Eulogy for a Hobo

by Tyler M. Carey

Last year, one of the early supporters of the idea of The Great Hoboes of New York passed away. He was twenty-five. We'll call him Thomas. This is his story.

I first met Thomas in our hometown school for the gifted. It was one of those affairs that was slapped together by an overactive board of education. The notion was that it was somehow beneficial to take all the outcasts in our neighborhood elementary schools and have them hang out for two days a week at the roughest and tumblest school in the district. There was no safety in numbers though. We nerds merely formed a much larger, much more tempting pool of targets for the bullies. Nowadays, the bullies are labeled as "at risk". Then, they were just plan sadists. It's wild how fifteen years changes the landscape so much.

Thomas was the only kid in the program who refused to become a victim. One day, a crew of the future Riker's Island Class of '96 accosted us near the jungle gym. They started shoving and calling us names. Most of us cowered and hoped that the bullies would grow tired and move onto another group of sheep to abuse. One kid called Thomas a "fudgepacker" - a name towards the top of the list of playground invectives at the time. Thomas stared the little creep down, and yelled, "Come within swinging distance next time you're going to say that, motherfucker! Ya hear me, ya little chickenshit?" The bullies backed off and didn't bother us for weeks. Even at the age of nine, I remember thinking that I was in the presence of greatness.

Our freshman year of high school, Thomas's father died suddenly of a heart attack. Thomas changed immediately. He went from being a wiseass with a chip on his shoulder to being a wiseass with no chip, and no boundaries whatsoever. As a gift, shortly after the funeral, his uncle got Thomas a ticket to see the Grateful Dead and a backstage pass. The next morning, Thomas showed up to school in a tie-dye t-shirt and a tam. He was full of dozens of stories from just one night with the Grateful Dead. "I think I'm going to go see them every chance I get," he said aloud in the cafeteria, to a group of kids who were gathered around him, like followers with their prophet. It was one of those moments that meant nothing at the time - just a kid with a goofy hat talking big. In hindsight, it was the start of something big for Thomas. When presented with opportunities from there on out, he ran with them. Shortly before his death, he figured that he saw about sixty or so Grateful Dead shows. Not many compared to many other deadheads, true, but Thomas only had a four-year window to see the Dead.

Thomas became the quintessential deadhead. He grew his thick hair so long and shaggy that he earned the nickname "Hedge". The only shirts he seemed to own were tie-dyes and retro seventies button downs. He got tattoos and even a tongue piercing, when he decided that the hippie image was passé. He was a forerunner of that neo-tribal look that became big in the mid-90s. The time that Thomas spent during the day telling stories about seeing dead shows was perhaps only eclipsed by the amount of time he spent every day taking in illicit drugs. I now think back to his shock at discovering that one of our fellow fourteen year olds had tried cocaine. One night, towards the end of his life, Thomas listed all the different drugs he'd tried during the intervening time period. I thought of myself as a party animal, but I hadn't even heard of some of the things he tried. During that intervening period, when I saw him growing wilder and wilder, it became obvious, that he basically only did things for the hell of it.

After we graduated high school, Thomas and I parted ways. He went off to a college in upstate New York to study theatre. I headed up to the Berkshires to become the hippie that I had always envied in him. Every once in a while, during my dreaded return trips to Long Island, I'd hear a little tidbit of what Thomas was up to. The stories were as diverse as could be. One year he was playing Hamlet in a respected summer stock theater. Another time I heard that he was spending all of his time in between classes standing in a park busking - doing magic, juggling, clowning. That of course led to the best of the stories - that Thomas had run away to join the circus. You don't really picture a full-grown man of twenty with a thick beard stowing away in the elephant car. The stories were of course exaggerated, but it was true that Thomas was touring doing clowning, fire eating and juggling. His act had reportedly taken on a dark, almost gothic tone. I immediately thought back to his tremendous appetite for drugs. I silently wished him well, and awaited the next round of adventure stories.

I graduated and grew up, and thought of Thomas every once in a while, usually when I took off my suit jacket and put a Grateful Dead bootleg in my tape deck. When I flipped through my high school yearbook one day, I opened to the center spread - a two page photo of our entire high school class standing on the bleachers in the football field. I searched out myself, and found me with pink glasses and an Elton John outfit on. (I was in the drama club. It had been a weird time.) It didn't take me long to find Thomas and his fluffy mane of hair. And despite having seen the photo a few dozen times, I finally noticed that Thomas had a joint hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Mr. Natural. Jesus. I shook my head and laughed.

On Independence Day, 2001, I sat at my computer and checked my email. I was just about to dash out to New Jersey to visit my brother. Up popped an instant message from some screen name that I'd never seen before. "Hey! Hey you!" it read. "Yeah, you, you twisted motherfucker! How many hands you got on the keyboard?" "Ha, ha, ha…" it added. I closed the window, figuring it was some sort of prank. Up popped one last message, "It's me, Thomas." Immediately, I knew it was Hedge. I got a few more messages from him, but they were all garbled. Finally, what must have been a different set of hands typed, "Call me at home," and provided me with a number.

"How…how…how are you?" the weak voice at the other end of the phone asked. We spoke casually for a few minutes, until Thomas explained that he was sick.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I...I...you see...I have this tumor. It's in my brain, and it's bad."

Thomas was only twenty-four.

Over the next few weeks, we hung out more than we had during high school. Thomas's huge 'fro was gone, replaced by two bald patches on the sides of his head, and a makeshift Mohawk. Two tiny dots were tattooed just behind his temples - the marks for the radiation technicians to line up during his all too frequent treatments. Our get-togethers were scheduled around his chemo and radiation treatments. Some of his motor coordination was gone, as was much of his memory. He remembered me clearly, but if I mentioned somebody we took a class with, it was doubtful that the name would register. One time, we flipped open our high school year book, and went face by face. There were individuals who I had completely forgotten - people on the far fringes of our social circles - who he remembered clear as day. Many folks who we had lunch with were foggy ghosts, though.

Thomas's reaching out to me was part of a very focused campaign on his part to get in touch with those he did remember, though. Sometimes when I showed up at his mother's house to watch The Sopranos and have cake, somebody I hadn't seen since shop class in 1993 would be there. One night, Thomas asked if I would drive him out on the Island to visit some guys we knew from high school who had just purchased a house. The last memory that I had of the ringleader of the group was seeing him around the time of our graduation. He was sitting in front of his parents' TV, watching a worn-out videotape of Blue Velvet. His face was mere inches from the screen, and he was reciting the dialogue word for word: "You're so fucking suave! So suave!" And here, more than six years later, was the same fella, sharing a mortgage on a Levitt house in Levittown with five of the skaters from high school, sitting mere inches from a TV screen, reciting the dialogue from Blue Velvet. "You're so fucking suave! So suave!"

The pot smoke was heavy in the living room, and Thomas and I escaped to the kitchen to avoid it; Thomas was fairly diligent about avoiding drugs during his recovery. Some people in our circle of friends had suggested that Thomas's drug use had directly caused his cancer. The doctors, however, said that that was so much Baptist bullshit. If pot and coke caused cancer, the wards of Mount Sinai would be full. No discounting that Tom's lifestyle hadn't been good for him, but I think it was more out of peoples' own sense of self-preservation that they tried to find some sort of mystery bullet that had caused Thomas's situation. If they walked the line, they reasoned, then this could never happen to them.

Into the kitchen stumbled one of our old crew. He was upset to see Thomas in such bad shape - he had lost more weight, and one of his legs was slightly withered. "He-Hey, bro," he said, going to the fridge. "Want a beer?"

"Nope," Thomas said. "I can't drink anymore."

"That sucks," said our buddy, opening his can, and trying to look solemn.

"But, you'd know that," Thomas continued, "if you'd bothered to visit me since I got sick." As scenes like this are prone to developing, everybody else had just walked into the kitchen as Thomas sunk this knife in. They froze.

"Hey," our buddy said, "I...I wanted to see you, but..."

"But what?" Thomas asked. His face, which was nearly hairless, grew bright red. "But you didn't like what you'd see? Tyler here at least visits me every once in a while. He brought me a Hot Tuna tape, and we watch TV on the weekends." Months later, when my visits became less regular, I would think back to that sentence. Out of my own fear, I had become just like the fella who didn't know shit about Thomas's condition, and didn't seem to care.

Thomas's chemo and radiation seemed to make some progress. Very little of his lost memory returned, but with effort, he was able to read brief blurbs of text. Most importantly, his confidence - that cockiness that I had respected at the age of nine - seemed to be returning. One evening, while we drove around in my car, to visit a friend of ours from high school who tended bar at an Italian restaurant, Thomas asked, "So, when can you get me a job?"

"Huh?" I asked, startled.

"I gotta get out of that house. My mom's done everything she can to make it comfortable for me, and I appreciate that, but I've gotta get out of that house. It's just me, the cats and the fucking TV all goddamn day."

"Well, sure, I know some headhunters who could get you started..."

"No," Thomas said, "I want to be a salesman."

"I'm sure you could probably get some sort of telemarketing gig to start..."

"Come on, man! I'd be good at it! You know me, I'm really suave on the phone."

"Doing a Barry White impersonation for everyone who calls doesn't count."

"Sure it does," he said. "Who wouldn't buy things from Barry White over the phone?"

"If I sold lube and condoms for a living, maybe, but I work with professionals, Thomas."

"Professionals who need a laugh in the middle of the day."

I sighed. "If you want me to set up an interview, I will. I'll help you put together a resume, if you want."

"Awesome!" Thomas smiled, and we drove on. After a while the smile faded.

"Whatsa matter? Want me to change the CD?"

"No, I love the Dead, bro. It's just, I don't think I wanna be in a cubicle."

"No sweat, man. I didn't even set up the interview, yet."

"No, it's just that I miss clowning. I miss breathing fire."

"You never really told me much about that. What was that all about? Was it performance art? Did you just like making kids smile?"

Thomas laughed softly to himself. "Dude, I just enjoyed breathing fire, juggling and having a good time. Being able to do that in front of people, or even better with people... Man, I miss having an audience..."

"You got me and everybody else you went to school with, Tom."

"Yeah, but...I was just taking off. I was supposed to do a small tour this past summer, and then this happened." He shook his hands, voluntarily this time.

"You'll be back out there on the road before you know it," I said, knowing that it wasn't true.

"It's amazing how shit fucks with your plans," Thomas said.

On September 9th, 2001, Thomas, his buddy Alex, and I watched Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers on HBO. The story of a band of citizen soldiers, young men like ourselves, in the midst of a huge global war seemed so foreign to us that it was almost hackneyed. Despite the ton of war movies we'd all seen, this one hit home for some reason. "Man," Alex said, "I'm glad we'll never have to be involved in a war."

Thomas laughed one of his sardonic laughs. "Hey, you never know what'll happen. All I know is that I'll sure as fuck never have to fight in any war."

The following week's episode of Band of Brothers hit home more than anything I'd ever seen.

One evening, I got home to find a rabid voicemail from Thomas. "Dude, when you get in, call me! Like as soon as you get in!" I had some supper and was preparing for a shower when the phone rang again. "You'll never guess who called me today!" Thomas shrieked, like a teenage girl.

"Bob Weir?" I joked. Why would the only surviving guitarist from the Grateful Dead call Thomas?

Thomas went even more ballistic. "Better! Phil!"

"Phil Lesh? The bassist for the Grateful Dead?"

"Yeah, man! My bro works at a radio station in Colorado, and Phil came in for a studio appearance, and my bro was all like, 'Dude! My bro's got cancer!' and Phil's like, 'Let's give him a call!' so Phil fucking called me, man! Phil!"

Phil went on to send Thomas tickets and backstage passes to see him and his solo band at Jones Beach during the Fall. It was like something from the Make A Wish Foundation. During one of the encores, Thomas called me on his cell phone, and did the ubiquitous concert bit of holding his phone up so I could hear the show with him.

Just shy of a year later, I went to visit Thomas before my August vacation in Vermont with my family. He had shaved his head completely again, as well as his face - the intermittent goatee and mohawk were gone. His leg was acting up again, and it seemed to be threatening his ability to do his job. Thomas had gotten a gig doing landscaping at the park that was up the block from his house. When they had kids from the local camp there for activities, the counselors would let Thomas do magic tricks for the kids. Despite his now many ailments, Thomas's showmanship and delivery were apparently still top notch. I could just picture him hiding a coin in one hand, offering his closed fists to the kids, opening them to reveal nothing, and then spitting a stream of coins out. "That's where they were hiding, ya dummies," Thomas would joke, laughing along with the kids. All that seemed to be coming to an end, though.

Thomas limped across the kitchen, and told me about how he and a few of our friends from high school were going to drive out to Troy, Wisconsin to see the Grateful Dead reunion concert. The thought of him sleeping in the back of a van like this made me uneasy. I had also recalled Thomas's stories about going to some head-type shows and becoming uncomfortable with all the drugs around. He had left fairly instantly from a show at Irving Plaza after the joints came out. I wondered how he would escape a huge outdoor venue with multiple stages.

We spent most of the night looking over the high school yearbook. Despite his huge gaps in memory, he still remembered extraordinarily intricate anecdotes and absurd bits about folks who I had always considered innocuous. Even the lowliest of nerds who never said 'boo' in our gym classes were grist for Thomas's mill.

At the end of our nostalgic evening, Thomas and I hugged. It wasn't like this hadn't happened before, but for some reason the hug just kind of hung there. I was headed off for a few weeks, and so was he. We'd see each other again soon enough.

I regret that I didn't call him as much as I probably should have. After Vermont, I left a message or two, and then the next thing you knew Fall was underway, I'd been promoted, I'd met a new girl, lots of things going on... We chatted once in September, if I remember right. A "Let's get together some weekend soon," kind of thing. He sounded frail, but spirited. When I'd be visiting my folks in my old hometown, I'd drive past the street that led towards Thomas's neighborhood, and I'd be tempted to turn. Then I'd realize that I had been an asshole and not called him for a few weekends, and that it would be rude to just swing by. I was also scared. Seeing Thomas was always energizing in one fashion or another, but it also chipped away at some of my spirit. He was the loud cut-up from high school, and he was dying fifty or sixty years too soon.

Jorma Kaukonen, one of Thomas's favorite folkies, was on the radio one evening, and I made a tape of the concert for him. I set it on my dresser to give to him some weekend, soon.

Two weekends later, I came home from dinner with my folks (I had passed the usual turn off towards Thomas's house, and thought, "Man, I should call Thomas..."), and I found a voicemail from Thomas's brother. Thomas had died early that morning, and funeral arrangements were already prepared. He asked that I call any of Thomas's mutual friends that I could. I've always been a delegator - I called a friend who stayed in better touch with most of our friends than I did, and suggested she spread the news. It was callus and insensitive, but I couldn't bear to make a series of calls that started, "Hey, so-and-so, remember me? Yeah, I'm fine, too. I'm a little taller, a little balder... So, did you hear about Thomas?" I just couldn't do it. The next morning, I called the bartender who Thomas and I knew. He had already heard, and was still recovering from the initial shock.

I went to the wake that next night, and it was packed. Thomas would have been proud - his last performance was standing-room-only. I think he also would have been a little angry. A priest stood up and stole his thunder for well over a half-an-hour of the wake, telling not necessarily complimentary anecdotes about the deceased - a real bullshit Catholic guilt trip. Also, while Thomas would have been thrilled to see half our high school class showed up, there was a large majority of less-than-desirables who seemed to be grandstanding. Guys who had emotionally abused Thomas when we were kids were standing there crying like children while their girlfriends comforted them. Certainly Thomas's death hit everyone who knew him well, and many who didn't know him well, but I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth. I felt like people were going there to mourn his death, and not to mourn him. There were no Big Chill moments in the air.

I got in my car, drove off onto the brilliantly lit boulevards of Long Island and played "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and then some Grateful Dead. I passed our high school. I passed the abandoned water treatment plant where we'd sneak to drink and pass joints when we were kids. I zoomed out along the coast, past Jones Beach Amphitheatre. I just kept going until I hit a late night diner, half way out to the Hamptons. I had a cup of coffee and grieved alone for a guy who had taught me not just to mock authority, but to mock everything. It's probably still not too late to run away with a rock band, to join the circus... I just wish that I'd joined Thomas for the trip.