’m not going to be the guy helping homeless, when i don’t even have firsthand experience of it myself. I can’t stand being a hypocrite.

He asks me my story, why I’m here. I give him the short of it, and now I’m in. He’s taking me to a place to eat for free. There is a place that serves lunch to the homeless, about six blocks away. He told me he’s been walking for over an hour to get there. I thank him for his kindness. I don’t know his name.

I had to sign my name to get the lunch. My name was 161 on the list that day. More than a few came in after me. It reminded me of prison. Chow line. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference except there were no guards. It was surreal and dreamlike. I was just taking it all in. It’s the same anywhere, everywhere, even among homeless; there is a bit of every kind of human nature.

I see the woman who lives on the corner of the lot. She calls me a cop when she thinks I can’t hear. We’ve had words before, so she does not like me. Once I was taking picture of the lot for Facebook, and she accused me of taking picture of her. She wasn’t even in sight. We had a bit of an argument about it. She’s still bitter over losing that argument. I sit down next to her at the table. Those fold in the middle, white plastic tables. Four topper.

I say, “Can I ask you something? Aren’t you living on the back corner of the Rare Breed lot?”

She says, tentatively, after giving me the stink eye, like why are you sitting next to me, “Ya.”

I say, “I was just down there, and some kids were going through your stuff, so I chased them off.”

She’s alarmed, but says, “Thanks. We got all of our important stuff on us, phones, knives, and stuff, but thanks for letting me know”

I say, “I would want to know.”

She says, “My husband and I got a twelve person tent. We’ve been looking for somewhere to put it because too many people go through our stuff down there.”

I am relieved to hear this. This means it won’t be me evicting them.

She is getting up to leave, “I am going to go check on it now.”

It’s no secret I am a sensitive guy. Having fasted for three days, and staying physically active, my sensitivity was off the charts. The aliveness of this feeling is hard to put to words. One just feels alive. But right there in front of me was reality. All the food stuff I had read about all those years was hitting home. All that preaching about taking care of one’s body was about to be real. Reality in effect. The chow line gave me pizza, and as I ate it, I could feel my body changing.

By the time I finished my two pieces of pizza, I was no longer feeling so alive. I was feeling sick. I felt like shit actually. I wanted to throw it up. I chugged a bunch of water, and decided to walk it off instead. My rationalizing said it wasn’t going to kill me. How many times in life had I scarfed far more than two pieces of pizza?

All the rest of the day I felt bogged down over that food. In my head I’m thinking, these people are already bogged down in life. This food is just sealing the deal. My starving body said to eat, but what I ate was not good for my body. Sad though, because I already know, should I get hungry enough; I’ll eat anything.

Time to head back to the Breed. I needed to find this homeless dude, and put him to task. If I have to clean up his mess, he really isn’t going to like me. It’s the only way it’s going to go well for him; I’ve got to catch him on sight. I’ve got to give him the chance to do the right thing.

I notice the woman, down on the corner. She’s married, and her husbands brother is there. He’s crazy amped up. This is one of those scabbed faced, punk rock looking tweekers. He starts telling me what happened.

Those kids came back and got his pack. He became frantic, and started screaming where did they go? Someone told him which way they went, and he went after them. Now keep in mind, as he is telling me his story, his knife is out, and in hand. He was wild eyed. He had chased after them, and he had pulled his knife on them. The only thing that stopped him was the cop parked down in the industrial flats. It’s just rail tracks and flat abandoned concrete everywhere. All the buildings are gone. If there had been no cop, there would have been no witnesses.

This guys says to me, “If a kid puts himself in a man's shoes, I’m going to treat them like a man.” I told him I wasn’t going to prison for touching a kid. He continued to rage and rant about his plans for such kids.

I don’t know if those kids know it or not, but that cop saved them. If that guy had not noticed the cop parked in the shade, he would have unleashed his rage. That guy is nothing but rage. I don’t even know if the cop knows he saved those kids or not. For all I know he was facebooking in the shade. I wasn’t there. I tried to scare those kids, I tried to warn them. That was all I could do at the time.

They seem lucky from where I am standing. I wonder how many times I got lucky like that and never even noticed it. I did many similar things at that age, riding my bike around during the summer. Did I smirk like that? I can’t remember. I don’t see how I didn’t.

I go back to the little stone table I sit and read at. I’m in the middle of a very important book. One of the staff from the Breed comes out the back door. He’s accessing a bunch of stuff that’s been dropped off at the back of the building. I’m asking him how he would handle these homeless people. As we are talking a cop driving towards us, from under the bridge. Huge bastard. Almost every Springfield cop you will see downtown is a big guy. NFL big. Turns out the dial is being turned up. The cops are being authorized to issue tickets to people lingering on the property. The cop came to get that piece of paper from the boss.

Things are about to get real.