Flotsam

by Fabrizia Faustinella

The sky was darkening, crowded by black, ominous clouds blown by a forceful wind. Dust and leaves swirled in the air, waiting for the rain to ground them again. I could feel and smell the humidity from the Gulf. I almost could smell the sea. I certainly could hear the loud shrieks of the seagulls and saw several picking up trash in the desolated parking lot of the grocery store. The horizon was a brilliant crimson, spectacular and eerie. Was the sun setting in a large pool of blood? Why do I think such stupid things? Vivid imagination or cognitive distortion? Forget it. I’d better hurry up. The storm was coming.

I loaded the groceries in the trunk of the car and I drove away. Traffic was light. It felt strange to see the entire road ahead of me, almost deserted. I didn’t want to be the only one out there when the storm hit and I tried to speed up a little. Nobody was waiting for me at home, and I wanted to get back before dark. I forgot to leave the lights on when I left, and I didn’t look forward to the darkness of the driveway and backyard.

I had to stop at a red light. As the lid of a garbage container blew away in the wind, plastic bags, paper cups, empty cans, and all kind of debris were sent flying and skittering across the ground. Farther ahead, on the sidewalk, I saw a man in a wheelchair, alone. He struggled to move forward. He was one of the many homeless people who roam the streets of our city. It’s hard enough to be homeless, but to be homeless and stuck in a wheelchair, how much harder can that get?

The traffic light turned green. I drove ahead and past him. The man was hunched over, face down, trying to negotiate the uneven sidewalk. The wheelchair was loaded with plastic bags overflowing with what were clearly all his worldly possessions.

I kept on driving while asking myself, You are not going to leave this man stuck on the sidewalk with a big storm approaching, are you? Of course not. So I drove ahead until I found a place where I could safely turn around. I went back and found him in the same spot, not having progressed one inch I parked, got out of the car, and approached him. “Hi, sir, can I help you? Where are you trying to go?” There wasn’t much around, a hamburger joint, a gas station, a bus stop, and …

“To that Luby’s Cafeteria, up there,” he said. “Could you find someone to push me?”

“Well, I’m here, sir. Nobody else is around. I don’t mind doing that.” The cafeteria was located on the top of a small hill. My city is totally flat and floods all the time. Maybe that’s why they built the cafeteria on an artificial hill. But now, what a challenge it would be to push a man in a wheelchair up there.

He was older, most likely mid-seventies, with curly, unkempt hair and a large black-and-gray beard. He wore paper scrubs, most likely given to him at the time of discharge from a local hospital. They were totally worn out, and the original blue color had faded away under layers of dirt and stains. He wore half-gloves, his fingers sticking out, revealing long, broken yellow nails. He had a strong smell of urine and old sweat. A roll of toilet paper had fallen out of one of the plastic bags, and I picked it up. The bags were on their last leg too, full of holes, ready to burst open at any time, their contents in serious jeopardy. Old food containers, boxes of crackers, diapers, bottles of water and soda, leaking and half empty, cups, plastic forks, pieces of paper with unreadable notes, and God only knows what else all crammed together and stuck to one another.

“I cannot believe I am in this situation and that I have to be pushed by a woman. I’m sorry, ma’am. This is not easy,” the man said as I was struggling to keep a straight path on the crooked sidewalk, which was littered with small branches fallen from the oak trees during the previous storm mixed with paper and plastic debris, some floating in puddles of water.

The wind didn’t help. It was adding weight and resistance to the wheelchair. I was concerned about engaging the uphill driveway of the cafeteria. What if I couldn’t push his weight uphill and lost control of the wheelchair? What if it crashed and injured this poor man? I started thinking of all sorts of disastrous scenarios. When I got there I  pushed so very hard, summoning all my strength, my body at a forty-five-degree angle on the slope. Amidst some puffing and grunting, I finally got to the top. I guess all the gym visits and weight lifting had paid off. I seemed stronger than what I thought.

“I can’t go inside, ma’am. My personal hygiene is very poor. I wouldn’t dare go into a restaurant like this.”

“I can go in. What would you like to eat?”

“I have a Luby’s card, ma’am. Let me look for it.”

“Don’t worry about it. Save the card, sir. I can go in and get you something,” I said with a slight urgency in my voice, as it was getting late.

“Don’t rush me, please. You see, people are impatient. Don’t rush me. I’ll find the card.” He pulled out three different wallets from various pockets of a black jacket. The wallets were bursting with receipts, business cards, pieces of paper meticulously folded, stickers, remnants of a life of struggles. As he sorted through them, uttering words of dismay at not being able to find his precious Luby’s card, he and became increasingly frustrated. I waited, suspended, wondering how long this would take, thinking of what to do, until I said in a calm, soothing voice, “Well, while you look for the card, why don’t I go inside? Please, just tell me what you would like to eat and I’ll be glad to get it for you.”

“Rice and gravy, lima beans, and three cornbread muffins.”

“What about some meat or fish?”

“No, that’ll be enough. Rice and gravy, lima beans, and three cornbread muffins.”

I insisted on getting something else as well, and he eventually asked for meat loaf, most likely one of the few meat preparations his poor dentition would have allowed him to eat, and a cup of ice.

I went inside. No line at the counter. I ordered the food. No meat loaf was available. I decided to get chicken. I hoped it was okay with him. I got the cup of ice, paid, and stepped outside.

“Here is the food, sir, but they didn’t have meat loaf, so I got you chicken.”

“That’s okay, thank you. I’m sorry I was impatient with you. You’re the only one who has helped me. We get so frustrated by our predicament that we end up taking our frustration out on the people who are there for us. I also apologize to you for smelling so bad. I apologize for being in your presence in such a state of disrepair,” he said with shame in his voice, shaking his head, barely looking up at me. We heard laughter coming from inside the cafeteria.

“You see, people laugh, and they move on with their lives. They laugh and they’re busy and have no compassion. That’s why I stopped going to church a long time ago. I realized that people go to church and say they believe in God, but then they have no compassion. So what good does it do, going to church like that and having no compassion?”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Jimmy. My name is Jimmy.”

“Jimmy, how did you get in this situation?”

“I don’t want to talk about that now,” he said with pain and a hint of resentment in his voice, “but I ask the Lord: what have I done to deserve this? I have robbed no banks, I haven’t used no drugs, I haven’t stolen from people, I haven’t killed anybody, and here I am. Why am I being punished like this, Lord? Lord, help me! I’ve been a good man, help me!” He lowered his head even more, saliva drooling out of his mouth, dripping on the paper scrubs.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m sorry…”

“No need to be, sir. I am sorry for you. This is a terrible situation.”

“It sure is terrible, ma’am.”

I patted him on his shoulder. “Should I push you there?” I pointed at a sheltered place on the side of the cafeteria where he could eat and maybe spend the night.

“No,” he answered, “I’d like to stay here a little longer.”

“But, sir, how did you even get on that sidewalk?” I blurted out, bewildered that anybody could get around in his condition and manage to survive. “I mean, where are you coming from? Where were you before? I’ve never seen you on this side of town. Who are you?”

“Don’t worry about it. I am … flotsam … just flotsam.”

Flotsam? What did that mean? I’d never heard that word before. I didn’t know the meaning of it, but I didn’t dare ask.

It was definitely late now and dark, streetlamps casting an uncertain yellow light on the street. It was starting to rain. I said, “I’m going now. I’ll be thinking of you, Jimmy. I wish I could do more for you.”

“Thank you for your kindness,” he said.

I headed back to the car, my hair scrambled by the wind, raindrops falling on my face. I drove home. As expected, my backyard was very dark, but not as dark as my thoughts and my heart. I opened the door, stepped inside, and felt guilt at the comfort of my home. I decided to burn a candle for Jimmy, but what good was that going to do? I did it anyway, still hoping the prayer would somehow help. Maybe it would help me more than Jimmy. It would help me to accept the intrinsic and inescapable unfairness of life, which no thought process has ever been able to reconcile in my mind.

Then I sat at the computer to search for the meaning of “flotsam.” This is what I found: 1. floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo; floating debris washed up by the tide; 2. a floating population as of emigrants or castaways; 3. miscellaneous or unimportant material.

Human flotsam. That’s what he thought of himself. The wreckage of a life, the product of a broken existence, fallen into pieces that could not be glued together any longer and made whole again.

Fabrizia Faustinella is a physician and filmmaker. She grew up in Italy and moved to the United States where she practices as an internist in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. Caring for the undeserved and the homeless has inspired her to write about her experiences in several patient-centered essays which have been published in academic and literary journals alike. She recently wrote, directed and produced The Dark Side of the Moon, a film-documentary about the root causes of homelessness and the hardship of street life.

Good Works

by Kirk Boys

The room is sharp with mildew, tomato sauce, melted cheese, days-old urine, and sweat. It is an all too human smell, not disguised by deodorant spray or scented soap, but one of grit with hard notes of melancholy. My wife and I have arrived here after years of conversation about doing good works. Here where our talking about wanting to do something good for someone else finally takes form.

The “here” is a church hall filled with people most of us only glimpse in the shadows of an alley, huddled under a blue tarp in a makeshift campsite, or sitting under a freeway bridge. Here at St. James Community Hall, well over a hundred homeless people stare at us. They are like ghosts, sitting on folding chairs that line the walls, their looks of distress or anger or resignation haunts me. They are intimidating. They dare us not to feel something. We have only walked through the front door, yet we are stopped, held hostage by those eyes. I do my best to disappear.

The door we have entered is dwarfed by St. James’ twin spires, which reach up into a cold, endless, gray Seattle sky. The bells within those spires peal across a city whose soul is being put to the test by a fast-growing homeless population. The city appears both disgusted and seemingly helpless to deal with the problem. More and more people show up on the city’s streets and there is no escaping their impact.

“Why don’t they just get a job at McDonald’s?” my friend tells me after a trip into the city from his manicured, suburban home. He sees no reason they can’t find work, but he makes his judgement from afar. He is not here. He has no idea, has not been held hostage by those eyes.

It is obvious to me standing within the reach of their eyes, there are no simple answers to their swelling numbers. Not money or rehab or housing or good intentions can, alone, solve this plague of desperation that crushes the human spirit. I wonder what these men and women think seeing us with our clean clothes and our haircuts? Do they hate us? Do they hate people who have nice homes, safe places to sleep, food, cars while they have only what they can carry in a pack or bag or push up the sidewalk in a shopping cart? Do they hate us or only wish to be us?

Here at the cathedral hall they receive a small red ticket like you or I might use for a spin on the Merry-go-round or the chance to win a cake at a bake sale. This is not the County Fair. The ticket gets them a hot meal and shelter for a couple hours.

The hall has a low hum of activity as people shuffle in. There is the occasional scrape of a folding chair on the tile floor or the sharp clang of metal on metal punctuated by random shouts or an angry rant. A napkin and fork make a place setting on long tables for eight. There will be nearly 200 here tonight when all is said and done.

A tall, bearded man with glasses stands at the entrance handing out the tickets to anyone who walks in the door. He hands us a ticket. “We’re here to volunteer as companions,” I tell him. He points a crooked finger toward the kitchen. It is day one of our attempt at good work, and we have little idea what we are supposed to do beyond making conversation with those congregated, to make them, for a couple hours at least, feel as though someone cares. Or so we were told.

We are overwhelmed by the crush of bodies, the sheer physicality of their hardship and need. The same people I would have previously gone to great lengths to avoid on a city sidewalk I am now face to face with. It would be a lie to say that I am not frightened.

The kitchen at St. James is separated by walls and metal doors and it is a beehive of activity. Ten volunteers maneuver in the cramped space preparing the evening meal. It is hard work in the kitchen, but it is also a refuge, walled off from the harsh reality of what exists just outside. In the kitchen you can escape the vacant looks. In the kitchen you can exhaust yourself with food prep and cleanup. In the kitchen you are not surrounded by the smell of down-and-out of broken lives.

The kitchen is not our mission.

We are tasked, if only for a couple of hours, to build a bridge between their reality and ours: to witness their suffering, to acknowledge their humanity, to let them know, if only with a glance or a smile, that they are seen, that they are heard. We can’t save anyone, but we can acknowledge them. Such bearing witness sounded noble and good from the safety of our home or in a sermon, but now, faced with them, we want instead to stay safe in the kitchen away from that responsibility. There is just the two of us for two hundred. It is impossible to know where to start. I want to take my wife’s hand and walk back out the door, away from this. No one would think worse of us. No one we know cares if we do this little thing. We have nothing to prove, yet there is something inside that pushes me forward.

We put on blue serving aprons which will designate us as ”companions”. We walk back out into the hall, like tentative swimmers heading away from shore for the other side. Uncertainty wraps itself around me as tightly as the smell of tonight’s spaghetti casserole meal. I put on a smile, stroll between tables into all those watchful eyes.

My wife plants her hands firmly in her apron pockets and does the same. I fear for all five-two of her. Her courage inspires me. Most of the diners are men There are so many. I try hard not to see them as menacing and dangerous. What if one of them were to lose it, to lash out in frustration or psychosis? If she were to be hurt, I would never forgive myself. Anxiety steals up my spine. There are patients just released from the psyche ward at Harborview regional trauma center two blocks away dealing with serious mental health disease. There are substance abusers and petty drug dealers. Fortune has not smiled on those gathered in St. James Cathedral hall for dinner. There are veterans left to fight their own battles or people who’ve hit tough times or had a run of bad luck a lost job a divorce. They are all colors, races, and ages and have nowhere to come but here. They all have red tickets in their hand.

“Talk to them, help them get their meal if they need help, talk if they want to talk. Let them know we see them as people, individuals blessed by God’s grace,” we were told by our volunteer supervisor, but it is hard to imagine God here. There is no cloud of incense, no gold crosses, no choir singing hymns, no sense of well-being or of grace, just survival. We must find the commonality we share.

We are frightened glad-handers hoping to feel better about ourselves by braving the misery that surrounds us and with which we must come to terms.

“Trouble, a fight or someone gets agitated, don’t get involved, call 911,” the kitchen supervisor hurriedly walks out to tell me.

My wife has set off on her own, drawn to a tiny woman with white hair and lipstick smeared on her cheeks in a small circle. She appears to be well past seventy. She has a kind face. How can she be here? She should be baking cookies, playing cards with her friends, or surrounded by grandchildren. A tall young woman with “PINK” written across her butt brushes past and moves quickly to take a seat in a darkened stairwell. Her long, red hair pushed over her shoulder, she seems lost to the world. I watch as more people continue to pour through the door, take their ticket, and line up along the wall.

The hum of humanity has escalated to a low roar, as more flood through the front door with dirty packs, sleeping bags, and plastic bags stuffed full. A thin black man smiles at me from a chair and I decide to venture over. “The food smells good,” I say. I can see, “How’s it going” doesn’t cut it here. I scramble to bring on conversation, but I am inadequate. I tell him my name, and he tells me his, James. James has a warm smile; he’s painfully thin and has kind eyes. He reaches out a hand to shake.

“That’s Gomez,” James tells me pointing at a stout Hispanic man across the table. I reach to shake Gomez’s hand. He offers a weak smile.

“Gomez carries pieces of metal and rocks stuffed in the lining of his coat. From where he comes they believe it gives them energy. I heard the cops talking about him, how they wouldn’t let him into his court hearing. He set off the metal detector.” James laughs, “It’s a trip, man. Right, Gomez? A trip?” Gomez smiles, but it is unclear if he understands.

It feels good to talk with James. He lightens the mood, gets me out of my head. I feel the rush of connection to James and Gomez too. I realize I am up to the task, that they aren’t so different than me, only our circumstance.

Behind me the metal serving doors rattle open revealing servers, eight of them, like actors at the end of a play, they hold serving spoons and tongs. A curtain of steam rises from the spaghetti casserole. There is a slow march to the food, tables fill, and the high-pitch ting of forks on plates fills the room.

A tall, painfully thin man with scruffy black hair sits near the front reading a book, in no hurry to get his dinner.

“What are you reading?” I ask him.

He looks up slowly and turns the book’s cover toward me, a rat-eared copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.

“Wow,” I say. I am shocked to find a Vonnegut reader. “He’s my favorite author,” I tell him.

“He reads just as delightfully when I am stoned as he does when I am not,” he says.

“I feel the same way,” I tell him and we laugh.

A man using a walker and wearing an Army Ranger hat asks if I will get him his meal and hands me his red ticket.

“Where are you from?”

“It would take too long to tell you,” he says. “Can you just get my food?”

I get in line with the others. My anxiety is beginning to ease. I scan the room for my wife, who is still talking to the lady with lipstick on her cheeks. I see my wife grin. I shuffle through the line and take in the smell of coffee, the feeling of gratitude, the spirit of humanity. It hits me like a sledge hammer how lightly I regard the conveniences those here aspire to and I take completely for granted daily.

We are all at St. James for a reason. I can’t say what the reason is for anyone else, but for me it is to find something in me that I have secretly feared I did not possess, a courage, a willingness to get involved. I want to believe that if there is a God, that I will see him in the face of a stranger. I want to believe there is an innate good in everyone, but more selfishly I am actually looking for it in myself.

“I like those glasses,” a man covered in tattoos tells me as he passes. “Makes you look smart.”

“Hey, thanks,” I say. I get the man with the Ranger hat his casserole and a slice of pie and deliver it to him. “Thank you for your service.” I tell him as I carefully slide the tray in front of him. “There might be enough for seconds.”

“This is plenty,” he says, waving me off.

Two hours passes, two hundred faces, give or take, have passed by and the hall is nearly empty. I’m not sure what we accomplished. Witnessing the hopelessness of life on the street, serving trays of food, small talk and smiles.

It’s enough for our first time.

I think about the whole of it on our silent drive home. Nerves have been replaced by exhaustion. I imagine it will get easier. We are not going to solve any problems, but maybe we offered a human touch if only for a moment.

Maybe a flicker of good intention starts a small fire? I feel a sense of pride I didn’t feel the day before. I saw the depth of my wife’s heart, how caring she is, how she stood toe to toe with fear.

We got more than we gave.

We’ll be back to Cathedral Hall in a week, wiser for our effort, fears tamped down, hearts in hand.

Kirk Boys’ personal essays have been featured in The Chaos Journal, Gravel Magazine and bioStories. His fiction has been featured in Per Contra, Thrice Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Storie-all write #57/58 and Storie.it/ English Department and in High Shelf Press. He has a Certificate in Literary Fiction from the University of Washington. He was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s New Writers contest. He has two novels for which he is currently seeking representation. He lives outside Seattle with his wife and a tiny dog.