Jacob on the Rise

Elmer the maniacal husky snoozed out on the couch next to me. It was four in the afternoon on a weekday and raining outside. I was reading a history of the American government's swindle, treachery and war against Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce.

A text message arrived. It was Jacob from the Old Crow Book Club. The message read: Are you busy?

I responded: What's up?

Jacob called me a few seconds later. He needed my immediate help. He was broke, hanging out at the convenience store a block away, and needed money for Max fare to get back to the house in Hillsboro where he shared a room. He'd thought for sure he'd run into some members of the club to bum some bucks, but no one was around. He'd spent every last dime he had on rent and was waiting until next week to get paid for his line cook gig at some deli in the John's Landing area of Portland. He would pay me back straight away.

I believed him. He'd never lied to me in our three-year friendship and had always told the truth about his issues with incarceration, homelessness and addictions. He had always made a point to me how much he hated being homeless and wanted a job, any job, if only he could find housing. Well, he had, and he'd cut back on the sauce, and now was working, saving.

Ten minutes later I walked around to the front of the convenience store and there stood Jacob smoking a cigarette. He greeted me with wild enthusiasm and we shook hands. He looked good.

I handed him ten smackers and told him one beer was fine. He laughed.

He asked me where everyone in the club was and I said they were scattered. He said he had no friends in Hillsboro so he took the train to Sellwood on his day off to hang out with the club members.

Imagine that: a formerly homeless man takes two trains halfway across the metro area in terrible weather to see his homeless friends.

Jacob gave me the lowdown on his job. Line cook. $17.25 and hour plus tips. He was doing all right. The owners loved him and we was about to get more hours. It was a cool place to work and they were going to start an open mic. An open mic at a deli! I told him to let me know when it all goes down and I would come out of gigging retirement to read some riffs from The Old Crow Book Club. I've always wanted to read at a deli. Hell yeah them damn cold cuts!

He promised me he'd repay me the following week. I told him to forget it and just keep moving forward out of homelessness. I reminded him of the promise he'd made to me a year or so ago when he said he wanted to honor my labor on producing the book by not fucking up and losing it again. Jacob told me he wouldn't let me down.

We reminisced about the golden time of the book club in the summer of 2022. I quoted Robert Frost to him: “Nothing gold can stay.” We had our heyday but it was gone and we couldn't recreate it. Look what happened to Jay Gatsby when he tried to recreate the past.

Jesus! I was quoting poetry to a formerly homeless man. Both of us were freezing our asses off in front of a convenience store and were flanked by two strange homeless man we'd never seen before. More in the neighborhood every day.

I asked Jacob how he was doing in his personal life. He said he'd lost a friend to fentanyl and that friend had previously lost his mother to fentanyl, a woman in her 60s.

He also told me of an elderly man in his 70s who took a bus to the deli every other day or so. He lived in one of the Safe Rest Villages in Portland and for some reason chose to visit the deli on a regular basis. The owners took a shine to him and had him sweep out the joint and clean up around outside. Then they fed him a hot meal and he went on his way.

There's so much of that kind of good work going on around Portland, and all across Oregon.

Jacob said he told the old timer about the book. We had to get him a copy of the book. I agreed.