But drinking makes you careless and sloppy and it wasn’t long before my attempts at crime landed me in jail. The things I did to get myself locked up were never outrageous or dangerous and the terms I served were never more than a few months. I found that gaining acceptance in lock-up was as easy as it had been on the street. The old-timers told me to “eat mutton, say nuttin.” I was already good at both, so it was easy advice to follow. Being in jail never scared me. I got healthy, put on some weight, even saved a little money. When I got out I went back to the old routine—with the same result.
That’s because I had no home to return to once I’d been let out. All I had was the street. I had never met anyone of substance, anyone with a predictable routine or schedule. We called such people “Square Johns,” and for a street guy to be seen with a Square John was unforgivable. So I had no one to help me, no one to care about me, no one to reach out to. All I knew was the street. Concrete becomes a part of you when you get as familiar with it as I did. You become concrete. You become cold and hard. Sleeping on it ceases to be uncomfortable because you fit there. As I thought about it that night on the hill, surrounded by the whole country, I remembered how it used to feel on those nights when I would wander aimlessly, sucking on a bottle, looking for a place to rest for a bit without a hassle before moving on.
I’d look into the windows of the houses I passed. The lights seemed so warm, so inviting, so filled with life, and I imagined myself as a Square John, walking down one of those streets in the evening after a hard day’s work. I would be tired, hungry. My steps would get faster the closer I got, until the moment I turned up the sidewalk of my home, when I’d slow right down. I’d slow down and look at those same windows and know in my soul that there was someone inside waiting for the sound of my footsteps. Someone who would breathe a little easier knowing I was home and safe. Someone who would rush to hug me, to welcome me, to want me near. Someone whose whole being said “love.”
I craved that then, that life of which mine was the shadow. You smell when you’ve been drinking steadily and you can’t shower regularly. Your odour makes romance impossible, except for drunken tumblings in the bushes with a woman as lonely as you are, and your lack of a telephone or address makes it hard to get a job. So the evening homecomings I imagined were light years from being possible. Still I craved them. I just didn’t know how to start trying to get there.
So I’d walk through neighbourhood after neighbourhood with sadness in my chest—a heavy, thick, unmoving sadness. I’d walk until I couldn’t take another step and then I would curl up in a back yard, a garage, a shed, or just beneath a tree and sleep dreamlessly and heavily. Street people don’t walk with their heads down because they’re ashamed or afraid. They do so because they don’t want to look at what haunts them the most: the sight of contentment, happiness, sheltered lives, and warmth beyond the lighted windows. I walked with my head down a lot.
For six years I went back and forth from street to jail. Nowadays I know it was because I went back and forth to alcohol. Those six years were misery. Sober, in jail, I was in conflict with myself. I felt a great hunger within me for the opposite of what I was living. I wanted a sidewalk to walk up, a door to open, and a loved one to greet me. I wanted love, security, and peace. I wanted the magic of a good book in an armchair. But the choices I was making only ever resulted in fear, insecurity, and conflict. I didn’t know how to make the things I hungered for become real in the outside world. I didn’t know that my conflict was born from my spirit crying for what it needed and my mind shouting for what it wanted. I didn’t know that I always chose what my mind shouted for: acceptance, belonging, the esteem of others. I didn’t know that there was a way, a healing way, to bring those two parts of myself into balance. I didn’t know that finding myself was an inside job. I didn’t know because the choices I made always put me in a place where there was no one to teach me and make me understand.
I’d met other Native people, but only on the street, in bars, or in jail. For the most part, they were exactly like me—lost, ashamed, afraid, hurt, angry, and trying as hard as they knew how to deny it. For the most part, they were doing the same things I was doing. When they talked to me it was about the dirty deal the white man had given us. It was about anger, hatred, resentment, revenge, militancy, and getting back what was due. It was about being a warrior. It was about fighting and it was about only being around other Indians. Sadly, too, it was about drinking and being falsely proud. After that kind of introduction to who I was, I learned to react angrily over name-calling, putdowns, snubs, and other actions people sometimes take against those they don’t understand. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I added these reactions to my routine on the street and although my anger and hardness put distance between myself and others, it did nothing to bring me closer to the things I craved. It also added to my confusion.
Now I had two roles to play—the rebel and the Indian—neither of which I knew how to carry off. So I faked my way through everything—even friendship.
I had a friend back then. His name was Joe Delaney and he was a retired master sergeant from the Canadian Forces. He was a fighter, Old Joe, a tough, grizzled veteran of Korea, and he loved to tell stories of his escapades. In his youth he was a brawler, a “standup guy,” a dependable friend, and an awesome enemy. His fists were as fast as his wits and he swaggered his way right into the army and upwards to sergeant’s stripes. I met him through his son, who was one of the Montebello Park gang, and Old Joe took to me right away. When I’d show up at his door he’d smile and bellow, “Hey, it’s the big Indian!” He liked doing that and he liked me.
For a while I went to live with Old Joe in his apartment on Cherry Street. I learned his story then and it affected my whole life. Sergeant Joe was a “slap-in-the-yap” disciplinarian who wanted his men to be as tough as he was. He was proud of his battles and as we sat in his living room many nights drinking the vodka and beer with which he surrounded himself, he regaled me with colourful stories of an army life where men were brawny, brainy, and free. The picture he painted of himself was that of an independent spirit, a fighter who would never back down from a challenge, and an unparalleled drinker.
But when the nights got long and the booze soaked through his grit and resolve, I learned the true story of Old Joe Delaney, Master Sergeant. He had been a tough young man, just as he said. He had been hard. But a girl changed all that. She came into his life and cast her gaze upon him and the Master Sergeant felt something soft and warm move inside his chest.
He fell in love. She showed him places in himself that he never knew existed, and he loved her even more for that. She took his hand and tamed him. They were married and Joe took a job as a mechanic and left the battlefields behind. When the time was right, he retired from the army and they moved to St. Catharines, where a son was born and Joe the soldier became a husband and a father. He loved that life, and the memories shone in his face when he spoke of it, even though the booze clouded his countenance.
“I’da stayed there forever,” he said. “No one ever had a better go of it than me and I prayed to whatever God there is to keep me with her always.”
But a drunk driver changed all that. His wife was walking home with a bag of groceries when the drunk careened around the corner and straight into her. She was in a coma for a year. Joe went every day to be with her and he never gave up hope that his lovely bride would one day wake and return to him. And one day she did awaken. But her brain was damaged and she couldn’t remember anything beyond the moment she was in. She recalled nothing of her life, of the son she had brought into the world, or the tough soldier she had tamed and loved. She couldn’t speak. Joe kept on visiting her every day but eventually the blank stare from the face of the woman he loved so deeply but couldn’t reach got to be too much for him.
He stopped visiting and took up drinking. Before long the arthritis born of wet mud and long marches crippled him and he was forced to leave his job. That was when
I met him. It seemed like his whole life was the sofa in his living room. We’d sit there, his son and I, and he’d tell us wild stories of rebellion and bravado, shaking his fist in the air and gritting his teeth at remembered enemies, swearing, cursing, sweating, until he led himself to the memories of her and he’d cry inconsolably. Then the booze would freeze him up again and he’d pass out to the only place where memory didn’t exist, where hurt couldn’t enter and where old soldiers could still be brawny, brainy, and free. Oblivion, sweet and dark.
And then we stole his money.
Because we were rebels, too. We didn’t care. For me, Old Joe represented free booze and handouts. I’d sit and drink his booze and listen to his tales because there was always something in it for me. He’d send me on a run for vodka and leave me the change. Every Friday the beer truck pulled up outside his door on Cherry Street and left his refrigerator full. He had his army pension and his unemployment cheques and he was careless. I always had money to try and impress the girls and whenever I needed more I’d knock on the old soldier’s door. He’d always greet me with a smile and a bellow, usher me into my seat, slap a glass in my hand, and listen to whatever tale I had to tell until it was time to launch into his own.
I watched Old Joe die. He died bit by bit right in front of me. He drank and he drank and he drank until his liver couldn’t handle it anymore. I watched him do that, watched him dissolve, shrink, and disappear. I emptied the bottles that he pissed in, changed his pants when he soiled himself, mopped the floor, cleaned the sofa and fed him when he was well enough to handle food. I took care of him as best I could, listened to him rant, covered him with a blanket after he’d passed out. And then I stole his money.
He died alone. I was out of town when it happened and when I heard, I dropped the phone and walked off down the road. I walked a long time. When the morning came I found a small, dark bar and had a drink for the old soldier. I had a lot of drinks that day and then I walked away, found another place, and drank some more. I hadn’t been a friend. I’d been a parasite who took advantage of an old man’s pain. I’d been a rebel and I had rebelled my way right past an opportunity to redeem myself in my own eyes. I let Old Joe die alone and I hated myself for that.
As I sat in my circle in the Rockies, I stared upwards at the endless sky and I cried. I wasn’t crying for Old Joe; he didn’t need my tears anymore. I was crying for myself, for the lost young man that I’d been. For the rebel unable to see that he was needed, that he might make a difference. I cried because my fear had made me self-centred, uncaring, oblivious to other people’s pain. I cried because Old Joe had never needed me to qualify for his acceptance and friendship. It had been given as a matter of course and I hadn’t seen that. I cried because if I had seen it, known it, reacted to it honestly, I might have grown up on Cherry Street. I cried for old soldiers and old rebels bearing old wounds forever.
I started another tobacco pouch. This one was for the spirit of a lost young man walking slowly through established neighbourhoods, craving the warmth and the light spilling from the windows of the houses. For his ability to survive harsh nights on the street. For rising above the heavy sadness in his chest and for moving on despite confusion, desperation, and doubt. For Old Joe Delaney and the lesson he was able to teach me so many years too late. The tears kept flowing down my face as I thought about those years and my hands trembled in the darkness as I tied that pouch together.
Then the hunger came. My belly began to groan with emptiness. When the late afternoon shadows stretched out late I could hardly think. All I could feel was the hard emptiness of my belly as it shrank in upon itself. The sun was a furnace. The humidity, with no breeze to move the sluggish air, made even the smallest breath hard to take. I stripped to my underwear and sat there with sweat coursing down my body. I wanted to swallow great gulps of water, but the canteen wasn’t a large one and there were more days still to get through. So I sat there, baked and miserable.
I tried sucking on some grass. I tried sucking on small pebbles. I drank a bit of water. Nothing eased the soreness that I felt spreading from my stomach through to my entire being. It was agony. I walked around the small circle, stopping here and there to try to lose myself in the different points of view. My belly almost rattled with emptiness. Then, as John suggested, I began to tell Creation about my hunger. I talked about how good a small morsel of meat would taste right about then and about my memories of bread, eggs, milk, soup, and pecan pie. The more I thought about food the less I felt the hunger. My mind cleared and I was able to recall special meals at special times. Like the birthday party I had when I turned thirty. My friends had baked me a great chocolate cake shaped like the console of a radio station because I was working as a radio producer. They had even fashioned a long chocolate microphone. When I recalled the laughter and the friendship of that night my hunger eased even more. I went back further in my memory and recalled the great feast I had had with total strangers at a hostel on Highway 17 in northern Ontario when I was nineteen.
That summer of 1974 I decided to head out on the road again. I had hitchhiked across the country twice before and seen a lot of places. None of those places felt like where I was supposed to be and so, as all searchers do when they can’t find what they’re looking for, I headed right back to where I’d come from. That, of course, was St. Catharines, and I spent a long unsettled winter wishing I were somewhere, anywhere, but where I was. I wanted out so badly. Back then I thought it was the city and the life I led there that I wanted out of. But it was me. I wanted out of me because I was unhappy, unfulfilled, and empty.
I had nothing. When I worked at all it was only long enough to get a paycheque; then I’d be gone. I didn’t really live anywhere. I stayed on friends’ couches, slept at missions, or outdoors when it was warm enough. By then, I was already trapped in the hard rinse of alcohol. Booze still promised good times, friendship, romance, and the esteem of my partying pals, and I always chased those things. But I wanted out and I really believed that somewhere else was going to be different. I really believed that another town, another job, another party, another somewhere was going to send the magic tumblers of the universe into the proper spin and they would open the door to the world I wanted to live in. I only needed to get to the place where that could happen. So when the springtime came I began to feel the urge to go. I resisted it at first, more out of a stubborn belief that I could change things by getting a job, finding a new girl, or partying with friends, than any real desire to stay. But by summer I was eager for the road.
So, one day in July, I left. All I had was a backpack with a few clothes, two books, a bag of oranges, and five dollars. I had no idea where I was going but I knew that it was west. In those days hitchhikers were more accepted and rides were easy to get. That first day I made it all the way to Sudbury, where the great barren hills testify to the presence of the huge nickel smelters. It seemed like my journey was blessed. Day two found me outside a Husky service station in Sault Sainte Marie when evening fell. I could have walked into town and found a safe place to bed down, but I chose to try and thumb a long ride around Lake Superior with a trucker or a night traveller.
Finally, at about ten o’clock someone pulled over. He was a fishing lodge owner named Earl and he was going as far as a place called Nipigon. Nipigon is a small town at the northwestern end of Lake Superior about a hundred miles out of Thunder Bay. For hitchhikers, getting a ride around that big lake is cause for celebration because there’s nothing between the Soo and Thunder Bay except for huge rolling hills and small lumber towns. Virtually no hope of a ride if you get stuck. Earl and I headed off into the night.
He talked while he drove. He told me about setting out with his father from Hespeler, Ontario, looking for land on a northern river. They were anglers. All Earl’s life had seemed to have been spent on the shore of one river or another, casting for whatever fish was in season. He loved fishing. He loved rivers. And when work in the factory became too much to bear any longer,
he and his father decided to pool their savings and start their own lodge. They’d found the perfect place on the shores of Lake Nipissing. Earl talked about the effort to clear a road to the site, about the two years of building, about the harshness of the northern winter, and how sometimes they wanted to give up and go back home to the farmlands of Hespeler. But their dream ran deeper than the winter snows and they finished their lodge. For twelve years it had been his life and he loved it. “Gol’,” I remember him saying just before I went to sleep, “that land just sorta cradles ya, makes ya giggle just like a baby to be wrapped up in it, makes ya wanna lie down in it forever. Guess that’s why it’s home.”
When I woke up it was raining. Earl pulled into a service station in Nipigon and bought me a huge breakfast before dropping me at the bridge with twenty dollars and a great big handshake. He was a good man and whenever I find myself on a river fishing I wonder whether the land still cradles him, whether he still giggles to be wrapped up in it. I always hope so.
It rained and rained and rained. All of that day and on into the night the downpour continued and when I finally crawled under that bridge to sleep, it seemed like it would go on forever. It almost did. For three days I stood there with my thumb out. No one stopped. Earl’s twenty ran out on the morning of the fourth day and I wondered what I was going to do. Desperation, when it becomes familiar, when it becomes a fixture in your life, only ever serves to feed itself. Nothing but booze can cleave it down to a manageable size, and that day in the rain there was no money left to get any. I thought of stepping into town to steal some money or try to stem some change on a street corner but you learn on the street to avoid putting yourself into conditions you can’t control. I had no knowledge of this town, how its police responded to transients, how the people felt about strangers, or who was approachable. So I chose to suffer the rain. It seemed endless and I thought about how Noah must have felt, or the jungle peoples’ amazing patience during the rainy seasons. Rain. Rain. Rain.
For Joshua Page 7