The Wordherder Online random babble by a certified loon…

Today I met Keith…

Today I met Keith. He is a wounded vet from two tours in both Iraq and then Afghanistan. He told me of how he took a direct hit from a roadside bomb on one of his sweeps. The Humvee flipped multiple times and he dragged out many dead mates who failed to survive that incident. Only he and one other soldier survived.

He came home with severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a bum leg, and no support from his VA counterparts because of a "less than honourable" discharge. I suspect there is more to the story on his discharge but the attitude he has now shines a pretty clear light on that. He talked of being programmed for the war-zone but not reprogrammed to come back from it. His family took a side against killing and did not want to know of the tragedies that he had gone through. He talked much of having to kill fifteen year old "Haji's" and being duped by "Maji's". He is a seriously troubled man.

"Haji's are bad. Maji's are good but you can't tell the difference until its too late".

I did what I had not done for any other homeless people and offered him food. I took him into Hy-Vee, the local all-night grocery store, and let him pick out anything he wanted.

"Meat is what I need, Protein! Meat, man... meat!"

So we picked up a giant pound of ground-beef, buns, and ketchup. He grabbed some produce -- tomatoes, a mango, and other greens, while I was not looking and stuffed them in his pockets which he showed me with child-like glee.

"Dude, I will buy them, you don't need to pocket them. I can afford a few tomatoes," I told him.

He obliged by giving me the tomatoes but he kept the other fruits and vegetables in his pocket only to show me after we had paid for everything else and had left the store. I could only shake my head at that. He has obviously been on these streets long enough that such was his thought process -- take what you can get, no matter what or how.

He showed me a secluded hideout which was within a soccer field and under a tree that had been planted below ground level. A 4-foot deep circular trench was around cut into the earth around it which made for a perfect hideout if someone came along. However, it dawned on him that while a fire could be built, hamburgers would require a grill and that was something not easily made by hand.

He had the idea to lead me away from that field, down Q Street, to a park which would surely have a grill. When we finally got there there were no grills -- just a baseball field. We took over one of the empty dugouts and he promptly fell to sleep, exhausted by the days events.

I was not tired so I walked passed the baseball field, into a subdivision and went on the lookout for porch grills. I finally found one and proceeded to take the iron grill out of it... there was a neighbour woman that was outside, but she never noticed me and went on her own into her house, none-the-wiser. I brought the grill rack back to our dugout hiding place and he soon wakened. He went off once he found his feet. I dont know where he went or if he is coming back.  Too bad, since I need his lighter to make the fire!

I returned the grill as I would have done should we have used it. I am a survivalist, not a thief. It had only been "secretly borrowed" then returned without its rightful owner having ever known that it was gone. Now I have enough hamburger to last at least a week. I hope to see him again so that I can give him the food.

Nights are endless on the streets. It seems that there are night people and there are day people -- two separate classes of homeless. The night people are the most obvious as it is quite easy to blend in with the rest of society during the day. Most homeless are not tremendously dirty, few smell at all -- at least not bad enough to be noticed. Sure, there are "those" types with weeks of grime baked into their skin and the rotten stench of old beer, but I have not met those sorts on these streets. I know of them mostly from Detroit or my visits to Chicago. The night people in South Omaha seem quite a bit less disturbed... many are quite like me except that I am quite young comparatively. I can imagine that younger people still have a few chips they can cash in before they are left to be forgotten on the streets so they just aren't here. This is the place of an older crowd, mostly in their Forties but a few older.

There is an obvious danger felt during the nights alone though I have not seen anything yet that is all that dangerous. Unless a gun or knife is involved, I feel quite confident that I can deal with anything. I've been jumped by some assholes before and was quite surprised at how well I fought them off. This was several months ago. They had been after my guitar as I was walking home late at night from a busking session in the Old Market. I don't think they had seen me in the Old Market or they would have been more concerned with the money I had made (which was in my wallet by then) so I believe they just saw a guy walking alone at night carrying a guitar case and thought I would be easy picked on. Not so, not so at all!  But I am truthfully quite vulnerable if anyone had a planned attack.

I must admit, however, that for a moment when The Vet was walking me to his secret tree-pit hideout that in the seclusion and dark night, a pocket of park space draped in remote darkness amid the otherwise lit up urban streets of South Omaha, I did wonder if he might be leading me away from help to do whatever evil to me. I was secretly on guard. I never let him stray behind me and had an eye on every one of his movements just in case he might try something. I would have been quite vulnerable there without this awareness. And should he have had a viable weapon I would have been vulnerable regardless. But I had sobriety on my side... a trait that he obviously did not share, as he was quite noticeably impaired.

When he eventually passed out in the empty baseball park's dugout I found myself imagining how vulnerable he was at that moment. Had I been someone else, someone with a killer's passion, he would be easy pickings. I could have plunged a knife into him as he lay. I could have slit his throat. I could have kicked his unconscious head or strangled him with my full weight keeping him down, surprised out of sleep but unable to fight me off in time. But lucky for him I only write about murder. That beast is not within me. Only ghastly thoughts meant only to be typed out instead of actually carried out. He made the mistake of not keeping his wits about him and the darkness on these streets at night is there waiting for just such a moment to make for a very bad night for those that are so careless.

I was not prepared for the exposure to the elements. Such is so obvious that I had not even thought about it until after the fact. My face is extremely sunburned now and because I had sunglasses on all through the daylight hours, I have that reverse raccoon look. I went from 40 days in a jail cell without any exposure to sunlight to being right there under the sun the entire day long. I had been so focused on every thing that I had been doing to survive that I never even thought about getting sunburned. I would not have even known if not for the chiding comments from the fella's that linger outside the Hy-Vee store.

Yes, there are jokes to be had... Raccoon boy amidst the wolves? Hardly. A sad group of men with one thing in common, lack of personal shelter. That really is all that they have in common because the vast reasons of why they find themselves on these streets are much more unique than usually said. Every person has a full story of their decline though life. There are mental adversaries that span the entire DSM-IV. No one comes here lightly. We have histories that bored this tunnel into our lives.