For now, all you need to know is that I found myself in a homeless shelter in Woodbridge, Virginia. Here are some notes I took at the time:
The Death of Miser Jeff
Sunday evenings tend to be moody, melancholy times at the homeless shelter. A group of disengaged, lonely men, recently out of jail or rehab, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, vaguely aware of some long-ago Sabbath day traditions and expectations, which are now lost, they sit out on the patio and chain smoke, kvetching with each other over the slightest incidents. I’ve lost the button to my last pair of summer shorts, so am trying to thread a needle to sew on a new button, which I’ve cut off from an old pair of pants someone threw in the trash. But my eyes are not good enough to thread a needle anymore. I ask if anyone can do it for me, since they are, for the most part, thirty-five years younger than me. Nobody bothers to answer.
I put away the needle and thread, and use a large paperclip to keep the zipper up to the button hole. I’m throwing these shorts away when I leave on Friday morning anyways. My legs are getting so scabby and blotched from edema that I don’t want to wear shorts any more. My bad legs remind me of Swede Johnson, an old circus clown I knew on Ringling Brothers. Before becoming a clown he was a lion tamer . . . until the day the big cats turned on him, ripping his legs to shreds. He always wore long pants, even when undressing and dressing in clown alley; his wife Mabel said his legs never properly healed after the mauling – they looked like raw hamburger, and he wanted to spare everyone the gruesome sight.
The sun sets, there’s no light on the patio, and the mosquitoes are active, but no one goes indoors. Miser Jeff, who has been closeted in his room for the past two weeks, so that no one has seen him, comes shuffling out onto the patio. He's called Miser Jeff because he collects pennies in a Mason jar. Even in the dark, I can see that his stomach is huge, and perfectly round, like a basketball. He says, to no one in particular, that he’s always hungry but can’t eat anything because he throws it right up. I make a sympathetic murmur, but no one else even grunts. Then, summoning up a bit of entrepreneurship, Miser Jeff announces that he knows there will be another urine test on Monday, and he is prepared to sell his urine to the highest bidder, so they won’t ‘drop dirty.’ Mickey the pyromaniac, who just got out of jail for setting fire to a Walgreens, has been drinking mouthwash all weekend, so he agrees to pay miser Jeff twenty dollars for his clean urine. This makes miser Jeff so happy that he immediately goes into the kitchen to make his favorite meal – ramen noodles and mac and cheese mixed together in a big, gooey pile. He hums contentedly, and since he has a cleft palate, it sounds like angry bees in a barrel.
That is the last time I am to see Miser Jeff alive.
Monday morning I go out for a walk, right after the daily rah-rah-sis-boom-bah group prayer. When I come back the ambulance is in front of the House. They are carrying miser Jeff out under a yellow blanket.
He had been discovered just a few moments before in his bedroom, sprawled on the floor in a pool of black vomit. We are told he likely died from a stomach hemorrhage. Everyone is upset, especially Mickey the firebug --- where is he going to get his clean urine now? He begs for some of mine, but luckily before I have to say no and risk his fiery wrath it is announced that the testing is postponed until Wednesday. By then I hope to holy God to be out of here, living with one of my children.
Miser Jeff’s body will be shipped to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, for burial in the family plot. No funeral service is scheduled for here in Virginia.
And Mickey pours several bottles of Listerine down the toilet, repeating over and over again "crappity, crappity, crappity . . . "
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