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54 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 12.14 hen Travis returns to Camp 211 from jail, back from his punishment for violating an emergency protective order (he says he was walking with his ex down the street), he tells the Camp 211ers he's been on vacation. Te Keys. "Tey were sure holding the keys all right," Larry says. Later, Travis says, "Camping ain't like it is in the brochure. I've seen 'em canoeing in the brochure. If I knew they were sending me here, I wouldn't have come. I'm gonna sue my travel agent." ate used a baseball bat. Bunted it hard into the Army Surplus Store front window, bottom right corner. It was pretty much a straight shot to the bulletproof vests near the back of the shop. He took two of the folded vests and entered the 11:30 p.m. quiet of downtown St. Joseph, Missouri, his hometown north of Kansas City. It was one of those "Hey, babe, don't worry about it; I'll fgure it out" things. Nate had lost his job in shipping and receiving at Walmart. His girlfriend at the time was two months pregnant. Money was tight. He fgured he could sell the vests for half price, $600 each, to someone in the "'hood." But after a week, no takers. After two, the cops. (His girlfriend eventually had a miscarriage at four months.) Tree and a half years in correctional and diagnostic centers and then parole. But Nate couldn't do parole. After prison, he says he "didn't give a fuck." He smoked a lot of weed. Drank. Nate was back to the crazy ways of the days after his frst girlfriend died in a car crash when he was 18. Nate crashed metaphorically. It was a volatile relationship, but it was love. "Brooke '85-'04" is tattooed on his left shoulder, his only ink. All in all, Nate did six years time and was homeless for an eight-month stint, sleeping in abandoned houses. He says he doesn't like the dorms in shelters because they remind him of prison bunks. "You'd be hard pressed to tell the diference," he says. It was a long walk from Batesville, Indiana — where he'd moved for a girl — to Louisville, which he picked arbitrarily. Te only thing Nate knew about the city beforehand was horses and tiny souvenir baseball bats. He didn't have enough money for a bus ticket, though he'd been working at a factory on the metal-stamping press. He says he had enough for a couple packs of smokes and a 20-ounce Coke. It rained three of the four days he spent walking. He'd duck in places here or there for sleep. Once he slept for three hours under a bridge by a creek. It was pouring. Mosquitoes kept waking him up. He doesn't get it about mosquitoes. Do they have a point? sually, Camp 211 goes as a group to Bologna Alley, the nickname for the Cathedral of the Assumption's Sandefur Dining Hall on Fifth Street, but Larry wanted to get out early this late-October morning. Te others decided to stay at camp. Not even 11 a.m., he walked with Nate to Main Street, then alone caught a free trolley going west. Nate kept walking to the Franciscan Kitchen on South Preston Street. Both places are open for lunch on weekdays and serve anybody who's hungry. Bologna Alley has bologna sandwiches. It's usually chicken at Franciscan. (Te Coalition's booklet of street tips lists nine places open for lunch, providing the times and addresses for each.) Te cathedral's bells ring at 11:30 and already Larry and 26 others are waiting. It's sprinkling. Some teenagers walk up with their vibrant ball caps fipped to the side or backward. Here it's a mix of street sleepers, campers and those in permanent housing or shelters. Once inside, Larry eats everything in order: fnishes his soup before he starts on the bologna sandwich and ends with cherry cobbler. When he leaves, he lights a cigarette. He's been smoking since he was 12 growing up in Louisville. He's got a bad cough that wakes everyone up at camp in the morning. Despite this, he says he's healthy, OK? Despite his past with a dope addiction that sent him state to state to state, breaking into drugstores for morphine and eight-ounce bottles of "cocaine" (actually a numbing agent prescribed for babies' teething troubles), he says he's healthy. (He got locked up multiple times for these crimes, including fve years in an Indiana penitentiary.) Despite the occasional seizure and once walking out of St. Joseph's Infrmary in only his hospital gown to drink at Freddie's on Broadway with the whole ass of him showing, he's healthy, OK? Despite getting into many fghts downtown, many stitches, he doesn't need any aspirin, OK? Once a brand-new car coming out of downtown's Brown Bros. Cadillac hit him. His legs were so bruised they looked like someone paint-brushed them black. His nurse cussed and cussed him, he says, shouting, "You son of a bitch, you ain't quittin' on me!" Tank God for her. He wouldn't have been able to walk otherwise. He receives a Social Security check for disability benefts each month. Some of that goes toward all that beer. Now that he's older, he uses a cane. Bets he has six of them lying around camp. He'll set one down in the dark and Brandy or one of the guys will have to help him fnd it. Today's is plain silver. He uses it to board the trolley headed home. Back at 211, things are in disarray. Brandy and Younger Matt are the only people here when Larry returns. Usually the group keeps stuf straight around here. But two Louisville Metro Police Department ofcers came to the camp the day before yesterday and said the campers had to go. Tey don't belong here. It's considered trespassing. Trespassing is illegal. Last night got a little raucous because of the news. Some got good and drunk. Today there are a bunch of clothes in the fre, a couple of lawn chairs. Te fre was so big it melted a bit of Older Matt's tarp. His tent was closest to the fre, but he moved it this morning. He's gone to a spot in the woods by himself. Nate will too, eventually. He'll borrow a shopping cart from another camp, load up shop, and walk 45 minutes down the road to solitude. He needs tranquility for a bit. "Peace is an ongoing process," he says. He's 29 but an old soul. Tough he talks to his mom every now and then with his First Links phone, he never mentions his living situation. She'd worry too much. He says he wants to fnd a job, save for an apartment, including the deposit and "I'll vote for whoever gets rid of the mayor we've got now," Curtis says. "'Cause he wants to get rid of the homeless." W N U