"Transience"

Kenneth W. Beek's epic memoir of his homeless years in Maine

illustration/Katy Finch and Bob Bergeron

Prologue: The Wallet

“How is it I haven't seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I've finally come to know it. Yes! everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquility. And thank God!”

— Leo Tolstoy, ​War and Peace

I turned forty years old playing bass guitar in a biker bar with a teenage garage band. I was legally drinking before the lead guitarist was born. We played together as Band of Bastards for a few years, and a source of great embarrassment for the boys was always my wallet. You see, I'd had the same old worn-out wallet since 1989.

By 2014, the band had disbanded but the singer and I would still occasionally see one another for various reasons, usually music- or drug-related, and my wallet still irked him. On Christmas, he brought me a present. What else? A beautiful new leather wallet.

I told him once again of the significance mine carried for me, how it was good luck. I told him he had no idea how much money had passed through the old fold of leather that looked so weathered. It was worn because it was well used. But he had given me a gift. What could I do? I had to accept.

I transferred the contents of my old faithful purse into my new wallet and went about business as usual — which was highly unusual business, as well as illegal. And the money came in, as it always had. A few days passed and I began to feel silly about the attachment I’d developed for the old one. I became rather fond of the gift from my young friend. It was a very nice billfold.

Come June, I was arrested. When I received the paperwork in jail I noted the date of the "controlled buy" that hemmed me up was one week after I received the Christmas present.

I no longer have either wallet.

After spending a couple of months in jail I agreed to a plea deal: two years of supervised release with two years of time hanging if I violated. Upon release I was enveloped by a deep depression. It seemed disturbingly clear I had been better off in jail, happier in jail, and I decided I didn't want to live anymore. Having been clean for nearly two months, I shot up a gram of potent heroin in an attempt to commit suicide. When I came to I was strapped to a stretcher.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"We just brought you back to life with a shot of ​Narcan​ and CPR," an EMT answered.

"Why?" I asked, enraged. "And where's my wallet?"

"You're not getting your wallet now," he replied.

"But you know I'm going back to jail! I need money!"

I never saw either wallet, or any of my other belongings, ever again.