The rehabilitation centre I was going to was Harvest House, a last-chance Christian rehab that took the worst of the worst cases that no other place would touch—I know, I tried calling them all from jail. Given my record, it was my only option. Olive had given me the phone number one day when I called her collect from jail trying to set up a release plan.
“I’m going to be brutally honest with you, Jesse,” she said, as I scribbled down the digits. “I’ve known you forever, and you can’t make it another season the way you are. You don’t look right anymore. Please call.”
Olive was always so optimistic, so hopeful—she believed God could rescue people even in the most wretched of cases—so to hear her talk this way really caught my attention. I phoned Harvest House the instant I got off the phone with her and discovered that they had GED schooling as well as treatment—I could finish what I’d started and graduate high school. Plus, they’d take me right away—no other program would do that. That gave me such hope. When I told the chaplain, he bought me the one-way ticket and gave me a pair of jeans and a shirt, right before the jail gates opened to freedom.
“These don’t fit,” I said.
“Trust me,” he told me when he dropped me off at the shelter. “You’ll put on weight.”
The electro-haired lady behind the Plexiglas ignored me and my bus ticket, slid a pen through the opening, and started talking with her colleagues.
I filled in the form and passed the clipboard back.
“Jesse Thistle,” she said, and I nodded. She buzzed me in and told me to wait near the front to get my toiletries and to finish the intake process.
The shelter was empty, or at least it appeared that way. A few people were playing cards near the doors to the washrooms. A couple were on the phones by the office. I hadn’t been to this shelter in months, but had been a regular for years, starting way back in 2001 when they moved it from the old fire hall. I sat down beside an old man with grey hair. His clothes and shoes told me he’d just gotten out of jail or lost his home—they were too nice to be lived-in street gear.
“Did she say you were Thistle?” he asked and motioned with his thumb to the office.
“Yeah.” I studied his body language and wondered if I should bolt—thought maybe he could be a friend of Mike and Stefan’s.
“Was your dad Sonny by chance? I only ever knew one family of Thistles.”
“Cyril Thistle Jr. is my dad.”
The man’s face changed from hard convict to friendly dog. I noticed a few prison tattoos under his sleeve as he stuck his hand out.
“Name’s Rodney. I was a good friend of your pop’s.”
I took his hand. “I’ve never met anyone who’s known my dad other than my own family. I’m just on my way to Harvest House in Ottawa. I leave tomorrow.”
“Been there. Treatment. Not Harvest House.”
The tips of his fingers were burnt and swollen. Telltale signs that he suffered from the same addiction I did. Only lighters or crack stems burn like that; that, or maybe he was a mechanic.
Not likely, I deduced. Working mechanics don’t usually stay in homeless shelters.
“Your dad was a great man. One of the best in Weston back in the day. Too bad what happened.”
I nodded. I had no words and just wanted to hear him riff—thought maybe he’d reveal some details I hadn’t heard before—but he fell silent.
I finally said, “I wish I knew him.” I glanced over to the intake worker, then back, not sure of what was on my new friend’s mind. “I grew up at my grandparents’. Last I saw him was when I was three. I’ve been keeping an eye out for him.”
“Keeping an eye out?”
“You know, in case he pops up somewhere. I heard he’s homeless. I’ve been searching all over for years.”
He shook his head and sat up. “No one told you? He’s gone, son. They got him in ’82.”
The lady in the booth called my name, but I didn’t move.
“Who got him?”
“You better go get signed in,” he said. “If you don’t, they’ll discharge you for wasting their time.”
“Who got him?” I asked again before getting up and walking toward the office, glancing back at him the whole way.
He didn’t answer.
The worker closed the door behind me, and I sat there the entire time thinking of what he’d said.
When I emerged, he was gone.
THE PROCESS
I DIDN’T GET IT RIGHT the first time in rehab. No one ever does.
I arrived at Harvest House in November 2007 and stayed for three months straight. I didn’t really work the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous when I got there, nor did I dig deep in personal development classes to the root of my addictions, like everyone else. I believed I was better than everyone, than the program. I kind of coasted after the initial detox and withdrawal, white-knuckled it, as they say in AA speak. I stayed dry with no cigarettes, sure, but never really achieved sobriety, even though I thought I did. I just repeated the first drugless day for ninety days.
Eventually dreams of liquor and drugs drove me out into a pitch-black February night with my roommate Max, another guy who was lackluster about the program. I was in no shape to face Old Man Winter in Ottawa; I didn’t own a jacket or even a sweater. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I was free and that I was going to be high and drunk and that I didn’t have to listen to the counsellors yell at me in group therapy while I avoided revealing any of my resentments about Dad or Josh or Grandpa or Jerry, or read the King James Bible, begging God for a forgiveness I knew I didn’t deserve.
“Fuck it all! Tonight is mine,” I proclaimed. I knew I’d most likely get arrested, so I was going on a tear until my cash ran out and the police caught up with me. “I’m going out in a blaze of glory!”
Max grinned a demonic grin and let out a hellish AC/DC scream, complete with heavy-metal devil horns thrust into the air.
We made it to the fence, and under the cover of darkness, we scrambled over it. My pants tore open as I leapt to freedom, leaving my balls blowing in the freezing wind.
The freedom that first day felt incredible. Like I’d been some cooped-up dog who’d discovered the gate left open.
Frickin’ party time!
We arrived at a homeless shelter an hour after we jumped the fence and immediately scored some dope and divided it between us. After the first blast of rock, Max saw an old working girl he’d dated before his stint in rehab. He waved to me, and they disappeared.
I ran to the liquor store, swiped a sixty ouncer of Crown Royal, and slammed it down without even tasting it. Then I went in to steal another to buy a huge chunk of crack. Store security didn’t notice me for once with my full cheeks and laundered clothes. My put-togetherness was like a cloak of invisibility.
I went ballistic. I know now that the compulsion to get high had eroded any moral judgment that I had. I was totally out of control. I was doing things like ripping open pay phones, and shoplifting in what felt like every store in the whole Ottawa area—razors, bras, makeup, baby formula, shrimp, whatever the cab drivers in front of Rideau Centre wanted me to steal, I got it for them. They were like my bank account—a twenty-four-hour drive-through cash bar that never closed. I must’ve been up for fourteen straight days before I finally fell asleep in the parking garage in the market. By then, I knew I was starting to look like some creature, slinking about. And I’d begun to be reduced to begging, worse than I ever was in Brampton, like my addictions had been at the bottom of the Harvest House driveway doing push-ups, getting stronger than before, waiting for me to fuck up.
THE MEANING IS GONE
I RETREATED INTO DARKNESS.
I walked along the boulevard in Ottawa, and the colours of the storefronts drained down across the sidewalks, faded under the blackened snowbanks, and seeped into the storm grates. Grey on grey, followed by more grey. The city hummed its droning hum, a cacophony of horns and car tires rotating across slick pavement, s
plashing through puddles. People hustled past me as I limped forward. My bowels loosened and let go, sending a stream of waste down my legs.
I’d held it in the best I could, stopping several times to ask store employees if I could use their washroom, but they’d said, “Sorry, for paying customers only,” before ushering me back out into the cold. I shuffled into an alley and attempted to clean myself with a discarded chip bag. After, I asked a restaurant for napkins, and they refused and grimaced. It was impossible to hide my shame.
I steadied myself against a bus stop, pulled out a bottle of Listerine, and took a swig, hoping that the antiseptic would cleanse my spiritual wounds. Mouthwash was the best I could do. Most of the liquor stores had caught me stealing and wouldn’t let me in. I heard the LCBO even had pictures of me in their backrooms. When the noxious fluid hit my belly, it torched my intestines but worked its dark magic. I faded into a groggy, chemical drunk, the kind that obliterated existence into fragments, just like I liked.
My digestive system was in tatters. The past few weeks I’d been puking blood mixed with bile, a sour, putrid liquid that burned when it came up. It made eating near impossible, save for a dry slice of toast or some weak chicken broth. The lack of regular meals caused my throat to close up. It hurt in the most ungodly way when I tried to force anything down it. The shelter staff worried. They’d come over and ask me why I wasn’t eating. I never answered. It was none of their business and they could fuck off as far as I was concerned. They didn’t even know my real name.
A passerby paused and said, “I don’t have any money.” I hadn’t asked. He looked me up and down then glanced at my bottle of Listerine.
“Fuck your money,” I said. “Cocksucker.” I belched caustic air in his direction then took another swig. It burned as though I’d eaten a forest fire. My stomach contracted, and bile shot onto my shoes and the sidewalk. The rose colour of it used to frighten me, but I didn’t care anymore. I wiped my hand across my mouth and started toward the Giant Tiger, where I hoped to steal a new pair of pants. My legs were like wooden stilts underneath my baggy, soiled jeans, knobby knees knocking. It took all the strength I had just to keep steady, my vision wavering. I gave up on my mission after a few laboured steps.
The smell of bread from the bakery on the corner made me think of my grandma and our Christmases in Brampton. There was an ember of that time still alight within me. I inhaled deeply, hoping to set it ablaze. Nothing. The memory passed.
My stomach gurgled, and I searched the ground for lost change and cigarette butts. I found nothing but garbage, more dirty looks, and a bench out in front of a bar. My foot was numb, and I decided to take a rest—I wouldn’t be able to fish change from the Centennial Flame fountain on Parliament Hill, either. I’d gotten so used to the pain from my ankle that I routinely forgot about the gaping sore. It’d been over two years since the operation. The hole was the size of a dime, but the flesh around the edge of it was white and shrivelled, like skin submerged in water for too long, and it expelled a green-grey ooze that crusted yellow when it dried. It reeked like the dead. My foot, too, used to frighten me, but now I was indifferent.
A song came on the loudspeaker of the bar. I turned my head to listen, wondering if I recognized it. I didn’t. I didn’t recognize much anymore—not music, or movies, or anything. Signs blurred into smears of jumbled incomprehension. Faces, too. I was a wild animal, a stray wolf with matted fur covered in filth, one not even a dogcatcher would want to mess with. The world screamed past me. I lived amongst the Ewok shadows; I groaned misery and shifted as they did. I longed to be part of something again, to be known and accepted, to hear my name. No one ever said my name anymore. I never told anyone who I was for fear of being found out. For what? I didn’t know. I’d forgotten years ago.
I slumped forward on the bench and held my head in my hands, trying to remember how my name sounded. I spelled it aloud to myself.
“J. E. S. S. E. Jesse.”
I smiled, but molten bile bubbled up into my throat, followed by the rude smell of feces, bringing me back to the street. Olive was right, my body was giving out. It wasn’t strong enough to endure any more punishment.
SALVATION AND THE SOUP KITCHEN LADY
“HEY YOU!” A VOICE CALLED up to me. “Get down from there.”
It was some woman. I paid her no heed on my ascent to the summit of the half-completed building on Rideau Street.
“I said get down, or I’ll call the cops.”
My bony hand grasped the edge of a roughly finished ledge. My muscles may have atrophied somewhat from addiction and soup-kitchen slop, but I was still as spry as Gollum of Middle-earth looking for his Precious.
“What do you care?” I shot back. “Beat it.”
“Why do all these do-gooders keep fucking with me?” I muttered to myself. “Why can’t they just mind their own goddamned business?” I hoisted myself up another floor.
“I work over at the Shepherds of Good Hope shelter. I’ve seen you on the breadlines.” The pitch of her voice raised the higher I went.
“So what?” I replied without looking down.
Her efforts were useless. I’d worked out my plan in jail. After I got released, I was going to climb to the top of a construction tower, close my eyes, spread my wings, and float away, crack and alcohol coursing through my brain for courage. I’d had enough. If shuffling around on the streets like a homeless rat on cocaine was bad, a recent stint in jail in the nation’s capital was worse. It wasn’t like in Maplehurst with Bucky and Priest—here I got no respect. No one would take my calls—not family, not friends. Rapists and murderers got their calls taken, but not me. And letters—forget about it. I’d wait every day at the front of the range for word from the outside world, and every day I was disappointed.
I shouted down to the woman on the ground. “Listen, lady, I’m just going to go to sleep up here cause it’s safer than on ground lev—”
“It’s still winter weather and cold as hell. You’ll freeze up there.”
A gust bit through my H&M hoodie, and I felt weak all of a sudden. “Listen, can you please just leave me be? I just want to be left alone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I quickened my pace. I didn’t want to lose my nerve, so I reached for the next floor. My hand slipped on some ice, and I fell onto my back on the floor below. Writhing, I almost rolled off the edge.
“You almost got what you came for!” she shouted.
Gasping for air, my heart racing, I curled up and covered my ears, trying to hide from both her incessant voice and what had just happened.
“Hey, you know what? I think I do know you. You told me about your grandmother and your brother. You said your name was Jesse or something.”
The sound of my own name dropped into my consciousness like a sledgehammer. The tears creeping along the bridge of my nose froze as I thought of my grandma and Jerry—memories that shattered and warmed me at the same time. The woman below was right, I did know her.
I could hear her yelling again.
“You said you missed them and wanted to make them proud. I remember.”
I rolled over and peeked over the ledge. Sure enough, it was her, black hair hanging behind her shoulders as she looked up at me.
“Come on now, enough of this nonsense,” she said with a big smile. “Get down, and let’s get you some soup and socks.”
I picked myself up and began my long descent.
When I got to the bottom, she greeted me with a brisk hug. “That was close.”
“It sure was,” I replied.
RECONCILIATION
2008–2017
FIGHTING THE DARKNESS
once, in a not-too-distant life
i was a different person.
it was a dark time
loveless,
cold,
violent.
a time when I no longer cared about the world,
a world that had taken so much
and left
me with nothing.
wîhtikow (monster)
i lived by the criminal’s creed:
live for today,
forget the past,
damn the future.
i took what i wanted,
stole what i needed,
and robbed when i could.
dwelling in shadows,
amongst the murderers and thieves,
the highwaymen,
and outlaws.
that is how i can fight the darkness now.
because i once was the darkness,
an apparition,
driven by worst part of the human soul.
a beast lost in resentments.
once, in a not-too-distant life.
DAWN OF THE BRONZE AGE
“WE FOLLOWED A TRAIL OF money from the scene of the crime,” the constable told his fellow officers. “Right to where he was smoking crack in front of the Shepherds of Good Hope. Can you believe that?”
It was shamefully true. For my very last crime the cops had literally caught me red-handed. I put up little resistance when they chucked me in the back of the squad car. I’d had enough.
I faced break-and-enter charges and was processed at the Elgin Street police station in a nice part of town I rarely ventured into, except when arrested. Then I was shipped to the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre (OCDC).
So there I was, once again, heckling the screws and counting the days and cinder blocks.
Those cinder blocks seemed to follow me wherever I went—the ones found in jails, mental institutions, probation offices, hospitals, detox centres, detention centres, shelters, Sally Anns, welfare offices, court holding cells, police station bullpens. I hated the monotony of doing time, but if I was sick of anything, it was seeing those institutional sixteen-by-eights. I once counted around 180 of them in my cell at the Don Jail in Toronto; around 190 at Maplehurst in Milton, Ontario; and around 160 at OCDC. But the Harvest House rehab centre had over 360 blocks per dorm room; that made it like the Ritz-Carlton to me.
From the Ashes Page 24