ZADIE SMITH: THE ONCE AND FUTURE HARLEM

HARPER’S MAGAZINE/MARCH 2011 $7.99

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HOMELESS IN SACRAMENTO Welcome to the New Tent Cities By William T. Vollmann A PILGRIMAGE OF SIN Booze, Bombs, and Hookers in Islamic Thailand By Lawrence Osborne THE MIRACULOUS DISCOVERY OF PSAMMETICHUS I A story by Daniel Mason Also: Breyten Breytenbach and Alexandra Fuller

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!"#$%&'()&*+,*&$-./#01233&&&4 4564544&&&44789&(4564544&&&44789&(!! 28 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

!"#$%&'()*++,-..(/0.-+"10.22((("# 34"3433(((5637(834"3433(((5637(899 REPORT

HOMELESS IN SACRAMENTO Welcome to the new tent cities By William T. Vollmann

y parking lot was an acciden- pulled into my parking lot and pissed put me on hold came back to say that Mtal complication of the building I in my rose bushes. I began to under- if the problem recurred the city would bought. Thanks to poor eyesight, and stand that this giant rectangle of worn write me a ticket. I tried not to worry a tincture of ecological concern, I de- asphalt was an entity over which I had about what I couldn’t help. cline to drive. Suffering from delu- Now and again people would sleep sions of urban gardening, I collected there. They never asked—how would bids on walling off my property. The they have found me?—and I never answers were thousands of dollars too turned them away. Several were " lthy high, so I left the lot open. I worked and obscene, some crazy, some hard- out a few half-assed deals with certain ened, and most quite polite—rather commuters, marched over to the like people everywhere. An unknown nearby body shop every six months or few used my walls for toilets, jumped up so to collect my rent (all the parking in my face when I opened my front space they wanted for a ! at rate), paid door, or took pliers to my water tap and my property taxes, and entertained left it running; so I fenced the building myself with isolation. off with razor wire and went on with It was convenient for the neighbors my life. to drive through, for the lumber- There were times it was annoying to company trucks to turn around in, for smell urine when I came outside on a police cars to idle in during slow mo- hot morning. Indeed the most powerful ments. Sometimes a cop might be re- quotidian argument against tolerating laxing in his cruiser a foot from my the proximity of the unsheltered must door. When I approached him, he’d be an olfactory one. I quote a neighbor: roll down his window very slowly. I’d “There’s a distinct smell that you’re ask whether he or I ought to accom- talking about in the winter; there’s this plish any particular thing in relation no power and which in fact controlled musty, moist smell of earth that’s not to each other, and he’d reply: “You’re me with responsibilities and liabilities. necessarily an offensive smell like a good.” Then he’d roll up the window Often in summer some stranger fart; it’s a sort of a musty smell that and continue relaxing there. From would make me the present of a truck- pervades the room when a homeless time to time the body shop’s big rigs load of dead tires, or a heap of rotten person who’s been camping in the rain would block my door so that I could mattresses, or a boatlike structure that and using the same sleeping bag for a barely get in or out. Drivers in a hurry cost me " ve hundred dollars to haul month walks in.” Other times the smell away, or the fixtures from a gutted is simply excrement. In my parking lot, William T. Vollmann’s most recent book is Imperial. His last article for Harper’s industrial kitchen (their disappear- one such human calling card will con- Magazine, “A Good Death,” appeared in ance cost me nine hundred). I called tinue to make itself known throughout the November 2010 issue. the city for advice. A nice woman who an entire rainless Sacramento summer.

Photographs of the Safe Ground camp in Sacramento by Max Whittaker/Prime. Illustrations by Stan Fellows REPORT 29

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''*/ 01*2100'''034*5'601*2100'''034*5'677 Sheer necessity excuses some of these them, what then? And while you and I became. My next-door neighbor also productions, and since the exterior of are disagreeing in good faith, what’s got to tolerate some of them and some- my building cultivates an abandoned happening to the woman the police times paid them to landscape the green look, I cannot blame those defecators carried off from my parking lot in a strip that lay between us. They said who believe what they see. But my squad car who now has returned to they liked him. He told me that his property offers considerable square spend the night in a wet blanket on the building no longer got graf! tied. He did footage in which to relieve one’s bowels; asphalt between my fence and my bill- get burglarized once, but he was pretty and with greater frequency than the board because she can’t ! nd a better sure that was a professional job. He said law of averages would predict, the spot place? And whether she moves her it was ! ne with him if they stayed all of choice, which incidentally offers no bowels considerately in a bag of kitty winter. In the spring they could be on advantage of shelter or modesty, lies litter, as do some of my homeless ac- their way. I nodded and smiled, think- immediately in front of my door. When quaintances, or makes a mess on my ing that they were on my lot, not his, I have had a bad day, I chalk this up to doorstep, how relevant should that be and as far as I was concerned they simple meanness. Year after year, I take to whichever “homeless could stay forever. up my hose and my humility, such as it policy” gets applied to her?I fatuously imagined that everyone is, and ask myself why. A convenient won. The homeless got a place to stay answer is that there is no why, that my ome of my guests stayed a little and to store their personal possessions; guest intended nothing in particular longer,S and to them I got more at- my parking lot was less of a headache and thought of me no more than he tached. It seemed to me that since I to me; and when I went out to the will when he dies and his corpse stinks. had no particular use for my parking blacktop at night to share my beer How one characterizes this unpleas- lot, permitting other human beings to with them, they told me stories, and ant topic is the best indicator of one’s dwell there was the least I could do. I we tolerated and entertained and con- “homelessness politics.” Some citizens am not a great believer in organized veniently or inconveniently misunder- dwell on it with a disgust suf! ciently religion, but the Golden Rule has al- stood one another as human beings obsessive to border on relish. They see ways appealed to me. will do. As for those who disdained my their homeless brothers and sisters as, To the ones who stayed the longest new friends, they were now spared in essence, walking (or shambling) I gave small jobs. Sometimes I hired seeing them stretched out on a public ! lth factories. From such a presupposi- them to clean up the messes they’d sidewalk. Nor did the city have to pay tion, logic demands the isolation, or made. “What’s wrong with this pic- to shelter them. better yet the elimination, of the con- ture?” said one old neighbor, shaking The police always kicked them off tagion. How far they would wish au- his head at my simplemindedness. But eventually. Every time I would stroll thority to go to make the homeless at least that way I didn’t have to do it. up to the squad car, there seemed to disappear I’ve never asked them, fear- Some of them weeded along the base be unfamiliar of! cers in it, so it was ing that the answer would make me dif! cult to arrive at any arrangement. sad. As for the more militant advo- Once an of! cer remarked that should cates of homeless rights, they belittle I erect a toolshed on my lot, and the stinking actuality, and sometimes should the door happen to be closed accuse those who point it out of be- whenever his squad car came rolling longing to the other camp. through, he probably wouldn’t look From this ideological division follow inside. I will admit to you that when all others. If I set up and maintained a two of! cers are doing their business portable toilet in my parking lot (never with itinerants, even when all parties mind that this experiment would be happen to be on my property, I some- illegal), would the immediate neighbor- times have to nerve myself up, because hood get cleaner or dirtier? In other authority dislikes being approached at words, if a local human need gets satis- such times, especially from the back. ! ed, is the result to attract people in But it goes against my self-respect to need from other localities? People can avert my face when guests of mine fall disagree in good faith on this question, into trouble. Although for my own as on the kindred matter of illegal im- safety he advised me very earnestly migration, and even on the next: against it, one of! cer told me that if I When I give a panhandler a beer on wrote a letter saying that so-and-so Christmas because that is what he could stay, then so-and-so could stay, wants, do you approve or disapprove? which worked for at least a week. (“I Now for another question: Who should just feel sorry for ’em, of! cer,” I kept take care of people in need? Should it of my new fence, or swept the lot. A few saying as stupidly as I could.) But then be “the government,” or charitable or- surprised me by being ferociously hard came the policeman who announced ganizations, or “the neighborhood”? workers. And I noticed that the longer that it was illegal for me to let anyone And if these entities decline to accept they stayed and the more we chatted, whatsoever camp on my premises, and the obligations you have de! ned for the cleaner and safer my parking lot everyone had to go today, no interrup-

30 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/0 12*3211'''104*3'512*3211'''104*3'566 tions and no arguments. I answered a parking lot a thousand miles from %3,/(. Under 4/&-,"/&$' the of! cer that I understood. To my friends home could be an improvement? The wrote: )$-,56)- %,.+/$0, (#6)'#* standing anxiously around me, I said mother soon moved on; the daughter '3#-"#(, /0$&(#* +(/&( 5,($/$0'. that I was sorry and would not forget stayed. She unfailingly wished me good He also checked: 1&&2/$0 (#7)/(#*. them. The officer softened a trifle morning; we joked together; many I wondered why the of! cials of my then. He explained to me that it was times I felt happy to be her neighbor. city were so stupid and cruel, not to not his job to hunt the homeless; he One cold winter afternoon when I had mention wasteful. How much public acted only when he got complaints. cooked some Chinese food, I took half money did they spend moving these Denise had lived on my parking lot of it out to my parking lot to give to people from bad to worse? How many for close to a year.1 Once, her mother Denise. She was lying on her side in her schools, parks, clinics, and buses got came all the way from Mississippi to sleeping bag, and her teeth were chat- starved in proportion; how many vio- stay there a while. Can you believe tering. “You mean, you cooked this?” lent crimes went unsolved? I also won- that? Can you imagine what her life she said. “Thank you, honey.” dered what “private property” meant— must have been, that sleeping in When they evicted Denise, she the right to go on paying property screamed in rage and grief. A day later, taxes, I suppose. Then I went inside my 1 In writing about the homeless people I have the neat tarp houses my friends had building and sat down be- come to know, I ! nd myself baf" ed by the made in their corner of the lot had all cause I felt like crying. problem of how to describe them most helpful- ly, or least harmfully. But (to get back to the! been transformed into garbage. I paid matter of avoiding harmfulness) one thing I somebody ! fty dollars to haul it away. he officer who agreed that I have done is to alter homeless people’s names. Would you like to know what De- Tcould write those permission-to-stay Some are burdened with legal dif! culties, and nise’s house used to look like? I quote letters had begun by explaining that I my portrayals of individuals might inadver- tently insult or humiliate someone whose cir- from her police citation: "#$" %&$- should kick everyone out because if cumstances have stretched him into what you '"()%"#* &$ +,--#"', .,""(#'', somebody got injured I might get sued. or I might call oversensitivity. '-##+/$0 1,0, 1-,$2#"', ./-2 %(,"#, I replied, as usual, I was willing to take

REPORT 31

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/0 01*2100'''034*2'501*2100'''034*2'566 that risk because I felt sorry for them. Sister Libby, who had shown up with so much a desk as a gigantic slab of The of! cer then remarked that I was two other people to inspect my park- redwood, sanded and polished so smooth at no imminent risk of a criminal law- ing lot. A slightly rotund man shook it’s nearly a mirror. It is held aloft by suit, but that the city attorney might my hand, and that was how I met twisted, gnarled branches that provide file civil charges against me. He re- Greg Bunker, an advocate for the nooks for small masks and art sculp- quested my name and telephone num- homeless who ran Francis House, on tures.” Mark, in short, is an aesthete like ber. I provided those with my best ap- C Street, until he died of a heart at- me. He plans out stained-glass mosaics pearance of smiling amusement, tack this past December. in his basement workshop. determined not to betray my true feel- With them stood Mark Merin, a Once I asked Mark to relate any ex- ing, which was dread. After he depart- handsome, clear-eyed fellow born in periences he had had, early on, with ed, I began to get angry. Much of life, 1943, a tri" e incongruous in his suit. poverty, and he said: “I have several at least in America, consists of submis- Mark is a civil rights lawyer.2 A local different kinds of memories. My dad sion to bullies in and out of uniform. magazine describes his desk, “which isn’t worked in a survey party and there was I telephoned the nearest homeless a guy named Earl Smith, a black guy, shelter, Loaves and Fishes. It lay in 2 He has won class-action suits against jails and my dad told me that when they walking distance of my parking lot. that conduct unconstitutional strip searches went to restaurants he would drink the Once or twice I had visited in order to of their inmates, and suits against right-to- sherry that was in a little " ask on the lifers who intimidate patients at abortion take train-hopping lessons from ho- clinics. He is arguing a federal case against table, because in those days you would boes. Its guiding spirit was a certain the Border Patrol for imperiling illegal immi- get snapper soup with a little sherry, and Sister Libby Fernandez. A police of! cer grants, and his writ action delayed the newly my dad told me that some people just remarked that she was a troublemaker imposed electricians’ certi! cation exam until have to make use of everything they it could be translated into Spanish. His “San whom he knew very, very well, and Quentin Six” case, he notes, “is still cited on can ! nd. And we talked about poverty. advised me to steer clear of her. the Eighth Amendment limits to conditions We lived in Philly. I was about nine or So that was how I met petite, wiry of con! nement.” ten. We never had much. Our family

32 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/* 01*2100'''034*2'501*2100'''034*2'566 was pretty close to the ground itself. It is not intended by this section to pro- who seemed to need a little bit of help. was kind of fun. We would go out and hibit overnight camping on private So we were used to making pick wild grapes and blackberries and residential property by friends or fam- our space available.” can them just to keep things together.” ily of the property owner, so long as The home that he shares with his wife, the owner consents and the overnight enise and the others got re- the lawyer-poet Cathleen Williams, is a camping is limited to not more than movedD from my parking lot on a former rooming house on the edge of one consecutive night.” Wednesday in March. On the follow- the neighborhood he so often serves: In January 2009, Mark filed suit ing Monday I received a notice from Alkali Flat, where Sister Libby and Greg against the city, arguing, as he ex- the City of Sacramento. I was informed Bunker operated their respective min- plained it to me, that it was “a violation that my property was a public nuisance. istries, and where I live as discreetly as of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition I had committed two violations. One I can within my anonymous building. of cruel and unusual punishment to was of Code C18, SCC 8.04 100 E: The homeless woman down the prevent someone from sleeping. And “Dangerous/unsightly.” I was ordered to block told me that Denise and the taking someone’s property was a viola- “cease maintaining any dangerous, un- others remained in police custody. tion of the Fourth Amendment— sightly or blighted condition which is This appeared plausible. Denise for unreasonable search and seizure. detrimental to the health, safety, or her part was a very enthusiastic pros- “The homeless started saying, Gee, welfare of the public. Comments: titute whose side businesses occasion- if we’re not going to be arrested, why ,-$"!$ ."/)0"/) 01/! ,&',$&02 /) " ally exceeded the category of victim- should we be hiding behind trees and 3')*/0/') 41/31 *'$! )'0 3&$"0$ " less crime. (From a complaint so forth? So they started making an 5-/%10 /) 01$ 3'..()/02.” submitted to the police by a local encampment, and right off the bat, The other violation was of Code business owner: “There is a parking there were three or four hundred C46, SCC 17.68: “Landscaping/Pav- area adjacent to the alley by 1221 C people behind the Blue Diamond ing.” Although my home state suffered Street where I have seen the campers almond factory.” That was the + rst from drought and water wastage, I was sitting around drinking. I have also Safe Ground. commanded to landscape and irrigate seen them having sex at that location Safe Ground moves with the home- the unpaved portions of my property. without regard to who was present. less as they are obliged to relocate. “Only living vegetation may be used as This activity offends my senses.”) De- The orders “come through the police. a primary ground cover.” nise’s companions practiced equally I had owned this building for four interesting professions. To reduce my years, during which time no authority risk of burglary, I never invited inside had ever expressed concern on either my place any of the people who slept of these matters. outside it, not even Denise, who had The letter was dated the previous faithfully offered me her by no means Wednesday. I was required to correct insignificant charms. By their own my code violations within seven days, accounts, most of her friends had or the city would assess + nes. been in prison. What they might I telephoned my designated of+ cial, have done to get there was not my Of+ cer Ricardo Vargas, and, needless business, and what I did within my to say, got an answering machine. building was hardly theirs. So I would Then I poured myself a drink and bring out cold drinks and we’d stay called Mark, who, bless him, came outside, inhaling the fragrance of over straightaway. stale urine on asphalt. Had Mark not helped me, I would not At any rate, the four of us stood have dared to resist the city further. I around in my parking lot on that hot would have paid whatever + nes were afternoon, trying to decide what to do. demanded, and spent several thousand I don’t feel that Mark and his comrades dollars landscaping and irrigating, and manipulated me into doing something paid someone to keep the place clean, for which I felt unready. Rather, they and kept my head low. If somebody inspired me into an escalation of sorts. wanted to camp on my parking lot, I We decided to erect two semiperma- would still have told him to go ahead. nent shelters. Mark put up a sign that It’s always the police who deal with And I would have done this until the read !"#$ %&'()*. homeless people.” Safe Ground eventu- + nes grew too high for me to pay, and Safe Ground is a movement to pro- ally made its way to Mark’s porch. then I think I would have sold my prop- tect the homeless in their itinerancy. “People gathered on the sidewalk and erty or abandoned it. It was formed in 2008 in response to said, What now? So at that time I vol- My late father once advised me to Sacramento City Ordinance 12.52, unteered my property. That was in pick my battles. This one had picked which makes it illegal to sleep even in August. We had had other people, me. (“Well, that’s what you should one’s own backyard for more than one homeless people, living on our porch have expected when you bought the night at a time. The law speci+ es: “It before that, people we got to know place,” said my mother.)

REPORT 33

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''// 01*2100'''034*5'601*2100'''034*5'677 The outcome was softer and in a each according to his ability, to each II way sadder than I had expected. Mark according to his needs?” On applying to the assessors, I am sur- dealt with Officer Vargas, and I “I like it. If we did that, if society prised to learn that they cannot at once crawled thankfully out of the city’s worked that way, then everybody name a dozen in the town who own their jaws scot-free. I cleaned up the mess would feel like a contributing member. farms free and clear. the police had made and waited for What pains me is to see people who —Henry David Thoreau, 1854 more people to set up house, but no- have talents, abilities, who are just body came. I met a young couple on unable to care for their families be- In the summer of 2010, Mark told my sidewalk, and they told me they cause of the way things are structured. me: “We have two encampments were scared of being arrested. For I think that under the Constitution now on the river that move their months I stored an old tarp, together it’s recognized that there are liberties stuff every day, sixty or eighty peo- with Denise’s stinking mattress and that can’t be abridged by a govern- ple, and another that is trying to stay several piss-stained letters and photo- ment. The right to life assumes a lot where they are. They are trying to graphs of hers that showed up in my of things, one of which is that you can keep pretty concealed.” excrementitious ivy patch, and when be someplace. It is a fundamental right I decided to sleep at one of these vermin made an appearance I got rid to be left alone, as long as you are not encampments. of the mattress. A friend took the tarp bothering anybody else. It is a right to Greg Bunker furnished me the to his garage, and I believe it lies there live off the grid.” phone number of a pastor named Da- still. I saved Denise’s cleanest photo- “How well would Thoreau do here vid Moss, whose name I recognized graph. If she ever comesin Sacramento if he tried to live and from the list of plaintiffs in Mark’s back, I’ll give it to her. write Walden?” lawsuit. He had been arrested on “If he had his own property he Mark’s lot, and his possessions (a tent asked Mark, “What’s your opin- could examine his barn and his pond, and sleeping bag, I suppose) con! s- ionI of the communist slogan From but otherwise we wouldn’t allow that.” cated as usual. I inquired about staying

34 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

!"#$%&'()*++,-..(/0.-+"10.22(((3% 45"4544(((36"4(745"4544(((36"4(788 at Safe Ground, and he replied: “We ramento. They were dubbed Hoover- a Safe Ground elder, informed us that it don’t turn anyone away.” villes, in mock tribute to the man who, was time for “the hike” if we were in- “In case we get a visit from the po- it was thought, too blithely presided over terested. Every night, it seemed, dinner lice, should I bring identi! cation?” the collapse of the nation’s economy. By came from somewhere different. Tues- “If you want the full experience, 1935, three thousand transients, most of day nights had the best food, and it was don’t bring ID.” them male, were living in colonies all Tuesday. So we walked a couple of As it happened, Safe Ground was at over Sacramento. (John Steinbeck men- miles, along riverbank, highway, and present enjoying a sort of détente with tions Sacramento’s homeless in The levee, with Ernest and two men and the police department. “It comes from Harvest Gypsies.) There were camps at two women, other groups before and the bottom up, not from the top down,” the Jibboom Street Bridge, which spans behind. None of my companions had explained an elder named Frank. (Safe the American River; just west of the heard of Mark. Most were young. Just Ground residents elect a council of el- Sacramento River; in the so-called Rat- behind me, a bespectacled girl in a ders: three people who rotate for a term tlesnake district on 20th Street; along Y hooded sweatshirt reached over the of a month.) Hence there would be no Street; and in a district then known as edge of the highway bridge to pick some need to rise before dawn and disappear. Shooksville, near to where the city in- ! gs. I tried one, but it was too unripe Frank was organizing the distribu- cinerated its garbage. for me. At ! rst she enthused about how tion of tents and sleeping bags. “Ladies I sometimes seek to categorize nice it was to sleep outdoors, but when ! rst!” he said. Then came the men’s whatever freedom it is these people Ernest remarked, “Nice as it is, I would turn. Safe Ground’s equipment was have that I do not, a freedom that I give up the whole fucking thing tomor- new-looking and of decent quality. He also do not want. I don’t know row for a roof over my head,” she grew gave me a pledge form, and I asked whether they wanted to work and melancholy and said that she hated to him whether Mark had drafted it. couldn’t, or chose not to work, or feel dirty all the time—dirty hair, dirty “The elders did,” he said patiently. needed or expected anything. For ! ngernails! I assured her, as was true, I walked beside him all the way to their part, the only need most of that she neither looked nor smelled the river. He had a little dog on a leash them expressed to me was this: a dirty. She said nothing. and Safe Ground supplies in his cart. place from which nobody would I kept Ernest company. Lonnie, who He was in ! ne shape, as a man who move them. Could it truly be that was probably the oldest among us, lives outdoors often tends to be, and they had everything else they re- walked quickly, a tri" e ahead, and the looked younger than his age, which quired? They were healthy, watch- others fell behind. “Hurry up, hurry you may estimate once I inform you ful, and at ease with what you or I up!” called Ernest. To me, he ex- that he was in Vietnam in 1974, “do- might consider discomfort. You will plained: “You gotta be aggressive. Oth- ing cleanup,” which meant “blowing quickly see that I am foolish to try erwise you’ll walk this whole fucking things up” when we commenced our to describe them or their surround- way for only a doughnut.” pullout from that great adventure. ings at all, since these changed Turning down a short steep path to a “So when did the homeless com- more rapidly than I with my parking lot beside a restaurant now shut- munity here start to organize?” homebound concerns tered and for sale, we found ourselves “In the Depression,” he said. “The could follow. among a group of homeless more hetero- American River has always been ev- geneous than the Safe Grounders, for, as eryone’s place, a place to be free.” o you ! sh, Frank?” Ernest had informed me, “everybody The banks of the American and Sac- “D“Not without a license. We try not who lives along the river is going to this ramento Rivers sheltered many of the to do anything illegal except to sleep.” feed.” We sat down on the low concrete homeless encampments that arose in And so we crossed the bridge and bars at the head ends of parking spaces, Sacramento during the 1930s. Owing to descended the riverbank trail, under the waiting for our free food. For music we the presence of well-funded charities, railway overpass and through the oak had traf! c and freight trains, dead leaves large commercial employment agencies, groves with their chocolate-brown and rasping across the asphalt with each and an ample demand for manual labor, yellow-ocher galls, past the bluish-white twilit gust, accompanied by the smell of the city had long been a haven for mi- globe constellations of wild grapes, pres- cigarette smoke in the cooling shade. A gratory workers and drifters, ex-cons ently arriving at the camp, most of woman was drunk and a man was push- among them. But the Great Depression whose dome tents, hand- lettered #$%& ing green neon, a variety of marijuana drove up homeless numbers across the '()*+,, were already in place. whose properties a satis! ed user charac- country, and transients " ooded Sacra- Frank had gone about his business. terized as follows: “My eyeballs are gon- mento and similarly hospitable cities in An elder named Thirteen showed us na slowly go green even after I close my numbers they could not possibly accom- where he wanted us to camp. He eyes.” White-bearded old men sat in modate, not least because of the native seemed to be establishing couples at raincoats and hats, stroking their dogs— residents’ own need for hardship relief. the edge, perhaps for their privacy. and, in case you haven’t noticed this for Transients began building “hobo vil- From one middle-aged pair I heard the yourself, I ! nd that the dogs of homeless lages” out of scrap metal and tarpaper. following romantic exchange: “Go to owners are particularly calm, alert, and These shantytowns sprang up in New your wife now.” “Not that bitch.” intelligent. A tall, slender, half-bad, York, Chicago, and Boston, as well as in A handsome young black man strangely smiling man with a duffel smaller cities like Minneapolis and Sac- named Ernest, once a Marine and now hanging perfectly straight down his back

REPORT 35

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/0 12*0211'''134*5'612*0211'''134*5'677 drifted around. Often the people stood ing rapidly through the sweet darkness gan to glow from flashlights within. in small groups, laughing and catching with these friends, it seemed to me that Although Ernest had to get up early, he up with one another. I saw a weather- the way back was very short. Lonnie wanted to read more about Ra, and he beaten blonde in a checked shirt shoot- talked a bit about his ex- girlfriend, and also had a thriller somebody had given ing the breeze with another woman and Ernest alluded to his researches into the him. His tent glowed for a long time. A two men, one of whom wore a long Bible and the Egyptian sun god, Ra. He woman coughed. The moon rose hunting knife at his belt. Groups of men told me that Amen comes from Amen- through the clouds. I smelled dead leaves stood around spitting. Slowly, the cheer hothep. He said that the scariest thing near my face, and woodsmoke from faded with the evening light. We were that had ever happened to him at Safe some rogue campfire. The woman getting hungry. Some people formed a Ground was simply embarking on his coughed over and over, patiently. circle with their arms around one an- ! rst night outdoors, because he came Wes, who occupied the nearest tent other’s waists; they must have been pray- from Chicago, where “that’s unheard-of. and knew a thing or two about impro- ing. Finally the vans and cars began to It was a shock.” Now he liked it; it had vised prison weapons (for instance: al- arrive, an hour after Ernest had ex- taught him humility, he said. I did not ternately melt and cool empty ketchup pected them. From nowhere appeared a ask him what he meant. packets, adding and amalgamating as Latino in early middle age, probably a It was very dark now, almost nine you go, until you have a plastic shiv that pastor, who began to intone a prayer no o’clock. Ernest called ahead on his cell can kill if it goes into someone’s eye), one could hear. He started over, but phone. An elder had placed logs over had remarked that there were skunks nobody listened. Now the backs of the our sleeping bags to keep them from hereabouts, one of which had entered vehicles opened. As Ernest had prom- blowing away. We thanked him. People his sleeping bag; and then I felt some soft ised, it was “a real smorgasbord.” were going to bed. small creature against the back of my You never knew what each line “I’m gonna put on some jammies knee. It could have been a skunk, an would offer. My ! rst expedition yielded and lay it all down,” a woman said opossum, a feral cat. Since it was outside me a plastic bowl with about four table- from the doorway of her tent. my sleeping bag, I let it stay where it spoons of spaghetti, a fat, delicious “Awright, sister. You know where I pleased and went back to sleep as cool- cheese roll, and a sweet pastry. The next am if you need me.” ness came down through the trees. line was for burritos, but they almost “Thank you so much.” Dawn came near. A couple mur- immediately ran out. There was a line “Good night.” mured an argument. The side of a wom- people thought was for soup and ice “G’night.” an’s tent rustled faintly, and I smelled cream, and I could see somebody hap- “Good night, everyone.” urine. Then I heard a lid screwing onto pily licking her ice-cream cone, but by “Hey, will you shut up back there?” a jar, and the smell went away. A cell- the time I reached the tailgate of the car I lay on my back staring up at the phone alarm began to tweet. Beneath there was only soup, very hot and deli- silhouetted treetops, which seemed to the paling sky, a silhouette rose and cious, the fresh potatoes and turnips grow toward one another, closing in the drank from its silhouetted water bottle. still a tri" e crunchy. Serving it was a pond of pallid sky, everything dark It had all been much more orga- pretty Latina televangelist named Nat- where I was, and then there were pools nized, peaceful, mutually respectful, alie. She told me the police had several of light from downpointed " ashlights, and even familial than I would have times threatened her with arrest for and faraway dots of light a little above expected—as beautiful, in short, as distributing this food. Once, she had the ground. A white shirt and black the long-haired, brown-eyed, brown- asked them what she was supposed to arms came skimming a " ashlight to and skinned young homeless woman do with it then, and they said: “Dump fro along the path. The frogs and crick- Maya, who was walking and chatting it out.” She replied: “I’ve spent four or ets got louder and louder. Next I began with another woman, Ellen, on the ! ve hours making this soup, and I’m not to hear the river. Slowly, the dome tents way to dinner. A week later I asked going to dump it out.” I did not get to bleached into visibility in the darkness after Maya, and Ellen re- ! nd out what happened next, because around me. The camp was almost silent plied: “She disappeared.” the man in line behind me very reason- now. There was a smell of foot sweat, ably told me: “You got yours; now get which went away. I heard a man and a n the following week I chose a the hell out of the way.” It had grown woman murmuring sweetly. There came OFriday instead of a Tuesday, thinking almost chilly, but the asphalt was still a cold loud wind, and then a freight that Safe Ground’s ambiance might warm and good against my buttocks as train blared through, no more than ! ve differ. This time I did not telephone I ate my soup beside a long-bearded man hundred feet away, a long metal exhala- ahead. At the warm and sunny place who stroked his piebald hound; another tion (the frogs and crickets continuing by the big tree where the chairs and man approached, greeted the owner, steadily through it). I had almost shed were, nobody was waiting. then caressed the animal. dropped off to sleep again when a crowd “What, they done left?” said a slim Concerned that my sleeping bag of people passed on the trail, talking black woman. “They must be at the might have blown away (wishing to loudly, smoking cigarettes, heading for church.” I walked toward the river just travel light, I had brought an old paint- what the Safe Ground elders called their in case and met Ernest, who said that er’s tarp for a ground cloth and eschewed “rogue camps.” Now and again came most of the “core group” were staying any tent), I decided to return to camp. new trains and passersby. Sometimes at the Lutheran church on 27th and Lonnie and Ernest came with me. Walk- one or two of the Safe Ground tents be- O, in care of Dave Moss. So I walked

36 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/0 12*3211'''145*0'612*3211'''145*0'677 up there. It was a mile or two. Moss as I watched a lady came out of the we had met the previous week had all had requested that all his visitors enter kitchen to add more ice cubes. gotten arrested this week. A man at my by the back alley, so as not to in! ame I sat down, slowly cooling down after table said this was an exaggeration; no the neighbors, who wished to avoid the walk. Of all the people there I rec- one had gotten arrested. the proximity of unfortunates. ognized only Frank, who did not seem It seemed pretty tame to me; but Moss Since it was the " rst of the month, to remember me; Dave Moss; and Ellen, now made an announcement: “After some people had received checks and who came in after I did and although I dinner we can’t go outside until 7 #.$. did not need the facilities. Fewer greeted her by name appeared to have We’ve gotta be really under the radar than twenty people sat at the tables no use for me. Ernest and Thirteen had about this. If you have to smoke this in that clean and pleasantly air- stayed by the river to help guard the evening sometime between now and six, conditioned but otherwise rather camp. (Frank remarked that a party was go out in ones and twos at the most. We dreary room, whose windows looked probably in progress there, because he cannot be visible to the neighbors or out only onto corridors. It seemed was here.) we’ll have to shut the program down.” better than, say, a welfare of" ce. No- They were all calm, patient, and so A blondish young woman named body who waited here had to jump clean that even the tall sunburned man Charlene remarked that up in Oroville through any more hoops. I signed behind me could have passed for a mem- she had rented a lady’s front yard for the Safe Ground pledge form when I ber of the propertied class. Some of them three hundred dollars a month so that entered. Backpacks lay neatly along read the newspaper. At one table a slen- she could pitch her tent there, with the walls. On a corner table were in- der, tired black woman sat leaning on kitchen and toilet privileges. The po- nocuous paperback novels, a Chris- her hand, while a white man and a black lice arrested her. The neighbors came tian yellow pages, and some board man, both wearing caps, chatted about to her defense, the landlady brought games. At the long table where the skunks. At the next table the conversa- proof of payment, and the police had church people would serve us dinner tion was about false arrest. Ernest had to let her go, but did so in angry spirit. stood two pitchers of ice water, and said that the Tuesday food givers whom She also said that in Marysville the city

REPORT 37

!"#$%&'()*++,-..(/0.-+"10.22(((34 56"7655(((%855(956"7655(((%855(9:: council had posted signs in churches man remind the mayor and his council “It’ll be a little snug,” said a man, announcing that people were not al- that the great luxury of sleeping inside a holding up a pair of pants. lowed to stay there after dark. church is rendered less delicious by the “Lights out in thirty minutes!” Frank asked for a volunteer to lead concrete " oor; and that night I received shouted Frank. us in prayer and thank the church. some education on that topic. Mark had Most of them were already on or in We formed a circle, holding hands, an epigram: “the ground gets awfully their sleeping bags, stretched out against and a woman prayed in a weak, hard when you’re in your ! fties and six- the wall. It was from their quiet submis- tremulous voice. I heard her express ties.” I was now fifty-one. Thanks to sion that I could tell they were homeless. gratitude to Safe Ground. I held Char- several sedentary years, I possessed some They became long and narrow as they lene’s hand, which she snatched stomach padding; so it was merely the lay there, most of them on their stom- away as soon as the prayer was over. grinding of my hip bones against an achs and sides. I lay back down. Then the church people served us unyielding surface that annoyed me. “I sleep here,” Frank informed me, dinner from a buffet table, ladies Preferring to sleep in the open for a num- “so unless you want my feet in your ! rst. I thanked one woman for the ber of reasons, not the least the ability to face, you might want to move.” salad she ladled onto my plate, and make a speedy departure in the event of I moved. she replied: “It’s my pleasure to a police raid, I never brought to Safe “You guys,” he was saying, “you serve.” People like her give Ground any tent or pad until the arrival move the garbage can this way. What’s Christians a good name. of the rainy season. I used to camp often your name?” in my youth, and lying in dirt did not “Doc.” avid Leeper Moss, retired from annoy me. Of course, novice Safe “You’re oh-four-nine.” Dthe United Methodist ministry, big- Grounder that I was, I had failed to Relenting, Frank now issued me a shouldered alumnus of the board of consider the possibility that tonight I sleeping bag to pad the " oor with. I Loaves and Fishes, white of beard and might be sleeping somewhere else. In thanked him; I was oh-three-! ve. mustache, had been involved with short, I lacked a foam pad. Noticing extra “Lights out in ten minutes,” said Safe Ground since July of last year. “I sleeping bags, I asked Frank whether I Frank. “You’d better wrap up that game.” heard about Tent City and defying could borrow one to put under me. I heard two men call each other the anti-camping ordinance, and I “One sleeping bag per person,” said brother. thought, Man, this is the place where Frank. “Do you have a sleeping bag?” Lying on my back in the darkness, I I would like to be! There’s a discon- “Yes.” stared up at the high ceiling and around nect between the people who are sup- “If you already have a sleeping bag, me at the yellow-glowing door panes, the porting Safe Ground and the people then that’s your sleeping bag.” long low sleeping-bag islands against the who are living Safe Ground, and since “Sure, Frank,” I said, knowing that walls, and Dave Moss sitting alone in I know my gifts and graces, I know this was how it had to be. The " oor did the light of the restroom doorway, read- that I can be a bridge between them.” feel hard, so I wandered into a vacant ing a book. He sat there all night as far I told him that the necessity of his side chamber labeled #$%&&'((). I as I know, for in the morning he was in guests’ hiding themselves from the liked the look of it; it was carpeted. the same spot. Another sentinel neighbors made me sad. He replied: “Hello?” came a sharp female voice. manned the table by the front door. I “The Trinity Cathedral on Capitol “These are women’s rooms.” suppose that if one of us had attacked doesn’t have the same community that “Perfect,” I said, wishing I had worn another, or tried to go into where the we do, so people can smoke on the a dress. women slept, one of them would have sidewalk. Also, it’s larger. There are My new friend Peyton, a blocky man called for Frank. As I lay there, I felt a even facilities for pets.” (All but one of with a crew cut, invited me to be a strange feeling of happiness. I could hear the animal owners here tonight had left fourth in a game of Yahtzee, but I didn’t a woman’s high-pitched cough, rich with their animals in their tents at the river. feel like it. So I lay down on the " oor phlegm. Now the church was almost The exception was a woman with a and listened to the creakings of chairs. entirely silent. A man rustled crossly in tiny, utterly silent dog.) A man was explaining to his friend: his sleeping bag. A pack buckle clicked Moss went on: “If you ask me, the “That’s actually a dark star. Guy’s hel- quietly open. churches are too damned timid.” met, that’s a dark-star emblem.” In the morning the lights came on “There must be many homeless who “Is there any other ladies that want at six o’clock sharp. Some of us were for whatever reason won’t follow the to go to bed?” called Frank. already rolling up our sleeping bags Safe Ground rules,” I said. “That sleeping bag is oh-six,” he was as quietly as we could. Frank was “Safe Ground is not a solution for saying a moment later. “Zero-eight is booming out: “I need a volunteer to homelessness. It’s part of a mosaic of Peggy Sue.” mop the " oor. I need a volunteer to solutions.” “No, I just wanted to get my towel,” clean the men’s bathroom. Thank I liked that. It was modest enough a woman was saying. you, volunteers.” There came a that it might be true. Beside me, a People were folding up the tables prayer, and toast and woman and two men pored over a and chairs. I got up and helped them cereal for breakfast. puzzle, and at another table, two men where I could. stared into space. “Did you sign your agreement?” ortunately, when we stood in line At City Hall I once heard a homeless Frank was asking someone. forF our free food at a new location, be-

38 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/0 12*3211'''145*6'712*3211'''145*6'788 ›KB EBIIRS> QB>J LC neath the 12th Street bridge, there troduced me all around, and I shook TOFQBOP E>P MOLAR@BA > were no of! cers in sight. Moreover, everybody’s hand. Then I went back ?LLH VLRÁII ?B AFMMFKD when on the path out of camp we had across the path to Safe Ground. FKQL CLO VB>OP’š passed some park rangers, the woman I asked a woman in the entranceway beside me, my new friend Cecilia, said of her dome tent (the sun red on her © FJ LRQLK— >RQELO LC >II LRO that it was best not to speak to them; face) how she had come to be there. they in turn looked right through us. She replied: “You know, where I was at, Dave Moss had said: “The park rang- I was at Saint Francis in a cot, and they ers, don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t see, kicked seven of us out with no notice. -0' .*!/# "(  don’t know.” That reminded me of a They got an old man who doesn’t    man I had once overheard on the bus, bathe, calls you an ef! n’ b3 every day, explaining that due to budget cuts his and we got kicked out because we com-     probation of! cer was leaving him to plained. So we went to Trinity Lu- his own devices. “Works for me,” the theran and slept on the steps. They 
Á

  man said. were very nice to us, and I just hated OBC>@B ?V LV ILRKQ O’ I began to wonder how many so-called the idea of going back into a shelter, so social services, doubtless with the best I went truckin’ down to Loaves and intentions, inverted their functions and Fishes, where my friend said, Why don’t became instruments of persecution. I you try Safe Ground?, and I met Frank, RIBP LC QEB >JB“ EB support the mandate of police to protect and he said, Why don’t you take a tent BPQ MLOQP OFQFKD COLJ me from crime, of park rangers to keep and a sleeping bag?” my local green spaces from becoming A man told me that his best friend, >OMBOÁP >D>WFKB RK@LS¦ ganglands or dumping grounds. Surely now deceased, had recommended Safe BOP CRKKV— QLR@EFKD— BU@FQ¦ these uniformed persons were doing nei- Ground. “They set me up right here FKD— FKQOFDRFKD PQLOFBP LC QEB ther more nor less than following their and gave me a brand-new sleeping PMLOQFKD IFCB— ?LQE MOLCBP¦ mission when they uprooted the home- bag.” He had been here a week. “I can’t less. How could this be recti! ed? stay too long, because of the weather. PFLK>I >KA >J>QBRO’ EBPB In any event, nobody ! ned, arrested, They say the water gets up here, right BPP>VP PELT QE>Q ELT TB or threatened Natalie that evening. I up to your calf.” MI>V >KA TOFQB >?LRQ PMLOQP was near the end of the line, so all I got Annie had been homeless for two from her was two spoonfuls of soup, but years. She was my age—! fty-one. Her OB^B@QP >KA @BIB?O>QBP LRO it was wonderful. I thanked that sweet skin was beautifully wrinkled. She was K>QFLKÁP @E>O>@QBO’ kind woman and she said God bless so high-cheekboned and brown- EFP @LIIB@QFLK FK@IRABP you. I sat down in the sand to eat. Then complected that at ! rst I thought her to I walked back to Safe Ground to lie be Native American. I told her she PLJB LC QEB JLPQ TBII¦HKLTK down in the dirt. looked good, and she said: “Thank you >KA OBPMB@QBA TOFQBOP LC Cecilia, who had given me permis- for lying. I have my teeth at the dentist’s QEB M>PQ @BKQROV— FK@IRAFKD sion to be her next-door neighbor, of! ce.” “I was born here in Sac,” she had remarked that “at night, it’s stone said. “I lived in Tahoe for thirty-one >OH T>FK— LJ LICB— quiet.” It did seem more that way years. I came from a very rich family. My EFOIBV >@HPLK— BTFP ’ when I put my earplugs in. All the dad died from a heart attack, and two >ME>J— >OV >OQTOFDEQ— same, on that occasion I found myself years later my mother committed sui- awoken several times with great cide because she couldn’t deal with it.
’ >OQIBQQ F>J>QQF— BQB abruptness by the ammoniac stenches That just kicked the hell out of me,
UQEBIJ— BLODB IFJMQLK— of those of my neighbors who must because I once faked a little suicide at- >KA F@E LEBK’ have been relieving themselves in tempt and [my family] said, We don’t do their tents. I was shocked by how that because we’re German.” When she powerful the smell was. There must divorced her husband, she told him that AFQBA ?V >QQEBT QBSBKPLK have been riper urine already in she didn’t want anything they had had >KA F@E>BI >OQFK whichever jars or bottles together. It used to be that she had to they used. pack up every day. One reason she ap- OABO QLA>V QEOLRDE preciated Safe Ground was that “I can’t TTT’E>OMBOP’LOD¥PQLOB¥ORIBPLCQEBD>JB October was more than half do that camping thing anymore,” mean- R?IFPEBA ?V O>KHIFK NR>OB OBPP spent, and still the rain had not come. ing the moving. She also said: “I never  ‡ †¦¦† ‡‡ƒ ¦ƒ†¦‡ I went down by the river to sleep, and seen a place with so little ! ghting— LCQ@LSBO Š‚’‡ƒ met Ernest on the path. He had split nothing. I think Frank is the reason. F RANKLIN from Safe Ground on account of “poli- He’s an excellent man. He’s fair. He SQUARE tics.” He showed me where he camped, neglects his family sometimes for us.” PRESS right across the path from his former comrades, in some thick brush. He in- 3 “Fucking bitch.”

FPQOF?RQBA QEOLRDE FAMLFKQ O>AB LLHP REPORT 39

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/0 12*3211'''45*/'612*3211'''45*/'677 I had never gotten to know Frank’s “I’m just coming in from Phoenix,” edge of camp I wished him good night, family. That night in the church I had she had said when I ! rst met her. Gray- flicked on my flashlight until I had glimpsed a woman I was told was his haired and tanned, she would have found my sleeping bag, rolled away the wife. Once in camp I said hello to her. passed for a rent-paying citizen. She had two wind-guard rocks, crawled in, and I never saw their child, who very likely sold time-share condominiums for nine lay listening to the evening voices. was inside their tent when I passed by. years in Mexico. “When I was married, “That’s the cleanest fucking shape When you read a little further in this I was Cecily. I had no problems. Now, I ever been in,” a man was saying. story, you will see why I wish I could oh, my. If you don’t want to make home- “Oregon’s a fuckin’ desert,” said a tell you more about them. As for Frank, lessness your way of life, the professional woman. I hope that I have given you an impres- homeless will give you a hard time. For “Have you ever been there?” said sion of the man—or his massive pres- me, it was lack of planning. I couldn’t the man. “It’s really great.” ence, his probably salutary microman- get a place because I was evicted . . .” A helicopter roared down low over agement and heavy-handedness, his I asked her how long she had been us. Cecilia was bantering with me from vigilance, which went far to keep Safe homeless, and she answered: “This her tent, then yawning. The crickets Ground safe, and his grimness, which time, about two months.” and cicadas were almost roaring. I could sometimes seem unfriendly. His As for Alan, he had been evicted could see Alan’s inverted V of Hallow- most fundamental quality was ex- from subsidized housing “for health een lights. pressed by Annie’s friend Jimmy, who and safety violations for having a “No, I really did see an honest-to- said: “He’s the fairest man I know.” workshop in the house.” I thought it God hobo, down by the coast!” Jimmy and Annie had nothing but tactful not to inquire about Then came cigarette smoke, and a good to say about Safe Ground. But this workshop. tall shape loomed over me. “Who’s Annie then said: “I been here in the this here on the ground?” wintertime, and it’s gonna be no fun nother night: the food givers I said: “It’s me, Frank. Okay if I at all. It’s gonna be a mud pit.” Aleaning against the backs of their ve- sleep here?” Farther off the main path was Alan, hicles beneath the highway overpass, “Sure. It’s okay.” resident of Sacramento since 1992 and the trees sharp against the yellow We wished each other good night. homeless since February. Weakly cough- sky, huddles of homeless bolting the Having brought mosquito repellent ing, white-haired and smooth-faced, he food on their paper plates, then dis- every previous time and not needed it, sat cross-legged in his tent, proud owner persing into the dusk with their dogs this time I had left it behind and need- of a radio, newspapers, and two minia- and bicycles. A few of the eaters ed it. Oh, well. A train exhaled its ture plastic skeletons dangling from wore Safe Ground T-shirts—Ellen, for harmonica breath. People were still chains of paper clips in order to comple- instance, who sometimes could and talking and coughing. From the main ment his blue Halloween lights. He said: sometimes could not remember me. path ! fteen feet away I heard the clink “I’d been dreadin’ about it since before I The last sun rays made her pale and of metal—probably links of a dog lost my job. The strength of Safe Ground glowing. Natalie the televangelist chain. Tents hunkered down around is being able to leave my stuff somewhere was calling out: “Anyone want any me like pallid tombs. and go about my business, and also I can toilet paper?” I had been chatting “That’s fine, brother,” I heard get a good night’s sleep.” with somebody, so I missed the food Frank boom. “Just wanted to know For him the two most serious prob- she was passing out; I didn’t get any who’s in those.” lems were trash and human waste. spaghetti but I did score a sweet roll, A woman was laughing long and “We keep calling for trash pickup, but which kept the cold away. I asked happily. A " ashlight played inside the we can’t give an address.” Frank if he thought the police would tent to the left of Alan’s. Annie was He worried about his three camping come, and he said: “I know the ser- chatting with Jimmy. tickets, which required three separate geant. There won’t be trouble.” “My daughter was seven years old,” court dates. Mark had advised him to Frank was right. a man said. contest them and demand jury trials. Another skinny person, accompa- “I’m sorry.” It was late afternoon. The boughs nied by a dog, walked back into the “Hey, you got any water in your tent?” overhead were half in shadow, half river forest to camp. The last of us sat “No.” glowing. I knelt on the leaf-strewn tarp in a patch of silver-yellow sand, the From a nearby tent came a man’s that passed for a welcome mat; Alan highway rumbling above our heads. We voice: “Well, honey, I’m callin’, but neither came out nor invited me in, so had eaten, so we were quiet and happy. you have your cell phone turned off. I did not bother him long on that ! rst A smiling man offered me his muf! n. So I guess you’re doing something occasion. Outside lay a few garbage Now the cyclists had ! nished riding you got no business doing. G’night.” bags faintly stinking. I saw Ellen and away and the rest of us walked into the I put in my earplugs. Right through called out a greeting to her. This time darkness, whose crickets and cicadas them, from across the path, in the she answered pleasantly enough. As so were very loud. Beside me was Angelo, camp to which Ernest had moved, I often, she expressed her wish to take a who said he was homeless because he heard a woman screaming obsceni- shower. Cecilia passed by, walking was a procrastinator. He hurt his back, ties, and then a man’s loud reply: “I— heavily and painfully, a single sandal went on working, ended up cooking will go—when I’m damn ready. Now dangling from her hand. methamphetamine in Alaska. At the good night.” Flashlights " icked over

40 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

!"##$%&&'()&%#*+)&,,'''-. /0*.0//'''/*1/2'3/0*.0//'''/*1/2'344 me from the trail. I heard Cecilia encounter with authority, he now had loudly zipping or unzipping to take the bus to Reno to deal with her sleeping bag. an outstanding warrant. An older Asian woman named Eu- ater that week Mark called me nice, who adored Frank, took me aside toL say that Safe Ground had been to catalogue his virtues: “Somebody raided by the police; the campers need to order here, and Frank do a real were compelled to move. When I set good job. He should be on his own, but out to look for its new location, I met he stay to help us.” Ernest, who said: “No, no, no. They As for Alan, she advised, “just got raided when they moved.” whatever he say, just write it off.” “Why did they move?” “How did you " nd out about Safe “I dunno. I’m still not with ’em.” Ground?” “Where are they?” “Well, " rst I got here from San Fran- “Follow the 12th Street path to the cisco, and I don’t even know where to path between the two towers. You’ll stay, and Mary House” at Loaves and see a path with one brick on it. Take Fishes “offer me Safe Ground. They give that one.” me tent; they give me sleeping bag. We “Thanks, Ernest. You’re the best.” put up the porta-potties and it’ll be He sent me a lovely metal smile. much nicer. Time when I was movin’ The camp was now on soft low mead- camp it was all right; it was just " ne. owy ground, somewhat screened by Rain coming; I’m not used to the rain. trees. Along our river, at least where it Rain, they will give us some tarp. That’s ! ows through the city, the strip of ersatz all we need; that’s okay. Oh, lunchtime, wilderness is never as wide as it appears; we can go down to Loaves and Fishes. and this latest incarnation of Safe Dinnertime, church come to feed us. So Ground lay close to a road the park rang- far, everybody do real " ne. You follow ers often patrolled. All the same, the the order, you do real good. I speak Ko- change struck me pleasantly. The grass rean; I speak Japanese; I old lady. I between the " gure eight of tents smelled shouldn’t be here. But life up and down.” sweet and fresh, and the ground around During the move a few of her things them had not yet been beaten down. had disappeared, but she didn’t mind, Cecilia said: “One of the kids came because they could be replaced. in to help me with their wagon. The An older man was saying to a young- kids are young. But anyway I’m gonna er: “If you want, I’ll give you gloves; I’ll go down to the Hotel Sequoia and try show you how to do it.” Then the old to put in a job application. One of the man raised his voice and said: “Hello, guys is going to bring me a ! ashlight. everyone. I’m Jeremy. I’m an elder. I’m People are very caring here.” pleased to tell you, we now have an Alan, however, was not happy. He operational porta-potty over there. Men, sat cross-legged in his tent, showing two if you need to urinate, do it outside. deep-reddish-purple sores on his ankle. Women, you can do all your business He had slipped on the path, and his inside. Eli is the steward of the john. blisters got infected. “I came here after When it’s full, I’ll change the bag.” moving myself on that ankle,” he said, A sleek, gray-haired woman with “and then Frank wants to sit here and tanned wrists and shoulders and gray- have a political talk! We were way over grimed jeans knelt and crept smooth- there at Gay Beach, and it hurts. It just ly into her tent. In a moment she came blew out. Now, I don’t know what they out, carrying a red toilet kit. The grass resolved last night about Frank. That gave off an almost perfumy smell. lady of" cer waked me up. I sit down; Alan sat in his tent with she gets mad at me for sitting down. We the ! aps open. were illegal. Frank took us over to the wrong spot . . .” slept at Safe Ground, and in the Frank for his part said that he led morningI my gate stank of piss. I the Safe Grounders to Gay Beach after strolled over to interview Greg Bunker, being asked to move by rangers. At and when I came back I found that Gay Beach they got run off, so they someone had defecated on my door- settled themselves here. He calmly step. I had to unlock that gate for a added that as a result of this latest telephone repairman who repaired 1 REPORT 41

9ROOPDQQ)LQDOLQGG 30 nothing, and when I went out to lock off in the interest of my security. “Can ing, I laid out the rain " y on my grubby it up again, I saw that someone had I see?” asked the woman. “No,” I said, old painter’s tarp, folded this sandwich stolen my garbage can. It was a large working away, “but if you want to, you lengthwise, spiderwebbed it round and one, of the wheeled type; I amused can talk to me.” This made her angry, round with packing tape, stuck my sleep- myself with watching its tracks wriggle and she rhetorically wondered why on ing bag inside, rigged up a shoulder strap into the alley. Will you be disappoint- earth she would want to talk with me, for the whole mess from an old pair of ed in me if I admit to feeling cranky because was I the father of her child? suspenders, packed a second tarp, a ball for an hour or two? It did not break me I said that I wasn’t. “They’ve taken of string, and scissors in my rucksack just to buy another garbage can. But the away my baby,” she said, and in case, and counted myself ready to fact that I had made up my mind to staggered away weeping. sleep in the rain. As an afterthought, I tolerate such nuisances did not entitle took a pair of tent stakes to keep the lip me to demand that my neighboring ! rst heard the name Sherwood of my shelter-sack off my face. property owners do the same. IForest on the day my friend the It was a pretty day of blue ! ssures My neighbor told me that once butcher, hearing how I sometimes between rainy white clouds. Mark upon a time he had planted roses, and slept down by the river, presented me called ahead on his cell phone, to have the next day they’d all been stolen. with seven or eight pounds of neatly somebody lead us to Sherwood Forest. I passed through downtown just be- wrapped frozen venison steaks, the That was his way of being respectful, I fore dawn on a drizzly day, and in the product of one of his hunts up in Ida- think. The elder who bicycled out to park a dark, wrinkled old woman in a ho. I considered this a princely gift meet us was Jeremy, the same who had black parka approached me. When I and could hardly wait to give it to my been giving toilet instructions. He was greeted her, she began baying obsceni- friends at Safe Ground. Since I knew a jolly, loquacious sort who seemed to ties and threats. Continuing on my that the elders did not allow camp- know every comedy movie made. He way, I thought out what I would do if I ! res, there was no sense in dragging led us to Sherwood Forest, which heard her running after me, and what the meat down to camp to spoil. Dave turned out to be the same old place by I would do if when I turned around I Moss said God bless me but they the river where Safe Ground used to be. saw a weapon in her hand. For some couldn’t use it, Greg Bunker’s freezer And just as we got there, the few drops instants her nasty expressions of hatred was too small (and in the course of of rain petered out, so that once again for me seemed to be getting louder. his demurral he mentioned that the I was going to have a lucky sleep. One night when Mark slept down at camp had been required to move yet Frank was gone. It turned out that Safe Ground with me, he left his car in again, to a place unknown to him, taking care of that warrant in Reno my parking lot. In the morning we called Sherwood Forest); and Loaves required serving time. And so my old found that somebody had cracked and Fishes, after three phone calls to acquaintance Thirteen, shaven- Mark’s front passenger window with a individuals who either weren’t associ- headed, with his hands in the pockets rock. Mark was sad, and I was sorry for ated with that aspect of addressing of his dark jacket, was now laying him, but he graciously said: “I’ve long homelessness or else worried about down the law: “We cannot go over since gotten over worrying about such health-department regulations, ! nally there at all. Not unless we’re invited. things.” How would my neighbors have sent a pleasant, busy woman to my That’s La Familia. Porta-potty belongs interpreted the incident? Many would parking lot in a white van; she didn’t to them. Oh, yeah. And about those doubtless have said: “Well, Bill, you can turn off the engine, and I passed the dogs. You have a dog, it comes by my thank those homeless friends you en- bag of meat to her through the win- house, we havin’ dog soup.” able.” And they might have been cor- dow. I think we both agreed that she This La Familia was, so people told rect; whoever passed through my park- was doing me a favor. These phone me briefly and sometimes darkly, a ing lot at night to break into cars could calls had deducted a good hour from splinter group with its own rules. In easily have been a transient, an in-the- my workday, and all the while I’d wor- conspicuous contrast to Safe Ground, bushes sleeper, or not. ried that the venison would thaw. At which prohibited even the tiniest ! re, On a frosty morning in November, least it would go to Safe Ground, or so La Familia had lights, a gas grill, even having woken up grateful for my bed, the woman in the white van said. It a flatscreen television. Mark knew I was doing chores in my parking lot seemed sad that the butcher and she somebody over there. The upshot was when a woman shambled toward me, and I had to go to signi! cant effort for that we got invited to dinner. The food weeping. I looked up at her and she so small a quantity of food. In any was simple and good, served on a plate, focused on me something not unlike event, none of my Safe Ground friends and even hot, though one of the men the shocking gaze of the British Mu- ever remembered getting it. who’d cooked it remarked: “After a seum’s bronze Anahita (200 to 100 When I set off to sleep at Sherwood while out here you don’t care whether #.$.), whose eye sockets reveal the Forest, I was sick and it was raining. you eat it hot or cold.” hollow darkness within her head. She Mark had agreed to come, since he knew A man of La Familia thought they appeared to want to get inside my where Sherwood Forest was. Before set- would be allowed to stay all winter. building. “Who’s in there?” she sobbed. ting out, I unrolled my tent for the ! rst Mark gave them forty-eight hours. “Everyone’s in there,” I replied; for time in ! ve years, only to discover that Ellen, tall, expressive-! ngered, re- whenever strangers ask me whom or the last person I had lent it to had bro- membered me. I asked her how she was, what my building contains I fob them ken one of the poles. Sighing and sneez- and once again she said she was wish-

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The exceptional lustre, texture and breathability of 100% spun silk knits ing for a shower. Cecilia gave me a hug and a cheek kiss. She explained that SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE... $29.95 they had relocated because the rain had Regularly $59.50 come and they’d all got soaked at the other place. Seeing Alan, I inquired about his ankle, and he slowly, indiffer- There is nothing more ently said that it was ! ne. A psycholo- comfortable than a knit gist might have said that he often shirt and ours fits perfectly. “lacked affect.” But what would that We guarantee it. mean? He was not indifferent; he was helping Mark set up his tent. Your Fit: Dusk defined itself through the •RegularSizes: S,M,L,XL,XXL,3XL,4XL smell of woodsmoke, the glow from •TallSizes: La Familia’s generators, the low LT, X LT, X X LT, 3 X LT, 4 X LT tents. A blanket hung from a branch. A pretty young woman in a Your Style: •ShortSleevePOLO tank top sat on her luggage, unpack- •ShortSleeveMOCK ing, while other women stood •6colors-Yellow,Berry,Ivory,Navy, around her shopping cart, laughing Black, Lavender and chatting. The light nearly gone. Somebody said that Annie’s friend Jimmy was going back east because he had cancer. I was " irting Ivory Polo with Cecilia when Eli announced to us that he had just had the happiest day ever because until now he had been very lonely but he had just res- Specify promotional code SYRSHP New customer offer. Limit four shirts per customer. cued a dog, whose name would be Shipping charges extra. Cannot be combined with other offers. Free exchanges. Expires 4/30/11. Sister. Cecilia told me that Eli was Order Today! Call 800-309-6000 or visit paulfredrick.com/spunsilk sixteen. He had heard about Safe Ground from his best friend, Cowboy, who had been hit by a car and died. SOLUTION TO THE here was a wide, brown-faced, FEBRUARY PUZZLE A T C E M P T S S H E H sweatingT man who kept hitting me up R O H X V I R T U O T O for cigarettes because he was addicted, begging me for marijuana because he C P A T E N A M B E E S was addicted; he showed me his iden- NOTES FOR S P R I N G B O A R L S ti! cation photo to prove it. He kept “GREMLINS”: asking everybody for money. He tried S L I N B E P U R P L I to get cigarettes from Jeremy, who T O N G A R O M C A T E laughingly commended his sincerity, then withdrew into his tent. He fol- Puzzle editing by R D E U B E S N O G A S lowed me around and interrupted Dan Asimov. Note: * I S S A I L P S A N O T conversations, whispering that I re- indicates an anagram. minded him of somebody, perhaps his C O N S T R I C T O R T brother-in-law. I was sorry for him, T R I H S I N M I L S T disliked him, shrugged him off, and forgot him. He found others to whom The word in the clue con- S D R E A M E D N I I E he clung. I had expected to meet taining the misprint is in- Y S R D P O L Y G A C Y many people like him at Safe Ground; cluded with each answer. in fact he was the only one. After dark, he tried to stab Thirteen ACROSS: 1. AT(temp)T’s (cries); 7. * (heed); 10. hidden in reverse (matter); 11. * (cap); 13. bee-t with a screwdriver. “The boys” of La (plant); 14. spring-boards (lives); 17. pur(pl)e (rid); 19. Cong-a (Dante); 20. to(m-ca)t (per); 21. * Familia who were hosting us stood up (bards); 23. tog(rev.)-as (sheen); 25. ass-ail (strife); 26. cons-tric(k)-tors* (boat); 30. t(o)Rip(ley) from their dinner, eighty-sixed him (shill); 31. mi(D)st (luring); 32. * (dried); 33. (Go)d-ray(rev.) (Ares); 34. lop(rev.)-Y-gam(e)-Y (carried) from Safe Ground for life, packed him up, and moved him a hundred and ! fty DOWN: 1. (M)arch (sump); 2. to-(A)pple (loan); 3. chor(in)es (Shaw); 4. * (fare); 5. * (peel); yards downriver. Thirteen came into 6. trap, rev. (bit); 7. * (blaze); 8. rev. (end); 9. S.O.B.(rev.)-siest(a) (overhearing); 12. homonym (meal); 15. hidden (setter); 16. * (carts); 18. * (blooper); 22. * (Beck); 24. aort(I)c* (hears); 27. two mngs. (rice); 28. homonym (Dow); 29. t-hey (otters) REPORT 43

9ROOPDQQ)LQDOF[LQGG $0 the lamplight sweating, his face nearly with the smells of the hyped-up boys ed me politely, Tracey smiled at me, as yellow as the canned corn in the pot and of Thirteen when he came to La Buzz shook my hand, and Cecilia gave under the generator light. “The boys” Familia, worn out and shaken. As soon me a hug. I asked after Eli, the one announced that he had two hours off. as he said that, I instantly believed it with the dog named Sister; Cecilia He sat down with us and ate dinner, to be true. The dogs never barked said that he had been eighty-sixed for watching a movie on their ! atscreen when people passed in and out of using meth. As for the “incident” that television. He was very quiet, and when camp in the middle of the night, con- Mark had mentioned, Eunice told me I told him that I was glad he was all ducting urinary errands. I remembered that on Sunday night someone had right, he did not answer. that when I had slept in the Lutheran gotten stabbed in the camp just across Now it was late—eight o’clock, may- church, one woman had told me that the path, the one that had always be. I laid myself down in the dirt on my her dog was staying in her tent at the been so loud. In consonance with her belly, with tents glowing palely around river, guarding her property and trust- veneration of the Safe Ground au- me, wrinkle-stained the texture of ing in her to come back. Being allergic thority structure, she rightly or wrong- translucent ! esh, and people murmur- to furry animals, and therefore not ly believed that the victim would have ing on their cell phones or rustling in knowing them well, I had always, so it died had it not been for the elders, their tents. A long train hooted by, and now began to seem, underestimated who gave him " rst aid and telephoned then came a helicopter. The sky was the capabilities of dogs, whose middle- for help. First the rangers came, and darker between the tree branches than class owners sometimes spoiled them, then the police. The next day, said it had been on the " rst night, and the pretending that they were children; Cecilia, a white notice appeared upon cold air stung my nostrils. Someone and children they did become in the every tent at Safe Ground: forty-eight was listening to the radio in the next worst sense: ill-mannered, vicious, and hours to move. Just when this forty- tent (country music and commercials); cowardly. But this Safe Ground river eight hours began I could not exactly that would never have been tolerated life might well bring out thedetermine, because although half of at this hour when Frank was in charge. best in them. the camp had already relocated to a Small dogs yelped. People coughed. place Eunice called Hope Camp (and The air smelled clean, probably on ac- telephoned Mark to see if he that the others named Camp Hope), count of the rain. wantedI to come and be homeless, be- some people did not plan to move un- Just before I fell asleep, a shy man cause it was a Tuesday, the best day; til Friday or Saturday. Eunice said that bent down by me and sweet Natalie would appear beneath the remainder were awaiting the el- gave me a coffee candy. the 12th Street bridge to give us good ders’ decision regarding where to go. food. I was lucky enough to catch him “It’s in God’s hands,” a woman told hen we had " rst come into the at a court recess. He told me that a me. “Anyway, I’m out of California in Wgenerator light, one of La Familia’s night or two before there had been “an nine days.” dogs, a dachshund–pit bull mix, began incident” in a neighboring camp— “Hey, everyone! All of you with bikes to snarl at me, but I stopped to look violence, evidently, to which the police and backpacks, Alan’s gonna stay out into the animal’s eyes, and then a responded by informing everyone in all in front. Alan will watch your stuff.” young woman who politely declined to camps, including Safe Ground, that We stood up, and off we went in a be photographed because she was pa- they would have to move. Accordingly, slow calm line, down the grimy fenced- gan (an alumna of a coven in southern there would be a march today from off runway of sidewalk below a pretty California) spoke to it, and it quieted Loaves and Fishes to City Hall. pinkish cloud, past people who sat or lay at once. I stroked its head, and it Safe Ground lurched from crisis to on cardboard, and around one heaped- watched me with what seemed to be crisis, as if everybody stood in a circle up shopping cart that stank a little, past an understanding patience. Then it with their arms around one another’s the never-busy adult bookstore, while nuzzled my ankle. Partway through shoulders, awaiting the stone that would starlings wheeled around the power dinner, when the addict tried to attack strike this elder’s head, that woman’s lines in the salmon-colored sky. Nobody Thirteen, and “the boys” all rose up to neck; and then they would support the held any signs. One man said to an- help, the dogs barked and bayed until staggerer until he recovered himself suf- other: “You did exactly the same thing the pagan woman calmed them, ex- " ciently to help his brothers and sisters for the Marines that I did.” Descending plaining to me: “They know some- again. Come to think of it, I guess we all beneath the railroad overpass where thing’s up with the boys. They want to do live that way ourselves, being mortal, years ago, behind those coils of razor be over there to back them up.” It was but our crises are rarer and more attenu- wire, a homeless man had helped me try not until I was ensconcing myself for ated in proportion to our income. to catch out on a freight train (a cop sleep, like a worm in an apple, that I Beneath a half-moon in the blue had busted us), we walked toward the began to think through the implica- and white sky they were all sitting red-orange beads of car-lights. Mark’s tions. Since Thirteen’s attacker was quite calmly on the red-painted curb characterization of this walk as a march only a hundred and " fty yards away, I in front of Loaves and Fishes, ! inging was, I should say, an overstatement. As wondered whether he would make a orange sparks off their cigarette-ends. we entered the downtown one unseen vengeance raid. But someone said that Eunice didn’t know me until I bowed voice up in front listlessly called out: the dogs would remember the man’s to her, then jumped up and hugged “What do we want? Safe Ground!” and scent, which they would have linked me. Alan was abstracted. Ellen greet- two or three people joined in; then the

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!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''// 01*2100'''034*5'601*2100'''034*5'677 chant died. At least none of them Cecilia said: “Belinda, I need you little brother would have no place to seemed grim or even cheerless. Perhaps and these ladies to come up with me go. Safe Ground is a family. It is not just it felt to them like one more necessary when I speak.” Safe Ground, it is a family.” chore. In twenty minutes we had ar- “I’d be honored.” The aged homeless man near me rived at City Hall. Filing into the bright “Edna, will you come up with us?” wiped his eyes. lobby, we encountered some sort of Tall pale Edna, who called herself a Now Cecilia came forward, with half glitzy meet-and-greet, whose happy- werewolf, was part Cherokee, and fre- a dozen other homeless women around voiced, expensively dressed participants quently liked to tell me that should her. She said: “I am residing at Safe pretended not to see us while we wound anybody molest my child, the molester Ground and I am a single woman and I through them to the metal detector. should be tied between two trees, bull- am a grandmother. We don’t take in The city-council chamber was whipped, and then introduced to a rat- people; we welcome people. It’s safe for mostly empty. Here came the mayor, tlesnake. “I’d like to give them a piece of me; it’s safe for all of us. It’s not me be- as handsome and personable as ever, my mind!” she said, clenching her jaw. ing homeless; it’s us being homeless,” pressing random ! esh: “Good to see “They should have left us alone.” her voice breaking. She was the best you, Dwight. You’re . . .” “No, don’t do that,” coaxed Cecilia. speaker of any of them. She talked Cecilia, very tanned, her gray hair “Leave it alone.” about the owls at night, and how love- nicely braided, complained to me about The back rows of the council cham- ly the forest could be at dawn. She Thirteen. He was too bossy, it ap- ber were now ( lling up with homeless, ended with nearly thirty seconds to peared. She said that when Safe Ground who took off their jackets, ( lling the air spare. “Thank you, Cecilia,” said the began to reconstitute itself at Camp with the smell of old clothes, wet wool, mayor in his charming way. Hope, others were already tenting and stale sweat. There might have been Last came Gerry, a black man, skin- there, including a girl who had done a hundred of them, although I recog- ny in a grubby hooded parka too large some time for attempted murder; Safe nized only a few from Safe Ground. for him, sighing: “I would like to speak Ground had eighty-sixed her for some We all placed our hands on our hearts on behalf of Safe Ground,” in an almost other reason; and now Thirteen in- for the Pledge of Allegiance, which all inaudible voice. “It’s not me, it’s we. formed her she had to move because performed with considerable sincerity. We’re tired of harassment from law en- the toilet had to go where she was; she Next came some ceremonial mumbo- forcement. All the people who has ! ew into a rage; but another woman jumbo for an amiable old gentleman of died for this country, we’re kind of spit- who had also been eighty-sixed ap- former importance, followed by a sister- ting in their face for not giving us even proached the girl and sweetly said: city presentation. Reader, aren’t you a piece of ground to sleep on . . .” “Can I help you put up your tent?” delighted to know that Bethlehem is None of the homeless asked for any- Next, Cecilia complained about La Sacramento’s (ninth) sister city? And our thing, not even for Safe Familia. “They’re a bunch of thugs. mayor now received a white-wrapped Ground to be left alone. They wear ankle bracelets.” present from Bethlehem! A representa- Cecilia then said that last week tive of the Korean sister city of Yongsan- he next day at midday, which Frank’s wife had been beaten to death gu spoke at moderate length. Then the feltT like late afternoon, some dogs in a hotel in Oklahoma. In her blood lady in charge of sister cities talked on were arguing like crows, and a fresh the murderer had scrawled on the wall: and on; entitled individuals are never apple lay forgotten behind a log. "#$%#&'. This detail, like the rumor of subject to any time limit. There came a Many tents were already gone from Natalie’s arrest, might or might not consideration of placing a “sister city Sherwood Forest, which had begun to have been an embellishment, but ev- directional sign” in City Hall’s plaza. stink. La Familia had dismantled it- eryone agreed that Frank’s wife had Were you wondering how many miles it self ( rst, I was told. A woman slowly, been murdered, which was awful is from Sacramento to Bethlehem? The carefully roped a tarp-roofed pile of enough. Their dog, Sherman, was still council appeared to be in favor. unknowns onto her bicycle trailer. at Safe Ground. Nobody knew what had Now at last it came time for public Someone in a green Safe Ground T- happened to the child. comment: each speaker was allotted shirt was slowly bagging her belong- Cecilia went on: “Now, Frank, I two minutes or less. ings. A chair creaked; people chatted. understand he’s doing sixteen months. The first homeless speaker was a Nobody was hurrying. A ! y crawled I doubt if we’ll ever see Frank again.” young man whose voice could barely be on a yellow leaf. The wind was cool. He was back within three weeks. heard. “I did want to speak on the be- Cecilia worried about the posses- Here came Eunice in her blue par- half of Safe Ground,” he said to the sions of a friend of hers who had ap- ka, leaning on her cane. I felt happy council members staring blearily and pendicitis. Eunice had already taken when she sat beside us. mopping their faces. The homeless man his tent, against, so Cecilia said, spe- In the row ahead of us sat high- rambled feebly on. “We need your ( nal ci( c instructions to the contrary; Ce- cheekboned Belinda, whose nephew had comments,” said the mayor. cilia was worried that Eunice might been in the Army unit that discovered Next came a man who introduced mean to keep it for herself. I helped Saddam Hussein in his spider hole. I himself and his friend Mike. He said: Cecilia move her friend’s property to asked her how the nephew had felt when “I myself was a foster child. They Camp Hope, carrying all but the front Saddam was executed, and she said: “He throw us away at eighteen. If it wasn’t wheel of his bicycle on my shoulder; felt pretty good. He’s a badass.” for Safe Ground, foster children like my and found myself back in the old place

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!"##$%&&'()&%#*+,*'*-)&..'''/0 12*0211'''134*5'612*0211'''134*5'677 from which they had supposedly been they groaned in disgust. A black wom- solitary and unfriendly-seeming. No one ! ooded out—although back in Sher- an named Cassie, whose hand was seemed to know me. Well, it had been wood Forest a man who used to ride bandaged because she had punched a more than a week since I’d last slept at the freights now assured me that that tree, led the way to Camp Hope, Safe Ground. I reached a big blue awning other place had never ! ooded at all. which had swelled considerably; they in the trees, with tents huddled beneath; Cecilia and I set up her friend’s tent, told me that today a hundred and " f- probably this was La Familia, but it and at the end another man came to teen souls were in residence. Cassie would have been inappropriate to ap- help us. Then we hunted up Eunice, then vanished among the many-galled proach uninvited. who called her honey but Cecilia wasn’t oak trees without a parting word. The The rain began, softly at " rst. A man buying it. I myself thought that Eunice place had a harder or at least more se- in a wool cap was kneeling before the had been innocently helpful. “She had rious feeling about it than before, per- entrance to his home, tying something no business doing this,” Cecilia re- haps because there were so many shipshape. Another man fed a long peated. “He is not sellin’ it to her.” strangers living there and passing stick under his awning, trying to make Back in Sherwood Forest, a man through, and partly on account of the a roof beam before more rain came. A gave me a candy bar, and Edna told me weather. It smelled of smoke and wet little white poodle ! ashed anxiously that she was sure the mayor had lis- leaves. I did not feel especially wel- into a tent. A woman was gently setting tened to them last night. I said I come, although the books were all a spider outside. Birdsongs and rain, doubted that and then felt guilty, be- chosen and carried off with thanks. I dogs barking, Edna showing off her cause Edna looked sad. wish I could describe to you the way knife, people rustling beneath their “Anybody ready to go right now?” that some of them looked at me, hop- tarps, the breathless groaning of a he- “That’s yours. Look at how you ing to get something, or wishing I licopter, a garbage bag hanging from a broke it down; that’s good.” would go away, or both. Their tents tree branch, a pile of garbage between Now here on his bike came Alan, were all covered with tarps or rain two tents, a woman slowly placing one who said that they had met with the ! ies, so that they resembled smooth- foot in front of the other while the rain watch commander on the north side of wrinkled river boulders. They seemed drizzled down her lined face, a man in the river. Impressed because they had closer together than I remembered. a camou! age jacket striding resolutely been the ones to call the cops after the Alan’s front door was open to the gray out of camp, his boots sinking silently stabbing, the commander was said to sky. He was sitting inside his tent on his into the path’s wet leaves, all these have offered to send out a patrol twice full-size blowup mattress, and his arms seemed very new to me. I almost began a week “to see what they needed.” I were folded. Everything was neatly or- to understand how little I knew about suppose this offer could have been ganized in there, although he had not these people and how they lived. friendly or ominous. Alan for his part yet rigged up his Christmas lights. I walked away. The wild grape was quite pleased. He said that one of (Against him one of his neighbors bit- leaves had gone yellow in the past the seniormost park rangers had con- terly alleged that he received a thousand two or three days. Thirteen and his fided that while he couldn’t advise dollars every month and never shared; friends were gone. The rain was them as to where to camp, he might let that was why he had such a " ne setup. strengthening, and it was getting them know which places were in his Thus the camaraderie of small com- dark. Downtown, men in hooded rain- experience least likely to ! ood. Not munities.) I asked how he was managing coats walked the sidewalks; rain having been present at this conference, in the rain. “We’re not gonna ! ood till ran down their shoulders I supposed that authority’s encourage- you start seeing puddles,” he replied. and darkened their bedrolls. ment in this instance, if indeed any had “That’s gonna be January or February.” been expressed, was about as much to After a moment he came out onto his hirteen got eighty-sixed, Mark be relied upon as La Familia’s impres- vinyl veranda to chat. He stood up. He saidT for drugs and Cecilia said for in- sion that they would be allowed to stay stuck his hands in the pockets of his timidation. By then the authorities in Sherwood Forest until spring. But green army-style jacket. An unopened had decided to send Safe Ground who knows? Perhaps the watch captain can of clam chowder was at his feet. packing again. In a reversal of Alan’s and the old ranger both subscribed to “I’m lookin’ out there and I think story, Cecilia now said the police the view that Mark once expressed to our next wave’s comin’ in,” he said, would have let them stay while the a reporter: “The city council should indicating the clouds. rangers declared they had to go. realize that it costs more to persecute He didn’t know where Cecilia or Eu- Cecilia and I met by coincidence in the homeless than it does to permit nice might be living; it was as if he’d the street and had coffee together. The them to establish encampments from never heard of them. Edna thought they next day, I met a friend and he said: which they can address might be with La Familia, which I “Did you see yesterday’s newspaper? their staggering problems.” doubted, given what Cecilia had said Two homeless murdered about that organization. Edna explained down by the river.” he rain came. On a damp knoll to the woman I was with exactly how to Tin sight of the 12th Street bridge, punish whomever might molest our chil- laid out the remains of my tent Thirteen and some friends were smok- dren. I walked in the direction Edna had inI the corner of my parking lot, ing marijuana. I told them I was bring- suggested and did not see anyone famil- with the stakes on top. In two hours ing more books to Safe Ground, and iar. The tents quickly became more it was gone. Q

46 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2011

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