Idiot Wind

by Peter Kaldheim

  As I would discover in the coming days, all the dos and don’ts I had learned during that orientation session were just a fraction of what I’d need to know to survive my time behind bars. The real ‘schooling’ came from the jail-tattooed inmates who called the shots in the cellblocks, many of whom were serving their third or fourth sentence on the island. These repeat offenders knew more about prison life than half the guards did, and they quickly made it clear to us new fish who was really in charge – and their intimidating trash-talk left us in no doubt that the guards were the least of our problems.

  Fortunately, when I was moved out of the intake unit to one of the general population cellblocks a few days later, I landed in a dormitory that housed a ‘soldier’ from one of the Mafia families operating in Westchester. After I had let it be known that I did business with Bobby Bats, he had one of his contacts on the outside check me out. As soon as word came back that I was telling the truth, Sal from Yonkers took me under his wing and became my ‘rabbi’. Even on Rikers Island, where the black and Hispanic inmates far outnumbered the white prisoners, a connection to the Italian ‘families’ commanded respect, and by ducking under the umbrella that Yonkers Sal extended to me I escaped a lot of the bullshit hassles that rained down on the other fish who had to fend for themselves. Which made me glad I hadn’t rolled over when the cops who’d busted me tried to get me to give up the name of my coke supplier. By keeping mum about Bobby Bats, I had proved myself a stand-up guy. As such, I was worthy of protection. So I did my time at Rikers in relative peace, shielded from the petty beefs that often sent other prisoners to the infirmary for stitches.

  With Sal as my rabbi, I no longer had to put up with gang-bangers cutting ahead of me in line when I was waiting to use the cell block’s one payphone at night, and nobody dared try to make me their ‘biscuit’ – which was the euphemism then current for inmates too weak to fight off the sexual predators who singled them out as rape targets. The only escape for these unfortunate ‘biscuits’ was to put in for transfer to a solo cell in the protective custody unit, which the inmates at Rikers sneeringly called ‘Punk City’. Solitary confinement always seemed to me a harsh penalty to pay for being a rape victim, but, as the only remedy short of suicide, it had its share of takers.

  There were no suicides in my cellblock during my time at Rikers, but an inmate in one of the adjoining blocks had hanged himself in the shower room soon after I arrived. I remember being disgusted when I heard one of the COs referring to the victim as ‘another mope on a rope’. But that was early on in my sentence, before my ongoing Rikers ‘education’ taught me to take the callousness of the average guard for granted. The few guards who treated the inmates decently turned out to be the crooked ones who smuggled drugs into the cellblocks. Their profit motive gave them reason to consider us as potential customers, rather than just bags of meat that had to be inventoried three times a day, so in the upside-down world of prison life these black-market capitalists were actually the only guards to exhibit any human compassion. I considered it a lucky break to have been assigned to a cell block where one of these bent guards held the keys.

  With our in-house smuggler on duty, the overnight hours in the dorm were a lot more mellow than they would have been if the hard-ass CO who worked the day shift had been in charge. At least at night we didn’t have to worry that the smell of marijuana smoke would be reported to the shift commander and bring the flying squad rushing in to search our bunks and lockers for contraband. This was a real bonus. Our cell block was crammed with eighty inmates in a space built to house fifty, so the air in the dorm was always foul – even when the barred windows set high in the cell walls were cracked for ventilation. But the scent of burning marijuana after lights-out brought a welcome change that I came to appreciate as one of those minor blessings that made prison life slightly more tolerable. That’s one lesson you can count on a place like Rikers to teach you – how to savour the little things. It was also the one lesson I promised myself I’d keep in mind once I hit the streets again . . .

  It had been so long since I’d done any serious writing, it was lunchtime by the time I’d eked out those few pages, but as I reread my words over a tuna sandwich I felt as though I’d made a decent start. I’d pick up the pace once I had a few more pages behind me. In the meantime, the crucial thing was to just keep at it till I’d built up some momentum. And, as a reminder to self, my entry for that day in my composition book was a block-lettered quote from Horace (via Apelles and Pliny): NULLA DIES SINE LINEA. ‘Not a day without a line.’ An ironic mantra for a recovering coke addict to adopt, I’ll grant you, but I’d dabbled in Latin far longer than I’d dabbled in cocaine, so I was willing to give it a shot. And – give him credit – in the weeks ahead Horace did his part in keeping me on track. Although, I’ll confess, some days my adherence to his dictum was de minimis – as he himself would doubtless have pointed out if he’d happened to be counting lines.

  To my relief, four days proved to be all I needed for the open blisters on my heels to close up. Even the scabs were already shrinking nicely by Thursday night, so my convalescence was about complete. A few more days of bandaging my feet with gauze before I hit the streets and my gimping days would be over. Hallelujah, and God bless jungle boots!

  Over the next few weeks, I would put a lot of mileage on those boots, as I chased down job openings all over the city. But despite the neatly typed résumé the volunteers at the drop-in centre had prepared for me, I never got a single call-back. If there were any employers in that city who wouldn’t shy away from hiring a Bluecoat, I surely never came across one. I couldn’t blame them, though. Who wants to take a chance on a job candidate who lists an SRO hotel like the Joyce as his residence? Or whose contact phone number connects to a hotel front desk?

  The only business that would hire transients like me was an outfit called Oregon Advertising. Once or twice a week they’d send a passenger van down to skid row to recruit ‘paper hangers’ – guys willing to spend the day like mailmen, hoofing it to every house in their assigned neighbourhood – to hang advertising fliers on the doorknobs of suburban homeowners who’d just as soon set their dog on you or threaten you with a trespassing charge as read the crap you’re delivering to their doorsteps. But hey, if your skin’s thick enough, it’s a way to pick up fifteen or twenty bucks for a day filled with healthful exercise, fresh air and the ever-cleansing rains of the Pacific Northwest. Yep, I fell for it for a few days, I’ll admit it.

  There was an empty warehouse a few blocks from the Joyce and the guys who wanted a day’s work would line up on the sidewalk in front of it by 7 a.m. When the Oregon Advertising van arrived, the driver would pick out eight or ten guys for his crew that day. I was younger than most of the tramps who showed up, so I got picked right away and, actually, my first two days hanging paper in the suburbs weren’t too hard to take.

  True, it was a pain in the ass trying to keep your bag of fliers dry when the skies opened up – and the skies always opened up at some point before your day was through – but with my feet all healed up I had no trouble covering the four or five miles the job required, and the extra cash came in handy. But the third time I showed up the van arrived with a different driver, a macho young Mexican guy who gave me a surly look I didn’t care for. Still, when he waved me into the van I piled in like a dummy and rode off with him into the boonies – this time way out in the wilds of Beaverton. He handed me a route map for my area when we got there and I was the first crew member dropped off.

  When I heard the rest of the crew laughing as the van pulled away, I had a bad feeling I’d just been played. But conscientious paper hanger that I was, I delivered all my fliers anyway – being careful not to violate company policy by cutting across any lawns – and when my route was completed I reported to the designated pick-up spot given on my route map and waited for the van to collect me. I’d arrived thirty minutes early at the rendezvous point, anxious not to miss my ride back to headquarters, and of cours
e it was pouring rain as I waited by the roadside for the van to show up. And the rain was still bucketing down an hour and a half later, when I finally admitted to myself that the little prick had gotten one over on me.

  I had a tough time getting any cars to stop for me in the rain as I hitchhiked the ten miles back to the company office, and it was dark by the time I got back. The vans were all parked and their drivers long gone when I arrived. I cursed my luck, because I’d missed my chance to give the punk the ass-kicking he deserved. The secretary was already locking up the payroll office, but I told her what had happened and refused to let her leave until she’d written out my pay cheque. On my way home, I was sorely tempted to have a shot and a beer when I cashed the fifteen-dollar cheque at a rummy bar in Old Town, but I decided not to give the asshole that victory too. So I made do with a long, hot shower when I finally got back to the Joyce – a ritual cleansing to mark the end of my paper-hanging career.

  The next day, still pissed about getting played, I decided to clear my head by taking a hike downtown to Taylor Street to treat myself to a ninety-nine-cent matinee at Portland’s only discount movie theatre. I didn’t care what was playing, as long as it distracted me for a couple of hours. I figured I’d just let the theatre’s schedule dictate my choice. Whatever film was about to be screened next when I got to the box office, that’s what I’d see. Which is how I came to purchase a ticket for Little Shop of Horrors, a movie I probably wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise, since I’d never been a fan of Hollywood musicals.

  I had no idea what I was letting myself in for, since all I knew about it was that it had made a splash as an Off-Broadway play back in the early eighties. So you can imagine my surprise when the movie kicked off with a big musical number called ‘Skid Row (Downtown)’. What a hoot! As I listened to the lyrics, I couldn’t help scanning the audience for any fellow Bluecoats, just to see if they were grinning as hard as I was – and sure enough, I spotted a few whose faces registered the same bewildered amusement. There we were, Burnside Street’s derelict sons, ducking the rain and our troubles for a few hours in a darkened theatre, and this is what Hollywood had to offer us? Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene singing about how hard it is to escape from skid row? Pardon the pun, but it beggared belief: skid row veterans paying ninety-nine cents to be serenaded by skid row impostors? Only in Roger Corman’s America!

  I laughed all the way back to the Joyce, and still had a grin on my face when I cut through the lobby and nodded at Vern on my way to the stairs. But my grin faded fast when I got up to the second floor and saw the sagging pile of overstuffed trash bags outside the open door of the room across the hall from mine, and the disgusted look on the day-shift janitor’s face when he stepped out of the room wearing latex gloves and a disposable breathing mask to dump another bag on the heap. I could tell right away what he was up to. I’d seen it enough to know I was witnessing an eviction – from the Latin verb evincere, meaning ‘to overcome’ or ‘to defeat’. One of my neighbours, it seemed, was getting the proverbial boot.

  At first, I was the only witness in the hallway, but then the Ancient Mariner emerged from his room next door – still wearing the same robe and Pearl Harbor Survivor cap he’d had on the night I first met him – and shuffled into the hall to investigate.

  ‘Lonnie moving out?’ the Mariner asked, eyeing the mound of Hefty bags.

  ‘Yep,’ the janitor replied. ‘He just doesn’t know it yet.’

  ‘What, he’s getting evicted?’

  ‘Can’t stay if you don’t pay,’ the janitor said. ‘His rent was due three days ago.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ the Mariner asked. ‘I haven’t seen him around all week.’

  ‘Probably still at the detox centre, drying out. Lou up in 323 says he saw the drunk wagon scoop him up on Tuesday night. Crazy bastard was passed out cold in the middle of the Burnside Bridge.’

  ‘That’s not good,’ the Mariner frowned.

  ‘Good riddance, I say. You wouldn’t believe how much crap the guy had in his room,’ the janitor groused, stooping to grab two cinched sacks by their throats. ‘Listen to this: I found a ripped-up old pair of berry-picking pants shoved under his bed, all crusted with strawberry seeds. But nobody’s picking yet, so they had to be seeds from last year’s harvest. Unbelievable. Why in God’s name would anyone hang on to such trash?’

  Because, I was tempted to point out, one man’s trash is another man’s proof of life. But I just fished my room key out of my pocket and held my tongue. Something told me the janitor knew as well as I did that you don’t end up living in a furnished room unless you’re desperate. And once you’ve reached that point, you hang on to whatever you’ve got left, no matter how worthless, just to prove to yourself that you can still hang on to something.

  As a former evictee myself, I was all too familiar with how the process worked. You go off on a bender, blow all your rent money, and by the time you get back to your room two or three days later some hotel minion with a pass key has hauled all your belongings off to a locked storeroom in the basement, where management will hold your stuff hostage until you pay up your back rent as ransom. Of course, for most evictees that’s just one more losing proposition. If you owned anything worth ransoming, you wouldn’t be staying at an SRO in the first place. So you do the only reasonable thing. You kiss it all goodbye and walk away. Now you’re back out on the street again, with nothing left to lose and, take my word for it, it never feels like freedom, no matter what Janis Joplin says.

  Lonnie’s eviction was an unsettling reminder that I had only two weeks’ worth of rent credit left on my LIEAP account. If I didn’t find work soon, it wouldn’t be long before I’d be out on the pavement with Mr Strawberry Fields Forever. Which wasn’t something to look forward to, even though the weather was getting milder by the day. If it came to that, I figured I might just as well head south to San Francisco and take my chances with Tanner. I wasn’t ready to bail just yet, though. Something could break my way any day now, if I just hung in there. Or so I kept telling myself.

  I was still sweating my situation a few days later when I happened to overhear two tramps about my age swapping stories about how much money they’d both made doing seasonal work in Alaska’s fish canneries when they were younger. I was standing behind them in the lunch line outside the Blanchet House at the time, engrossed in a library copy of a slim book of character sketches by Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus, but I put the book away as soon as I heard the numbers the two tramps were throwing around. Twenty thousand bucks for a four-month gig? How could Theophrastus compete with that? I was instantly intrigued, and immediately began pumping the two for information about fishery jobs. I couldn’t really see myself working on the slime line in a canning factory, but a job as a galley cook on one of the trawlers would suit me fine.

  ‘Hell, yeah, galley cooks make even more than the slime liners,’ one of the guys claimed. ‘Cooks take home a cut of the crew share, so if the catch is good, you can make bank. Sometimes double what the factory guys take home.’

  This is sounding better all the time, I thought to myself, and went on pressing them for any tips they could give me about applying for work in the Alaskan fishing fleet.

  ‘If you’re serious, you’d better head on up to Seattle right quick,’ the other tramp advised. ‘April’s when the Alaskan boats start hiring. You wait much longer you’ll miss out. Most of the boats have year-round offices on the waterfront in Seattle harbour. With no connections, you’ll just have to make the rounds with your résumé and hope you get lucky.’

  ‘He’s right,’ his partner chimed in. ‘I just hopped a freight down here from Seattle last week, and guys were already rolling into town looking for cannery work. I was you, I’d catch a train up there tomorrow.’

  His mention of freight-hopping clinched the deal as far as I was concerned. My aborted attempt at catching a freight out of New Orleans hadn’t satisfied my urge to give Jack Kerouac’s favourite mode of travel a t
ry. So I switched my line of questioning from boats to trains, and the freight-hopper gave me good advice on the easiest way to ‘catch out’ to Seattle. According to him, the Portland railyards were too heavily patrolled by yard bulls. My best bet, he said, was to catch a city bus to the Washington border, then walk across the bridge to the Vancouver train yards, where security was a lot lighter.

  ‘Good to know,’ I said. My mind was already racing, making mad plans to head for Vancouver at the earliest possible opportunity. I was so preoccupied by the time I got into the Blanchet dining room that the volunteer directing traffic had to shout at me three times before I snapped out of it and realised that the empty seat he was pointing at was meant for me. I haven’t the faintest idea what they served that day. I ate in a daydream, and as soon as I left I headed downtown to the main library, where I spent a feverish half-hour huddled over a copy of the Seattle Yellow Pages, jotting down the names and office addresses of every Alaskan fishing company I could find. It was encouraging to see how many there were. I couldn’t wait to get up there and start making the rounds. But first I’d have to hit the Army-Navy store and pick up a duffel bag for my clothes and food and kitchen equipment. Easily done.

  By Friday night, I had everything taken care of, and my pack and duffel were all loaded and ready for an early departure in the morning. I’d drop off my room key at the desk on my way out and then head straight to Salmon Street and Sixth Avenue to catch the metro bus that would take me to the Washington line – a budget-friendly trip that would cost me only one dollar ten cents. I barely managed three hours’ sleep that night, I was so wound up and ready to go. Portland had been good to me, but after sixty-six days on skid row it was time to seek my future elsewhere.

  When I awoke at dawn on Saturday and heard the rush of rainwater splashing into the airshaft outside my window, I had a feeling the weather gods were about to change my plans. I threw on some clothes and went down to the lobby to see what it looked like out in the street, and it wasn’t an encouraging sight. The temperature must have taken quite a drop overnight because the rain was coming down as sleet and the sidewalks were a slushy mess.