Before the dead car, I'd stayed at this fleabag mission a few blocks from the school and would slog over to the law school with the others out of my dorm after we were dispatched early in the morning. All of us seemingly aimless, not yet awake, wandering reflexively away from the shelter. The swell thinned as I approached the side door to the Law School. Noticeably thinned, yes… not too many heading for the law school. They departed and I would see some in the line at St. Luke's later, waiting for the daily soup. Which was it. Soup, stale bread and thin, thin coffee. There was a lot of splitting up of the “loaves and fishes” for the four to five hundred mouths that came there each noon. Of the thousand churches in Atlanta, few cared to abide the poor in their midst. And they, good Christians, could live with that.
The Dean of the Criminal Justice School, already a thriving educational industry by the mid-’80s, arranged for my early release from Key Road. At the request of Maddox, the dean had interceded with the judge. The assumption being that perhaps finally I would turn the corner on this “thing.” Maybe this little degree program, with some guiding project, would lift me out of whatever the rut I was in. Finally. Get me back on track, as it were. In my heart of hearts I knew the roots of what was going on with me were far too complicated and beyond my ability to comprehend or resolve.
Upon release then, not in the least surprisingly, I promptly pulled my routine of going to the liquor store which was precisely where they dropped us off. Given how long I'd been away from the booze, I got thoroughly blasted and did the only sensible thing, the only intelligent thing to do under the circumstances. I went to the Dean's class that night after a day confabing with the sauce. All these straight little uniform types and me. A stinking vat of 100 proof Vodka, pouring from my pores, my clothes, and my eloquently liberated tongue.
At one point early in the course, before my Key Road episode, we had done an impromptu count to get a sense of who favored the Death Penalty. An odd exercise I thought. Who with any sense of justice would support state-sanctioned capital punishment? However, every single mitt went up but mine. My fate was sealed. Even the Dean raised his hand. I have rarely felt more the stranger than sitting there among all those crackers with their hands up and waving like it was the Super Bowl. Doing the Wave for capital extermination! Boolah! Go State! Fry the black godless bastids!
Indeed, it was strange. Actually, that isn't quite correct. I was mellowed behind the Vodka, and looking at them like fish in an aquarium. We had as much in common. Pitiful, soul-less insentients, I remember thinking. As I sat as high up and removed from the dean as possible, yet still my condition trickled down to his nostrils, not to mention those seated around me. The fish in the aquarium had sharp teeth. At the end of the class the dean requested a conference with me. He was civil; it was brief and to the point.
“If I EVER see you on this campus..." I studied him without due concern, like studying a hand-puppet, I remember, and departed. I had been playing a doomed game that wasn't really me back then. Not even close. It had been wishful-thinking to expect to resurrect any sort of straight much less academic career, of whatever meager sort. The street had absorbed me by then and drinking all the time, non-stop, was all that made sense. It was my modus vivendi, as it's said. Low on vivendi, but the modus was fixed.
I repaired across from campus to the church where Open Door was holding a memorial service for Al King, which I'd planned on attending after the class — a worthwhile new beginning after my release from the doldrums of the prison farm. A worthwhile new day. A new direction, I had intended. The idea made sense on the surface at least.
Al had been a one-time bunker at the Community who'd been bludgeoned by a disgruntled client at the homeless day center at St. Luke's Episcopal (where the daily soup kitchen was). Al had been in charge of the door. I wasn't totally surprised at the news of how he died. Al could be imperious. But it was a real loss.
Anyone who has dealt with homelessness, either the status or trying to help out, experiences this, I suppose: Deaths are frequent and arbitrary. Disappearances. Usually without notice or discoverable reason. It upset me to discover in Atlanta that hearing about folks I knew who had died one way or another began to sort of slough off me. I became so used to it, it had become such a regular thing, that I didn't really respond finally. I wasn't unique in this. You develop a sort of shell. Not a brilliant insight, I admit, but when I first became aware of it, it scared me. I only remember sensing that I was not the same person I had always assumed I was.
When you're literally living in that extreme where your primary concern is where you'll sleep each night, assuming you're not so cooked you don't really give a damn where you plant it, that survivalist mentality has set in, and you've pretty much given up on most everything else — dreams, even the affordability of caring or just getting to know anyone, you divorce yourself from reality, even the deaths of folks who constitute your everyday suroundings. Acquaintances, familiars. Feelings generally.
Being housed has involved — for me at least — a return to feeling and human connection. It hasn't happened at once. Housing is the critical piece though. By far, the critical piece. I know it's saved me, so I can be saved the other way. Support, that human connection, is critical and indispensable, too. It's going on four years inside now and I'm still getting used to it. It takes time. Clean sheets (sheets at all!), the quiet, warmth — simple things. Security. Predictability. (When I wake, I don't immediately bolt out of my place anymore, for instance. Not a small thing, believe me. The reflex to simply get the hell out, now! before you're discovered.)
And it's funny, in all this time, until sitting down to write this, I haven't had reason to think of the pro-Death Penalty Criminal Justice Dean. But I do recall Al from time to time. He had a closed coffin.