Tenor

Tenor was a client when I was doing street outreach. He was a client of all. Every social service agency in Nashville had been burned through. I think everyone in the “biz” knew him. Notorious. He was ill, addicted, violent and completely engaging.

I was assigned to him one day. Asked to go to another part of town and find my way to the woods behind the home improvement store. I stood at the edge of the trees and called my husband at work. Someone needed to know exactly where I was — alone. “If you don’t hear from me in 30 minutes…”. That kind of call.

I held my breath and dove in, following a vague clearing through until I saw signs of a man. Living in a tent burned through from trying to cook meth on a propane stove.

Tenor was in baggy jeans hanging on his slight hips and a hospital gown all opened in the back. I always thought he kind of looked like an ugly version of Paul Bettany. Medical ID tag still on his wrist. I think this time may have been from an overdose, or a sobriety attempt, or a routine beating that he deserved. He was surprised to see me but didn’t care who I was. We went to the grocery nearby. I was glad to be anywhere out of the woods.

I forget the real reason I was supposed to check on him, but loaded him up with anything he wanted. This was a part of town not unfamiliar with poverty yet Tenor was always out of place. Loud, wobbling. Forgetting where he was. Grabbing things here and there and tossing them in a cart. He wanted a roasted chicken from the deli. Of course you can have that, sweetheart. I was like a new adoptive mother, satisfying an infant with needs I wasn’t equipped for. Please just don’t yell or hit.

He said he’d been locked in a closet when he was a kid. Abused. And now he had a little girl who screamed at him in his head all the time. And men in metallic suits would find him and beat him at night. And that one of many major country music stars would take him to AA. I think that last one was real. Well, it was all very real to Tenor. So it was all real.

He burned through all my outreach friends, sometimes violently, threatening. A masterful manipulator. He burned through Nashville, country star and all, to the point we worked to get Chattanooga or Memphis to take him. I think that happened for a while.

The last time I was with Tenor, he’d been allowed to stay in a shed behind a shelter. He started a fire in the hay to keep warm. Nearly burned the thing down. One of his primary outreach workers and I went to get him a few days before Christmas. We had to drive him far enough away so that he wouldn’t find his way back and exact the revenge he was threatening on the shelter residents — or that they wouldn’t get back at him for the fire and everything else. We got him some rum. Give the baby a bottle. It’s what he wanted — and needed — to live. He would die if he stopped. And I got him eggnog. And we left him in the park.

Like taking a dog out to the country and driving away. No one can help you anymore. You’ve bitten us all and we’re in triage.

The heart breaks and doesn’t completely heal from never helping our friend move outside a hurricane.

Tenor died a few days ago. I don’t know what finally bested him. I’m selfishly sad because I found hope in knowing he was surviving fires and pill cocktails and beatings and elements and a positive status and unknown horrors. He helped me believe we could all survive more than we knew.

Goodbye Tenor. You were many things. And you are greatly loved.

“God is a wild old dog
 Someone left out on the highway
 I seen him running by me
 He don’t belong to no one now”
 Patty Griffin