The 12th Street Bridge: A Story of the Spring that Comes after Winter

Jo Should she take sheets? Eleanor holds the blue flowered set. No, who uses sheets when they’re sleeping in their car? She puts the sheets back and pulls out the heaviest quilt. It’s May and still chilly at night. She stops halfway down the hall, holding a black garbage bag crammed with clothes, and stands like a child soon to be orphaned. She is tiny for a grown woman, just five feet tall, and thin like a heron. Her black hair is short and flat against her head, her brown eyes red from all the regret. What else should she take, she wonders? There is no time to think. The landlord said she has to be out of the house by six or he’ll call the Sheriff. She leaves the key in the mailbox.

She drives to the grocery store and sits in the lot. It’s not clear what she should buy. Stuff that will keep in her car, that won’t go bad, or need to be cooked, she thinks. She goes inside and buys two boxes of granola bars, a six-pack of Gatorade, and a roll of paper towels. She’s not sure what the paper towels are for. In case something gets messy, needs wiping off. Like what? She doesn’t know.

She meanders through town, taking the slow route from the north side to the south side, and then swings past her apartment. It’s dark and the lights are out. Maybe the landlord came, maybe not. There’s no way of knowing unless she checks the mailbox. She doesn’t get out of the car. It’s done, she thinks, no point in feeling the keys in her hand even if they are there. They’re not hers anymore.

Eleanor drives her red Toyota to the Park and Ride Lot near the hospital and backs into a corner parking spot shielded by a hedge. She wishes her car weren’t red, so conspicuous. But nobody plans ahead for homelessness when they buy a car, that’s crazy. She pulls the quilt from the back seat and piles it over her head. It smells like Tide and the place that used to be her home. She falls asleep holding her phone against her chest like a little girl with a teddy bear.

The pounding on the passenger side window wakes her up. 

“Hey! What’re you doin’ here? Who are you?” It is a man’s voice, deep, but friendly.

She freezes. Could it be the cops? Three more raps on the window.

“It’s the welcome wagon.” She hears a man’s muffled laughter.

The flashlight shining on the glass makes it impossible to see who is speaking. Thinking it might be the police, she decides to respond. She would never resist the police. That’s not the kind of person she is.

“Hold on,” she shouts. “Back up and I’ll put down the window.”

With the window down, she sees the man who claims to be the welcome wagon. He is 40ish, rough-shaven with short brown hair. He is wearing old black jeans, a ratty blue Brewers hoodie and heavy-duty hiking boots. The boots look new, like he’d bought them that morning.

He stands back, his arms outstretched to show he is harmless.

“Well, alright! Thanks for answering the door.”

“Who are you?” Eleanor knows he isn’t a cop, unless he’s seriously undercover.

“I’m Butch! Your new best friend.”

“Eleanor. Thanks for the welcome but I’m not interested. I have stuff to deal with.” Eleanor starts to power the window up but Butch grabs the top of the glass.

“Heck, we all got stuff. What’s your stuff? Tell me all about it.” Butch peers into the car. When his eyebrows go up, they lift his whole face into the joking, teasing look Eleanor’s brother used to give her. He feels like an okay guy to her.

“What’s got you sleepin’ in a car all by yourself? This isn’t a drive-in movie.” Eleanor debates telling him her story and then does.

“I screwed up. Bad. Somebody died. And I got fired. So that’s pretty much it.” She nods toward the hospital. “That’s where I used to work.” She paused. “In the ICU.”

 “You’re a nurse? That’s a first.” He motions for Eleanor to get out of the car.

“Look it, why don’t you come with me? A bunch of us stay under that bridge over there. All good people. We can help you out. Don’t take this wrong, but you don’t know shit about living outside.”

Eleanor shakes her head. She can’t deal with people, any people. There would be a thousand questions. She puts the window up. Butch shrugs and gives her a salute.

“See you soon!” he yells. “Take it easy, girl!”

In the morning, she grabs a towel and her purse, then hikes up the hill to the gas station to wash up. She feels upbeat, thinking everything might be okay. Scrubbed clean at the gas station sink, she strolls back to the Park and Ride Lot, but, right away, sees that her car is gone. She catches the glint of red as it’s being towed down the freeway. It’s then that her eyes hit upon the sign peeking out of the bushes behind her car: No Parking/Bus Turnaround. She drops everything, sinks to the curb, and puts her head in her hands.

She remembers her friend, George, getting his car towed last month, so she knows it’ll cost at least $240 to get it out of the tow lot if she got it right now. Every day, the price will go up. She has $56 in her wallet, so the car, her home, is gone, for who knows how long, maybe forever. And everything in it is gone, too. Her clothes. Her quilt. The granola bars. Homeless twice in two days, homeless with no Plan B. And then she remembers Butch’s offer.

“Well, lookie here, it’s Nurse Eleanor! This is the chick in the parking lot, you guys.” Butch stands, wiping his hands on his pants. Two other men and two women are sitting in old lawn chairs around a fire pit, charred logs from the night before just beginning to flame. There are tents set in the nearby trees and, next to the river, underwear and t-shirts hang from a clothesline.

“I guess I’m taking you up on your offer to teach me about living outside. They towed my car, so I don’t know what to do next,” Eleanor says, embarrassed to turn up after shooing Butch away the night before.

“Ha! The first thing to do is get rid of that stupid purse,” yells a wiry, blond woman with a long ponytail pulled through her baseball cap.

“And find a place for your towel. The beach is thataway.” Charles, a guy with dark hair with bangs cut straight across his forehead, laughs and points east. Then he grabs a paper-wrapped sub sandwich and hands it to her.

“Here. Breakfast. First lesson. If you get to the sub shop first thing, they’ll give you yesterday’s stuff.”

The older guy sitting furthest away waves with both arms. “Hey nurse, can you look at my leg. I ripped it up on a piece of metal a few days ago and it’s killin’ me.”

Butch shakes his head, “No way, Bob, she says she killed somebody up in that hospital. You don’t want her messin’ with your leg.”

“I can look at it, if you want. You probably should get a tetanus shot.” Eleanor speaks so quietly that the whole group leans in trying to hear her.

The lessons continue. Get a tent and a backpack. Don’t leave important stuff in camp, carry it with you. Don’t tell people your life story, they’ll just use it against you. Too late, she’d told Butch what happened at the hospital and he’d already used it against her. Everything she does is wrong. It’s always been that way. Now, she even needs coaching on how to be homeless.

“Don’t forget the most important lesson,” says a woman, named Esther, sitting next to Charles. “Do what Butch tells you.” Esther is heavyset, thick, her hair tucked up under an orange knit hat. “Or you’ll be….” and she makes a slitting gesture across her throat. Everyone laughs. Esther nods at Eleanor as if to say, this is no joke.

“So, here’s how it works, my friend. We need you to take this sign and go up on the street and get us some cash.” Butch hands her a cardboard sign, its edges worn from weeks of use. It says “Hungry. Please help!”

“I can’t do that! “There’s no way I can do that.”

“Sure you can. Plus, you don’t have a choice. You’ve heard of rent? This is your rent.” Butch pushes the sign at Eleanor until she has to grab it. “Now.”

“I can’t. I don’t know how.”

Then Andrea, the ponytail woman, grabs a sign from a pile near her tent.

“Come on. I’ll go with you. It’s not that hard.”

She puts her arm around Eleanor’s shoulders and they head up the steep hill that leads to 12^th Street.

“It’s no big deal once you get over how disgusting it is. First, make eye contact. It really gets to people. Second, get to the car window even if you have to stop traffic. Nobody’s going to hit you, it’s a lotta points.” She stops talking long enough to snort and laugh. “And say God bless you. But, Jesus, why are you even here? You’re a nurse, for Chrissakes.”

Eleanor doesn’t answer, instead picking up the sign and facing the traffic pulling up to the red light. She makes eight dollars that day and gives it all to Butch.

Andrea and Eleanor work as a pair all summer. They hit the intersection around nine and stay under after rush hour. Every day, Andrea elbows Eleanor about being a nurse, especially after people start coming from other homeless camps to get help with their problems – headaches, rashes, bad drugs. Butch waves them off, but still they come. By August, everyone is calling her Nurse Eleanor. She uses part of her panhandling money to buy supplies – alcohol wipes and bandages, Tylenol and cough medicine – and every night she holds office hours, sitting on a broken beach chair next to her tent.

“I hear you been freelancin’. That money you make up there on the bridge is for me to support the camp, not for you to buy medicine for junkies,” Butch leans over Eleanor’s chair. “Doin’ stuff on your own, that’s not done here, Nurse Eleanor. So, I gotta close your little clinic down. Tell your patients bye-bye.”

“No,” she answers. “I’m not hurting you and I’m helping them. I’m not stopping.” She is surprised when she says this. The words are new to her.

“Then start thinkin’ about someplace else to live. There’s no rebellion in my camp.” Butch pats her cheek. It feels sinister to Eleanor like nothing Butch has ever done before.

“I’m staying. I’ve been a good nurse here.”

Eleanor arranges supplies in her cardboard box first aid kit. Her hands are shaking, fear, tasting like this morning’s burnt bacon coming up her throat. She knows Butch is watching her but she doesn’t look. For once, she knows she is right.

The next afternoon, a blue SUV blows through the intersection where Eleanor is panhandling and pulls over to park. A woman in flowered scrubs jumps out, yelling, “Eleanor! Is that you?”

Eleanor spins around. It’s Johnnie, her supervisor on the ICU and now she is running over to the median. “Girl, where in the Sam Hill have you been?”

“I got evicted. So, I’ve kind of been living out here.”

“Out here, as in where?” Johnnie looks around while traffic backs up at the red light.

“Under the bridge. I live with five other people. I have a tent. People are nice. I’ve been helping them with, you know, medical problems.”

“Seriously? You’re homeless? Damn, after that problem with Mr. Harrigan, you just disappeared on us. Nobody knew where you were. Crazy.”

“Well, I got fired and ran out of money. And I knew I couldn’t get a job because of what happened so I ended up here.” Eleanor likes Johnnie but she feels stupid. It is an old feeling, one she used to have all the time, but it had started to go away at the camp.

“You got fired because you disappeared, not because of Mr. Harrigan. You pretty much fired yourself. It would take some doing but I could probably get you your job back if that’s what you want. Better than this, right?”

It seems crazy to think the hospital would let her come back. She thinks about the steps Johnnie said would be necessary to be hired back with probation. It is a second chance but not a gift. She nods at Johnnie and says she’ll call her, but she knows she can’t do it.

 Back at camp, Andrea tells everyone that Eleanor’s getting her job back. Butch looks up, “Nah, she’s not goin’ anywhere. She knows she’d screw it up. Once a screw-up, always a screw-up, right Eleanor?”

He comes over to her and, for the first time ever, wraps his arms around her. “You’re ours, girl. We love you even if you are a danger to others.”

“I’m a nurse. A good nurse.” Furious, Eleanor twists away and pushes Butch hard. He trips and barrels down the hill into the river with a loud splash. No one gets physical with Butch, so the camp is quiet and stunned, scared for what’s next, despite knowing he will survive. Everyone in the camp, except Eleanor, cheers when Butch reaches the concrete outcropping to grab hold. He pulls himself out, his hoodie sopping wet and his old jeans hanging off his butt. He hitches them up and crawls into his tent.

After the episode in the river, Butch steers a wide berth around Eleanor. He watches what she’s doing from across the camp but doesn’t talk to her. Ever. She glances at him now and then but avoids looking right at him. Dealing with Butch is too risky, she thinks. The tension hums like this through the fall and into winter.

The colder weather makes everything harder. Every day is a challenge to keep warm and find decent food. Eleanor walks a lot with Andrea, going from one McDonald’s to another to keep warm and then stopping in at the meal program before coming back to camp for the night. When it is really cold, the city opens a warming room, but Eleanor doesn’t like it there. Too many people and not enough privacy. She’d rather take more blankets from the outreach volunteers and stay hunkered in her tent. On the street since May, Eleanor feels like she’s built up calluses, added layers that protect her from the elements, from people. Still, the cold weather eats at her and makes her feel even more of an outcast. Who lives outside in deep winter except people nobody wants?

Eleanor moves her makeshift clinic inside her tent, out of the wind and the snow. Every night is a steady stream of men and a few women from other camps. Frostbite. Sores that won’t heal. Chest pains and blurry vision. Sometimes she calls Johnnie at the hospital and tries to get her patients in the door to see a doctor. Sometimes she sends them to the free clinic across town. But most of them say no, they just want her, they don’t trust anybody else, and so she keeps at it, doing the little bit she can. She cleans the wounds and listens to heartbeats, holding a cardboard paper towel roll to her friends’ chests for lack of a stethoscope.

Johnnie’s offer rolls around in her head. Maybe she could go back to work as a nurse. Jump through whatever hoops there are. People do things like that, have second chances. As soon as she thinks it, she throws the idea away. Other people. Not her. Butch was right, she would just screw it up.

She worries most about Esther. When she listens to Esther’s chest, she hears the hint of backwash, heart valves not working right. “I’m okay,” Esther says, “It’s always been like this. Since I was a little kid.” Figuring that Esther had probably had rheumatic fever as a child and suffered damage to her heart valves, Eleanor knows there is no medicine or advice to give. Esther needs a valve replacement, maybe two. Eleanor worries about heart failure, especially after Esther’s breathing gets worse and fluid builds up in her abdomen.

“Esther, your heart’s really not working well. You have to get this fixed. Let me get you into the hospital.”

“No way. I’m gonna let them split open my chest and do whatever with my heart? Shoot, two days later, they’ll shove me out the door.  And then what? I’ll just be screwed all over again. Not doin’ it.” Esther zips up her green parka and winds her scarves around her neck. There are at least four of them, wool scarves, handknit scarves, gifts from the good people who come by at night to help them. She pulls her orange hat down over her eyebrows and gives Eleanor a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t worry about me.”

The siren wakes her up. Eleanor peels back the tent flap and sees EMTs crawling into Esther’s tent. She hears Charles telling them that he was bringing Esther some coffee when he found her unconscious, panicked and hit 911 on his phone. Eleanor thinks she should explain Esther’s heart problem to the EMT’s but stops herself. I’m going to tell professionals that I’ve been listening to Esther’s heart through a paper towel roll? Why would they listen to me? She hunches herself out of the tent to stand with Butch and the other folks from the camp. She watches Esther being loaded into the ambulance. Everyone can see that their friend has died. It’s too late to tell the EMT’s anything.

“You did all you could for her.” Butch sidles over, zipping up his parka. He blows on his hands and rubs them together. “Nobody coulda done more.”

“What? You always talk about what a screw-up I am. How I shouldn’t go back to being a nurse because I’ll kill somebody else.”

“That was just talk. I’m a tough guy, right? At least I was until you pushed me in the river.”

Eleanor took her eyes off the ambulance pulling out of the camp to stare at Butch.  “I should have gotten her to go to the hospital, made her deal with that heart thing. I knew it was really serious. This is my fault.”

“You can’t control other people, kid. Folks have to do what’s right for them even if it doesn’t turn out great. Esther was the master of her own ship. We’re all running our own game, even you.”

******

It is early spring when Eleanor runs into Butch hustling change from customers at the gas station. She is wearing blue scrubs under a winter parka and holding the gas pump. He’s in the same Brewers hoodie as the day they met at the Park and Ride Lot almost a year before.

“You got your car back.” He smiles. It’s a sweet smile, like he knew all along what would happen.

“No. That car’s long gone. This one’s new, well, new to me.” The car was old but in decent shape, beige like practically all of the cars on the road these days. “I needed a car to get to work.” Butch gives a little chuckle. “Now I remember the red one. Alot’s happened since then. You’re working. How about that?” Eleanor nods, her tight-lipped smile growing into a grin. She pulls out the pump and screws on the gas cap, waving goodbye as she gets in the car.

She starts the engine, inches her car toward the street, and then sees Butch in the rearview mirror. She brakes and opens the car door. She yells as loud as she can, so loud that Butch can hear her along with everyone else at the gas station and down the block. “Butch! I figured out how to run my own game. Because of you, I think. And me. I’m the master of my own ship!”

“Yes, Ma’am! Butch yells back, and then he stands up ramrod straight, clicks his heels, and salutes, one captain to another. He gives a little wave, smiles to himself and shrugs, and then turns to head back to the bridge.