Wake-Up Call. Joaquin De Torres

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СКАЧАТЬ stopped. My normal route from my home in Concord to the clinic near the Oakland Coliseum took more than an hour one way in morning traffic, on a good day. So, needless to say, there was a lot of time sitting in the gridlock as thousands of commuters made their way towards the Bay Bridge to get to San Francisco.

      Somewhere within that stretch is where I’d see him. Sometimes just off the freeway, but mostly along the streets;

      Picking through dumpsters, meandering about alley ways or open lots, rummaging for food in restaurant trash bins, or just sitting on the steps of abandoned buildings. I’d slow down enough to see his facial expressions; always the same, clueless, indifferent and ignorant of the world and its trappings. I never saw panic or urgency on his face, though. I guess it’s true what people have written; that a homeless life is free of appointments, deadlines, tardiness, missed meetings, excuses, politics, and accountability. Instead, it’s a timeless existence. Hours of everyday are spent wandering, searching, gathering, hording, and hopefully finding a comfortable, safe place to sleep in order to do it again the next day.

      But that’s a dangerous, volatile gamble in these neighborhoods. Oakland has the deadly distinction of making America’s Most Dangerous Cities list every year without fail. It also triples down by making America’s Most Murderous Cities list, and is the perennial number one on the FBI’s Most Dangerous Cities in California list. Other statistics are equally ghastly such as the fact that the city is ranked first in the nation for violent robberies. With a population of 396,000, Oakland has long been plagued with higher crime rates than other major Bay Area city. In addition, its residents are, on average, poorer than those in San Francisco and San Jose. In Oakland, 20% of people were below the federal poverty line from 2007 to 2011, according to U.S. Census data. This fuels the gang wars, massive unemployment, unending drug use, and prisoner recidivism that plagues the town. Over the years, deep cuts in the city’s police force have left the streets unprotected, so the wounds of rampant violence continues to hemorrhage year by year.

      I can’t help but think that if something has happened to this guy, something tragic, I may not be able to forgive myself for my blind stupidity.

      “Stop kicking yourself in the balls, Javier!” I spat as I continued my cruising and surveillance run. “This is your day off, so just keep looking for him until you run out of gas!” Between jerking my head between streets and squinting my eyes to check alley ways, I keep trying to convince myself that I can find him. But reality is what it is. After spotting him consistently for two months, I had lost him for two weeks. “Goddamn it! Why didn’t I do anything then?” My fist hammers the steering wheel in self-disgust.

      I’d been on the road for nearly five hours now, checking places where I had consistently spotted him; parked the car and searched on foot within the radius of those areas. But Oakland isn’t a small town; it’s the seventh largest city in California, covering 54 square miles. Expand those miles exponentially because of the fact that I’m searching from within a car; shit! Doogie could have been anywhere! I got in the car, and decided to search “outside the box”. I began checking other areas of town that I had maybe overlooked or didn’t consider. Who knows? Maybe I’d get lucky.

      Doogie wasn’t someone one could easily lose sight of; he stood out. He walked everywhere, and not very fast. He sort of lumbered about, sloth-like, stopping often to look around. Two months ago, when I began to casually watch him out of curiosity, I followed him as he skirted around public parks, behind the strip malls, along loading docks and construction sites, parking garages and behind shops and restaurants-anywhere where there were garbage bins or junk piles. He made his rounds carrying large GLAD garbage bags over his hunched shoulders, or pushing a rickety COSTCO shopping cart full of stuff he’d picked up. This was a stereotypical image: a homeless person pushing a shopping cart. But in Doogie’s case, it just looked different, and according to those I’ve talked to on the street concerning him, it sounded different.

      After visiting the Tuckmans, it occurred to me how much Doogie stood out from the rest of his family. Blaine stood around five-eight, the same as myself; built thin and angular; Faye was a statuesque five-nine, and Brittany towered over all of us at nearly six feet. The contrast was stunning and saddening. The description I received from the orderly who gave me his file, the photo within the file taken five years ago, and the photos I took of him two months ago, in no way reflected the Tuckman bloodline; especially reviewing my photos, and my photos were the reality.

      Doogie was only five-foot-four, 245 pounds; obese, with an unshaven, corpulent face. He looked like a short, fat bear in dirty clothes. His eyes were droopy, his nose bulbous and his mouth sagged down on the right side. He wore long sleeves even on the hottest days, buttoned up to his rolls of neck fat; and he had only two pairs of ragged, filthy jeans. He walked with a bob, and leaned to his left from what seemed to be some past injury to his hip. According to the orderly, he had a speech impediment which slurred his words heavily to the point of sounding unintelligible. It had grown worse while he was at the shelter. His diminished hearing in one ear forced him to almost yell his sentences. Cruelly added to his oral deficiencies was a stammer that further vocalized his mental retardation.

      He was often taunted by the other tenants of the shelter. On the street, he was taunted by the public, from kids to passersby, who laughed or swore at him as he lumbered by or rummaged through the dumpsters. A month ago I talked to one kindhearted liquor store manager named Orlando Sikes, who was standing in front of his shop with a lead pipe in his hand. He told me Doogie rummaged through his dumpster out back every few days. The manager felt so sorry for him that he’d leave a bag of food and sundry needs like towels, toilet paper and bottled water for him to find. Doogie would come around the front and try to express his appreciation each time. This brought a smile to the African-American manager’s face as he reflected.

      “I didn’t know what he was saying, but I felt so bad for that boy,” he said. “The way he is, his lip all messed up. I know he’s retarded and that just breaks me up because it’s hard enough to survive in this world as it is.” He pointed up and down the street. “This area is rough. Lots of shootings, muggings. These fucking kids with their gangs and their drugs. That’s why I stand in front of my store with this pipe.” His finger continued to point about. “I got video cameras inside and outside; a Cop Call button under the register; and a gun, too. I let ‘em know right from the get go, you mess around in my store you’re gonna get fucked up.”

      He told me the locals made fun of Doogie at every turn. They called him many things: troll, beast, dump truck, fat fuck, along with the other gratuitous obscenities used by today’s indifferent and cruel youth.

      “The White people call him the Village Idiot,” Sikes added. “No offense, man.” I shook my head to show him none was taken. “When they dare to come down this area, they say that. I’ve seem ‘em right here in front my store. They roll down their window and say, ‘There’s the Village Idiot!’ Makes me sick because that boy is harmless. He never hurt anybody.”

      No, Doogie wasn’t hard to find, but he was missing. So, I stopped at Sikes’ place again, and found him standing dutifully in front with his lead pipe.

      “No, Doctor, I haven’t seen him in like two weeks,” he said with a worried face. “Maybe it’s experience or intuition, but I think something’s happened to him. It’s normal for the homeless to disappear; but then, you know that already. I’ll keep the bags of stuff for him if he shows up. I have your card by the register, so I’ll give you a call if I see him.”

      Sikes’ intuition was probably right. Two weeks is a long time for someone whose life was on the streets, to just not be seen anywhere anymore; especially someone as slow as Doogie. I couldn’t help but consider even more harshly, the disadvantages he possessed. I’ve started entertaining the idea of a new search tomorrow, but not on Bay Area streets. I’m considering locations like abandoned infrastructure projects, drainage ditches, construction holes, СКАЧАТЬ