Wanna know what a typical day in the life of a social worker is like? At least, way back when? Trigger warning. This is not for the meek, the weak, or those easily offended by reality. Certain words may be used, for example, quite possibly, one beginning with the letter "F".
It was a terrible neighborhood, mostly filled with desperate hill people who'd come north looking for work when the mines closed down. Clinging to honky tonk dreams, these folks were angry, rightly so, always on the verge of an explosion. A guy wearing a two piece suit could be a trigger. This morning began with a visit to Miz Esther Homewood, forty looking eighty (each line a crevice of deep disappointment), come north from Mudsuck, West Virginia (check it out) because there wasn't anything there to do except get drunk on applejack then get laid on the closest empty flatbed truck you could find. What I'm telling you, she told me. Mudsuck was so far below the poverty level that hard, cash money was as rare a sight as a polar bear walking down main street. You were wise not to flash it if you had it. As in so many Appalachian towns like this, big money mining corporations come in from out of state, squeeze the wealth out of the mountains, then take their wealth back home, out of state, anywhere but back where it came from. Black lung disease was not genetic, although damn near every man left behind had it. "Sixteen tons and wha'd'ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt."
Miz Homewood had three sons without a clue or care as to their fathers. When I got the case, two sons were in prison and a third, the youngest, was in reform school. She'd raised them all to be thieves, and incest was a big part of their upbringing. Her youngest was now up for release from reform school, and here I was, in a rickety hallway rejecting an aroma I could not recognize, knocking on her door, checking out his given address.
"Yeah? What?", she yelled angrily as the door flung open.
Nobody would ever have said about this woman that she was once beautiful. She wasn't. Right now, she was as ugly as she was angry. A man in dumpy drawers poured himself a cup of coffee from a tin percolator on the stove.
"What's'at, Mister?", she said ready for a fight.
"Liam Homewood?"
"What's he done now?"
"He's up for release, and this is his given address."
"Who give it to him?"
"We assume you did."
Miz Homewood yelled, "Get the hell out!" at the man with the droopy drawers, told him loud and clear, "Out!" He stumbled into his clothes.
"You know where I am," she said to him as he brushed between us on his way out the door.
"Liam's coming home?", she turned to me with a grin on her face. "That boy can lift a gold tooth right outta your mouth and you'd never even know it."
"You sound proud of that."
"Can you do it? Uh, huh. How long?"
"Two weeks."
"He told you he was gonna live here?"
"Will you take him in?"
"Jesus Christ."
"Is that a yes?"
She didn't want to take him but she would, so we talked about the logistics of re-entry - what to expect (She already knew that one); favorite foods; clean sheets. That's when she said to me she'd been taking care of Liam's pride and joy and how happy he'd be to see them. Pigeons. A flock of them. His. In a coop on the roof.
"We lost a couple but tell him they're mostly tip top."
We made a follow-up appointment for the day before Liam's release. Check things out. I'd be there to help.
That day came. Knock. Knockknock. Knockknockknock. Knockknockknockknock!!
The door swung open with a vengeance.
"Who the hell are you?"
A burly, half-dressed man walked in from the next room.
"Esther?" he offered.
"No problem. Go way." She waved him away. Her pits looked like they’d grown billy goat beards. He shrugged and left the room.
"Liam?" I said.
"What about him?"
"His discharge. Tomorrow. Are you ready for him?"
"Gimme a minute to think."
The place was filthy. Dirty dishes. Threadbare linoleum. You could've written your name in dust anywhere in the room.
"I been fixin' him a feast," she said with a toothless smile. "Smell that?"
I did.
"Gonna be delicious. Gonna be even more delicious tomorrow. Come for dinner. Take a look."
She opened the oven.
"Crispy," she said. "Crack the bones for the marrow."
She slid out a tray with twelve little pigeon carcasses, plucked bare, sizzling away, feet up.
She'd cooked her son's pigeons.
"Hunger's a bitch," she said - a statement not an apology.
Whatever I yelled I yelled loud enough for the burly guy to charge back into the room ready to start his day. She was laughing. I was not ready for this one. I was in the presence of madness.
"Go on back," she waved the hulk away.
He scowled but did as she said. I was speechless and backed towards the door.
"Where you goin', Mr. Two Piece Suit?"
"I'll have to talk to Liam to see where he wants to go."
"I mean where you goin' now?"
"Outta here, ma'am. We'll be in touch."
"Yeah. In touch." She sidled up to me (oddly, her breath smelled like peppermint) and said, "At least, they sent me a cute one this time. How 'bout you 'n' me? No charge."
I have no idea what I said or didn't say or thought or anything but getting the hell outta there. If this had been a movie, I'd have said something clever like, "Sorry, ma'am, that's not in my job description" or, "I have this terrible disease." or, if not threatened with immediate death, I might say something like "Lady, If you were the last...on earth..." You know the rest.
I'd backed out the door and had started down the hall when she came out with the hulk behind her.
"I'm gonna fuck you 'fore we're through," she yelled after me, this time laughing, cackling, crowing, I didn't know.
She was so damn certain it was chilling.
Nasty. What other word? Unclean? Nope. Vile? Stench? Nope. Nasty. As in "nasty taste","nasty smell","nasty sight", "nasty mess". Nasty. That's the one, the most disgusted I have ever been, before or since. Maybe somebody quick-smart like Billy Crystal could crank out a couple of good one liners. Except, it wasn't funny.
Liam went to a foster home after his release. Miz Homewood got jail time for assault and battery. She punched out a young woman who asked her to sign a petition to save the wild horses of New Mexico. I visited with Liam a few times then one day he was gone. Never saw him again.
He was a broken kid. I think about him when it's raining.
