Bum Town

In which Our Protagonist discovers a hidden camp of homeless people

Spring, 1997.

So there we were, smoking a joint in the bushes, trying to stay out of the line of vision of whatever bourgeois fuck happened to jog by in their fruity neon spandex. We were supposed to be running too, but we had snuck away from the rest of the track team. They were off sprinting up hills or somesuch nonsense, the tractable squares that they were. Physical exertion was respectable, but we had exerted ourselves enough already that day. It was time for a break.

Only three of us were hitting the J as it was passed around: James Graves, Ian Carpenter, and myself. The other two, Billy Stanton and Jon Edwards, didn't smoke. They also took high school track a lot more seriously than the rest of us did, albeit less seriously than did those who were actually doing the workout that day.

Graves and Carpenter were throwers, but they decided to train with us that day because they knew that we were ditching the run. Graves was one of the funniest guys I had met in my life. He was a stocky guy with a gut, a wrestler, but his laugh was high and giddy. Oftentimes he'd rub his hands together when he laughed, whether from nervousness or excitability I couldn't tell. His mom had been the lunch lady at my elementary school. When we first began middle school, Graves would always point out the hot girls to me:

"Man, look at Katy Casteneda over there. Isn't she fine? I've had the biggest crush on her since third grade."

"Yeah, she's fine as hell."

At which point Graves yelled out:

"Katy! Seamus likes you!"

I subsequently hid my face with embarrassment. Graves could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

Ian Carpenter was a big greasy guy with bad acne. He looked like the teenage offspring of Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd. Ian had been one of my cohorts since I was four, notwithstanding a break of a few years when we attended different elementary schools. He was a pretty strong guy; one time he beat my dad in an arm wrestling match, which was a rather impressive feat. Carpenter also had a high pitched laugh that belied his large frame. Whenever he laughed, talked, or yelled, flecks of foamy spit would be flung from his mouth, much to my chagrin.

Stanton and Edwards were more somber fellows, a little more introverted perhaps. Admittedly, compared to the rest of us that didn't say too much. Stanton was tall and skinny with curly red hair, and he was smarter than anyone knew. Edwards was a short rich kid with dark hair. He smirked a lot.

"Do you think those guys are gonna rat us out?" I asked. Some of our teammates had seen us take the detour off of the creek trail.

"Man, fuck those guys! We'll beat their asses if they do!" Carpenter sprayed me with his saliva and began his weasel-like laugh.

"Man, could you try to keep the projectile saliva in check?" I said. "You already saturated the J, could you at least leave my face alone?"

Graves rubbed his hands together and giggled. Edwards smirked. Stanton laughed a little, but he still didn't really approve of our substance abuse.

"Oh shit, a bike cop!" I exclaimed.

They had put the less intelligent town nazis in black uniforms and had given them bikes to ride around in, looking for kids to harass. One of them was headed down the trail. We jumped behind a wall of bamboo and crouched to the ground. The cop rolled past us, but stopped a few feet up the trail, surveying the area suspiciously. There was a tunnel that went under the trail, a large round metal one. We quickly hurried along the ground and slipped into the tunnel for cover.

"Is he still out there?" Edwards asked after we had waited a few minutes.

I snuck to the edge of the tunnel and peered out.

"I think he left. Let's go all the way through though, and check out the other side."

We walked through the tunnel, crouched down to fit inside it. About halfway through we noticed a stench. Beneath us was a dirty sleeping bag, reeking of liquor and body odor.

"Gross, some bum lives here." Edwards was disgusted. I remained silent. We pressed on until the tunnel opened up into a lush and verdant vegetated area that flanked the creek. It was an unexplored area for us, a secret wilderness we often ran past, but never ventured into. It was odd to think that in all likelihood only one percent of the yuppies that ran through the creek trail actually ventured off of the trail into the creek area itself. The foliage was thick with trees, bushes and bamboo, a veritable jungle in the midst of Los Gatos. A series of faint labyrinthine trails were traced through the wild. To the south, a concrete canal pooled up in a perfect circle; the Los Gatos creek began when the concrete ended and gave rise to the plant life surrounding us.

I stepped through the trails, in awe of this new world that had apparently been underneath my nose for years. Through the tall bushes I saw a tent, apparently made of some black tarp.

"Look, a tent." I was caught off guard.

"Shit," Stanton replied, stunned, summing up the collective mood. We hesitated.

"Should we check it out?" Carpenter. Graves looked at me.

"Let's go for it. Be quiet."

We stepped like ninjas through the ivy-covered ground. I was fairly slim and accustomed to sneaking through the wilderness, but Carpenter and Graves sounded like a team of elephants behind me. Stanton and Edwards, thinner and sober, quickly adjusted to the crunching leaves and began moving quietly. We entered a clearing. The tent was in the center, a black tarp mounted on bamboo, sheltering a sleeping bag and piles of shredded and partially decomposed newspapers.

"Shit, it's a homeless shelter," Graves laughed nervously.

"Fuck." I was reduced to expletives once again. Seeing as I was fifteen and angry at the world in general, expletives thus comprised a significant portion of my vocabulary.

We looked around hurriedly. There were no signs of life.

"Let's check out the river." We were uncomfortable. It was an entirely new universe to us, both alluring in its natural beauty and alarming in its signs of human squalor. We made our way out of the clearing and onto a new trail, which wound to a grassy creek side. An old log rested in the grass, sinking into the earth and grass, waterlogged and eroded. A series of stones appeared to provide a tenuous passage across the stream. We were walled in on either side by trees, licorice plants, and bamboo. A faint trail continued, parallel to the stream, on the opposite side. We looked at each other.

"I'm down." Stanton was down.

"Try it out, I'll follow you." I was down.

Stanton negotiated the smooth rocks, which wobbled as he half strode, half leapt from one to the next. A flat one in the middle shifted and deposited his left foot into the current.

"Fuck!" He pulled his leg out, but still couldn't find support on the rock. He leapt forward and planted it firmly in the water, and vaulted onto the opposite riverbank. His leg was wet almost up to his knee. I followed him, but chose an alternate route downstream through the center of the river, and avoided the treacherous stone. I sensed peripheral motion and turned to my right as I neared the other side.

An old man was in the river upstream, bathing or wading through the current. His hair hung in dirty grey and white locks; his back was turned. Stanton was already staring at him silently. The bum apparently had pretended not to have noticed us as we crashed awkwardly across the creek. I looked at Stanton. We felt like trespassers. I quickly leapt back to the other side, getting my right shoe wet in my haste. Stanton bolted back across the river, no longer concerned with his already drenched leg. Carpenter and Graves had made some progress, but quickly turned heel and splashed back to the trail, cursing in surprise as they beheld the transient. We ran, breathless and quietly swearing to each other, all the way back to the paved creek trail. Our former cage was now a haven.

"Holy shit," Edwards was laughing, but unsettled.

"It's like an encampment out there. I saw other tents faintly through the trees, I think." I wondered what the population was out there, beyond perception, a hideout by the Los Gatos Creek.

"They have their own fucking town out there, dude." Stanton.

"Yeah. A bum town." I was flabbergasted. And thus was christened the place now known as Bum Town.

*   *   *

That night I lay in bed, thinking. Los Gatos was an affluent community, yet its parks were secretly peopled by a different caste, a caste that eked out existence beyond the perception or comprehension of the pampered and naive upper class. I had always felt less than privileged, but I realized how fortunate I was to have a home and an education.

My family's post-earthquake trailer had been replaced with our unfinished house, which wasn't much of a promotion. I looked at the floor of my room: unfinished, splintered, and spattered with paint from when the walls were first whitewashed. Sub-flooring. My parents were screaming at each other in the kitchen; my brother was blaring the TV in the living room, blocking it out. I could hear the pandemonium clearly, an incomprehensible and blaring multilayered mess. No door was installed on my bedroom, and sound traveled freely throughout the house. Our bathroom door was a torn blue blanket, hanging from twisted nails dug into the doorway. Privacy in this home was impossible.

Los Gatos kids were as ignorant of my living experience as their parents were of the homeless people residing in the less frequented areas of their parks. I wondered what my friends were thinking as I lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, before I eventually faded into sleep. I dreamt of betrayal and fear, and woke frequently, but was each time soothed back into complacency by the chirping of the crickets outside.

*   *   *

Bum Town became a regular stop on our workouts. Every afternoon after school we'd explore the area more, and soon became aware of a realm beyond the comprehension of the outside world. We tried to avoid the bums as much as possible; at first due to a lingering fear, but ultimately due to a pitying respect. I wondered at each of their pasts, and how they had come to be in this position. Our brief and distant encounters with them were like encounters with wildlife; they seemed foreign, untamed, and dangerous, yet they were painfully human. They appeared furtive and insane, and I suspected that they fled and hid at the sounds of out clumsy approach, and spied at us from behind leafy curtains with suspicion and distrust. I was reminded of the deer that frequented the area: the bums were elusive yet perceptive, quick enough to elude the intruders who violated their secluded world. We never exchanged words and rarely saw them. They were like sasquatch or yeti, known only in brief glimpses, shrouded in mystery, both frightening and fascinating.

I wondered if they were born into poverty, as I was, or what circumstances led to their position. They seemed mentally unbalanced; maybe their families abandoned them, or maybe their insanity was a symptom of their conditions. In comparison to most of my friends, I was poor; in comparison to the transients, I was a king. For the most part, our respective situations seemed decided prior to our actual births.

One day we decided to explore the mossy banks of the creek, and crept along the steep concrete sides of the canal. At one point a pipe emerged from the side, from which water flowed down into the swift moving canal waters. Moss and slime had accumulated along the water's trajectory, and lay across our path as we moved like spiders along the slope of the canal. Stanton was the first to brave the green strip, but I climbed higher along the slope, carefully, trying not to slide down into the canal. I headed for the area above the pipe to avoid the green stripe that projected from its mouth. Stanton and I were always in the lead: some men are born with a little more courage and a bit less discretion.

Stanton tried to straddle across the wet moss as he crab walked under the pipe, but his foot slipped, and his whole body went careening down the slope, sliding as if on an organic waterslide.

"Holy shit!" He flew down towards the current as we gasped, his red hair bouncing as he kicked his legs out, vying for traction on the concrete at his sides. Billy flailed wildly to slow himself, and barely stopped prior to total immersion on the lip of the canal. One of his legs sunk in the waters, but he was still secure on the edge. His hands were scraped and bloodied; his clothes were stained green and brown from the slime.

"Fuck!" Edwards was right behind him. I had stopped. I was slowly making my way up to the pipe, but the going was dangerous. Edwards decided to save time, and attempted to cross the slime as Billy did, but, unlike Billy, he faced the wall as he climbed sideways across the treacherous area.

He seemed like he was about to make it when his left foot slipped and he went sliding on his stomach down the canal, cussing up a storm. Billy moved quickly to his left, narrowly avoiding Jon's body as Jon flew past, dropping into the canal with a splash.

"Oh shit, that's fucking crazy!" Graves managed to rub his hands together as he rested on the lip of the canal, laughing.

"That's fucking hilarious!" Spit flew from Carpenter's teeth; his laughter was contagious and we all lost it. Even Jon started laughing as he floated, sputtering, in the canal. I wondered if the bums were somewhere watching our antics with amusement, cackling drunkenly. Edwards swam to the side and climbed out of the water back onto the concrete slope.

Our teammates looked at us with skepticism at the end of practice that day. We were dirty, scraped up, and green; our clothes decorated with leaves and lichen. They had been running along the streets and footpaths, ignorant of the savage and hazardous wilderness that existed just beyond their vision, just as the vagrants were ignorant of the stable and luxurious lives they enjoyed. But we, the deserters, had now seen both sides of our small world.

It was amazing what one could find if one ventured off of the designated trail.