Another Mark
The last two months, I have conversed with a homeless man named Mark about a dozen times, always around six in the morning on the Coos Bay beach adjacent to the Empire Boat Ramp—always with Elmer at my side.
Mark and I typically talk about the history of the area, and I often comment on the sheer beauty of this place.
Once he introduced me to his girlfriend, a homeless woman I had seen digging in the mudflats multiple times for no discernible reason. She had a pleasant face, nice smile, and said Elmer was handsome.
The other day I encountered Mark at dawn, in drizzle, in fog. He was working on a Trek bicycle he had recently purchased for $100. He was adapting a baby stroller to serve as a trailer, which I assure you is a homeless survival skill adaptation that must be seen to be believed.
As I have written many times, I have no idea what prompts me on any given occasion to dig deeper into the reasons a person I've encountered has become homeless.
But it was one of those journalism mornings (Journalism Morning, great name for a soft rock band).
In short order I learned:
Mark was now living in a Jeep marooned on his sister's property three blocks away from my house.
Whenever his sister stormed into a drunken rage, she kicked him off the property and he ended up camping in the willows. Then he would make up with his sister and bunk in the Jeep.
I knew the sister's property well, having walked and driven by it a couple times a day. One word: menagerie. Rolls and rolls of red shag carpets, lawn gnomes, a wagon wheel, bald tires, chunks of concrete, flowers, a trailer (his other sister lived in it), someone living in the woodshed, and all manner of homeless people coming and going.
Mark had served 12 years in prison for various burglary and assault charges. He'd used terrible drugs and made terrible choices. He wouldn't touch fentanyl. A few days ago, a new dangerous homeless man appeared in the area, dealing fentanyl. He gave a pill to a long-time elderly homeless man, right on this very beach, and the old timer freaked out, then passed out. Everyone was screaming for Narcan. Mark got the hell out of there fast. He didn't know if the old timer had croaked. He might be decomposing in the willows 50 yards away from where we were standing and no one would ever know.
He had grown up in Coos Bay and was in 50s. He had worked for many years as a constriction worker and helped build the North Bend Walmart, an addition to the hospital and a credit union. Yes, he wanted to work again and find his own place, a real place, not a Jeep or tent in the willows. His body was too broken to perform construction work anymore. I suggested maybe custodial work, at night. He said he wanted to get into massage. Massage!
What concerned Mark the most was the absence of true romantic love in his life. He longed for it. I asked him about the girlfriend he'd introduced me to a few days ago. He said she was too far out there, and made the cuckoo bird motion with his hand. He just wanted something real, someone real, he could start over with and find a new, better path.
Many of us feel exactly the same way.