I have been in Savannah all of an hour-and-a-half. So far I have discovered that the mission doesn’t want me, and that a gas station on Bay Street sells coffee for 89 cents. I wander up Martin Luther King Blvd until I run into a long clutch of benches at what must be a main bus stop outside the gates of SCAD – the Savannah College of Arts and Design. It’s hot, though there’s a cool wind that keeps the heat from being oppressive, and I slip gratefully out of the pack and plop down in the shade.
A few minutes later, a short, gamin-ish woman with dark hair, crooked teeth, and a wicked scar on her right knee drops a small pack next to me and says, “Watch my home for me, baby. I see you got one too,” pointing to my pack. “I gotta pee.” After which she promptly disappears. She has “street people” written all over her.
I watch her home.
When she returns some 10 mins later, she sits next to me and asks if I mind if she smokes. “How long you been here?”
“Just got here, like, fifteen minutes ago.”
“Then you’re a baby, baby. You don’t know anything.”
“Less than that.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Just a second… Have you been to the Visitors’ Center?”
“Not yet. Where is it?”
She laughs. “Right behind you, baby.”
Sure enough, we’re sitting in front of it. I never looked to see what that building was. “Imagine that,” I say sheepishly.
“Stay right here, honey. I’ll be right back.” And she’s gone again.
But she returns much faster this time and clutching two maps, one of the Free Trolley’s route and one of the city. She explains where the soup kitchens are and marks them on one of the maps. She shows me where the missions are and marks them on the other. She goes through the whole routine, a special sort of travelogue for the new homeless – what services you can get where, how to stay away from the cops (“They’re bad here.”), who to stay away from (the Salvation Army, as usual), and a little about the city. She even hands me a contact, Guitar Bob who makes his living playing in the parks. “He’s trying to learn violin now,” she says, rolling her eyes. “The sounds are… Well, when he’s practicing his fiddle, my visits with him are very short.”
Then she leans in to me. There is drama coming. “It’s a black city,” she says in a stage-whisper as if she is sharing some dark and dangerous secret. “We got a lot of poor, there’s a lot of low-income here.”
“Then rents must be low.”
She makes a face. “Not really. You can get by, though. If you’re willing to live in the hood with the crack dealers, you can get an apartment for $300 a month.”
She jiggles, jumps, and jives with nervous energy. She talks a blue streak, as my mother used to say, or as my Uncle Harry would put it, “as if she’d been vaccinated with a phonograph needle.” She is charming, knowledgable, and a lot smarter than I’d bet most people gave her credit for. “What happened to your leg?” I ask when I think it’s OK.
She had an accident. She doesn’t go into details but it wrecked her right knee and thigh. The scar she points to is long and deep. “They never thought I’d walk again. I didn’t either, but then I decided I would. So I came back here. My man’s in jail,” she adds ruefully, as if to say, “Ain’t they all?”
I don’t ask what for.
She’s on her way to see him and keeps asking me what time it is. She’s waiting for a bus. I take my watch from my pocket and lay it on the bench so she can keep track. The bus is due at 1pm. It is now 12.45. ”I don’t want to miss it. There won’t be another one for an hour and I won’t get back ’til 4 as it is.” She ducks her head self-consciously. “Can you spare a cigarette?” I’m gonna get some later when I get back but I haven’t got time now.”
I give her two. “For all the information. And the maps.”
Philadelphia – December
I get into Philadelphia at night. It is full dark on a cold December and a bitter wind blows up the streets outside the Greyhound station. From the moment I step outside for a smoke I am beseiged by homeless men. They want cigarettes, they want any change I might have in my pocket, they want to sell me CD’s or DVD’s or their coats for the price of a burger, a cup of coffee, a drink. I give them the cigarettes thinking, “After all, it’s a small thing.” The two packs I have on me are gone in less than half an hour and still they come.
I don’t know where I’m going or how I’m going to get there but I can’t give away cigarettes forever. I don’t have any more.
I go back inside the station. I figure I’ll at least get rid of the damn backpack. I’ll put it in a locker like I used to do when I was traveling. For a quarter, your stuff was safe for a whole day and you didn’t have to drag it behind you. I look around for them but there aren’t any. Confused, I collar a large black man in a security uniform. “Where are the lockers? I want to tuck my bag away.”
He shakes his head and smiles. “We don’t have lockers any more. Homeland Security found a stash of C-4 in a locker and ordered them taken out. No lockers any more, not at bus stations, train stations, or airports.” (Later, I check this story of the C-4 explosive in a bus locker on the internet but can find no mention of it in any data base.)
“You mean I have to drag this goddamn thing all over Philly?” I ask, incensed at this latest whacko edict from Bushie Tom Ridge. “Because Homeland Security is scared of bus lockers?”
He cocks his head at me. “You a Greyhound passenger?”
“Just got off here for the night. Tomorrow I’m going to Yardley.” I don’t mention that I’m going by train.
“Got no place to stay tonight?”
“Didn’t seem to be any point. It’s expensive and I’m leaving really early anyway.”
Well,” he says, “if you’re a passenger you can leave your bag in the Freight Office until morning for $9.”
“Nine dollars?! To leave a lousy bag overnight?”
“You have to give them nine but if you pick up the bag by 8 am, they’ll give you $6 back.”
The absurdity of post-9/11 paranoid America and the corporate exploitation of same. Where I used to be able to safely keep my luggage in a locker for 25 cents a day, now I have to pay a corporation $3 (and a $6 security deposit on my own bag!) to let it lay on their floor for 7 hrs.
If that isn’t a sign of the times, I don’t know what is.
