Grace: T-Bone

“Eli. Wake up. Come on, man, are you dead or something? Psst. Hey Eli, wake up.”

I could hear Jim* whispering and could feel the determined rhythmic pressure of his large hand on my shoulder. When I finally decided to open my eyes I could also see the outline of his head and shoulders peeking out from his sleeping bag, not by any natural light but by the thin fluorescent haze coming from the shelter staff’s office.

“Get real. What time is it anyway?”

“Time to meet Billy and T-Bone.”

“Right, in the middle of the night?”

“I’ve gotta go for a walk.” Jim spoke in that quiet, urgent tone he’d been using quite a bit ever since before Christmas, when he and Julie had to split up to get shelter for their kid. They’d all come from Montana in the ’74 Vega for some construction work, but the job fell through. Living in a car midwinter worked even worse with a two-year-old, so she had to tell them at West Women’s‡ that he’d left her. And he had to leave her. The man never said much after that, and showed even less emotion, so when he did speak you got the impression there was some reason bigger than you could figure.

“O.K. You tell the office and I’ll collect my braincells.”

I stuffed both the sleeping bags in his Army duffel and was pulling my cap down tight when he returned. He picked the bag up high over his head so he could see better not to trip on anybody and I followed his route carefully. Having everybody so close together on the floor was great for keeping warm but you had to concentrate to walk.

Opening the door was like walking into a meat freezer. I turned up my collar and wished my gloves weren’t the fingerless kind, but Jim didn’t seem to notice the cold. He walked slowly, looking leaner than ever with the wind against his clothes. It was still dark outside, but from the streetlights reflecting on the river I could see him sort of chewing on his teeth, the way he always did when he thought about missing his family.

“Let’s wake up the guys,” I said. Whenever the three of us—T-Bone, Billy and I—got together and set our minds to it, we could get Jim to laugh. Billy was about my age, seventeen, but he continually insisted he was twenty-one. He had big, smirking brown eyes and a tiny little nose and carried his guitar with him everywhere. Nobody believed much of what he said and he didn’t expect them to, as long as they had a good time listening. Billy and I would improvise crazy nonsense songs on any subject we could think of (usually sex or the President) and T-Bone would dance around and laugh that infectious deep-belly laugh of his. Seeing T-Bone dance was comical enough—he was 5’8” and weighed about 225, all of it in his arms and shoulders, making him look like a spinning-top or a cartoon sailor. But if this didn’t crack you up there was no getting past his laugh. He’d start with a bearlike rumble, then laugh deep and round and open like he was playing Santa Claus, then soon he’d put his hands on his hips, throw his head back and shake so hard there wasn’t any sound. By this time we were all laughing too hard to be singing and we just had to give in to it, even Jim. Then when we could breathe again T-Bone would tell us rowdy stories of his Navy days and we’d laugh all over. Yes, these guys could really get your mind off things, and that’s just what Jim needed now.

We walked silently across the bridge, me setting a faster pace and Jim sort of following without ever getting behind. We passed the lighthouse mission and United Clothing, Cindy’s Adult Books, the abandoned Greek restaurant and J.T.’s yuppie bar. We took a right at the Catholic chapel with the statue of Jesus and passed the Satyricon nightclub with all its graffiti.

Then, sooner than I’d expected, we ran into Billy, leaning against the bike rack where you wait for Sisters of the Road to open.

“Hey dude,” I greeted him, “been sleeping in?” He didn’t answer; maybe he was groggy. I continued: “Where’s T-Bone?”

There was a pause. Billy seemed to be fascinated by the designs in his Guatemalan-weave bracelet. I was about to repeat myself, thinking he was in his Twilight Zone mood, when Billy finally spoke.

“Kicked,” he said simply.

“That’s not funny, Billy.” Jim was so quiet you could hardly hear him. Billy kept fiddling with his bracelet.

“Projects filled up, and Joe’s‡; old sailor froze to death.”

That was all. I looked at Jim then. He was crying.