The 16-year-old who sat across from the table from me broke my heart.
Allen and I sat in a booth at Great Pacific, sipping coffee drinks and talking about his four months of homelessness for a story I was doing on homeless students (Life in the shadows, March 14). Calmly, matter-of-factly, he leaned back and described what it was like to live under a bridge during the months of September through December this year. He wore everything he owned – sweaters, long pants, shorts, shirts – and slept on the cold ground as cars passed overhead on
Allen winced as he recalled snowy, icy nights where frigid winds invaded his shelter.
“Why?” I asked him. "Why live like that?"
He told me a story of his family life. Because of a turbulent relationship with his step-father, he moved out and began living with his father and his new wife. That relationship was rocky, too. One day, he and his dad got into an argument that turned physical.
“He slammed me against the wall,” Allen told me. “I pushed him back.”
Allen took off on foot with a hastily-packed bag and walked 12 miles or so to Pendleton. Not knowing what to do, he just kept on walking around. He slept a little during the day, but was afraid to at night.
In September, he started living under the bridge by night and attending school by day. He didn’t eat at night, but filled up during school breakfast and lunch.
As Allen talked, a youth worker named Danny Bane, sitting next to Allen, watched him with intensity and injected his own questions.
“He’s so honorable,” Danny told me. “He’s not taking advantage of the system.”
I asked if Allen would take me to his bridge. He said he would, even let us photograph him for my story on homeless students if we didn’t show his face.
A few days later, we headed down there in my Toyota Prius. Allen, who’d never ridden in a Prius, peppered me with questions about how the car worked. As we drove, rain pelted the windshield.
“There it is,” he said, pointing at a place Tutuilla crossed the creek.
I pulled over and waited for E.J. Harris, one of the paper’s photographers, to pull up behind us. We all got out and slipped through a gap in the fence, our feet squishing in the mud. E.J. and Allen scrambled under the bridge for a photo.
Seeing the bridge, I felt like crying for this boy. A boy who lived outside during the cruelest months of the year, a mere quarter mile from my home – a home with an extra bedroom, heat and plenty of comfort food.
E.J., who lives within eyeshot of the bridge, later shared the same sentiments. He regularly steps out on his deck for a cigarette.
“I never saw him,” he said.
After the photo session, I took him to my house for lunch – hot soup and a peanut butter sandwich. He told me how he planned to graduate early and go into law enforcement. I told him how much respect I had for him – someone who’d managed to make it through such a raw and intensely difficult experience.
He thanked me profusely for lunch, like I’d given him filet mignon. I drove him back to school and sat idling, watching him walk up the sidewalk and through the school doors.
Allen’s now in a much better place, living with the family of a friend, but how many other Allens are out there, I wondered. I’ve read several different reports and I don’t think anyone truly knows.
I said an extra prayer that night – for Allen and for other teens living in cars, under bridges or couch surfing at their friends’ homes or otherwise living in the shadows. God help them, since we humans can't seem to do it ourselves.
