Friday, January 14, 2011

Unfinished Stories

Before there was Charles, my six-foot-two, African American, mentally ill former bank robber adopted son, there was Keith. For the better part of the past decade until I left Union Mission Charles and I were extremely close and he achieved more stability in his life than he’d ever had. It’s been a few months since I’ve seen him but he crosses my mind every day. The last time that I saw him he told me that he loves me.

In 1995 though, there was Keith. From Ohio Keith was a mentally ill, Vietnam veteran with lupus. His head was permanently cocked to one side and his white face was filled with red splotches. He spoke with that high nasal twang of northern Ohio. He loved French fries, science fiction novels and pretty girls.

“Keith,” I asked him one day sitting in my office, “I really have a hard time envisioning you in Vietnam.”

“Oh Mike,” he replied in his high pitched northern voice, “I was different back then. It was before the lupus.”

I nodded, of course. It had to have been.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Oh I discovered pot,” he answered with great enthusiasm.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled. “Then what happened,” I probed.

“I liked it so much I sent some to my wife back in Ohio”!

“Wait,” I said standing up, “you were married?”

“Oh yeah,” he said turning his body to look me in the eyes, “back then I was hot.”

I loved Keith.

“Then what happened?”

“Well,” he replied sitting back down with his head cocked away from me but his green eyes still looking in mine, “I mailed her really good stuff. And the Army found out so I was discharged pretty quickly.”

“You mailed it to her?”

“How else was I going to get it to her?” he stood and turned his body to look me dead in the eyes again. “I was in Vietnam and she was in Ohio.”

‘Uh huh,” I shook my head. “Then what happened?”

“Well when I got home she divorced me for being stupid.”

I didn’t know what to say.

A few weeks later I ran with the Olympic Torch and soon after I finished took it to Grace House so that homeless people could see one. There is a photograph of me still wearing the official sanctioned running wear standing next to Keith who is holding the Torch. His head his cocked to the side but his eyes are staring at the camera. He is smiling a crooked slurred smile.

So Keith became part of the family. The first time that I brought him to Tybee he went nuts over the girls in bikinis. He deserved more than life in a homeless shelter and after we got him disability I asked if he wanted to move to the Ocean Plaza Nursing Home, a couple of blocks from where I lived.

“Can I look at girls in bikinis?” he asked.

“All you want,” I told him.

So he moved into the nursing home and though Julie would visit him and play Chinese- Checkers with him sitting on his bed, he hated it. I was forever getting phone calls from Susan the administrator.

Keith had taken a boom box, placed it in the middle of the community room, hit play and the Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy for the Devil” blared into the ears of all of the wheelchair bound residents. Keith gyrated and danced and got mad that no one would dance with him.

One day I was called to immediately come because Keith had taken $1,700 on a group trip to Wall Mart. He wanted to buy a Walk-man. The Nursing Home Policy was to charge rent first and leave a bit of spending money for the residents. I’d hid Keith’s money so that he had plenty.

“Dammit Keith,” I was furious after Susan had given me back his money, “what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know what a Walk-man costs,” he calmly answered. “I didn’t want to be embarrassed if I didn’t have enough money.”

I didn’t know what to say.

In my mind I thought that it would always be this way. Keith would live and die as part of my family on Tybee. Kristen and Chelsea would visit him with us. It would be a perfect ending to a rotten life.

But Susan called me one day to tell me that Keith was gone. I rushed out to his room at the Nursing Home and he had cleaned it out. And … that was that.

Life is full of unfinished stories. We’ve all got our share.

So Keith, if you’ve figured out the Internet yet in your science fiction brain, or have a Face Book page or might you still be alive, this is for you. “Not trying to change your mind … but to say that I miss you … good luck, goodbye …”

And thank you.