The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 74: The Village Idiot, Part II

1.

For some reason, I don't remember the night that I decided to save Robert from homelessness.  It seems reasonable that I should remember the moment of  that simultaneously egotistical and generous act.  I remember so many vignettes from my life in El Paso in extraordinary detail, including rather mundane scenes, like eating breakfast at the lunch counter in the old Kress department store.  For instance, I hated that they didn't have bottles of catsup for your eggs.  Only in El Paso would such a standard of American cuisine be left out.  Instead, they had salsa, lots and lots of choices of salsa.  Although I loved then, and still love now, Mexican food, it seemed then, as it does now, that the only patriotic way to eat the standard American breakfast of two slices of bacon, two eggs, hash-browns and toast is to smother the eggs and potatoes with catsup, Heinz Ketchup, that is, if at all possible.  I wanted my Mexican food spicy and my American food as bland as a drive through Kansas.  There was no place in El Paso where I could eat as if I lived in the upper 48, and although I loved the sound of clanking dishes and random conversations I overheard while I sat at that counter, watching steam rise out of big pots of caldo tlalpeno (a chicken soup with fresh green beans, big chunks of potato and whole cobs of corn floating around in it), breakfast without catsup made me homesick and lonely.

Thousands of such details combine to create the movie El Paso running in my head.  So, it is strange that I don't remember the night I decided to rescue Robert.  I assume it was cold and rainy.  I identify with the scene in The Blind Side when they first pick up Big Mike.  Get rid of the suburbs, the wealth and the large house, and it was probably pretty much the same.

Robert didn't talk though.  That must have created some difficulty at first.  He did, however, understand English.  Quite well, I would later learn when I gave him my Alice Cooper Goes to Hell cassette to go in the Walkman I bought for him.  I could tell he enjoyed the lyrics when he put on the headphones and started laughing a big, giant, missing-tooth grin.  That was the next day, which I remember better.

I know I told him to shower first thing.  I would have had to.  There would have been no choice.  He slept on the living room floor.  I always used the walk-in closet of my studio apartment as my bedroom anyway.  I know I didn't sleep well.  Letting a homeless man spend the night is not the safest choice one can make, which is why I assume it was cold and rainy.  Something pulled my heartstrings more than usual.  Vagrants were part of my neighborhood, part of my life.  I didn't go around trying to rescue everyone that I saw.  I was as numbed to their humanity by the abundance of human suffering as anyone else.  I tried to keep change in my pants to help out, but other than that, I walked on by.

But Robert was different.  I'm not sure why.

2.  The next day, I took him to go shopping.  We went to the mall, Sunland Park Mall, on the west side.  I remember that.  I also remember I wasn't sure how I could cover everything.  It turns out, I couldn't.  Later, I had to call my parents and ask them to cover a few checks, but at the time I didn't worry about that.  I just took him shopping.  We bought two pairs of pants, two shirts, underwear, a coat, and something akin to a Sony Walkman.  

That evening I took him to the homeless shelter.  I remember it was someplace down by the river, right along the border.  I don't remember what it looked like.  I remember the people were not overly friendly.  I thought they should be.  When I was in high school I volunteered for a few weeks at a shelter in Dallas.  They weren't overly friendly either.  They didn't want me working while I was there.  They said the homeless people needed to learn to take care of themselves.  I got chastised for picking up a broom.  I wasn't allowed to volunteer to do things at a place I was a volunteer.  They treated the discarded as if they were discarded.  I felt sick to find out this place was no different.  I'm no sociologist but it doesn't seem like the best way to bring a broken person up is to constantly really remind them that they are really down.  It's bullshit.  

I left Robert there anyway.  What else could I do?  I liked my privacy too much to give it up for another human being, and a stranger at that.

3.  A couple of days later, Robert was out on the street again.  At first, clean and in the new clothes I bought him.  I was angry at the shelter; I was angry at myself; I was angry at Robert.  I asked him why he left the shelter.  He didn't tell me.  He showed me that he still had his Walkman; he opened it up, showed me the tape, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, and smiled that toothless grin and then walked off.

Each day I saw him, his clothes were a little less clean.  One day, his Walkman was gone.  Any music, other than what was in his head, had come to a stop.  Outwardly, my actions had been futile.  I hadn't changed a thing.

Yet, on cold nights, when it rained, he no longer sat in the parking lot outside my work, drawing circles on the pavement with a stick.  Instead, he stood under the awning, and when the wind was blowing rain against the window, he would even come in.  I took some flack for that.  From customers.  From my boss, even though she was about as kind as anyone could be.  But I wouldn't budge.  I'd made a friend.  He seldom talked, and when he did, it was three word sentences spoken very softly.  He seldom requested anything.  He just came in to get out of the cold now and then.  Most nights he would just stand outside and wave through the window, the image of him walking around in a long trench coat, thick shaggy black hair blowing in the wind, bleeding in with the reflection of the neat copy machines inside and the passing lights of the traffic and the night.  Occasionally, I'd buy him a Subway sandwich from next door or a burger from up the block.

Then, one day, he was gone.  A hole was left.  The music had stopped.  I don't know how much I changed his life.  I do know how much he changed mine.  Alice Cooper Goes to Hell became a hymnbook of sorts to the man who said so little and yet said so much.

Break a heart of stone, open it up, don't you leave it alone.