With a blue moon hanging pregnant in the sky, New Year's Eve brought with it an extraordinary sense of promise and expectation. But when the hour of midnight arrived, we got a law regulating tanning salons, a new selection of canned soup, and a particularly savage assault on an elderly homeless man.
I have been working with Spider for about nine months, and every effort to help him to a dignified, humane living situation seems to fall stillborn at our feet (see blog posts dated 5/26, 7/25, 8/31, & 9/26). An ever-expanding circle of social workers, physicians, non-profit organizations, federal employees, and private citizens of conscience have struggled to assist Spider in escaping what he refers to as "My Nightmare"; but the result is always the same.
On January 2nd, my wife and I found Spider after several days of searching. He had moved without warning from the location where he had been holed up for the past half year, and after scouring the streets and sidewalks where he customarily wheels himself in his dilapidated chair, we finally tracked him down beneath an overpass just outside the downtown core.
"What are you doing over here, Spider?" we asked. It was late at night and he was crumpled on the concrete with one of his badly soiled diapers just inches from his face. "We were worried about you." In truth there had been a flurry of email by concerned friends who had noticed that Spider was not in his usual haunt.
"It's too dangerous over there," Spider began, recognizing our voices. "It's not safe. I was mugged."
Mugged. I seldom consider that someone would be mugged in San Jose. But then he related the incident that had occurred on New Year's Eve over possession of his cigarettes.
"He started hitting me on the back of my head," and then Spider paused as the pain welled up in his throat. "He was beating me with a can of beer, and he wouldn't stop."
Although Spider's skin is badly wrinkled and his voice is coarse, he never seemed so much like a child. "He kept beating me, but I couldn't do anything ... because of my legs." He motioned to his shrunken bones, and tears dropped from his dirty cheeks. The assailant then took what he was after amidst the fire works, honking horns, and happy couples streaming from the clubs and out into the freezing street to celebrate the New Year.
What continues to astonish me is that in the 21st century, in the Valley of Earthly Delights, it should prove impossible to provide the most basic human needs for a single, disabled, elderly man. While resources have been mobilized on his behalf, they have proved impotent in the face of a society that acquiesces to the occasional sacrifice of the weak.
Spider drinks incessantly, smokes, jokes, makes friends easily, complains ad nauseam, has a terrible time trying to use a toilet, takes pride in his Native American heritage, makes idle threats, is stubborn, lonely, and nearly blind, loves sports, and most nights cries himself to sleep. He receives a paltry disability check each month, but the money he receives is not enough to pay for even low-income housing. What's more, he is simply incapable of caring for himself; even if there were a place he could afford, he would require 24-hour care.
A few days after I had spoken with Spider regarding the assault, I found him back in front of the abandoned downtown office. I was dismayed to see him back so soon after his attack. "What's going on, Spider?" I wondered what could have happened that would have out-weighed the vulnerability to assault that he obviously risked in this spot.
He looked at me, anger in his eyes, and spoke quietly: "I was sitting in my wheelchair underneath the freeway, listening to my ball game, and a couple of kids came along and started harassing me." He then turned his face to the ground, his voice barely above a whisper. "One of them grabbed the back of my chair so I couldn't move, while the other one stood in front of me ... and pissed all on me."
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