Fumble – Part Three

(Author’s Note: I want to start this last installment with the words of two writers I admire. Their words speak to me.).

David Roddy co-writes the podcast “Worker’s Cauldron” with Mercedas Castillo. He advocates for the marginalized and homeless. The “Worker’s Cauldron” originally called “Sh!t Gets Weird” focuses on “the cultural politics of the paranormal.” Each program is a lesson about history you probably did not learn in school, at least not here in the United States. You can catch the podcast at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-workers-cauldron.

David states:

The most dangerous person is one who never questions the efficacy of his or her hard work to overcome adversity, who doesn’t take into account circumstance, outside help, or sheer luck. It is dangerous to disconnect racial disadvantages, disadvantages that are especially hard for those who are single mothers. A person is doomed to callousness and a heartless inconsideration of others as long as they idealize that hard work is the sole cause of success.

The other is poet Lyla Osmundsen, a member of the Women Writers of the Well. At our Monday evening meeting, she responded to the prompt: “Have I invented the world I see?” Vibrant with emotion, shining Love with the heart of an angel, Lyla wrote from the core of her being, which she does – always. She completed the first two lines during our meeting and read them to us. I was so touched I asked if she could complete it to add to this blog entry. Thankfully, she agreed. Her book is available at: Wa(o)ndering to Poetry (9781717396556): Osmundsen, Lyla Fain: Books

Have I Invented the World I See? – Lyla Osmundsen, 3/10/21

Does my anger vibrate in unison

with the anger of others,

causing volcanic eruptions of

daily gun violence?

Does my careless waste

of food

constitute a crime

against a starving individual?

Does stuffing my house

with thoughtless trifle

transform into the tragedy

of a child with no home?

Lyla asked the hard questions of herself. Those of us that hear her words, in turn ask them of ourselves. What are the ramifications of our emotions, our patterns, our wants and desires? We all need to ask, “What world have I created?” Is it the one we want to see?

To live, a human needs water, food, and shelter. These are not privileges. These are necessities. According to most articles that I read, the top four reasons for homelessness are: lack of affordable housing, unemployment, poverty, and low wages. Contrary to popular belief, more than one third of people who are homeless are not jobless. They work long hours, sometimes more than one job, even more than two or three jobs at a time. Housing is too expensive and there aren’t enough developments to house all the people that need housing. Even if there were, the average wages for the average worker cannot cover mortgages, or even skyrocketing rental costs.

The housing problem compounded in California when yearly firestorms became the norm, forcing people to leave established living accommodations. As a teacher, I worked with families displaced by fire. Some lived out of their cars, more fortunate ones found safety with family or friends. Others, unable to find work in California, left the state, abandoning their old lives entirely. These were the lucky people.

The rest careened into homelessness and took to the streets, or the edges of parks, or under overpasses of highways. People of small towns and rural areas, areas with limited job availability especially develop an attitude of looking down on the displaced citizens that hover in their areas. The typical response I heard was that the hardworking taxpayer shouldn’t have to subsidize lazy vagrants.

Then Covid-19 hit. Stimulus packages were not enough and came too late. Workplaces were shut down, people lost their businesses, mortgage holders weren’t compassionate enough because their own livelihood was compromised. Homelessness was no longer an issue of “you just have to work hard.” I wonder, do those angry people bemoaning their taxes still feel the same? Are some of them now living on the edges of society, possibly still working hard, still paying taxes, living under makeshift tents on the edges of town?

Covid-19 gave most of us time to realize our good fortune is largely due to luck. Having or not having is often a matter of who you know. It’s almost always a matter of what color am I?

As early as the 1970’s Federal investment in housing was threatened. In the 1980’s there was already an unwarranted number of families with children considered homeless. In 2008, financial crises created foreclosures forcing people to give up their homes and take rentals instead. Unfortunately, affordable and safe rental construction could not meet the demand of displaced homeowners. Rents rose, but working class wages did not. By the time Covid-19 was a pandemic, rents were too high for most people working full time year round as minimum wage workers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in a survey completed in 2019, 82.3 million workers 16 years and older, represent well over half (58.1 percent) of all wage and salary workers in the United States. These are people struggling to maintain shelter. Six percent of white households are extremely low-income renters. _(2,3,4)

For people of color, the statistics are bleak. “Twenty percent of Black households, 17 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native households, 15 percent of Hispanic households, and 10 percent of Asian households (compared to the white households), are extremely low-income renters and are often locked out of affordable housing due to systemic and structural racism and decades of racist policies.” ₍₁₎

I think about other single mothers like myself. What are those statistics? Over 85% of homeless families are headed by women, specifically, by single women with children, and domestic violence is a principal cause of homelessness among single mother families. ₍₅₎

Reading a statistic such as this raises the ugly face of my own fear. My fear was real. I was afraid of homelessness, however, that fear was as irrational then as it is now. I always had people who cared for me. I had places I could go. I am white. Job opportunities, even in this rural area, were presented to me, largely because of who my family knew. There was no way I would find myself on the street.

Even now, as a retired person living on barely adequate retirement wages, when the fear stops me in my tracks, the truth is – I remember that money is adequate. I have shelter. I have water. I have food.

I will never know who that huddled person in front of Starbucks was. I didn’t stop to ask their story. Where was that person’s luck? Did my callousness leak some of it away? Were they as terrified of me, as I was of them? Were they huddled under the mound of clothing in defense and shame? Could I have alleviated part of that shame for one transitory moment if I had stopped to smile, at the very least? Could that one moment have made all the difference in the world for that one person?

December 31, 2019 was a lost opportunity. Today, as I rewrite this article, terror washes over me again as I remember being a single mother of two very young children. My heart crumbles as I remember the person I left behind at Starbucks. Before my fingers touched the keyboard, I sat on my bed sobbing. I lived on the brink of disaster, that person lives the disaster.

I have to own that terror and let it go. I also have to own the pride that covered it up and made me callous. Yes, I worked hard, but I was fortunate. I was presented with opportunities that I was in a position to grab; opportunities that a great many of us don’t have.

In the future, will I find, at the very least, the courage to smile if I have nothing else to give? I need to look behind the pride that covers my near miss and move forward one encounter, one opportunity, one story at a time.

Works Cited

Aurand, Andrew, Dan Emmanuel, Dan Threet, Ikra Rafi, and Diane Yentel. 2020. “The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes,” p.13. Washington, DC: National Low Income Housing Coalition. https://reports.nlihc.org/sites/default/files/gap/Gap-Report_2020.pdf.

Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence Katz. 2016. “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Project.” American

Economic Review 106 (4). https://scholar.harvard.edu/hendren/publications/effects-exposure-better-neighborhoods-children-new-evidence-moving-opportunity.

Gowan, Peter and Ryan Cooper. 2017. “Social Housing in the United States,” p.1. Washington, DC: People’s Policy Project. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf.

Family Homelessness Facts

Fumble – Part Two

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Pride pushed me to achieve stability for myself and my small family. I took advantage of opportunities available to a white person with education. I bought a house from my parents’ estate, taking advantage of a generous, no interest payment plan. I raised my two children in a safe, small-town homeschooling situation while working as a teacher in the school they attended. All the things one expects out of life came true. I was proud of my achievements, proud of my children, and happy in my situation.
Ironically, pride is a powerful screen that can hide something as huge as the terror of living through untenable uncertainty. Terror not faced cropped up in a mysterious, inconvenient, and unfortunate way.
Last year, twenty-four years after becoming a teacher with a steady income. I published an article about my failure to respond to someone in need. It seemed a lifetime had passed since living with the terror of the world falling out from under my feet as a single mother and sole provider for two souls, a lifetime since I had worried about homelessness. I was hard working and successful. I had avoided the calamity of which I was most afraid. People were impressed with my story. I had come far. I believed them when they congratulated my strength and fortitude. I was finally in a league to “pay it forward” by seriously donating to charities and food drives.
Like me, many of us experience the act of “paying it forward” whether in a grocery line, contributing to Food for Families, or donating to local food pantries. Perhaps like me, many purchase a sandwich or a cup of soup for a cleanly dressed person on a street corner who approaches and asks politely. Most of us donate money to organizations like the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, or causes for veterans. There is an endless list of worthy causes to make us feel we are doing something to help. Those efforts are safe. They don’t take much time, they don’t require person to person contact. This is all fine, but what happens when one is confronted with an individual buffeted by a pauper’s life on the street?
On December 31, 2019, the last day of a difficult year that cinched my decision to retire at the end of the second school term, and with no way of knowing that in seven short weeks, 2020 would be a worse year, I pulled into Starbucks. This was my special treat for coping with a drive to Stockton, California. Stockton is a rough town, rated 3 on a scale where 100 is safest.
I went there to see a pain specialist because of injuries sustained while struggling as an apartment manager, exasperated by single motherhood, and a bad fall. Good news or bad news, I always stopped to give myself some sugary, caffeinated love. Even though I did not feel safe in Stockton, the treat had a calming effect that negated my need to race home beyond the posted speed limit like a barn-sour horse.
I entered Starbucks’ parking lot.
A beggar huddled on the island in the middle of the entrance/exit split off Hwy 88 and Hwy 99. To enter Starbucks, a driver had to pass him (or her) coming and going.
I shut down, as I often do when confronted with this choice. I could not tell if the person was a man or a woman, crouched as the person was under a mountain of clothing. Was he or she young, old, black, white, or any other color in between? Were they on drugs, did they have hidden weapons? He or she held a sign, but the lettering was so faded I could not read it from the car. Did it say, “Out of work,” or “Homeless,” or “Need money,” or “Clothes,” or “Food?” This was Stockton. The unidentifiable person under the mound of clothing was panhandling, either by default or by “choice,” as so many people insist.
I entered Starbucks wrapped in thought, eager to use a gift card one of my dear students had given me for this treat, but seeing a person huddled and begging for something brought forth a deluge of anxiety I didn’t really define at the time.
When I stepped outside, the person was still there, unmoving. I took a few steps toward him or her and tried to catch their eyes, figuring I might be able to size up the situation if I could see their expression. When I couldn’t, I didn’t look twice. Truth be told, I didn’t try very hard. My heart was pounding with unreasonable fear, and I think pride was blocking my access to the real cause of that fear.
However, I blamed it on the gift card I held in my hand. There was money left on it. I could hand my gift card through the car window, but what if caffeine was detrimental to their mental or physical health? What if Starbucks wouldn’t let them in? Should I step back into the shop and buy a banana? What if they, like me, reacted poorly to bananas? Did my student have a re-gift in mind when she gave it? For this particular student, her gift had been a tremendous act of generosity.
From the safety of my car, I regarded the person on the island through my side mirror. My heart was crying for action, but my ego justified not acting. As a young girl, I heard grandfather stories. One story taught me, don’t give money. There was a McDonald’s next door. I didn’t have much cash on me. The amount I had wasn’t enough for a hamburger, which was at best a momentary fix. Would coffee do? What if they needed shoes, or medication? What if, what if, what if?
My anxiety told me – run away. My head argued with my heart, calculating all the ramifications of helping or not helping. Was I prolonging someone’s helplessness, the same helplessness I felt when raising two small children by myself? Was this someone taking advantage of others panhandling like this? The guilt I felt taking advantage of Food Stamps, and payment plans grew like a swarm of locusts as I sat there. People in need taking advantage was another common stereotype and one I had worked hard to get out from under.
A percentage of homeless people lacking jobs and living on the streets have severe anxieties and mental health disorders. They can’t find jobs; or if they do, they can’t keep them. Housing prices in California are astronomical, and housing is generally unavailable. It was a stroke of luck that I found the job I did. Or was it? Had that luck come from white privilege?
The question pummeled my ego which took a different tact. I was older, less equipped to defend myself should the need arise, even though I knew that it was more likely that a homeless person would be attacked rather than perpetuate an attack. Still, my ego told me, don’t get out of the car. For a few moments I sat there in conflict, trying to intuit the right course of action.
In the end, I ignored the huddled person on the island and drove home. The treat did not slow my flight as it usually did, nor did I enjoy it.
I fumbled.

What was this huddled person’s story? I will never know. I threw away my chance to ask. It was an opportunity to reach out, to ease a moment, to hear Story and I drove away. There are many reasons for homelessness, seldom is it a choice like some would believe. I invite you to check out next week, Fumble – Part Three, when I explore some of those reasons.

Fumble – Part One

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My eyes snapped open. It was dark, but I didn’t need to see. A familiar, heavy weight pushed against my chest. My heart pounded against it. I gasped, frantically gulping air. Terror, a nightly visitor, was back to remind me I was one step away from losing all I had worked for.

I jumped out of bed to check on my children. They slept soundly in the second bedroom of the small apartment. I closed their door, fighting against the consuming tears that threatened to shut me down, and tiptoed to the kitchen.

It was dark and private, especially if I huddled in the corner against the cupboards under the sink. With cupboard handles digging into my back, crushing despair overwhelmed me, and I dissolved into quiet, painful, body-consuming sobs. I couldn’t handle this – single motherhood, sole support of two young children, working as an apartment manager, a job my body was not equipped to handle. There was nothing else…no job that paid enough to keep me and my two babies housed. I had made my bed. Now it was up to me to lay in it.

I was a survivor. I felt a sense of pride that while I was a single mother that received no child support, I could keep us off the streets. That sense of pride pushed me to achieve more stability, stability I had not had before.

As an artist, I was always one dollar away from destitution, but that one dollar kept me off the streets and under a roof. So, when my marriage dissolved, it took a long time for me to find the courage to initiate a divorce. Once I found courage, I took full custody of our two small children without support from their father. In fairness, he had more than he could handle fighting mental illness. It was unfair to ask for support, so I didn’t.

My parents, while available for occasional help, were not emotionally equipped to live full time with two small children. They had earned their freedom after raising four kids of their own. I felt the idea of a grown child coming home with two of her own children was too great a burden; so, I wheedled my way into an apartment manager’s job, a job set up for a married couple. It would now be handled by one, unqualified, single mother. Even though the job was more than I could handle, I never let people know what I was going through. In fact, except for shameful nighttime sob-sessions, I didn’t admit it to myself. After all, I was a strong American woman. The world could hear me roar. I had put a roof over my children’s heads. I wasn’t the daughter leaching off her parents.

The apartment job took its toll physically, mentally, and emotionally. My five foot, two and a half inch body was not equipped to handle the manual labor part of the job. My poor little vessel had not yet fully recovered from gestation complications nor had it fully recovered from breast feeding. But payment was a free apartment in exchange for that work. All I needed money for was life in general.

In Northern California there is a lot of resentment towards people who use the welfare systems. People using it are caught in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. In the State of California, at that time, to be eligible for public assistance, one could not work more than forty (40) hours per month. Let me write that again. To qualify for help, I could not legally work more than forty hours per month. I was required to be on call 24/7 as the apartment manager. I was not eligible for Welfare assistance because it was considered a full time job, but I still needed money to pay for utilities, groceries, and childrens’ needs.

I took odd jobs on top of the management position. At the end of the first year, I discovered that the Federal and State governments counted free rent as income for which I owed taxes, but had never received a monetary exchange. My family wasn’t keen on helping me pay that. I complained but didn’t ask for help because I had been raised to believe that if you made your bed, you laid in it. I had made that bed getting divorced. The management company that hired me found out I was working off the premises and frowned upon the odd jobs I had taken because I was to be available to their clients 24/7. I could quit the jobs and be a full-time manager and not be able to buy food or keep the jobs and lose housing.

I cried on the floor of my kitchen in the middle of the night.

Because I was a single mother with two small children and had a bill for Federal taxes, I was eligible for Food Stamps. However, using this type of assistance embarrassed my family, which in turn shamed me.

I cried on the floor of my kitchen.

But what does one do? One takes care of the kids and moves on. That’s what. No matter what it takes. So I felt a sense of pride in this, or at least pretended that I did. I went without health care for myself so I could set up payment plans to pay for my children’s health care and dental needs.

Too many times, I heard family and friends talking about “What a shame it was” that I had put myself in this situation.

I cried in the dark on the kitchen floor.

Pride kept me going. I took out student loans to go back to school for a teaching credential, something I could do because I had a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art with a minor in music, but hadn’t made a lot of money as a street or gallery artist. I had not yet made any money as a musician. “What a shame,” I heard. “So much talent going to waste.”

Teaching brought in a steady income, something I had not experienced before. Yet, I still feared homelessness. To remind myself how close I still felt to it, I practiced the art of facing my fear by dressing every Halloween as a bag lady. My kids and family were not impressed with my choice of costume, but it helped me face the fear that was still haunting me. Dressing up in such a way confirmed that I had something to be proud of: at least I wasn’t a bag lady living on the street.

Pride of accomplishment can be a powerful smoke screen. It can hide something as huge as the terror of living through untenable uncertainty and color one’s memory of that uncertainty with self-aggrandizement. Pride-cloaked terror popped up in a mysterious, inconvenient, and unfortunate way. Next week, read Part Two of “Fumble,” when I share the memory of a missed opportunity to help someone else facing homelessness.

V is for Vagabond…

…which he preferred to the label of run-away. While it was true, he ran not out of malice or injustices done to him, but because he sought adventure, something new, something never tried before. He was his own man.

Jonathan Tyler had not planned to run away the first time he did. Rollo, his best and only true friend suggested his closet as a life raft, reacting to Jonathan’s anxiety over another activity forced upon him by his mother and hovering stepfather, Phillip. Jon jumped on, or rather in, never once considering the current of distress that would wash away the trusting love of his family. After four days of freedom, Rollo’s father caught him.

Phillip had no problem soundly paddling his fourteen-year-old stepson. Then he grounded him, piling on a mountain of chores and more extracurricular activities as a deterrent for wayward thinking.

Jon endured it with grim satisfaction, feeling like a vindicated Tom Sawyer.

That was six months ago.

He dumped his allowance onto his bedspread and counted it. A ticket to Sacramento would cost him the whole thing. He’d been to Sacramento twice, was pretty sure he could find his way around. Tomorrow he’d go to school, but by evening he would be on a bus. He stuffed the money into the backpack he’d hidden behind the clothes in his closet and leaped onto his bed. The mattress bounced twice. It was stupid to go without extra money, but he could not stand another day either cooped up like a trapped bird or toiling like a child laborer. He stared at the walls around him, seeing nothing, but soaking in every detail at the same time.

Most of the posters on his wall depicted mixed martial arts. On the top of his bookshelf were two trophies. One was for most improved fighter; the other was for first place as a team in a tournament. There were multiple pictures of him sparring in various events. One showed the gym in the garage that Phillip had set up. He and Phillip sparred there two or three times a week. Was he willing to give up on all of this?

He sighed. Mind made up, he went to bed.

The next evening, he stood on the corner across from the bus station in Sacramento. The view before him was nothing like he envisioned. Behind him was a parking lot. There were office buildings on the next block and a few shops across the street, all closed for the night. On the next corner was a restaurant, but he had no money for that. He could stay by the river, but there was a chilled breeze wafting off it. He could stay in the bus stop. He took a step to cross the avenue to do just that. Then he stopped. That would definitely scream run-away to anyone keeping eyes on a stray kid. He hadn’t thought this through long enough. What did he expect, arriving penniless, dumped into an urban wilderness? He walked west until he came across a police station. Then, he turned abruptly and walked the other way.

Night fell swiftly, and with it the temperature. He put his head down and paced, two blocks, three blocks, four…he lost count. It felt like he’d walked an eternity, but ahead of him a light signaled hope. A neon sign lit his way to a small apartment complex, like a green affirmation that he would be okay. A three-foot chain link fence surrounded the little group of buildings. Most were curtained and dark, but a soft night light shined in the larger building, which was, no doubt, the main lobby. He tried the doors.

Locked. Why did he expect anything else?

He explored until he found a sheltered wall between the lighted office building and a laundry facility. Hunkering between the two buildings, he spent the first night fitfully shivering in the cold.

As the sun rose and before traffic picked up, he hopped back over the fence and walked south, toward downtown where he hoped to find the Capital Mall. Along the way, he passed several restaurants before it dawned on him to check the back alleys for garbage bins. He might get lucky and find some fresh pickings. A small pub across the street was open. People entered and left with regularity. It seemed a likely place to scrounge for leftovers. He raced across the damp pavement and crept around to alley behind it. Furtively, he looked over his shoulder. Was it illegal to steal garbage? He’d heard it was, but he didn’t know if that law applied here. However, he sure didn’t want someone turning him in because he looked young and truant.

To his delight, he found that the pub threw away their leftover food in a separate bin from the trash. Beyond the street behind the pub, across an expanse of public parking, there was a small park. Had he found his stomping grounds? Maybe. The park would be the perfect place to stake out a bench or at the very least the base of a tree. The back door latch jiggled. He grabbed a couple of rolls and ran. Heart pounding, he raced across the parking area and sprinted into the park. The he feigned calm, hoping he looked as if he was taking a morning stroll to school.

He spent the morning day dreaming and following the arc of the sun so he was always in the light. His bones started to warm up and it felt good to sit and observe, to have no responsibilities, no worries. He watched a couple, dressed as if they were homeless, raid the pub’s food dump. After observing that they came back a second time for the lunch hour, he surmised that perhaps the establishment put the food there on purpose.

Testing his theory, he crept to the bin and found half of a roast beef sandwich and some carrot sticks. He laughed when he got back to the park. He crept under the bush he’d staked out. He was eating a better lunch on the street than he was at school any day, hands down.

The pub closed at midnight, and he salivated as a final dumping of leftovers was put into the bin. Jon ran to get his share, as other homeless people were bound to take advantage of it. He skidded to a stop because a stooped older man, with very long, very gray hair and beard, wearing multiple layers of soiled clothes, stepped in front of him. The man used a walking stick and wore athletic socks over his hands. He hit the pavement with the end of the stick.

Jon yelped and backed up.

The man glared at him.

“No, of course, you first,” said Jon, bowing slightly.

The man didn’t smile, nor did he stop glaring, but he nodded and reached into the bin. He pulled out a loaf of bread, some browned apple slices, and a couple of thick pieces of ham. These he handed to Jon. Then he reached into the bin again and pulled out a half bottle of white wine. “Sometimes they leave it, sometimes they don’t,” he said. His voice was whispery, but underneath the breathiness was a lilt. “Remember to be thankful.” He winked at Jon. “Now, where are you staying? Let’s go there to eat.”

Jon said, “Uh, sure. Over there in the park. I made a nest under some bushes.”

“Sounds like a picnic to me,” said the man.

They walked across the parking lot to the little park. Jon led the man to his shelter of sorts.

They sat down. The man took the food, and divided it between them.

Jon said, “Are you sure?” The man had given him a sizable portion of the bread.

“I have all I need,” said the man.

They ate in silence. Jon furtively watched the man as he ate. He seemed thoughtful. He seemed happy. Jon was struggling with his decision to leave a warm home, a loving family. What kind of person did that?

“Why did you run?” said the man, as if he could read Jon’s mind.

“Who says I’m running?”

“What are you, fourteen, fifteen? You’re runnin’ from somethin’.”

“Maybe I am running toward something.”

The man laughed, a deep belly roar that shook his whole body. “Yeah. Well, I hope you find it. My name’s Tim. Folks call me Sailboat Tim.”

“That’s an odd name.”

“And yours is better?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s Jon, spelled J-O-N.”

“For Jonathan, like the Bible, gift of God. And so it is more important.”

“I-I-I only meant that I was curious about why they added the Sailboat to Tim,” said Jon.

“Guess folks like to tease. I’ve always wanted a sailboat, talked about it a lot in the early days of…,” he swept his arm wide as if gathering the expanse of the park in his sweep, “…this.”

Jon asked, “How long have you been doing this?”

“Long enough to know this isn’t a good place to stay the night. Vigilantes come through and run people out of the parks. We’re a safety hazard to the good folks that live in those houses and apartment buildings right over there.” He pointed to a beautifully landscaped two story building with multiple terraces. Then he pointed to a block of well-appointed office buildings. “We might break in. One never knows about vagrant folks.”

“You’re just being facetious now, right?”

“No.” Tim grimaced. “Come on. Finish eating. I know where we can sleep safely.”

They huddled together on the porch of an empty Victorian in the Oak Park region. Tim shared the only blanket he carried with him, a ratty, flea-filled wool of tatters and holes. He told Jon heartbreaking stories. Some gang banger knifed a crippled army vet while he slept under a tree in the park. The cops didn’t even investigate. A crazy old coot froze to death just a winter ago on the steps of the library downtown. Word was, he shouldn’t have been sleeping there. Tim, himself, had ended up in jail twice for raiding the garbage behind a Safeway for scraps of food. Who knew it was illegal to take food from a garbage bin behind a Safeway? Sailboat Tim had fond memories of the food he ate while he stayed in jail, though. And, he appreciated the nice blankets on the sturdy cots and the warm cells. At least while he was in the slammer, he didn’t have to worry about getting knifed or “froze to death.”

Jon smiled.

Tim’s toothless grin was kind, and his eyes were gentle.

Before dawn, a clatter of footsteps on the porch of the house awakened them.

A helmeted policeman with a bat, grabbed him by the arm. Another grabbed Tim. Together, the policemen hauled them down the steps and hoisted them into the back of a waiting van, where several other homeless people cowered on the benches. A young girl at the end was silently sobbing, the rest sat stoically, eyes averted, awaiting the trip to jail.

Jon whispered to Tim. “What now?”

“Now we sit in a cage until a lawyer secures our freedom. It will be okay. The food is great, the cots are firm and the blankets are clean and warm. Oh, and the commode is clean. That’s a big plus. They give us coffee if we want it.”

Jon must have looked horrified because Tim bumped his shoulder and said, “It’ll be okay. You’re lucky. They will call your parents. Then, you can go home where it’s safe and warm.”

Jon curled up on himself after that and hid his face.

As Tim said, the police sent Jon home to Stockton. Jail would have been preferable to his parents’ house of strict rules, scheduled time, and proper attitude. Jon had acquired a yen for freedom that no amount of discomfort could alter. Third time’s a charm, he’d always heard.

It was time to plan his next adventure.