Disturbed Ground (2 page)

Yet even this capital city of "the world's sixth largest economy" has not been immune to the toxic side effects of "Reaganomics," and small, dirty caravans of overburdened shopping carts also clatter along these sidewalks.

Though Sacramento's weather is kind and its charities busy, life on the street is a wearisome limbo of waiting and walking, of stubborn rules, of being hungry, of making do. The well-traveled route from shelter to soup kitchen and back is called, simply, "the Walk."

Benefit checks—veterans benefits, disability, Social Security, SSI (Supplemental Security Income), Medicaid, pensions—are the slow heartbeat that feeds this flow of society. The money comes in spurts: a wealth of food, alcohol, and cigarettes for a few days that trickles to nothing by the end of the month. Some budget, some splurge, others have it stolen. Street people, with little to lose but less for protection, make easy targets for con artists and thugs.

Those with physical handicaps are hard to begrudge our tax dollars, but those with mental handicaps meet more often with incomprehension than compassion. They are "the crazies," "the ranters," and they suffer a gamut of mental afflictions: schizophrenia, manic depression, Down syndrome, organic and inorganic brain damage. For many, internal distractions loom larger than mundane matters such as shaving or brushing their teeth. The voices they hear, the paranoia that molds their behavior are as real to them as any tree or building, and far more demanding than mere social graces. No one pretends they could get work but for a failure of will.

With the number of public mental hospital beds dwindling to a fraction of what they were a generation ago, and with "deinstitutionalization" the prevailing ethic, housing the mentally ill is a formidable task. Those recognized as ill—not merely discounted as obnoxious—may be rescued from the street by mental health workers who then try to place them in appropriate facilities, (ironically, those "lucky" enough to be tagged "5150"—law enforcement lingo for "a danger to themselves or others"—often get the most comprehensive care.)

If the mentally ill can simply remember to take their own medications (or "meds," in the parlance of mental health workers), they've crossed a major hurdle: They can live on their own rather than in a licensed facility, where a supervisor administers their meds to them.

Surely, some who could manage to take their meds on their own don't, simply because the prospect of greater freedom is too frightening.

It could be, there's good reason to be scared.

PART ONE: CANARY

There's no loneliness on the street—there's a million of us out here.

—Vietnam veteran Mike Bailey
,
in
Red Heart

CHAPTER 1

At first blush, Bert Montoya wasn’t a particularly appealing fellow. His grooming habits were poor, his big stomach pushed out over his trousers, and a mean case of psoriasis assailed his scalp. With his thick gray-white hair, unruly beard, full lips, and soft dark eyes, he had an unkempt yet benevolent look. He rarely spoke, even with others who spoke his native Spanish. And at his most articulate he mumbled so badly that he was hard to understand, perhaps because he had so few teeth. Shy and acquiescent, he usually watched from the sidelines, appearing isolated, remote . . . yet somehow irresistible.

Bert talked to trees. Wagging one thick finger skyward, shuffling down the street in ill-fitting boots and rumpled clothes, he conversed with people only he could hear. When more fleshly beings interrupted, he fell silent.

While Bert Montoya had many problems, alcohol wasn't among them. Other than the infrequent beer, he simply didn't drink. Call him simple, call him mentally retarded, call him delusional, but he didn't really belong here in this metal warehouse, sleeping every night on a vinyl mat on the concrete floor, surrounded by fifty-nine drunks in various stages of inebriation. It was rather chance that had put him here, and inertia that had kept him, since the early 1980s, at Detox.

"Detox," short for "detoxification," is a misnomer, actually, for the Volunteers of America (VOA) Central Reception Center on Front Street. This long metal structure, tucked unobtrusively into a comer of Sacramento, is really just a no-fuss drunk tank, a money-saving alternative to jailing those who commit the misdemeanor of public inebriation. But unlike the down-and-out drunks who arrive at Detox in paddy wagons, stay a couple of nights, then leave, Bert was a regular here.

Though Bert was reclusive and communicated mostly in grunts, he had such a gentle, unassuming manner that the staffers at Detox took a liking to him. They gave special vigilance to assuring that Bert got to sleep on his customary mat, B-ll
.
(Characteristically, he slept with his head and feet pointed in directions opposite everyone else's.)

Though he was quietly friendly, he remained an enigma. No one ever mistook him for an idiot savant, but perhaps he understood more than he let on. A staffer recalled: "He spoke Spanish to us for three years. Then one day he came into the office and spoke English. Nobody knew he could."

Besides keeping a protective eye on Bert, the VOA staff gave him food, cigarettes, clothes, even an occasional buck. Noticing Bert's penchant for cigars, a few employees (and even the odd cop) would make a point of bringing him a stogie from time to time. One staffer observed, "He'd rear back like he was worth a million and smoke 'em."

Bill Johnson, who at age thirty was already a five-year veteran at Detox, was particularly intrigued by this misfit who preferred coffee or tobacco to whiskey or wine. A blue-eyed fellow with a compassionate smile hidden in thick whiskers, Johnson was a man who had seen a world of hurt, but also a sprinkling of miracles. He approached his work with hope, in a quiet, understated way. And he deliberately mingled with the most solitary
,
asocial fellows at Detox—especially the shy one who was always mumbling to himself.

Johnson could manage only the simplest Spanish, so he stuck to English. When he first asked the man's name, he'd heard Alberto— thus, the nickname Bert.

Over time, Bert began to spend a good deal of time in Johnson's company, and the two established a singular bond. Though Bert never became loquacious, he told Johnson that he was originally from Costa
Rica, and that he used to work as a mechanic. Eventually, Bert synchronized his schedule so that when Bill Johnson drove up at 7:30 each morning he was standing there, waiting with a smile.

Johnson always made sure that Bert got a cup of coffee and something to eat. He reminded him when it was time to take a shower. And Bert even let him cut his hair. "Bert was special," Johnson mused, "and we always treated him special."

More than special, Bert was honest. Once he found more than two hundred dollars in the parking lot. Did he pocket it? No, he turned it in to the office. When no one claimed it, the staff rewarded him with a few dollars each day until the money was gone.

Bert also liked to help with chores. Working mostly for smokes, he helped the seventy-four-year-old maintenance man paint picnic tables, wash cars, pick up trash, and sweep floors. He became such a permanent fixture around the grounds that someone dubbed Bert the Detox "mascot."

Perhaps due to Bill Johnson's soft-spoken, religious influence, Bert also went to church "like clockwork." Boarding the Glory Bound Ministries bus every Sunday, he would ride to the modest church, take a seat, and listen to the service. Here, Bert and others from Detox took comfort in one of the few places where indigents were truly welcome.

But no matter how regularly Bert went to church, religious faith wasn't going to cure his most pernicious affliction. Bert heard voices.

Psychologists would say he suffered "auditory hallucinations," but Bert insisted he was talking to "spirits." They were always with him—around the grounds at Detox, and especially down the street near the cemetery—carrying on a running commentary to which Bert responded with gestures in the air, admonitions and protest, even smiles and laughter.

When Judy Moise first noticed the big, clumsy man who would become her obsession, he was standing in front of the graveyard, muttering.

Moise had started working as a "street counselor" with the Volunteers of America Courtesy Outreach Program, and Detox was her base, her "office," if you will
.
Each day, she'd go to the corrugated metal structure on Front Street, and after greeting the staff and punching in, she'd leave her car in the dusty parking lot and head out in the VOA van.

One day shortly after starting work in the spring of 1986, Judy saw
Bert on the sidewalk. It was hard to understand his words, but he seemed to be arguing with himself, saying, "Get out of here! Keep away from me!"
 

She stopped and asked, "Who are you talking to?"

He turned his deep brown eyes on her. "Those people," he explained, waving an arm in the air. "Spirits. In the graveyard."

"Oh, I see." Auditory hallucinations were nothing new to Judy Moise. She understood that the voices were real to Bert, so she simply asked what the spirits were like. With effort, she discerned that one "bad spirit" had first come to Bert when he was nineteen.

"Have the voices ever gone away?" she asked.

He shook his head.

'"What about medicine? Maybe medicine will make them go away."

"No." He frowned. "Won't work."

Apparently, Bert's demons were permanent. In any case, Judy observed, he conversed with these ephemeral citizens more than with anyone else.

It disturbed Judy Moise to see Bert here, where he seemed the most sadly displaced of displaced persons. He wasn't an alcoholic, yet he spent his nights in a long, narrow, locked room, surrounded by inebriates snoring on vinyl mats. The perpetual buzz of fluorescent lights. Benevolent but constant surveillance. Not the best environment for someone with mental problems.

Other walk-in shelters might offer more commodious accommodations, such as bunk beds, but all except Detox required, as a minimum, identification and sobriety.

At Detox, even skid-row alcoholics could get help. The slightest interest in getting sober was met with ready support. Clients could be transferred to a true detoxification clinic, and the Detox staff kept close ties with Alcoholics Anonymous. (Bill Johnson declared earnestly that he'd "seen too many miracles happen" to believe that even the most hard-core drunk was beyond redemption.)

But what about Bert? He wasn't an alcoholic. He was only at Detox because he had nowhere else to go. What could they offer someone with mental problems?

It was impossible to move Bert elsewhere, Judy learned, because he didn't have any money. And he didn't have any money because he didn't have a Social Security number. As Judy put it, "He had an identity problem."

Worse, rumors of imminent closure were always afloat. Neither pretty nor profitable, Detox wasn't a very popular place. Even many skid-row alcoholics thought it uncomfortable and déclassé.

But where else could Bert go?

It was hard to imagine him surviving well on the streets. While Bert's vulnerability tended to draw out the best impulses in some, others saw him as a target; he was easily taken advantage of. Bert often went without a shirt because every time someone would bring him one from a charity bin, he would give it away to the first guy who coveted it. He was too well-meaning even to look out for his own best interests.

Early on, Judy Moise decided to make Bert a priority. She resolved to track down his identification and his Social Security number so that he could receive the benefit checks to which he was entitled, then find a real home for him, a safe place with a real bed to sleep in and a light he could turn out at night.

It was a simple enough wish, born of a generous impulse. And years later, it should have been a source of pride.

CHAPTER 2