Salal

6:10 a.m.– I squeeze between a Ford Expedition and a Chevy Suburban into a spot marked ‘Compact Only,’ and wonder if I’ll have to kick out the windshield. Snug. Cozy, anyway. By 6, most of the spots are taken, so no blame. Either take the last spot or drive all the way into Portland. We watch the incoming cars when no spots remain; We watch with a mixture of relief and pity.

And I suppose smugness.

For our transit system, the 134 Express represents the cream, floating on top. A mostly older clientele, white collar, polite, quiet. It doesn’t stop, never leaves the interstate until the last possible moment, cracking Portland’s shell, allowing us a glimpse of huddled masses lying under overpasses; in hollowed out spaces underneath tiny groves of Oregon Grape; embedded in Salal, cleaned of its ripened fruit. Even the Madrona berries eaten, stomach pains disregarded.

The walk to the office momentarily safe, since the homeless won’t wake til the mid-morning coffee run.

* * *

Saturday - An American flag flies over the fire station. I should allow it to remind myself of its ideals and its stars, 100,000 deaths for each of us. I should draw it down from the pole and wrap myself in it, unfurl it on scene; show it to the girl who just got beat up for the 10th time this month. Tell her to stop calling 911; Call 1800GOGUARD. Get yourself a gun, little girl, and defend yourself like each of these pointed stars. I should use it to cover her head, cover the spot that she’s scratched bare, a 20-year old woman with a bald patch, scabbed over twice. Three times. Remind that man how many soldiers are dying for his freedom to spank you when you’ve been bad. Take this flag and keep his apple pie warm within.

I ask her where she lives, and the store clerk says she’s homeless. I’m badly drunk, and I buy a tin of mints before the police arrive; I speak into my chart, when they ask me questions, acting indifferent. They seem to like that. One of the cops is a young woman who usually laughs at my jokes. On another call, she had wondered aloud how on earth a particular drunk had survived a lengthy fall from the roof of his house. After I finished applying his C-collar, I had said, ‘Even Darwin was wrong some of the time.’

We’re no different from the city. We have plenty of homeless. But they don’t sleep beneath underpasses and park benches. The homeless out here have no shortage of places to stay. The boys in high school you never noticed, the ones who wore gray and never spoke, the ones who didn’t walk along the graduation dais; the ones you forgot; they house the homeless. They find them at gas stations, and begging outside trailers for fixes and hits. They take in the wayward boys and girls, keep them off the street, keep them from begging tired commuters for pocket change on their way home from work. Their eyes shine like a thousand stars.

* * *

7:45 p.m.- I work too late and miss the 134 back home. My only option is the number 5 through town, along the side streets, the North Side. Off the interstate, off the express. The slow and easy way, the 25 stops til Vancouver. The clientele entertain. They fight and scream. They watch the activity outside to determine where to get off, stopping when it looks like there might be a little action. Two girls show off their beggings for the day. One girl clears $85.

Some nights, I can’t tell myself apart from the homeless. I smell like alcohol and cigarettes. My eyes glaze over, a defense from seeing the world too clearly, like an amphibian’s, protected from the water by nictitating membranes. I know my time on the fire department needs to end when I can’t get in the ambulance without two long pulls from the bottle.

Tag: Hyperbaton