Bent Hope. Tim J Huff
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God that Smoothy’s path would only know such light and freedom for the rest of his days.
After an hour he awoke, as though an alarm had gone off. The sound of hitching cars linking up down below were his cue to press on. He sprang to his feet, gathered his meagre belongings and lit his pipe.
“This is my ride, friend,” he nodded towards the tracks.
He shook my hand and said merrily, “Keep on fightin’ the good fight!” A shock of a statement to me, as the phrase had meant so much to me that I had it tattooed on my shoulder many years prior.
I smiled sadly and responded hesitantly as he ran towards the lowest section of the easement and jumped the rail: “You too, friend.”
He didn’t respond, so I guessed he hadn’t heard me. So I shouted it again. But he was busy working out the timing of his long strides against the side of a boxcar while it gathered momentum. Then, just as he had himself in perfect sync with the slight opening in a freight door, he turned back, winked with a giant nod, tipped his hat and called out, “At least I’ll go down swinging.”
He leaped. And he was gone.
I leaned back against the giant rocks at the sides of the Memorial to Commemorate the Chinese Railroad Workers in Canada. Massive nuggets of rock carved from the Rocky Mountains where the workers had toiled and transported to this place in honour of them. I felt a digging in my back, thinking it was just a rough edge in the boulder. I turned and looked. And there, mounted on one of the eight-foot chunks of mountain was a tiny plaque. Written on it in both English text and Chinese script: “One by one the walkers vanish.” With only a guess at its profound meaning and the history of the words, in that moment its significance was monumental to me. One by one indeed, I have watched the walkers, runners, crawlers, hiders, seekers and Smoothys vanish.
There wasn’t much time to gather up the abundant blessings of knowing Smoothy, apart from one. The one we all have the opportunity to share. The one that can come from knowing someone for a lifetime, for a season, in a chance meeting or for a few hours beside the railway tracks. The blessing bestowed on others by those, like Smoothy, who live out the priceless challenge of Mother Teresa:
“Let no one come to you without leaving them happier and better.”
I was left happier. Better.
4. No Jesus: October 1999
Correen had lovely round blue eyes. They were only exposed when she dropped her guard and raised her head, which was rare. But when they were, it was like catching beams of sunlight through storm clouds.
She camped with a hodge-podge of misfits and runaways, each with their own dark story, secret glories and unique approach to survival.
Among the teenagers camping between the steel I beams beneath the Gardiner Expressway was a young man in his early twenties who loved to talk about Satan. He was new to the streets—weeks at best. New enough to maintain his commitment to pointy, waxed eyebrows and the shiny blackness of it all. He wore a long leather duster-jacket covered in pentagrams and ram’s head images, and tall storm-trooper boots with wire laces. He loved to skulk among the group, evil-eyeing everyone from between strands of greased hair pressed long against the sides of his face.
He caught Correen’s cautious attention, but he never caught her off guard. She watched him, but she never feared him.
Older, louder, and still with so much to prove entering real street life, he often dominated group conversations. Inevitably, he created and orchestrated countless haunted conversations about the Order of the Trapezoid, Pythagorean Tradition and the Goat of Mendes. Tired, repetitive rants about the Nine Satanic Statements and the Nine Satanic Sins. We had more than a few ironic conversations about Satanic Statement number four (“Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates”) and Satanic Sin number six (“Lack of Perspective”). Many of the young people maintaining turf along this 500-metre stretch indulged him out of sheer boredom, having passed through the this-is-so-cool stage into the how-am-I-going-to-get-by stage long, long ago.
But on occasion—usually in the darkness of post-midnight—wits were stirred and nerves were tapped in very real and frightening ways. And if I were present, the young man in black would look my way and raise his head high on his long neck like a wild animal with a carcass, assuring me that he had won the hunt that night. He eerily enjoyed my presence and the opportunity it served him to centre me out as a manifestation of naïve Christianity, a pathetic Jesus and a futile God.
Within that same group of regulars claiming squatter’s rights along the muddy stretch, there was an 18-year-old who moved drugs along the Lakeshore to the tune of hundreds of dollars profit a day, every penny finding its way into his veins or up his nose that same night. And by midnight, he would turn the young Satanist’s conversations into his own surreal reality, get on his feet, repeat some of things he had heard, and chase the devils, snakes and spiders in his mind around the small fire pit where everyone gathered.
Some kids would laugh nervously, others just shook their heads and rolled their eyes. One just wouldn’t look. Correen would sit on her hands and look down at the fire and say nothing. Just stare into the orange sparks cracking off dried twigs, used paint sticks and fragments of misplaced construction lumber. A silent little girl, working hard to escape her unimaginable reality by gazing into the only bit of light and warmth nearby. With a tiny frame, a sweet, pain-filled face, and a gentle disposition at all times, Correen was nothing like the animated group she was in the midst of, or the dark characters that monopolized the group conversations.
I had known many of the others around the nightly circle for quite some time. It was their acceptance, built on long months of presence without pressure, that allowed me to find at least some sense of community with them. It was that same acceptance that mystified the newly arrived Satanist. And it was that same acceptance that clearly worried Correen.
Why was I there? And what did I want?
Unlike any other experience I had known on the street, the gentler or more sensitive I tried to be, the more I could sense Correen’s fear of me. It wore on me for weeks. Correen was a mystery even to those she gathered with. Some of the other girls would tell me they had no idea where she was coming from or what her story was. She was an outsider among outsiders. Mousy and shy, yet she stood out so vividly in her timid presence. I had worn Correen on my heart since the moment I met her as the special one God meant to humble me most.
Cults, pimps, pushers, suicide pacts—I sat in on dozens of conversations around the circle about everything “street” and otherwise. Exchanges exposing shredded hearts and souls, and depraved dialogues nothing short of shocking. And sweet little Correen was there for every single one. Even through the most graphic telling of the Satanic Rituals of Diabolatry, she was always present, saying nothing, but never leaving.
But every time the name “Jesus” was spoken, she flinched. No matter who said it. Quite often it was the young man in black who spoke it while prophesying his disturbing interpretation of Satan’s ultimate plan. But on other occasions, it would be when some of the others had had enough of his banter and would ask me questions about my faith. Or just offer up some part of their own beliefs.
Whenever I would speak she would remain as still as stone, but for the tiny spasms at even the passing mention of Jesus. Over time, it was so obvious that even our frantic friend well into his midnight high would stop and take notice.
Then one rare evening, when almost all the familiar faces were gathered, I was asked by the supposed Satanist, “How the hell can you believe in Jesus?”
And I began to answer: “Cause I think Jesus may be the only one any of us can really and fully trust and….”
Correen stood up and walked away before I even finished the sentence. Not out of sight. Just far enough that she could not hear me. In the shadows of a cement partition, she crouched on a wooden freight skid, waiting for me to finish.
I continued on, speaking through the jeers of Satan’s fan and the disbelief of a young group weary of the notion that they should trust anyone, and especially