Jamie
Since The Old Crow Book Club came out three months ago, new doors of fact and perception had opened into the lives of the homeless people who were the subject of the book. As I have learned with most of the books I've written, the better stories about the subject you have written about will emerge when you publish the book. It's been a rule like gravity in my writing career and produced some of my greatest joys.
So was the case with the publication of The Old Crow Book Club. I see now the book needs a second edition because the story has become so much richer. The subtle deficiencies of the first edition have become clear to me. First and foremost, I didn't know the homeless people in my neighborhood well enough because I hadn't tried hard enough. I didn't want to use them for richer storytelling and invade their privacy.
The book's publication blew my reticence for deeper engagement to smithereens. Perhaps that will ultimately be the main point of the book—to get closer to who these people are so I can better help them.
Help someone like Jamie, one of the charter members of club.
I was sitting at a picnic table outside my local watering hole on a weekend afternoon, drinking a beer, writing in my journal, when Jamie rode a bicycle down the sidewalk past me at breakneck speed. She saw me, slammed on the brakes, yelled “Matt!” ripped the bicycle around, and fell down doing so!
She rousted herself and brought the bike over to the table. She sat down across from me and placed a purse on the bench.
Jamie's face was covered with soot and she looked like a chimney sweep in Mary Poppins. Before I could ask anything, she told me her tent had burned down the previous night. She had been trying to stay warm on a 40-degree night by burning hand sanitizer in a pot. She managed to rescue her dog and phone a few other possessions. To top it all off, someone had ripped off her bicycle and she was borrowing this one.
I'd met Jamie maybe a dozen times over the past two years. She was always amiable and often busked with her flute in front of the grocery store to earn some survival money. I knew a little of her personal story, but not much.
An hour later, I knew a lot more:
Jamie was 44 years old.
She played the played flute in Portland's Marshall High School marching band and the radio station Z-100 used to hire the band to play at Packy the elephant's birthday at the zoo. It was her favorite gig.
She planned to join the Army after graduating from high school and become a member of a special military marching band. She enrolled in an early entry program and visited Fort Lewis once a month to practice. Someone in her family died and she couldn't enlist. It was her dream to travel the world in the Army, retire, and write features for National Geographic.
Jamie graduated from Mt Hood Community College and worked in a mortuary, then later for a contractor that tested pollutants discharged from Precision Castparts.
She used to live in an apartment in Sellwood. She got into a car accident and hurt her back. A doctor prescribed pain pills and more pain pills. He was just like an ordinary pusher. She managed an addiction for ten years and then she couldn't, turned to worse drugs and ended up homeless.
As we discussed her life, Jamie started getting emotional. She told me she was in love with Sean, one of the members of the Old Crow Book Club. He was the kindest, most decent man she'd ever met. But they couldn't yet get together because each was still entangled with a tyrannical ex partner.
I commented I knew Sean well and that he had shown incredible interest in the welfare of my Dad when I had to move him into assisted living and he struggled. I told Jamie I'd stake them both $200 to get Sean's truck running so they could escape Portland and live temporarily in the federal forests of Clackamas County. There, they could get their heads straight, avoid entanglements and the chaos that seems to swallow up so many homeless people.
Jamie almost started crying when I made the offer.
I reached into my bag and extricated my beloved Swiss army knife. I traveled with it all over the world, opening cans, bottles, repairing this and that, cutting cheeses, breads and ropes. I told her its story and then offered it to her. I hadn't opened it in over a decade and certainly a homeless woman could put it to use, probably daily.
Jamie started crying. “I can't take it,” she said.
“Yes, you can. You need it,” I said. “I don't. Just try not to lose it or let it get ripped off.”
“I'll jam the corkscrew into the eye of anyone who tries it!”
That roused us into laughter. Then Jamie said, “I don't know why homeless people steal from one another. A convenience store, I guess I understand, but each other?”
We discussed that for a minute.
At some point, I said, “You've got such potential.”
I'd said such a thing hundreds of times to teenagers in my 25-year teaching career, but never to a middle-aged woman, let alone a homeless one.
This time the statement felt more true than I had ever said it before.
“I know I do,” said Jamie.
I fished out ten bucks and gave it to her.
She thanked me.
“Matt,” she said. “Is there going to be a second edition of the book?”
“We're living it right now,” I said.
But really, I didn't know.
Jamie brought her purse up from the bench and stashed the knife inside. Then she produced what I recognized as a recorder because I had played one badly in grade school. A recorder!
“I saved it from the fire,” said Jamie, “and I've got to get the busking going. My friend has a nice flute up in his attic that he's going to give me.”
“You'll be going full tilt Jethro Tull,” I said.
She chuckled and stood up to go.
We parted and I watched her ride away to somewhere. I sat there, thinking: I'm not doing enough.