It was an overcast Sunday morning and I was on foot through the neighborhood.
“Matt!” someone yelled.
I looked up and saw a young man sitting inside the back of a truck. I walked toward him. It was Aaron. I'd met him several times. He was a likable member of the informal Old Crow Book Club of homeless men I'd talked books with on multiple occasions.
He called again, “Matt!” It was the most excited anyone had called my name in a decade, maybe longer.
The truck was an 80s model, white and gray, with a windowless canopy rigged up as if once used by a contractor. The truck didn't have a tail gate, rather two doors that allowed entry into the cab.
He looked exhausted and was recycling a cigarette butt for a future smoke. We struck up a conversation. In similar encounters with men like Aaron, I'd felt reluctant to probe the details of their lives. With Aaron, I felt no such reluctance.
These are the salient points of his life as he relayed them to me:
Aaron had been homeless for two months and hated being homeless. He really hated being homeless. He hated Portland. He wanted to live in Ashland, where he once resided.
He recently held a job for four weeks, but missed a day and was fired. He'd worked his whole life, starting at 16. He wanted to work at night and sleep during the day but everyone was always knocking on the canopy during the day. He couldn't get any sleep.
He'd grown up in the neighborhood and attend the local high school. He once had a girlfriend and an apartment in the area.
He was tired of smoking discarded cigarettes
The drive train on the truck was shot. His buddy removed one from an abandoned vehicle. It worked and then the transmission blew up.
There was no way he could afford an apartment, even though there were dozens of newly constructed empty studios for rent nearby.
He was on parole for some act of assault. He couldn't pay any of the fees associated with parole. Therefore, he'd never be released from parole. His parole officer couldn't do anything for him about housing and knew he was living on the streets. There was no transitional housing available. If he could get off the streets he'd get a job immediately and there would be one less homeless person and one less unfilled job. He was adamant that he hated being homeless but didn't know what else to do.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $5 bill and handed it to him.
“Get yourself something to eat this morning,” I said.
Aaron took the money and thanked me like I'd given him a hundred dollars.
I was ready to leave when he reached into the truck and pulled a out a book. He began describing it with incredible enthusiasm. It was a fantasy novel of some kind, a thick one, and he loved it. It was worlds away from his world and he wanted to read the whole series. I made a mental note to get him the rest of the series.
So, what is the book?