What Ever Happened to Chris Olsen?
by Carol Franks
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the
main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is
the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if
a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any
man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in
mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne (Meditation 17, 1624)
Chris Olsen is dead. He didn’t want to die. I don’t
know if he thought much about his purpose in life, but he
has made me aware again of my own.
On January 9, 2004, Portland, Oregon,
was encrusted in an icy snow so hard that no one, no matter
how large, could
break through it to walk. Somehow an ambulance backed into
the east side of the apartment complex, where I have lived
for over a decade. I couldn’t see who was being loaded
into the back, but when the ambulance drove away, the siren
wasn’t blaring and the lights weren’t flashing.
That meant that there was no hurry. The passenger was dead.
I don’t know my neighbors very well. The apartments
are low budget and nondescript. Let me illustrate what I
mean by nondescript. Two or three years after I moved in,
I came home one night, cold sober, and pulled into the apartment
complex to the west of mine. I parked my car in what I thought
was my space—in front of a juniper hedge. I went to
a door that I thought was mine, put the key in the deadbolt,
and tried to open the door. My key didn’t work. At
that moment, I noticed that the apartment number—same
style, same positioning—wasn’t mine. I pulled
my key from the deadbolt and fled.
As I fled, I heard the apartment
door open, and a young man’s voice barked at me through the darkness, “Who
are you?!”
I froze. In the United States, many city dwellers have guns
for just such occasions.
“You’re never going to believe this,” I
began, “but I live in the apartment to the east and
. . .”
He laughed. “I’ve put
my key in your deadbolt, too.”
That’s what I mean by nondescript.
In such apartments, turnover is high. Only two or three
of my neighbors have
been here as long as I. My purpose in life has nothing to
do with acquiring better housing. Mine suffices.
On January 10, I learned that the
dead neighbor was Chris Olsen, a man in his early fifties
who had, in fact, lived
in the apartment complex longer than I. Over the years, Chris
and I had chatted by our mailboxes from time to time, mostly
about weather and cats (a mutual love), but sometimes about
bigger things—his allergies and heart trouble, my father’s
death, his night work at a printing office. He never mentioned
family, just whatever cat had moved in on him at the time,
always a savvy street cat, who could teach me to follow it
to Chris’s door to ring the doorbell so Chris would
let it in. His cats were always smart—survivors.
I speculated that the couple who lived next to me and asked
Chris to baby-sit their toddler were somehow related to him.
Chris ate lots of meals there, and the little boy adored
Chris, addressing him as Uncle Chris. After Chris died, I
was surprised to learn that the people next door were good
neighbors to Chris, nothing more. Just good neighbors. Better
than I.
Chris was an odd man, perhaps what
people used to call a savant—someone with noticeable patches of brightness
and dullness. He took pride in living on his own, paying
his rent on time, being kind to children and other neighbors,
and caring for whatever half-feral cat that had claimed him
at the time. He was computer savvy and had worked at the
same job for over twelve years. He didn’t have a driver’s
license, but he could read. Sometimes, as he looked through
his mail, he read to me. I think he wanted to show me that
he could read. A few times he read something to me and asked
me what it meant. We chatted amicably about his junk mail.
Chris must have walked or bussed
to work, though I never saw him leave or come home. Sometimes,
I saw him shambling
like a large toddler to the Plaid Pantry, a twenty-four-hour
convenience store two blocks west of the apartments. Chris
wasn’t noticeably large, perhaps 5’ 9” and
190 pounds—boxy, but not obese, but his movement spoke
of marginal motor skills.
At one of our mailbox chats, I
learned that he had once been mugged and robbed on his
way to the convenience store;
another time, his apartment had been broken into and his
computer stolen. In the spirit of small talk, I told him
about the window peeper I’d had—and my 1985 Toyota
that had been stolen in 1995. Generally, we had little crime
in our complex, but no one was affluent. Chris and I never
talked about poverty. And we never talked about God or religion.
Or purpose. Chris had that emotional intelligence and recognizable
goodness that made children and stray cats love him. I respected
him.
On the other hand, Chris was, by
anyone’s standards,
odd. One late-fall day, five years or so before his death,
I had the sad duty of going to his apartment door to tell
him that his current cat, a long-haired, tuxedo tom that
Chris had named Pooter, had been struck by a car on Division
Street, which ran east and west in front of our apartments,
and was lying dead under the junipers. I tried to be tactful,
but Chris’s grief was instant and deep. Despite the
fall chill, Chris shuffled barefoot in his short, blue terrycloth
robe across the parking lot to the junipers to fetch Pooter.
As he walked, stunned, he talked, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh
no. Maybe it’s not Pooter. Maybe it’s some other
cat. Oh no. Maybe he’s not dead. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” I
was sorry I hadn’t simply disposed of Pooter’s
body.
As Chris bowed over Pooter, the
blue robe crept too high in back and fell open in front,
fully exposing his genitals
to me and to a few onlookers who had gathered. Chris petted
Pooter’s black-and-white fur and let his tears drip
onto the stiffening cat. The man that I had guessed was related
to Chris joined us. “Close your robe and stand up,
Chris,” he growled.
Chis stood, clutching his cat to his heart, and somehow
managed to close his robe. His grief had made him oblivious
to a small matter like public nudity, a nudity that was,
to those who knew him, asexual. He carried the dead cat into
his apartment and closed the door behind him.
A few days later, Chris thanked
me for letting him know about Pooter, and he insisted on
showing me a memorial he
had erected in his apartment. On his printer, he had produced
a large photo, poster-sized, of Pooter. The poster was on
the wall above a long, narrow table. The table held a variety
of small incense burners, a crucifix, and a white ceramic
bowl, probably Pooter’s dish. There was also a large
boot box on the table. I didn’t ask Chris what was
in it. I couldn’t smell anything dead, and Chris’s
apartment was clean, if cluttered. My eyes held briefly on
the crucifix. Perhaps St. Francis would take care of Chris’s
cat. “Pooter would like this,” I said. Chris
smiled serenely.
At other times, when my apartment
was too hot, I’d
open my secluded front door so the air would move. Many times
over the years, I’d be startled to turn toward my door
only to see Chris—inside my apartment—crouched
on his hands and knees, wearing his faded blue jeans and
worn tee-shirt, his thick glasses sliding down his nose,
looking under my daybed for my cat Jeremiah—just to
say hello to her. Generally, because I wasn’t expecting
to see a middle-aged man crouched on my floor, I’d
holler, “Jesus!”
“I’m sorry,” Chris would always say. “I
didn’t mean to scare you.” He always meant it,
genuinely. But, sometimes only days later, he’d startle
a “Jesus!” out of me again.
Chris was like that: simple with patches of brightness.
In November of 2003, two months
or so before he died, Chris had come into hard times. After
over twelve years of steady
work, he had been laid off. Despite the term “laid
off,” Chris knew the lay-off was permanent. At our
mailboxes, Chris told me the bad news. He added, “I’ve
lost my health insurance, too.”
I understood. Like Chris, I could
be laid off. Like him, I take pride in supporting myself,
in doing my job well.
Some 15 years ago, as I entered the Department of English
where I teach, the department chair told me, in passing,
that he had gone through the adjunct teaching applications
and 75 people were waiting for my position. He didn’t
mean anything by his statement. He just saw me and, on impulse,
said it, because he thought I might be interested. I know
I’m fungible; that is, at some level, I’m just
like any other quarter that goes into the pay phone. I have
been an adjunct at my current job for twenty-three years,
a teacher for thirty-four. Still, I feel unsure of my employment
future. I think that Chris had felt surer of his. Like Chris,
I’ve lived, from time to time, without health insurance;
unlike Chris, I don’t have a long-term, pre-existing
health problem that makes employers shy of hiring me. If
I ever become seriously ill, I don’t believe my employers
will renew my teaching contract. As many writers have suggested,
including Benjamin Cheever (Selling Ben Cheever, 2002), “Job
security [in the United States] is a thing of the past.” When
our jobs go, our health insurance goes. Chris needed his
heart medication.
“Are you eligible for the Oregon Health Plan?” I
asked. I thought perhaps he didn’t know about the option;
in 1994, Oregon’s Governor John Kitzhaber (M.D.) pioneered
the first state health care system in the country, part of
his effort to cover some of the forty-five million Americans
without health coverage (American Academy of Family Physicians,
2000).
“Not until the end of January. I’m cutting back
on my heart medicine, so it should last me until then.” Chris
was one of those waiting for eligibility.
“Does your new cat trigger your asthma?” I was
somewhat acquainted with his little gray tom, a flea-bitten
and unneutered street cat, who had already trained me to
ring Chris’s doorbell.
“No,” Chris said, “cats are about the
only thing I’m not allergic to.”
I should have pushed the issue,
but, at that time, I still thought the man who told Chris
to close his robe was family.
And I knew that the man’s wife was a pediatric nurse.
I recalled seeing Chris leave their home with leftover food,
probably food that he shared with his cat.
For lots of reasons, the current
theory of neighbors caring for neighbors is flawed. People
need public assistant—food,
clothing, shelter, and work that doesn’t cost them
their pride, something the Roosevelts understood. Chris had
pride; he’d earned it. He’d been a steady employee
and tenant as long as I’d known him. He was civil and
polite, gentle with children and with his pets. Chris could
no more afford to support the stray that depended on him
than his neighbors could afford to pay for the medication
and food he needed. While the wheels of the health-care process
were grinding along, Chris was dying.
After Thanksgiving, turkeys went
on sale at the local supermarket. For less than seven dollars,
I bought a 21-pound turkey,
baked it, trimmed an ounce or two off one side, and told
Chris that Jeremiah and I were “turkeyed out.” “Could
you and your kitty,” I asked him, “use a fresh
baked turkey?”
“We sure could.”
My gift felt puny. Not enough to
cover his needs. Here’s
another problem with the current political policy of replacing
social services with neighborly charity: the wealthier one
is, the less likely one is to be inconvenienced by a neighbor’s
neediness. If someone in a wealthy neighborhood goes belly
up, that family discreetly disappears into a poorer neighborhood.
In short, the least capable of lending financial assistance
shoulder the greatest part of public assistance. Even had
I known that Chris was only weeks from a fatal heart attack,
I couldn’t have bought his medicine for him. The most
I could do was to provide a bit of food. Chris was unwilling
to declare to his neighbors the depth of his need. He had
pride. English has lots of words for those who ask for charity:
free loaders, spongers, down-and-outers, beggars. As people
fall farther, losing their homes and moving under bridges,
the names become harsher: indigents, bums, ne’er-do-wells.
We have not enough words for public assistance, too many
words for the people who need it.
In mid-December, Chris returned
my roaster, shiny clean. “If
you bake another turkey and can’t use it all, be sure
to think of us.”
“I will,” I promised.
Before I got to another turkey,
a cold front moved into Portland. When I wasn’t snowed
in, I was in my office, where I had access to a computer,
writing. When I write,
I am filled with purpose. Sometimes, I worked all night.
Since my old cat had died in late July, nothing drew me home
except eating, sleeping, and bathing. I forgot about Chris.
On the morning of January 9, from
what I have pieced together since, Chris had a heart attack,
dialed 911 for an ambulance,
and managed to unlock his apartment door. The ambulance arrived
too late to save him. His scruffy cat watched as Chris was
put in the ambulance. When the cat got underfoot, trying
to stay with Chris, the manager of the apartments put the
cat in Chris’s apartment and locked it in. In the process,
the manager was badly scratched.
On the morning of January 10, a
Saturday, I stood by Chris’s
door and talked to the landlady, who is a retired, first
generation German immigrant, and her manager, a young man
who works two other jobs. They could find no next of kin,
no one to claim Chris’s body. Even the couple who had
befriended Chris knew nothing of his family. The landlady
said that Chris had been unable to pay his rent for the last
three months. “I told him not to worry,” she
said, “that he could make it right when he went back
to work. But, of course, he was worried.” She had tried
to find his family on the Internet, but there were too many “Chris
Olsens.” She had tried to call his former employer,
but the print shop was closed for the weekend. “We’ll
try to reach them again on Monday,”
The manager added, “I don’t know what we’re
going to do about his belongings. It’s like a garbage
scow in there. And I’m not tangling with that cat again.”
Half-heartedly, I spoke, “I’ll take the cat
home if you don’t need a second pet deposit.” I
didn’t have the hundred dollars.
“That would be great!” the landlady said. “I
was going to take it home rather than having it put down,
but we have a dog that doesn’t care for cats.”
None of us knew the cat’s name, just its personality.
It was a ruffian. The manager said, “I’ve seen
it take down a squirrel.”
“Maybe that’s why both of its ears are torn,” I
recalled.
The landlady let me into Chris’s apartment. “Garbage
scow” was an understatement. Cat urine was only one
of many dreadful smells. The floor was covered with clutter
too busy to identify. I found the cat in Chris’s bedroom.
It recognized me and let me carry it to my apartment.
I wasn’t quite ready for another cat. By fall, I thought
that I might have money for another pet deposit, neutering,
shots, litter, food—in short, luxury items. When I
had tried to picture my next cat, I often thought of two
kittens—perhaps a white one and a gold one, or maybe
an Abyssinian (they like water) or a Siamese (they’re
keenly intelligent). I hadn’t pictured anything like
this ragged-eared tom. He was the antithesis of my last cat,
an urbanite, a spoiled calico who used my toilet, drank from
a crystal goblet, and disdained anything messy. This fellow
was a thug, a street cat who scoffed at a litter box, drank
from gutters, and ate like a pig, splattering half-and-half
cream (his first luxury item) on my walls and snuffling his
food around his dining area. He wasn’t quite ready
for a new human; he wasn’t quite ready for civilization.
Chris died on Friday, January 9,
of a massive coronary. Five days later, the landlady found
a nephew in Walport,
a short distance from Portland, to claim Chris’s body
and handle his “estate.” As the nephew, a bright,
pleasant man, excavated Chris’s estate, I talked with
him. He and his wife were relieved not to have to take Chris’s
cat, “We have three already,” he said.
Standing at the door, I looked
again at the horrible mess of Chris’s apartment, the dwelling of a man who had
given up trying to fend for himself—and even for his
cat. He could give his cat shelter and love, but little food,
no litter box, no health care. Still, the cat had been satisfied
to stay with Chris under those conditions. And he had tried
to get in the ambulance with Chris. The cat knew Chris better
than any of us did.
I’ve since named the cat Hank, and he has installed
himself in my heart. Cats can do that fast. On April 1, two
to three months after Chris’s death, Hank told me something
big about Chris. We walked together to the manager’s
apartment to deliver our rent check. Hank stopped on Chris’s
doorstep, looked up at me, and paused briefly to see if I
would ring the doorbell.
“Chris is gone,” I said. “You’re
my cat now.”
Chris’s death diminishes
us. Chris had kept hope as long as he could. His needs
were simple: he needed his job
back, so he could pay his rent and electricity, buy food,
and take care of his cat. He needed medication for his asthma
and his heart. He needed good neighbors. He wanted to live.
All of this, he was denied. First came unemployment; then
the resulting poverty wore him down. Then his heart gave
out.
Recently, I read a book by David
K. Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
For the last five or six years, Shipler has been looking
into the lives or the “working poor” in the U.S.
in order to “unravel the tangled strands of cause and
effect that led to their individual predicaments.” He
prefaces his book as follows:
Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of
rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift
them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in
turn, hold them back. The term by which they are usually described,
“working poor,” should be an oxymoron. Nobody who works hard should
be poor in America.
Shipler concludes his profile of the lives of the working poor in the United
States by observing, “Workers at the edge of poverty are essential to
America’s prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral
part of the whole. . . . It is time to be ashamed.” It is, in fact, time
to be outraged.
Copyright © Carol Franks
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