"Shattered" from "Escaping The Despondent Sea"

My walk back to Sean and his girlfriend’s apartment gave me time to think about the words from the Prophet of Cow Key Bridge. 

It also gave me plenty of things to observe along the way. 

My hope was for some contrast but I observed much to support what I had just been told. Even still, I had the mindset that I could find work to make the money I came for, and then some. 

If nothing else, I would be able to sell, what tools I now had here, to buy a bus ticket home, since Julie, did me such a huge favor by bringing me a bunch of crap that should never have been brought. 

The stuff she dropped off at Sean’s was just about every single thing I possessed, things like Danny’s guitar, Four Track recorder, my prototypes of the Dice sculptures I had made for a desktop pencil caddy, air compressor and all sorts of tools and things that I needed a truck to cart around.

 God bless her pointed little head.

When I got back to the apartment, Sean’s girlfriend explained that she and Sean had broken up. She was moving to the mainland near Jacksonville but I could stay there until she moved out. 

Sean had come home, in the wee hours of the morning, with a white crust in his nostrils. Assuming he had been screwing around after the bars shut down, (unless he was doing a third shift drywall job) with another woman and drugs, she threw him out. Her generosity included buying me a cell phone to use while trying to find a job- a means of receiving communication from any prospective employers, since mine was now lost in the shuffle.

In the meantime, I had been dragging my tools and air compressor all over the island hoping to be able to sell them to a pawn shop but the pawn shops were filled to the gills, revealing the history of people who spent what little they had to come to the Keys with, hoping to find work. 

They left what little they had left in life there in order to go back to where they had come from. 

And those are just the people who were lucky enough to make it out with their lives. 

It sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, I know, and wish it were, but I swear on the lives of everyone I share love with that it’s the truth. 

I witnessed it and almost lost my life as well. 

I was beside myself in shock that Julie had dumped me to be with a junkie. I was enraged that I fell into Andy’s scheme, and that I failed to remember that he was no good. 

How could one man be so stupid, so consistently, as I had been?

My brain worked rationally long enough to realize my wisest decision would be to find a Community Mental Health office.  

By now, Sean’s ex-girlfriend had moved out. I was sleeping in Sean’s Oldsmobile that was left in the parking lot at the apartment complex. 

Before she moved out, I set up an account on an Internet social network. It was my hope to make some friends in the area that could help me. 

It made sense to use every avenue I could to find a solution. What I found only added to the problem, which happened to be three women who were friends of Julie and Casey- area witches who were always in communication by computer with them.

When they had me over for dinner, which was everything mushrooms, a lot of hints came out in the open. 

Everyone who knew me knew that I couldn’t eat mushrooms. They added comments about “other” people, conveying things that went on in the past with Julie and Casey.

They suddenly vanished shortly after we started hanging out, removing all traces of our “friendship” on the computer.

My days were now being spent getting to know the area. Internet access was found at a K-Mart and the local public library. 

The K-Mart thing was new, an effort to help bring in a larger customer base but when they found "the boat people and homeless" to be the ones using the computers the most, they began organizing “technical difficulties”. 

There was a huge war on the island between the haves and have-nots. 

The majority are individuals suffering from addiction and poverty, casualties in the game of consumerism- the scrambling to give us an income, only to target us to take the money back. 

Consumerism makes us work more to have more to spend, making us need and want more of everything, while what we really need becomes neglected and unimportant. 

Eventually these people become unheard of or from.

Among my thoughts about what I was seeing, I remembered Danny saying that we’d live on a boat. 

“Yeah, that’s what I’ll do”, I thought. Having a boat to hide on would be better than having to keep walking around for fear of being arrested for vagrancy, and I could find someone else who’s been trapped here that can sail the vessel.

 With a Captain, we’ll make our way up the coast, up the Saint Lawrence River, into the Great Lakes and up the Grand River- RIGHT BACK HOME! 

It’s “easy-peazy”, as Danny would say. Now all I had to do was find a boat. And since a hurricane was just through the area, there should be sailboats all over for free or next to nothing. 

It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It has to float, that’s all.

Hoping for a break, I put my ear to the vine.

My feet found the local CMH office, where I was reunited with my medications that I had been prescribed back home.

The guy I spoke with seemed genuine, giving me a camouflage Velcro wallet that he had just picked up at a flea market, after I mentioned how I lost my wallet in the process of the moped being impounded. 

He directed me to some shelters in the area that also served hot meals, explaining that one was a men’s shelter where I might find a room to get back on my feet. 

All I needed to do was find a job within two weeks. 

He also gave me the address of an employment center that housed the Department of Human Services, suggesting that I apply for assistance and build a resume for the talent bank. 

All of these bits of information were uplifting. My confidence in him soon built to what felt like a comfortable level of trust and friendship. 

With a smile and a renewed spring in my step, I set off for these locations.

When I came out of the building, I had food stamps, Medicaid, and a resume in the Talent Bank that I also submitted to several employment prospects. 

Finding a bench, I sat down to get my head together, deciding on what to do next. A man was already sitting there smoking a cigarette while waiting for his wife. He gave me one, and we talked about how we both played the Harmonica.

This man and his wife were both homeless, living in a van that was parked somewhere.

 There was work on Stock Island, at the crab shacks and on fishing boats. He told me I would find some work there. 

There was also a place called Anchors Away, an A.A. meeting place. 

The only problem is that you have to walk by every bar, liquor store, drug addict and dope house in the damn city to get to it. 

Little did I know, he and his wife were both Crack addicted, and I found myself right in the middle of some kind of drug transaction that I wanted nothing to do with.

I started going to Anchors Away that night for the six-thirty meeting, and then attended every night, hoping someone would see me in my struggle to do good for myself, that would help me to get back home somehow. 

So many people had ulterior motives that I couldn’t blame any of the A.A. patrons for shutting strangers out. 

It was not as fruitful as I had hoped, and I never received much by the way of an opportunity but I did receive a kind word and a few dollars.

The men’s shelter served a mid-day meal, so I made it a point to find my way there to get acquainted with how things worked, and whether there was an opportunity for a place to stay there.

 Eventually, I got to speak with the man who ran the shelter. He reminded me of Danny in so many ways. He was a musician with lots of equipment and guitars. 

A Golden Retriever named Bailey was his companion, the two of them making for a jovial pair. 

The fact that he was so unintimidating in appearance and nature, made me at ease. 

He took me in with the prerequisites that I get a job and stay clean of drugs, alcohol and filth. This provided a huge relief for me.

Soon after moving in, I found that he and the man from the CMH office were friends. 

One night I was called into the end of the building that he was occupying. There was some paperwork that I needed to fill out, along with some further interviewing questions about my background that he thought of. 

Oddly enough, a television was on in the room where they were watching Porn together at the time. I thought that it was strange that two men would be watching porn together but didn’t really take interest in what they had going on or why.

The next day, I received my general scope of responsibilities, which was to police the grounds for trash every day, and to mop the bathroom and laundry area. 

The day I began my duties, the facilitator decided that it was a good time for him to shower, coming in and stripping down as he tried to engage me in a seemingly innocent conversation while I worked. 

Quickly, I became uncomfortable but continued mopping, while minimizing my interaction, and avoiding his insistence to impede upon my ocular sense. 

When I refused to glance his way, he became hostile and short- no pun intended. 

It started to sink in, after awhile, and I realized it was weird, that he pointed out where his bed was, and how he made references to Cheetos stains on his penis from snacking and masturbating. 

It finally dawned on me that I had been selected as a playmate, preying on my situation and my medical history.  

Shocked that I had been set up to be victimized by the guy from the CMH office, the images of the two of them running some kind of freak show became more real. 

The shelter started to show that it was nothing more than a roach motel. Well, I was definitely checking out as soon as possible.

It happened to be Sunday when I decided to check out Stock Island for work but I don’t think I knew that, since I rarely know what day it is. 

The island environment has that affect on a person. 

The choice was to wander around to find work or stay in the trap. 

Anyway, the fishing doesn’t stop until the season does, unlike regular employment that generally doesn’t work on that day or so I told myself.

 The fish houses were open but I was told that there was no work and sent to another place where I might find a job. 

It wasn’t long before I had been all over the place, coming up with nothing but another dead end. 

Stopping a High-Low driver, he sent me to a salvage yard where boats were scrapped, saying that there are always people working on boats. 

My feet couldn’t get me there fast enough. The day was nearing six pm. 

After going into the office of the yard, I was sent to the end of the lot to see if there might be a boat owner around who may need help.

 I doubted anyone was going to be around or willing to get off of a few dollars but I made a last stitch effort to fulfill my mission for the day. 

When I got to the end of the yard full of boats in dry dock, I found an expensive looking vehicle parked next to an old Shrimp boat and a very large tourist fishing cruiser.

There were two older gentlemen working on the keel of the Shrimp boat with some body filler and fiberglass. 

One of them asked me if I knew how to work with the body filler, asking me to prove it by mixing some up and applying it, which I promptly did.

 They hired me on the spot and I worked the rest of the day. They laughed at my sales pitch, saying that I was willing to work for the first week at no charge.

The job was cash, and I was tickled- elated. Now, I was getting to do something I had never done, and I was filled with hope that I would recover from my mission at getting the money I came to the area to get. 

The first money I received was taken to a bank where I immediately started an account.

Eventually, I found out that these guys were all ex-cons, and the boats were distressed vessels that had been sunk. 

They had no value what-so ever but these guys were making them look like they were safe by patching them up in any way they could, asking me if I had ever seen M.A.S.H.- mentioning the phrase “meatball surgery”. 

They were brokering the junk for the scrap yard to sell to people who wanted to use them “one last time”. 

It didn’t matter all that much to me, I had my own problems to handle. 

Their con job was a bit alarming but meant little to me, that is, until two strangers started snooping around.

Instincts told me they were investigators, and when the guys came around that I worked for, they also said that they were detectives. 

That’s when they brought in a third man, also an ex-con, who put me to work on his Dive boat, a Manta, once the boats we had been working on were done. This was another D.V. that he intended on taking across the gulf to Honduras. 

He mentioned that I could go with him, illustrating the scenario of the adventure with all the seductive trimmings.

The idea was that the boat was going to be turned into a dwelling that he would use to go take his son from a Honduran woman he had been married to, and then disappear with his son, who would live on the boat with him. 

Lots of red flags went up in my head. I played along with him, seeming to entertain the idea for myself in order to keep the money flowing until I was to be done with him. 

Soon it was revealed to me that he was another person in the grip of cocaine addiction.

 Now it made sense when I recalled the guys I worked for talking about their associate getting hung up on the rocks. I thought that they meant with his boat.

 A short while later I was told, by the original guy that hired me, that the company was being “run out of the area”, and that I could meet up with them in Alabama to continue working. 

There was no way I was going to take them up on that. I had eight or nine hundred dollars saved up, and that was enough to get me out of there and back to Michigan. 

It was short of my goal but what was I going to do? 

The day they left the area, I had them take me to the bank at lunch to close my account and cash the last check. 

They paid me for the rest of the day before they left to head back to the mainland at two o’clock. My work was to last until six p.m. that day.

When I returned to the yard, I had all my money in my wallet. The plan was to finish the day, get paid from the Manta job, and go to the bus station in the morning, cutting my losses.

About sunset, I headed for the shelter to pack up what little I had left of my possessions. Passing by a small road through the mangroves that had been blockaded with a pile of broken concrete, I was stopped by a young woman who asked me for a light. 

This was a place where I had seen and avoided people who hung out there drinking, and who knows what else. 

Subconsciously, I could feel fear of the area but today, with a pocket full of money, and filled with the joy that I was getting out of the Keys, I decided to be friendly- giving her a lighter to use. “Keep it.” I said to her.

She asked me a series of questions typical of acquainting one’s self, which I was happy to answer. And since I was starving for attention, I soaked it up. 

Then she asked me if I had any dope, to which I answered no but that I was leaving in the morning and would love to have a puff. 

Pulling a brass pipe from her pocket, and holding it to my lips, she lit it and I smoked from it. The taste was strange, like vanilla.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the mud without my pants. My red duffle bag that held my meds and personal belongings was missing and so was my wallet. 

It was pitch black out and Mangroves surrounded me. In a panic, I stumbled around looking for my things- my pants, anything. 

The Moonlight penetrated the thick overhead vegetation in few spots but I made out a trail, stumbling franticly through the Mangroves, muck and trash.

Struggling for what seemed like forever, I found another pile of concrete near the edge of a road. 

Exhausted, I sat on the cement pile to catch my breath and think. 

At some point I looked around the pile, my eyes catching a spot where the moonlight glowed on the rubble. 

There, on the broken concrete, was my Camo wallet. 

Happiness was but for a moment when I realized that the money was gone. 

Of course it was. In tears, I searched through the pockets inside, hoping to see a stash of cash through my watering eyes but all I could find were business cards and some receipts that I had been accumulating to tell a story of their own. 

As I pulled them out, sadly lamenting the loss, I found a Bill enfolded in the receipts- a One-Hundred Dollar Bill. 

This single bill made me so happy that I forget I am sitting there in my underwear, or that my bag, filled with some very important things, is gone.

Determined to find this girl to get my stuff back, I set off down the road- a road I was not familiar with at all. 

A group of four or five young men are walking toward me on the road, commenting: “Nice pants.” as they pass by. 

It’s then that I realize I am now walking around in my underwear and a t-shirt in public but I am so mad that I insist on passing it off as swim wear. They, of course, have no idea who I am asking about.

It seemed like I had been walking for miles and miles, and maybe I had ,by the time I found my way back to where it all started. 

My bike was the first thing I found to have disappeared. Going in to the Mangroves, I was happy to find my bag. Further in, I located my pants. 

The losses were: one bike, one phone, my dignity, and all the money but for the hundred bucks. 

It was an absolute travesty. It’s so cliché to say, “I’ve never been more humiliated,” but I hadn’t ever been more humiliated.

 And the strange thing is, just when you think that, you discover that you CAN be more humiliated, which I was about to find out.

Still, determined to find this woman, I stomp off down the road of fools to find a group of guys in front of a two-story house but I am so angry that I storm right past them. 

They were asking something that I assumed to be an attempt to sell dope, so I ignored them. Then it dawns on me that they may know, or have seen, this girl.

Turning around to go back and ask them was somewhat pointless. They weren’t going to tell me anything I wanted to know but I tried anyway. 

As I am standing there with them to make my inquiry, flashlights, assault rifles and a whole squad of goons grabbed me and rolled me up in a wad. 

They cuffed me, taking my wallet and removing the last bank note I had been lucky enough to retain, threw me in the back of a paddy wagon with two other guys, and then hauled us off to jail.

The officer had commented on his keeping my money, and they would be charging me with soliciting to sell cocaine. 

Certain I was going to be found innocent, I worried little about it. In a while I would see a judge, explain the whole incident, and I’d be on my way to Michigan.

Several “continuances” later, I demanded to speak directly to the judge. My “Public Defender” said it was a pretty gutsy move on my part, explaining that it was a Felony charge, and that there was digital video evidence. 

Well, conveniently enough, all the evidence against me had been lost. 

My council did nothing to provide a rigorous pursuit of defense. He did not motion to have the case dismissed.

When I went to court to be heard, the judge said how he couldn’t believe that I was in such denial of my drug problem, sentencing me right then and there to a day short of a year in jail, which stuck me with a year of probation that wasn’t transferable. 

This kept me in their little system, which made it extremely unlikely that I would get out. The routine was to violate people just before it was over- another part of the scam on the funding for programs.

 One way or another, I was going to pay for my time spent in the Keys. This shattered me.

Thanks For Reading- zachery polk @bandanbro\twitter