Alone in the Night - 5. Alone 5

The nice weather didn’t hold out for long as storm after storm pounded the city. I finally had to abandon my home by the river due to rising water in the James River. I wandered around the downtown trying to find a new home. I knew enough to stay well clear of the Capitol Square area when finding a place to sleep. Work could be lucrative around there, but you had to be careful. I learned from others that it wasn’t worth the trouble. If you’re caught you would get hassled or arrested for vagrancy. After all, you can’t have the beauty of the grounds of the state capitol marred by the presence of the homeless. People might think there was actually a problem then.

I headed towards the other end of downtown even though I didn’t like that it was more parking lots than anything. I liked my home by the river even if it was cold and wet,. It had been my spot since I came to town and the sound of the water always put me at ease. I walked around the Jefferson Hotel checking it out and made my way to the back. I found an area that looked promising as it was fairly well protected. I thought I would be able to get out of the rain and at least stay dry. I was happy that the kitchen seemed to have its own dumpster so I wouldn’t have to go through all the hotels garbage to try and find something to eat. It felt strange to be surrounded by so much concrete after a couple months of living on the banks of the River. The relative shelter was nice. However, it wasn’t calming like the sound of the water or the greenery of the brush and trees. Still, I didn’t have to listen to trains occasionally traveling directly over my head.

I scoped out the area taking note of where any security cameras and lights were located near the dumpster. I also watched for what day the trash was picked up. I had to be constantly alert and ready to hide from any employees. I quickly found one benefit to being by the Jefferson in December was they seemed to have a constant stream of holiday parties. That meant a lot of pretty good stuff getting tossed out. I did my best to stay out of site when any employees came out to dump their trash. The last thing I wanted was to get chased off or picked up by the police. I don’t think I would ever get use to getting my meals out of a dumpster though, but the hotel’s food was good. When you have few choices you do what you have to do to survive. I just kept asking myself, “Did I really want to survive?”

As the hotel, and for that matter, the rest of downtown began to come alive with Christmas decorations I started to slip back into a deeper level of depression. I had always loved the holiday season. It’s just not as much fun when you are by yourself. I kept up my routine of going to the Y and that helped keep me focused on living. I would sometimes spend a little while just floating in the pool in between swimming laps. Some of the staff, especially Jason, tried to talk me into turning myself in for getting placed in foster care but I figured I’d just end up in a group home. I made it quite clear that wasn’t going to happen and I would run before it did. They didn’t try to force the issue since they could keep somewhat of an eye on me at least if I was around. It was a situation no one was particularly happy with.

The Christmas season brings out the best and the worst in people. Most just go about their lives without noticing the changes, but when you spend your days watching people you begin to pick up on it. I did my best to stay as much of a ghost to people around me as I could. Blending into the background as much as possible was fairly easy. A very few people who did notice me would hand me a few dollars or not charge me for buying a small amount of food.

I couldn’t just give up on what I felt was morally right if I saw something that I might be able to prevent. There’s the unwary Christmas shopper who doesn’t pay attention to the man about to snatch her purse or bag of gifts. When it happens they are usually unable to do anything about it and most of the crowd around doesn’t want to stop and help. Taking on the attitude of it’s not my problem or I don’t want to get involved. They are somewhat more willing to help when a careless teen running through the crowd happens to accidentally trip the purse snatcher knocking him to the ground before disappearing into the masses.

The Christmas season also seems to bring out more frustrated husbands and fathers looking for something they aren’t getting at home. Worse yet, for something they wouldn’t dare try at home. I just hope some of the fantasies they would talk about to me were something that was never going to happen around their own kids. If I would have been willing to fulfill their fantasies I could have made fortune or more likely ended up dead. Although I had gotten pretty good at removing myself from the job at hand, I didn’t want to do it any more than absolutely necessary. That didn’t stop me from sometimes hooking up with five or six guys a day of the opportunity presented itself. Money is money. Each time I told myself, “This is survival, not a career.” Some of the sick and twisted things these normally upstanding men would request made me glad I was not part of their family as well as reinforcing my mistrust in people.

******

About two weeks before Christmas I was out walking in the evening and went past Gail’s restaurant. I don’t think I was even paying attention to where I was going, just walking to clear my head. She happened to be outside taking a cigarette break and saw me before I realized where I was. I wanted to run off, but she called over to me saying Hi. I walked over to her. The voice was as gentle as ever. “Hello, Matt. How are you?” She eyed me carefully.

“I’m okay.”

“None of us have seen you since Thanksgiving. Chad’s been worried about you.” She stamped the butt of her cigarette out. “I’ve been worried too.”

I’m doing okay. Really. I just haven’t been to this end of town in a couple weeks.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Ma’am. I want to thank you again for Thanksgiving dinner. I had a good time.”

“Chad seemed to enjoy your company too. He’s a very nice boy. You make a cute couple.”

I think she could see the hurt in my eyes at the mention of his name.

“Did something happen?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Ma’am.”

She let it go. “I’ll tell him I saw you. Let me get you something from the kitchen.” She was about to go in, but I stopped her.

“Thank you, but I’ve already eaten tonight.”

I don’t think she believed me, but she didn’t say anything.

******

I knew Andrew and Dan wanted me to spend Christmas with them. I had been calling regularly to let them know I was okay. The closer it got to Christmas I started figuring times when they wouldn’t be home so I could just leave a message instead of talking. Depression and pride were getting in the way of me having any kind of holidays. I was quickly slipping into a place I didn’t want to be and no matter what I did I was losing ground on pulling myself back out of the black hole I was in. A part of me knew I’d be safe with Andrew and Dan, and they had told me they wanted me there. In fact they had insisted that I spend the week there. I kept telling myself I wasn’t their problem. I just wanted to be alone and away from everyone.

The food supply from the parties at the Jefferson was no longer of any interest to me and I eventually left the relative safety and dryness along the building and made my way back to the park, to my riverfront home. The park was muddy and wet from the rain and the river was running higher and faster than normal. It was miserable out. The weather was cold enough that everything iced over at night. The days weren’t much better and it seemed the sun rarely came out. A lot of the areas homeless were spending the nights at emergency shelters due to the frigid temperatures. Because of my age, the shelters were not an option for me. I would have likely been put in juvenile custody with the possibility of eventually being forced into a group home.

My mood and depression kept getting worse and worse. The longer the bad weather lasted, the darker my moods became. More than once I thought if walking into the river and letting the water take me. I was already sick from being soaking wet all the time with no way of being able to get dry or warm. The continual winter storms weren’t helping my health or depression any. I did still try to stay warm but little I did seemed to help. A very large part of me was hoping I would freeze to death in the night. I stopped going to the Y even though the hot showers there did help and it got me out of the cold for a while. The down side of going to the Y was I’d always have to leave and head back out in to the cold. I stopped eating at one point and just didn’t care anymore what happened to me.

******

We had a bitterly cold storm come through that started with heavy rain. I cursed the skies when it turned to sleet. It seemed the heavens heard my complaints and responded with hail. I covered my head as best I could while getting pelted with chunks of ice. Freezing rain followed as the storm intensified. It had already lasted for several days and showed no signs of letting up.

When it turned to snow I was moderately thankful for something soft and gentle falling from the sky. The park turned white. Things were icing over and not even thawing during the day. The water on my clothes had turned to ice as well. Just over a week before Christmas I was soaked to the bone with little interest in trying to get dry or find even the slightest warmth, not that I had any dry clothes left. I just sat in my home, the brush along the river, shivering from the cold. I felt very sick and the fever I was running made me even colder. My fingers were blue and I watched the ice around me grow thicker.

I had reached the point where I had given up and had no interest in living anymore. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to die soon. I felt at peace seeing a light snow falling and thinking how beautiful everything looked turning white. I knew it was my last night alive and was thankful for the sites of winter before me as I waited for the night to take me. The sounds of the river were soothing and helped me finally drift off to sleep while my body began to succumb to the elements.