An Evening at the Capitol

At the end of a nice evening out, I had escorted Michele back to her vehicle, when during a playful post-first-date conversation of kittens and llamas, a middle-aged man approached us and asked for thirty cents. Not a dollar, or two, or even fifty cents, but precisely thirty. I reached into my pocket, and found a total of two quarters, which I offered him. "But, that's too much," he protested, "and I don't have change." I told him not to worry about it, and he thanked me, and began to recite a poem he had written, about birthdays. He then recited another, a take-off on "Twas the Night Before Christmas," reminiscent of dreams of escape he had during his most recent stint in prison. After that, I was hooked. I gave my date a hug goodbye and she drove away, with me offering to walk the gentleman a mile or so to Washington Ave.

"Yard Dog," as he's known to other homeless in the area, and even to the police, is in actuality a relatively short, mustached 50-year old Vietnam veteran named David Manix, who's been on the street about a year, since his latest release from prison. During the next hour and a half, the two of us walked around downtown Lansing, by the Capitol building and Kositcheks where I recently bought a new suit, by the Cooley Law Library and by empty parking garages, down sidestreets and even alleyways, in the biting wind and breath-catching cold, discussing everything from drugs to race relations to world history to sex. And of course, from him, more increasingly good poetry.

"I don't like it in there," he said at one point, responding to my inquiry about the "Jesus Saves" Rescue Mission we passed. "Too preachy, too religious. Plus, they make you take a breathalyzer the second you step in the door before they'll even help you." He pointed off to the North. "Now, the VOA over there, those people I respect. If it's really bad out, I can rely on them." A police cruiser passed, and he waved enthusiastically. "Hello America!" he shouted. The officer stopped for a while, and I suspected that my traveling companion might have been picked up had I not been in attendance, so I simply smiled and we continued our conversation. "Actually, I don't mind being picked up," Yard Dog disclosed. "Usually they're my saviors, not my captors, and I tell them so."

Yard Dog -- oh, hell, that just sounds ridiculous -- David then asked me to pull up the back of his shirt, to see a tattoo. We were on the very public sidewalk of Michigan Ave, about a block from the Capitol, so I was hesitant, but he insisted, so I did as instructed. His back was indeed nearly half covered by an elaborate (and extraordinarily impressive) homemade tattoo, with three large roses as its focal point, and the calligraphied text: "In Memoriam: May, Chris". "Chris was my sister, who committed suicide, though it was ruled drunk driving, but I know she got drunk and hit the tree on purpose," David explained, "and my other sister, May... she died of AIDS in '84." After the war, he had been a low-end foreman for a rail company, and had taken one of his workers home to dinner a few times. The worker took a liking to his sister, who he was living with at the time, and eventually they moved in together. "But he was bisexual, and she didn't know, and he gave it to her. Most people didn't even know if they had it then, and she never tried intravenous drugs or did anything wrong, other than him." He went on to explain the third rose was for his last remaining sibling, his only surviving sister, who he prayed would outlive him, and whose name would therefore never have to be added.

As he was zipping up his coat, a small plastic bottle of Popov vodka fell out. "Drinking water," he said playfully. When I bent down to pick it up for him, he stopped me. "Jesus, no -- if a cop sees you touching it, then you'll get in trouble! This is my problem."

An elderly black man rode up on a bicycle, obviously a friend of David's ("acquaintances, not friends" he would later correct me) and the two had a brief chat in what can best be described as a sort of "homeless code," involving things like "will you be down at the 120 later," and so on. When the bicycled man eyed me suspiciously, David introduced me as "my new friend John -- he's with the State Police." The look of horror on the man's face was just enough for Yard Dog, for he burst into laughter and admitted he was fooling, that I was actually a musician, instead. After he bicycled away, I pressed David about the meaning of the "120." "Well... that's a motel room," he explained. "For crack cocaine." (I'm assuming that he offered the full technical term for my benefit; I can't imagine actual crack users sounding so formal about it.) So we talked about drug use for a bit, and he defended his occasional indulgence in a most unusual way -- "hey, cocaine leaves the body after only three days, but pot lasts 27 to 30 days, so really, crack's a lot smarter if you don't know when your next drug test will be." I didn't have a witty comeback for that one.

Every time we passed a cigarette butt with some decent puffage left, David would pick it up and place it into an Altoids tin. (This made me laugh, since my father always stores his cigarettes in Altoids tins, and the parallel was even more striking when David later revealed his Bugler tobacco pack and Zig Zag papers -- the exact tobacco and papers my father still, to this day, rolls himself and smokes filterless.) As we walked, every trash can was routinely checked for bottles, and every fast food cup was shaken for liquid. What I thought was particularly interesting was that every item David picked up, even cigarette butts, that he couldn't use or didn't want, was carried by him until we passed a trash can, and then thrown away in its proper place. Better habit than most of us non-homeless people, although I suppose, to someone living on the streets, exterior litter might be thought of the same way I'd pick up trash in my own house or yard. (Either that, or perhaps cops use "littering" as an excuse for arrest.)

The longest part of our conversation, however, after turning south on Washington and walking further away from the Capitol, was about Vietnam. He explained -- with pantomimed, gutwrenching detail, even crawling on his belly on the cold pavement -- exactly what a "tunnel rat" such as himself was, what they did, how they did it, how they held the weapon, etc. "I killed a lot of men, John," he said, newfound weight and seriousness in the details. "The Gooks were human beings. They were just doing what we were doing. They were just doing what their government told them to do, nothing more. I killed a lot of men. I'm not proud of it. It changes your life."

Then, he added: "hey, at least one in ten of us out here is a Vietnam vet." I nodded solemnly, allowing him a certain level of exaggeration. But you know what's scary? I looked it up. It's one in six. Think about that for a second. One in every six homeless people in this country fought in Vietnam. That's... incomprehensibly staggering, considering the relatively small number of people alive today who were in Vietnam in the first place. I checked a dozen sources. I couldn't believe it. When David said "one in ten" I was thinking it couldn't possibly be that high, but one in six?

Anyway, he went on to explain the end of his service, how they were going to give him a BCD (which he later defined as a "Bad Conduct Discharge" -- I didn't ask for details), which would have left him without VA benefits, and how he worked out something in a special Dregs (?) unit to allow for a General Discharge instead, and then followed with a very detailed explanation of how VA benefits work, and how he lost his eligibility for them, which I couldn't quite grasp logistically, and I think he recognized that, laughed, and apologized for "boring" me. But it wasn't boring -- I just couldn't work my mind around having those worries, those issues, that past. Later on, when it came up that I was diabetic, he looked crestfallen and apologetic, and felt so sorry for me, that he couldn't imagine what I had to go through. Me! I didn't know what to say. What's the right response to that? My life has been blessed beyond reasonable description compared to Mr. Manix. So I said what I feel, that considering all that I have, feeling like a victim because of my illness would be ridiculous. David excitedly shook my hand. "See, that's right. I'm not a victim because of Vietnam. I'm who I'm deciding to be. I tell blacks that they have to stop being victims because of slavery -- no one alive today was ever in slavery, I never enslaved nobody. Besides, blacks were selling blacks to us back then and hell, if you go back to Egypt, blacks were enslaving whites and Jews, right? It's just a circle. We're all equal. Everyone's always looking to blame someone else. So good for you!" And it occurred to me that during all of his stories of life, alcoholism, drugs, Vietnam, the death of two sisters, all of it -- never once did he portray himself as a victim, nor did he blame any of these events on "society" or "the government" or even circumstance. He told me these stories so I might see a clear picture, not for sympathy, but understanding. He remains, despite all that he's gone through, despite all his terrible choices in life, a proud man. And other than the initial request for thirty cents, he hadn't asked me for a thing.

It was time for me to call for a ride, and David went to flag down a passing van to borrow a cell phone, before I showed him I had a cell of my own. "Ha! And I was willing to jump into traffic for you," he laughed. I called a cab to pick me up on the corner of Washington and Kalamazoo (the guy at the cab company laughed and called me "brave"), and we waited. "Hey," David said, "lemme give you something," and began to empty his pockets. He took out everything from chapstick to tobacco to toothpaste to those individual tooth flossers ("what, you don't floss?" he said, amused at my apparently unconcealed surprise at this item) until finding a pen, which he gave to me as I found a brown bag on the ground to use as paper. "I'm going to give you my mother's number. Her name is Madeline. I see her once in a while, but I feel like shit that she's listening to the police scanner every night, listening for me." He gave me the number. "If for some reason you ever need to talk to her, make sure you say David Manix, alright? Just, don't call me Yard Dog." Admittedly, I couldn't imagine why I'd ever need to call his mother, but it seemed to mean a lot to him, so I nodded somberly, pocketed the info, and returned the pen. My cab pulled up, and I offered him a ride, and he accepted, asking the driver to drop him off at a nearby motel which was more or less on the way. David thanked me again for the company and conversation, and for the ride, and even recited one final rhyming poem of his, another about prison, to the cab driver and I before we arrived. "Get inside where it's warm," I said as he exited the vehicle, and my companion for the past hour and a half took the time for a final handshake, before closing the door gently behind him. Given the now nearly intolerable cold, I was just happy to know he would be somewhere other than the concrete slap of a windowless parking garage for the evening.

Eh, who am I kidding. I know it was almost certainly the mystical crack-filled room "120." But I avoided looking at the posted exterior room numbers just in case, just so I wouldn't know for sure, as my taxi sped away towards home.