The Isthmus of Christmas

The Isthmus of Christmas 

Hello, world traveler.  I call you that because all of us today are truly world travelers.  With the wonderful world of instant communication being such an important part of our culture our concepts are carefully built byte by byte. Perhaps it would be more accurate to claim that our view of the world is constructed piece by piece by a constant  barrage of images, sound clips, and flashing messages that flash across our visual screens..  Technology has invaded even the most modest home. It is the same, to a point, no matter what scenery resides outside of our window. We carefully select what we see. 

If you are fortunate enough to have a window, clean or dirty it holds the weather at bay. It offers you protection from the direct exposure to the world as it really is. If you have no window then it is to you that I dedicate this story! You understand exactly what I am saying.

I thank you for reading my story, whoever you are, I cordially invite you, my dear reader to walk with me across “the Isthmus of Christmas” to visit a place you will never see on TV.  It is what is seen by Jack "Ironman" Carbonne' (pronounced carbon A).  Your eyes can not possibly conceive all that he perceives through the veil of his experience. Empathay with him forces you to bend completely out of your comfort zone!  What Jack sees with his burn scarred eyes, and cancer ravaged brain is hard for a healthy person to understand.  There is very little that lives beneath his mop of thick white hair that is not diseased with Cancer.  It started with ulcers a long time ago. Jack understands what is happening to him though on a bit different plane now since his mind no longer works like it did before the cancer moved in.  Each day has become a struggle in him, to survive, to bear the pain, to add one more crushing breath to pay the debts for which he feels responsible.

I will introduce Jack to you as best I can with my humble skills. Some times it is if my glasses, you know the ones we develop by being taught what we should see, suddenly slip away for a precious few minutes.  What I see causes my skull bursting headaches.  I can empathize to that extent with Sgt Major Jack Carbonne'. I must write down,  to the best of my abilities,
the images sent to me from a sleep disturbing specter. Please come along, if you dare!

We intrude into his world, as total outsiders. The first thing visible is a narrow strip of rust stained, seriously eroded, former industrial land that has been neglected since 1929.  The old steel mill that still borders the railroad here closed for good.  Since then the rusty red flakes from the mill itself have formed into a kind of iron rich soil where wind-borne seeds sprout if they can.  There are no plants at all growing where the sticks of pipe that once weighed 200 pounds each now resemble red lace or sponge. The flakes are individually too thick and heavy with partially digested steel to support plants. All in good time. The wind will soon scatter them everywhere.  Heaps of rust flakes hide objects no longer discernable as discreet objects. They all have become rather shapeless mounds. Time has been very unkind to everything and everyone here.

It is the home of large numbers of rodents. Mice, rats, and voles  have been prolific for years. They scavenge scattered bits of grain and other edibles from the rail cars that wait patiently on sidings for their ride across the big railroad bridge to Ohio. 
The Ohio air is thick with steam and odors from the operating mills and processing plants clustered along the big bend in the river. A heavy inversion layer held them close to the earth until the front moved in with a brisk wind.  The air is clear now, and freezing cold getting colder fast.

For Jack it takes unusual circumstance or metaphysical energy to force him to leave his "place", especially in the light of day with a brisk very cold wind blowing.A bystander would see is a severely stooped man. He is extremely thin even with all those clothes on!  He has everything he owns layered on his slender frame, yet a good gust of wind should easily roll him like a paper wad. Time and the ravages of cancer have stolen his substance.

Jack peers with watery eyes down the length of the bridge at the dust stirring in the cold wind of the Canadian Clipper moving in from the Northwest.  A chilling cloud is formed of torn bits of soggy paper, wrappers, and unidentifiable bits of this and that escaped from the dumpsters located over a hundred yards away. Suddenly set free again, thanks to the icy wind. dust, mold spoors, and fibers  shed by the passing of millions of people across the river, rise into the air, a choking cloud propelled by the urgent wind. The only time it lies dormant is when covered by snow or when it becomes a yellow-brown scum floating at the edges of  the river after a day long hard rain.

The ghost of a man named Jack, looks about, casually; as if checking the weather. You and I have no substance in Jack's world we are powerless to intervene, we can only watch.  Sensing no human soul nearby he disappears into a cluster of brush apparently growing wild next to, and under the north end of the bridge.  In actuality the clump of brush is carefully kept just under control with a sharp machete, a skill he had learned in places like Dung wa, and Nicaragua, and a thousand other festering sores where out of control humans kill each other.

The access to his place, where he hides in plain sight, is a wire handle fastened by Duct tape to the skin of a cubic bubble that Jack calls home. A door is formed by piece of cardboard covered on both sides with a smooth layer of clear plastic. It is slightly larger than the hole it covers.  It is held in place by a duct tape hinge that runs the whole four foot length of the door. Once the door is open he stoops over and steps onto the floor of pallets carefully wired together.  The floor hums a slight protest when his weight strains the wire which holds it perched above the top of the little hump of silt that a flood deposited decades ago.  A thick bush that was opaque to viewers was well established there when Jack had first moved in becoming "the invisible troll, that lives under the bridge."

Jack is a hell of an engineer, of the practical variety. With his mind, hands, and very few tools his innovations made the impossible, bearable, for thousands of men in every corner of the world his long military carrer had taken him. Jack is familiar with and uses the things that Providence provides.

Scraps of wire where are in plentiful supply having been used to hold crates of every size and variety together. The dumpster behind that factory always yields up a good haul.  Over the years, he twisted heavy wire cables that hang from the original eyes used to lift the huge beams that support the entire span from the shore to the huge cement pillar that cradles the other half of the bridge across the river.  He fashioned a couple hand holds securely fastened to the bridge, made of loops of hand twisted cable strong enough to support the weight of someone many times his size. He also fastened a loop of wire so he could use it for a step to lower himself to the enclosed platform. His place is built of pallets and cardboard covered by a clear bubble of plastic sheet. It is a very real part of him, like an extra exterior skin that protects him from his environment.  He never stores any kind of food to attract rodents, and it would take acrobatics for a rat to avoid the wire barriers he made that protect the beams from interlopers.

Dessert for the rodents is easily obtained at great risk from the dumpsters that line the back side of the river highway. A large feral dog pack enjoys great hunting at night! They range along the highway that follows the north side of the flood control dike that contains the river when it is engorged with rain or snow melt.  They are ferocious and quite adept at catching rats.

Several Fast food drive-thrus and a floating seafood restaurant as well as Le'Restaurant, a club and restaurant with a generous buffet;  line the highway providing a good variety and quantity of edibles for scavengers of all kinds that brave the area in the dark of night.

The south end of the Big Bridge branches into three spurs and two small bridges that form a wye where two small tributaries meet the main River. This leaves a long narrow strip of land between them that  joins an alley that looks directly up a widening street that forms a ninety degree angle with the dike.  The dike is part of an old WPA project that keeps most of Newport downtown from flooding once or twice a year. Large strings of lights hanging from the flood control dike form the word “Christmas”. You can’t see “Merry” from the north end of the Isthmus.

When he first came here the others, like himself, that lived in the cracks and crevices of the decaying city simply called it “the isthmus.” After seeing the Christmas Lights the first time, Jack dubbed it the “Isthmus of Christmas!” It matters not, what anyone else calls it, to Jack. After all he spent over a year in Dung  wa.  "Great name for a shit heap," was the standard explanation when someone asked about the name of Delta Base One.

He has other things to think about now other than talking to assholes or avoiding bullets.  His highly refined survival skills allow him to avoid contact with the other homeless transients who really drift around like falling leaves settling only  into temporary places, waiting for a gust of wind to move them elsewhere. Not Jack, he made his place with his imagination and his bare hands and a few tools from a Goodwill store. Only God, could take it from him now, after all these years.

Most people here have no idea what the real world is all about; "Transients with fried brains for the most part."  Jack gave up trying to communicate his thoughts after a couple “discussions” resulted in warrants for his arrest on assault charges in two states.

Witnesses had outright lied, when they said that he attacked them.  Truth was he was so adept at protecting himself that he inflicted painful injuries on anyone foolish enough to take a swing at him.  After 31 long years in the United States Marine Corps, he couldn’t restrain himself.

For years now he has watched the river slowly rise and fall.  He finds that listening to the Trains, as they rattle their way across the ceiling of his home, fills him with energy. The cancer has slowly consumed his body and ruined his once fine mind.

One can easily infer that the little bent old man with long matted white hair and a scruffy white beard and the awful smell has given up completely trying to communicate with anyone else.  He never meets the gaze of anyone directly anymore.

It is usually dark and cold when he goes out, the people who are out under those conditions do not waste their valuable time talking when it could be spent finding a warmer PLACE to be.

Jack has that situation well in hand,  He has lived in his bubble for a long time.  His Place!

He has traveled to a lot of places scattered around the world in his life, but they all fall into two neat categories for him. 

1.          Places he can’t remember,

2.          Places he cannot forget! 

His  life has been simplified by the cancer, and his self imposed isolation. His world has been reduced to things that
relate to him, now, this instant!  For example  a strong urge to urinate or a crap working its way through his pipes at a faster than usual rate!

Life is about his immediate needs, Things that need doing right now.  Like letting in some long past due fresh air!

He rises from his bunk, pulls a cardboard flap (window) toward himself. Cold air rushes in clearing the stinging miasma.

He purposefully, peeks out of the clear plastic sheet that forms the outside skin of his place! He instinctively checks it and uses duct tape to fix any holes, or tears, anytime he goes out or comes into the room that he manufactured from three packing boxes that were former homes to some kind of large sheet goods.

Measuring five feett high and ten feet long they were plenty big enough to form three walls of his home.  His back wall is a bridge support, concrete poured to support a ¼ share of the span. His Ceiling is the bottom plate of the bridge, the floor is pallets wired together and suspended with hand twisted wire cables from the structural lifting eyes that were left from the days when this bridge was assembled on this spot.

Pallets are easily snatched from the dumpsters outside the pallet yard, a few blocks away.  You get almost good ones sometimes, if you can get there before the people who gather them up in a truck and make new ones from the broken ones. 
ASSHOLES!  Think they own every scrap of lumber in those dumpsters.

In his place, wire is everywhere, twisted wire tightly holds the pallet scraps together forming a floating floor, suspended from the bridge .  He has wired together a table and a bed covered with multiple layers of cardboard, scavenged foam, topped with a moth eaten old army green colored sleeping bag.

When you enter this place, you are keenly aware of being in a “tuned space.”

Even a light breeze makes the taut wires sing, with haunting melodies, Spirit Music.

The resonant structure is comprised of key Individual pieces of lumber held in place by wires tightened to a musical scale, really only understood by Jack.  When the train passes overhead three times a day, a cacophony of discords blends with
fundamental frequencies tuned to the exact requirements to revive a man teetering on the edge of coma.

When he feels it in his bones, the sound brings him back from that awful place, the abyss full of things he cannot forget, where his spirit dwells during periods of inactivity.

Three times a day the tuned segments of the bubble that clings to the underside of the railroad bridge resonate with the exact frequency needed to bring his heart rate and breathing rate back to somewhere in the lower normal range!

Trapped Inside this resonate refuge, his odor is overpowering!  It permeates the cardboard under the scavenged rug and the layers of dirty rags that cover his skinny body.  He smells like urine, the kind which dribbles out during extreme pain and the sometimes frantic nights when he is caught firmly between the folds of THEN and NOW or HERE and somewhere FAR AWAY. Every fiber of his being stretches almost to the breaking point!

Memories of places like Beirut make him sweat profusely.  He relies on the vibrations of a passing train to provide an escape from that special place of torment. 

He wakes encircled by the cloudy remnants of his dreams. He sees faces that are not really there! Yet they are not ever altogether absent.  They are not quite friends now, he harbors a deep distrust of them but he stoops almost crab walking about his daily routine.  Because of the low ceiling, the more time he spends here, the more permanent is his stoop. Lately he has spent more time here than not.

Sometimes he lays on the bed, he hovers precariously close to death; is cold to the touch, if anyone dared to risk trying, and he is blue, the spark of his life barely present.  After the train passes he is manically active at least inside his damaged brain.  His fingers work the edges of the dog tags he still wears around his neck, for a moment he fingers his official designation, the string of letters and numbers pressed into the worn smooth surface, of the dog tags.

“Is this all there is left of me?” He asks the shadows cast by the last rays of day, as he places his leaden legs over the side of his bed.  His weight shifts the pallets and winter insinuates its freezing fingers through the tiniest crevasse into the layers of clothing he wraps around himself, and penetrates; driving the chill into his bones. 

During hours of daylight, He stays in his “Place” located under the rusting railroad bridge, at the north end.  It is well hidden by a big clump of brush. You have to be right on it before you discover it.  The slope there is too steep to spend maintenance time on, besides the roots help hold that bank in place!

Been there since 1901, the bridge I mean. And that clump of brush underneath this end  is kept to just the right size, with a worn but razor sharp machete, by a grizzled smelly old man who is smart enough to figure it out!  If there is no increase in the danger of damming the river when the water is high; there isn’t really a point to sending a crew in there to cut just one small clump of brush.

High and under the shelter of the century-plus old iron railroad bridge with North to its back, it provides the essential elements for “A Place.”  It needs to be warm, at least out of the wind, as private as possible, with ease of entrance where it is hard for interlopers to see; and high enough above a good launching point so as to be safe from dog attack. Even the most persistent dog would give up trying.

Isolation is a necessity for a man with numerous warrants on him in states on both sides of the river, which would result in his immediate incarceration “If there were room in the Jails.” 

Things have reached a semi-stasis now. He comes and goes in the dark, a stealthy rat-like moving shadow that avoids contact with anyone else!

Police look the other direction, definitely not a favor, when you factor in the fact that he isn’t taking up a warm bed and eating three squares a day on the state, county, or city.  Forecast for this evening is six below zero with wind gusts of 30mph out of the northwest. The cold breath of an unforgiving Canadian Clipper.

He seems to be a danger to no one, except perhaps to himself, and he would not be considered a loss to anyone as he has been lost to his family for over 18 years.  Since the government has not been notified of his death, His Marine Corps retirement checks are sent faithfully to a joint account that he shares with his daughter.  She has never spent a dime, and keeps the checkbook tucked in the back of a drawer where it has been safely out of sight and out of mind all these years. 

She hadn’t known that he left everything for her, leaving himself penniless. He cares not one whit, as he can scrounge anything he needs, if the assholes leave him alone. The checks come from another time, and from places he tries in vain to forget.  He knows the money cannot replace the time he was gone, when his daughter needed him desperately and he was somewhere else faithfully serving the master called God and Country.  He cannot expect her to forgive him when he has no forgiveness for himself!

He always did what was expected of him, he followed orders, and his innovations provided the bare essentials for his troops in places whose names he never could pronounce.  Running water, Electric power even when powered by a jeep attached to a makeshift generator.

After faithfully serving this master for thirty one years he quickly was retired when he suddenly began asking the question why? The first time, the major with whom he was meeting, thought he was joking, laughed a little which came to an abrupt halt when he encountered the stone faced expression worn by the highly decorated Sergeant-Major. 

You  question my order, Sargent Major? What the Hell is wrong with you?  I am filing a report of this incident, Get out of here, NOW! The florid face of the major flamed redder than it had in years.  He was just a tiny bit short of the blood pressure necessary to cause a stroke.

Jack couldn't really say why, but he felt a freedom he hadn't ever felt in the Military, before. 

Fortunate for Jack, the officer to whom the report went knew Jack back when.  When the Colonel was an Lt and Jack was an E4 Sergeant they were at Dung wa when the place was under a barrage of mortar and artillery fire. Jack had dragged the injured Lt to a little flat bottomed boat and had polled their way sixteen clicks up river to an American occupied enclave. Jack earned a purple heart and a silver star. With the latest turn of events the Colonel finally had an opportunity to pay back a life long friend.  Loyalty spelled M_A_R_I_N_E!

Jack leads no troops now. his solitary raids now normally occur late at night, after the first train of the day passes over his bridge a few minutes past midnight.  He is as alone as it is possible for him to be; responsible only to himself and the demons that torture him in his sleep.

Dumpsters are his game, to fill his empty stomach his aim, Easy enough as long as you don’t make a mess, or scare the rats, who will bite you if they can.  They are fast and almost always get in at least one bite on the offending dumpster diver.

Jack always touches the bright-red scar on the left side of his nose  when approaching a dumpster, Jack walks so quietly, he seems to materialize out of the darkness and so to make his presence known to any co-divers he always raps gently, 1,2,3.  Any critter inside would hear him, yet no one could ever complain about either noise or mess left from Jack’s nocturnal visits. 
One Dumpster is of major interest, the one behind Le’ Restaurant!  The establishment closes up at 11:45PM with all the doors firmly locked at 12 midnight.

The salads are tossed out first, which puts them at the bottom, not something too appetizing after having luke-warm soup, and then a layer of mashed potatoes and whatever else that was on the buffet dumped on top of them.  Sometimes there is a clump of spaghetti noodles and a pool of sauce that he can scavenge. Occasionally an almost whole steak lies within easy reach.  First come, first serve. 

There is little competition from other humans; they’re scared of the dogs, who are in turn scared of Jack. He carries a 1 ¼” steel cable 16 inches long, a loop handle on one end and a fanned out brush about 4 inches across on the other end. The #10 steel strands each terminate in a hand filed needle sharp point.

Jack’s weapon leaves a distinctive mark, not fatal but a very painful experience as several dogs in the pack that lives in a long abandoned factory on the big river can attest. They each wear a uniform cluster of scars where the steel quills penetrated the most sensitive part of their noses.

Jack will never use his wire whop, as he calls it, to kill.  These dogs are just doing what comes naturally, not what they were trained to do, as Jack felt he had all his life.

Now he constantly pays for his sins and the sins of countless others that he feels responsible for, the only way he knows how, he survives, enduring another day of pain, another day of torture.

He knows there is some kind of cancer slowly eating through the core of his body, sometimes he is paralyzed by it, and all he can do is stand and shiver as the pain passes through his thin frame. Sometimes he dribbles a little piss in his pants, it is never a lot, and nothing but the odor comes through the thick layers of clothing.

He catches his breath and presses on toward his goal, the dumpster.  He tips his head, inhaling deeply.  The smell of stale fried chicken and rancid grease saturates his senses.

Jack carries a gallon syrup bucket with a lid. He has a large table spoon in his pocket.  He always carries his wire whop in case some new dog decides to challenge his position of top dog.

His last canine challenger was a huge black dog who had a ruff of white tipped grey hair that stood up like some rap singers do, when he was excited. His nose is still populated by small scabs from the whop!

Jack knows that they are watching him from the deep shadows, waiting patiently for a moment when the pain blocks the signal from his brain slowing his hand just enough to cause him to lose a challenge. Perhaps that wouldn’t be too bad a way to die, quick but bloody!

Jack never takes more from the dumpster than he can eat at one sitting. He makes an effort to leave some for the other creatures who live by the code of scrounge.

He returns to his place, blending with the shadows.  There is no accumulation of traces of his presence, other than his smell, to betray his place.  He polices it carefully, and has a spot he can perch on a girder and let his feces drop into the water below.  Years of training allow nothing to betray his presence to anyone. Jack learned to hide in plain sight! He has been there years and anyone would be hard pressed to se the smallest sign of his presence.

He lights a tiny smokeless fire in his fire bucket, he hangs the wire handle of the syrup bucket so that the bottom is just above the coals in the bottom of the 5 gallon fire bucket. He loosens the lid to let the steam out.

He heats it till he figures most of the microbes are dead or on the run, lifts out the syrup tin and begins his meal for the day. He finishes quickly, his belly now full and round he lies flat on his back on the bed of wood and wire, stares at the patterns in the rust flakes on the ceiling asking himself a three letter question over and over. Jack's Litany.

WHY?
WHY?
WHY?

If Sgt Major Jack Carbonne’ were to catch sight of himself in a mirror now, there is no way that his mind would be able to grasp the picture of the grizzled and bent old man there, straining under the weight of a lifetime of decisions now at question!

“Who”, his tortured mind would say,” is this cursed creature looking back at him?”

A wave of pain so strong it crackles like electricity, strikes suddenly.  The pain surges through his whole body overloading his synapses until he shivers, then his breathing stops; his heart slows and finally stops.  It is over, His life. Perhaps his debt is paid.

Will he, dear reader, finally find peace?  After all he always tried to do the right thing; Follow orders, GOD, Country, How can you be wrong doing what you think is right?



Epilog:

This short story was inspired by a few lines in a newspaper account of a woman who was notified that her estranged father’s retirement checks from the United States Marine Corps would no longer be deposited in an interest-bearing joint-account that she had forgotten even existed. Her father’s remains were identified by the dog tags he still wore. The value of the account with interest was almost a million dollars!

Animal control officers discovered his remains while investigating reports of the continuous barking of a large black feral dog with an awe inspiring ruff of long grey hair on his neck, who kept watch beneath “The Place”  steadily calling for the alfa dog.

The body was discovered in a hidden plastic and cardboard bubble hanging under a bridge, A lone clump of thick brush provided cover. This had obviously been his home for some time, said a spokesman for the police.

  Sgt Major Jack Carbonne’ was retired from the United States Marine Corps after 31 years of exemplary service. “No one knew where he was, “said his daughter Mary Benoit, 45, of Pittsburg PA. “He has been out of touch for 18 years,” she added.

While this story is based on events which actually happened, names and places have been changed to prevent embarrassment to the family.