Edmonton’s High Level Bridge seperates downtown Whyte from the residential, and much more suburban Bonnie Doon area. There are schools, parks, a mall. Pretty standard. The Bridge in itself is worth looking for. It cascades over a river valley with hundreds of year old sycamores and pines fighting for their natural place. The homeless and addicts that stalk Whyte Avenue live beneath this bridge. Their business so dangerous and frightening, even bored teenagers interested in a late night dip, refuse to descend.
I’ve never seen him anywhere but the space between High Level and Bonnie Doon. I can remember reading somewhere that in a new city, it is the familiar sites that make it feel like home. This boy has no home, nor does he know that someone he’s never even met cares about him. His story seems worth telling, the little that I do know.
The first time I saw him I observed a very angry young man that made me nervous to be near. He was attempting to squeegee some cars along Whyte Avenue. He was cursing and pacing wildly. A motorist hadn’t paid his fare. On my way back home I noticed a bus shelter window that only 10 minutes before hadn’t been smashed.
I really took notice of this man, a boy really, when I went to drop something off at the youth shelter just past the bridge a few weeks ago. Getting off the bus I saw this boy run into oncoming traffic. He begged and threw himself onto cars screaming for death. I was horrified and called the shelter immediately to see if they could come comfort him. I imagine he wasn’t admitted to the shelter just then. Either he chose to be a very angry young man and buy into a whole image of rebellion, or he had been dealt a particularly hard life. I chose to believe the latter.
I was frightened just being talking on the phone about him when he stood beside me, spit dribbling from his lips and firey words spewing forth. I tried not to look directly him for fear that he would be violent towards me. I was truly scared. Still swearing, he made wild gestures and stared through my eyes, his own the blackest of black. I stopped talking. I prayed for the traffic light signal to turn so I could leave.
People yelled the same profanities back and honked their horns loudly as a shelter worker rushed out moments too late. He had tired of bouncing off the car hoods and raced off in the direction of the mall. Most likely, he could be temporarily anonymous there. I pointed in the direction that he had gone and tried to express what I had witnessed. What could make a youth so angry that he could invoke death right before me?
A week later I had an errand to run in the same neighbourhood. He got on in the exact same place that he had first entered my life, but this time quiet. When he did speak his voice was deep and raspy as if he had smoked 50 cigarettes that day. Only once he got onto the bus it was apparent that he was on something. There were seats free but he stuffed his sleeping bag onto the front beside the driver and folded his body onto it, appearing as if wanting to sleep, but given that it was at the entrance of the bus, it made no sense. When a passenger climbed aboard he yelled groaned until at last yelling in his raspy voice, ‘hey! I’m trying to sleep here!’ along with some choice cuss words.
The bus driver promptly stopped the bus and kicked him off. He slammed down his worn sleeping bag onto a bench then turned and swore and made more rude gestures as the bus as it, and myself, sped off safely away from him.
On my way to the health clinic I had to stop in at the convenience store on a particularly grey morning. It was just below freezing and snow was threatening to fall. About to enter I heard that raspy voice, ‘spare some change?’. Beside the 7-11, he was crouched with no mitts on the curb. Recognizing that this was the suicidal boy that frightened me, I quickly shook my head no. In the store I couldn’t decide if I should get him a cup of tea, as it was so cold outside, or if he would just throw it on me, after seeing his angry outburst previously. I debated also if I should let the clerks know that he was soliciting but figured he best be left be. I wasn’t sure if one of the clerks had taken pity on him and given him this care package or had asked him to leave.
Moments after getting checked into the clinic he ducked before reception to find himself a spot in the same waiting room. He smelled bad and immediately everyone looked up; a musk of sweat, dirt and vomit. Given his constant coughing and clearing of throat, his presence was not out of the ordinary.
I found this interesting- maybe he had learned to be quiet in order to be warm and to get what he wanted. I figured he had probably been banned from the local mall like so many other homeless youth, so he’d had have to find other neutral places to stay warm. Winter in Edmonton spells the end for many of the city’s homeless. This poor boy was just trying to survive.
I avoided looking directly at him. His smell and sounds a constant reminder of his existence. He had on oversized skater shoes under his uniform grey trench and ripped jeans. I questioned why so many privileged children would go out of their way to look like him. Dirty, filthy, sick, and smelly- undesirable.
What had made him become so unwanted that he had to find refuge in a place of sickness and bad country music. I turned the page of my book and pretended to read. My bookmark a plane ticket, I wondered if he had ever gone anywhere, if he was from the city, or if he would ever escape.
He took out a bag from the 7-11 and drank a vitamin water then started to shake a box of Kraft Dinner. He stared at it intensely, as if memorizing every detail of the box. My concern was that one of the clerk’s had given him this box of kraft dinner in good intention not realizing he had no home to cook it in. He had no pots, no pans, no butter, no milk; this box of food as a torture method, each time he shook it, a reminder of his lack thereof.
Where would he cook it, I wondered. Could I invite him into my home? No, I was sick and that was silly. Where could he go to simply try to get a meal. Did he even know how to cook Kraft dinner? He kept turning it, slower than ever. The noise of the pasta echo added torment to the constant waiting of the rest of the room.
“Samantha?” The nurse called. I got up to see my doctor, making a deliberate effort to walk on the other side of him. We coughed in unison.
As I bundled up to leave, I noticed he was gone. Had he been asked to leave again?
Another woman was waiting silently at the bus stop, he was standing to her right.
‘Excuse me,’ I looked up, ‘Do you have a spare bus ticket?’ He was remarkably polite in the request. His face was so pale. He had the blonde beginnings of a beard and green eyes. He was wearing a hood with ball cap over top.
‘I’ve been asking everyone,’ He stammered. It became apparent that he was no more than 16.
‘uh, yeah,’ I shook my head and dug out an extra ticket, ‘here.’ I placed it in his dirt-smeared hand.
‘thank you so much! I’ve been asking everyone and no one had one.’ He let a small smile show. His kraft dinner shifted in the small bag.
‘No problem’ I replied and wondered where his sleeping bag had gone to. I kept my head bowed.
Getting on before him I rushed to the back of the bus, still nervous about my act.
I was quickly relieved. ‘Barry!’ a young woman called out beckoning for him to sit with her, ‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’
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