Returning is bittersweet.
My first day back at the Day Center in Grand Junction, I step into the vestibule, and there is Will. When I was back in Minnesota, I read that he had been arrested for drug distribution.
Based on his rather contemptuous view of authority and his practice of redistributing legal marijuana in a town that did not have legal dispensaries, I feared Will might be back in prison.
But no. Here he is, talking about looking for a job. I'm glad to see him, because he is one of the street people who opens up the world to my limited sight, who I consider a friend.
Yet I'm sad to see him, because the chair he occupies is Ed's, another one of my favorite people.
Ed died while I was away.
Ed was one of the old school homeless. A self-sufficient alcoholic who didn't bother others. Who lived rough and paid the prices—bad health, sore bones, regular arrests for petty infractions. No future.
At the Day Center, Ed was decent and respected. He didn't like the hubbub inside, so he sat by the door and watched, absorbing it all, but rarely speaking unless spoken to. We fetched coffee for Ed, so he could man his post. It was not a group decision, and we didn't do that for other people. Independently, we brought him coffee because Ed had that sort of gravity that only comes from suffering borne without complaint.
We all wanted to help Ed, to get him away from demons so buried we didn't know what they were, but a cup of coffee from the inside was all he would accept.
It was the best we could do.
Some new volunteers have arrived since my last stint, and there is a new computer system at intake that makes the process less personal. Calling up records dampens my pleasure at being able to recall people by name.
On the plus side, I can give haircuts for as many who want them.
Today, I cut for most of my shift. Two women, eight men.
One young man had a cough so bad, I had to ask him to leave. Not for my health, although the health of anyone who came into the room was a consideration, but because his cough was so violent, he couldn't stay in the chair.
I referred him to the clinic across the hall, and then sprayed down everything with disinfectant.
Another customer asked me to make him look respectable for his job search, "So I don't look like some homeless guy who gets drunk all the time."
The short haircut for his balding pate was easy. I spent more time on his beard, trimming it from neglect into a near fashion statement.
"I shake too much to trim my mustache," he confessed. "I want to keep the beard so I don't have to shave every day."
He left ready to interview. There's nothing I can do about the shakes.
On the way out the door, I learned something else about Ed's ending. It wasn't age or alcoholism or COPD that killed him. Someone beat Ed to death.
It will take me a while to put this together. I am always learning this world anew, where help and predation live side-by-side.
Where respect means something, until it doesn't.
