Alvin's Story - The Ugly

Alvin asked me to retrieve a Kool-Aid packet from his bag, consigned to our office for the night. He told me he’d come to own such an off brand Kool-Aid, “Lemon Chill,” while in jail by accident. Then things took a turn for the darker.  He asked me if I wanted to see something I had never seen before. I acknowledged that I did, praying that it wasn’t going to be African-American genitals. Alvin, sitting next to me in his wheel chair, leaned forward in the seat and raised up the back of his shirt…I had never seen a more mutilated body, still living. Deep scars covered every inch of the grown man’s body. As I probably gawked at this strange site, Alvin began to speak about the number of times he had been shot and stabbed. He claimed to have been shot sixty-three times, a number I found astonishing and very hard to believe. Yet, looked at his skin I could not doubt the sheer volume of spots where you could tell incisions had been made. I did not push him to tell me how it happened. Alvin next told me how he wished he could cry anymore. According to him, when you get to be as old as he was, probably late 60s or early seventies, you can no longer shed tears. I wondered if this was not a function of old age, but of the strange red discoloring and bulging appearance of his eyes. He says high blood pressure will do that to a man. He told me that he and his sister spoke every day while he was in jail. They had always been “like this,” Alvin says, as he raises two fingers wrapped around each other in unity. The first day he says he did not speak with his sister was when he was transported to the hospital, and was constantly drugged while there. Alvin says, slowly now, that on his first day out of the hospital, the day I met him, he called his sister’s house for the last time. The phone was answered by a man. It was his sister’s son-in-law. Asking for his sister, the man hands the phone over to another woman, Alvin’s niece. Worried now that something was amiss, he listens to a stifled sob through the receiver. His niece goes on to say that her mother had passed away nearly three weeks ago, now. She says she is sorry repeatedly, that she tried to tell Alvin. She says she called the jail on caller i.d., but the receptionist told her she could not deliver such a message.

Alvin says he cried out, morning his sisters death. An overwhelming feeling of guilt at his ignorance of her passing has not passed him yet. He wishes he could cry. He is in such pain: the blood clots, his sister’s loss to cancer, his own uncertain future with the court system. He wished he had family, but no. The man is alone.

Alvin's Story - The Bad

Considering all of the good fortune that had befallen Alvin, I did not understand why this man was in such a bad state. He told me about his most recent stint in jail and how the system had screwed him over again. The story goes that Alvin was at the Superbowl this year in Indianapolis when the police picked him up, simply for being there. (Alvin was particularly vague on this matter). They took him to jail, and next transferred him into the county penitentiary. While in the pen it became evident that Alvin was becoming very sick. The sheriff had him taken to a local hospital where doctors diagnosed Alvin with multiple blood clots in his legs. Having no money and no insurance, the hospital would not operate on his legs. They leter released him, after two and a half weeks. It has now been a month that Alvin had been in state custody, I yet to find out why, exactly. The very next day, the state rove Alvin back up north to the Tippecanoe county courthouse for a hearing; however, because the hospital released him late in the day, Alvin was unable to make it to his trial. He planned on returning to the courthouse, after a night here, the very next day. At this point in time, Alvin was also unsure as to how he would retrieve his power chair from the hotel in Indianapolis where he’d left it, when he had left to “go to the Superbowl,” and subsequently arrested. 

Alvin's Story, The Good

He told me about life growing up in Gary, Indiana. I heard a lot about his life, during and after the period in which his brother played NFL football for the Buffalo Bills. His brother lived outside of Buffalo, in a largely Jewish community, in the penthouse suite of an upper class apartment building. Alvin described the room in vivid detail, with a Jacuzzi, and full bar stocked with beers and spirits from around the world. There was a massive floor to ceiling TV set; the living room decorated with five waist-high, NFL themed, celebratory mugs-each uniformly filled to the brim with either silver dollars or other specialty coins. I heard tales of nights Alvin spent on the town with his girl, often living off backstage or courtside tickets some of Alvin’s brother’s friends would give him. He told me about how stingy his brother was with the money he had earned. While the brother would buy mink coats for himself, he never gave Alvin cash. The brother provided a roof over Alvin’s head, and he put food on the table; but, Alvin always felt that he should be entitled to more. The brother would set Alvin up regularly with pro teammates of his on small jobs around their mansions that would pay exorbitant amounts of money.

Reflection on last night

Last night was a whirlwind of crazy. No sooner had I posted my last blog did a wheel chaired man, named Alvin Martin, come straight up to my table. I had spoken to the man earlier, after he nearly ran me over while backing up out of closet elevator. I could tell immediately that this man was in a bad way. Asking me to roll him over to the check-in counter, he uttered a long, low groan of pain. Later on in the evening, Alvin-being a man of considerable size- asked me to ensure he received enough to eat, after his first helping of one ham & cheese, or pb & j sandwich. I hadn’t been able to help him out at the time because the boss figured there was not enough sandwiches lift for all to have seconds. Being “fair” is very important here. So when Alvin rolled up to my side last night, I was unsure of his intentions but assumed they involved more food. Instead, I heard a fascinating story made up of the high and low points of this man’s life. 

Live from the shelter!

Good evening, everyone! I am currently serving my shift as night watchman/sentry, in the cafeteria area of Lafayette Urban Ministries. There are three of us volunteers tonight. The other guys names are JT and Phil, both chiseling away at 178 hour community service requirements after receiving DUIs. They’re both really easy going and cool to work with; whenever I have a question regarding what I need to do they’ll show me or just let me know. I guess I can forget all about the training, because the actual volunteer work is nothing like the training lady described. The first words my supervisor, Tim (a 28 year old California native, with a medical-marijuana card), said to me were, “Marcus, you go through that training?” Assuming that he was going to ask me to perform one of the tasks so carefully outlined in our volunteer handbook, I too enthusiastically replied, “Yeah, I took the class!” Tim promptly shouted, “Well forget all about it! I do things differently,” and walked off into the kitchen. 

First Day

Tonight’s the night! It has been a month and a half since the training session I wrote of last. I wish there was an available evening sooner, but there wasn’t. At this facility, volunteers get credit for ten and a half hours per night; thus, many people come here for mandated community service, to knock-out 200 hours quickly. These folks will reserve many nights each week, until their quota is left. This creates two problems. For one, the massive blocks of time already taken, by the community service people, often discourage new volunteers by setting the start of their service back by months at a time. Secondly, while it is great for the shelter to have so many willing volunteers, there is a high turnover ratio among the community service volunteers-since they’re only serving at the court’s request- which leads to many hours of repetitive training for the supervisors. 

Anticipation

So I'm a few days away from doing my first service hours for Lafayette Urban Ministries, and I'm kind of nervous. I already went through the 2 1/2 hour long training session, in which this ultra-conservative Lutheran woman droned incessantly about how strict the policies are here. There are a lot of them too. I'm kind of worried that I'll forget something important or mess-up somehow. There were about a dozen folks in the training session and I wonder if I’ll ever work with them…This service runs from 8:15 pm to 7:15 am, the next morning. I hope I’m able to get some sleep in a room full of other volunteers. Also, I got “hit on” by an attractive upper-20something year old as we were wrapping up the session; I wonder if we will ever be scheduled for the same evening.