The routine has been established: Elmer and I are walking the neighborhood down to the park at 6:00 am.

It is interesting walking the city this time of the morning. Everything is pretty much still. We did see a coyote the other morning and the trickster didn’t bolt on us. Rather he kept ahead about 50 yards until a jogger appeared and spooked him. Did I try to make any meaning of the coyote, as I have done other times in my life when they showed up? No. It was just a thrill.

Most times Elmer and I don’t encounter anyone. Maybe a jogger or dog walker here and there. Once, a homeless person sitting on a park bench with a tarp over his/her head.

What do I think about on these walks in the darkness? Everything. I do specifically remember thinking about a Flannery O’Connor novel I am reading, Wise Blood, and trying to make sense of its total weirdness, black humor, depravity and lack of anyone who has any decency or kindness or intelligence. I can’t tell if I despise this book or think it’s genius. I do know that so far there is a powerful theme of homelessness and according to the introduction of this omnibus of O’Connor’s work, the editors said that homelessness and hopelessness were the two main themes of her fiction.

What do Elmer and discuss on our walks? Mostly the state of the nation.

Rain doesn’t bother Elmer at all.

We sometimes parallel Highway 99 and I watch the commuters driving downtown to their jobs. That feels so depressing to me.

I’ve got to get the pea coat’s buttons sowed on tighter. It’s great to wear that ancient coat of mine with a dog again.

I may try running with Elmer. I’ve taken a few short jogs and he does very well.

Many Christmas lights are still shining. I see many Christmas trees still twinkling inside people’s houses.

I’ve lost five pounds since adopting Elmer. I’m sleeping better. My mind seems more acute. And here I am writing about dogs again!

Friday morning, December 22. The Oregonian reported that in 2022, government officials determined 315 homeless people died in Multnomah County. Average age: 49. Typical cause of death: hard drugs, a bankrupt American culture, and the Combine as Ken Kesey so accurately described it in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The county coroner said the number was undoubtedly higher.

Why does it take a year to report this kind of news? There is no urgency in this emergency. I have never understood the pace of the response to the crisis.

The number of homeless deaths in the county for 2023 is surely higher. If you figure in the deaths from adjacent Clackamas and Washington Counties, I suspect 600-800 homeless people have died in the Metro area in 2023. Perhaps a great many more. More than a few probably died in remote rural areas and their bodies were never discovered.

So far, none of the members of the Old Crow Book Club have died. It’s only a matter of time before one does.

This morbid news was on my mind that Friday morning as I walked the neighborhood at first light in rain.

Most of the inflatable Christmas decorations had deflated and looked as if they’ve been murdered. I saw a couple of homeless people wandering around. They were new to me. It was a weird juxtaposition seeing homeless people shuffling past holiday displays of lights and Santa Clauses on million dollar homes. There has to be a word for it, but it hasn’t been invented yet.

The blues overtook me, but I kept moving. I wanted to rally, but how? Forlorn holiday decorations certainly didn’t help.

I looked up to a dead tree that overlooked a wetlands that homeless campers had done their best to destroy in recent years. As of this writing, they’ve been swept out of there and I don’t feel a lick of remorse for that action. Being homeless doesn’t give you the right to destroy habitats of other living creatures.

Two bald eagles perched in the tree. They were making bald eagle chirping sounds. A giant illuminated star atop the nearby 80-foot neighborhood Christmas tree was part of the eagles’ background.

The image was staggering beautiful and almost entirely the color of gray.

What a juxtaposition! Thank you Oregon! Thank you Rachel Carson for leading the charge to save bald eagles from extinction. Thank you JFK for actually reading a book, Silent Spring, and then acting upon its findings.

My rally was instantly instigated. I took a photograph. A Black man came running up with his phone in hand. We exchanged pleasantries. He had seen the eagles and the star and had to get the golden shot. When people still run to take a photograph of bald eagles, there is still hope for this country.

I kept walking. I kept rallying. My Old Man taught me: if you don’t rally, you’re dead. I’ve been proud of his spirit for rallying in assisted living. He has never given up, although he was on the verge a few times.

I was standing under the neighborhood Christmas tree. Rain fell harder. More light was coming on. I looked down to the wetlands, also known as Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. I saw a beaver lodge, a massive one, in the marsh. Then I saw a snowy egret circle the lodge and land on the damn thing! It made my top five of all time sightings in Oregon nature, maybe it ranked number one; it was like a scene out of the Lord of the Rings movies if there had been beavers in that trilogy, which there damn well should have been.

My rally was complete. I walked to a coffee shop and drank black coffee and watched homeless people outside the window, doing whatever they do to survive.

My favorite American writer of all time is Jim Harrison. He also happens to be the greatest American writer on the subject of dogs, even though he never wrote a book about dogs. In one of his novels, he wrote: “There is something about doing a favor for a dog that calms a person down.”

Very true.

In many of Harrison’s novels, characters cook and barbecue for their dogs, and I copied that practice with my three big dogs for almost two decades. I returned to it the other day by frying up a steak for Elmer, my new dog. He just sat obediently near the oven and watched me. I talked to him as I cooked. We discussed current affairs and the death of rock. I cut up one of the portions and served it with a little pumpkin puree. Elmer gobbled it down in fine style.

Just as Harrison wrote, I felt calm doing this favor for my dog. Calm is a wonderful way to feel, especially as American society does everything it can to undermine or eliminate altogether the ability to feel calm.

I got The Old Crow Book Club out and it enriched my friendships with the homeless men and women in my neighborhood. The book launch party along Johnson Creek was one of the most incredible moments of my creative life.

I saw Crater Lake again, probably for the last time.

I drove 300 miles to deliver a one-minute eulogy to the deceased owner of the RV Park that helped save my life.

Dad rallied from a shaky start in assisted living.

I had a fantastic and unique Christmas Eve.

I cooked some superb meals that were greatly appreciated.

I built about a dozen driftwood forts.

I ran into someone distressed and mysterious in the parking lot of a grocery store in Gold Beach and believe I can help this person transcend some of her problems.

There was one sizzling hot summer night on the lawn.

I oversaw the production of my aunt’s memoir.

I played golf for the first time in almost 30 years and played pretty damn well.

I honored my promise to Smoky Epley and published his writings and our unique story of collaboration.

I heard from Rachel D.

I scored a few golden items from thrift stores.

I retained my faith in American government.

I stained the deck and spruced up the yard.

I helped my neighbors.

I kept my body reasonably fit.

I read about a hundred books and discovered the novels of Herman Wouk.

I produced and disseminated a zine that honored a homeless man swept away by high water on Johnson Creek.

I met a reader of The Old Crow Book Club and became good friends and I’m assisting him on a podcast project about the homeless in Portland.

I saw a beaver in the wild.

I got a dog.

I saw three coyotes in the city.

No tarot reading in a driftwood fort.

Didn’t sell that many books.

Trump is still around.

I lost connection with my great literary collaborator.

Experienced various flaking episodes from well-meaning people who didn’t follow up on their efforts to help the homeless.

Discovered the whereabouts of a special former student, who is severely mentally ill and homeless in Las Vegas.

Keith Richards hasn’t been knighted yet.

Oregon sportswriters didn’t do their jobs. They should have uncovered and exposed the dissolution of the Pac 12 conference long before it was a foregone conclusion. Easily the worst sports reporting fiasco in Oregon history. All people want to do anymore in this profession is opine—after the fact.

I didn’t get the tennis game going.

I didn’t see the Redwoods again.

Rachel D didn’t get back to me.

I didn’t make enough progress on the 90s novel.

Readers:

Two weeks ago I posted a story called Swept Away that reported on what I had learned about the man who was drown in Johnson Creek in early December. What you are about to read is the zine I produced to honor this man’s death and distributed in street libraries around the neighborhood where he died. I printed 100 copies and rewrote the text in the third person, which often makes a piece of writing exude more power. The cover art was drawn by the deceased man, Sean Struckman.

Swept Away

At approximately 7:30 AM on December 4, 2023, high water on Johnson Creek in SE Portland swept away a man under the Tacoma Street bridge, the site of a homeless encampment.

Television crews broadcast from the bridge site and interviewed a resident of the encampment. He said the deceased man was his best friend, a tattoo artist, and they’d tried to save him but the current was too wild. It was unclear from the reports whether the missing man resided in the encampment, but he was there nonetheless.

The man’s body was discovered by a downstream homeowner two days later. He has yet to be identified to the public, perhaps he never would be.

John Donne wrote, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

How are we diminished by the loss of an anonymous man swept away in a homeless encampment?

Maybe he’s not anonymous.

Five days after the death, if one looked down from the bridge to the encampment, it appeared as if a mortar round had scored a direct hit. People still lived there. Had they erected a memorial to the man? None was visible from the bridge.

A side street off the bridge offered closer inspection. There was a well-worn path that led straight into the encampment. At the entrance to the path were several neat piles of split firewood. This was grade A Doug fir, seasoned and obviously not harvested from the woods in the area. Someone in the neighborhood was supplying the encampment with firewood to help them survive.

Fifty feet from the encampment a newly razed former manufacturing plant on a roughly two-acre lot was being graded and prepped for future construction. A thought materialized: this was a perfect spot for a temporary homeless encampment. It had water and power already on site. It had sewer hookups. It was surrounded by concrete and railroad tracks. There wasn’t a residential dwelling in site. There were already 20 or 30 homeless people living along the creek and in nearby RVs within shouting distance. The neighbor across the street was a public golf course.

If there were any urgency addressing the emergency of homelessness in Portland, this site could host temporary housing for 30-50 people in purchased second-hand trailers and fifth wheels. It would take two weeks to set up. Hire an onsite manager. Establish a residents’ council and draw up some rules. No accumulating shit. One strike and you’re out.

Two men were coordinating the grading and surveying of the site. They were asked what was planned for the space.

“Storage units. We’ll break ground in a month and have them opened by late spring.”

Storage units. Heated no doubt. Oregon probably builds more heated storage units than it erects unheated temporary housing units.

Swept away. Such poetry in that vivid image; it has the force of a folk song commenting on monumental loss. (Think “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” or that song Dylan wrote about a bear mauling people at a picnic.) Someone should write a song for this drowned man. Someone should write an elegy for this drowned man. Someone should write something for him.

Here you are:

A day later, at a dive bar not far from Johnson Creek, the drowned man’s story emerged. It emerged courtesy of a bartender in the joint, who had spent two days consoling the distraught man who had appeared on television and spoke of the loss of his friend. The man alive was Kenny. The dead man was Sean.

Sean Struckman was around 40 years old. He had a young son who lived in the Portland area with his mother, Sean’s ex. Sean was not homeless when he died, but perhaps had been at some points in his life. He lived in an apartment in North Portland but often traveled to Sellwood for days at a time to hang out in the encampment with friends. Sean was a small man and exuded a skater sort of vibe. He admittedly suffered various mental illnesses.

Sean was a tattoo artist and tattooed housed locals and homeless people in the neighborhood in their residences. He was not affiliated with a shop. The bartender had bought some of his tattooing equipment for her daughter when she became interested in tattooing as a possible career. After Sean’s death, the bartender gave Kenny one of Sean’s tattoo guns as a memento of his friend.

Kenny told the bartender that Sean had thrown a seat cushion into the current before he ended up there. Kenny wasn’t sure why. He thought Sean might have jumped into the creek as a kind of joke or was just horsing around with nature, but he didn’t believe his friend committed suicide. Who really knew? No one would ever know for sure.

What Kenny did know for sure was the last time he saw Sean. The current was ripping and roiling and turned Sean momentarily around. Kenny got one final look at Sean’s face before he went under and it registered a look that he would never forget: I fucked up!

Kenny hadn’t slept since he’d last seen Sean’s face.

The next day in the bar more of the story unfolded, as did samples of Sean’s artwork.

A man was in the joint. He rolled up his left sleeve and displayed NATIVE inked on his forearm. He said, “I think I was the last person he tattooed.”

Sitting at the bar, the man recounted the night before Sean died. He had been with him near a convenience store. Sean was extremely upset about a breakup with a woman. He had two black eyes. In the morning, he ended up in Johnson Creek at flood stage and lost his life.

The bartender produced some of Sean’s artwork. They were two pencil drawings of women and were quite arresting. Had either of this flash made it onto someone’s body?

Sean’s art lives on other bodies. It adorns the cover and back cover of this publication.

The creek may have swept him away, but not his art, and thus not his spirit.