“Beaten to death” is just a phrase on the news till you really think about it. Beaten with fists until you die. This weekend George Faultain was beaten to death.
I really try to not get preachy here. This isn’t some social change soap box. You really don’t have to read this because reading it will not really accomplish anything. I am just in a funk and it seems wrong to write about ice roads and lynx hides and huskies when something so significant is dominating your thoughts.
I knew George, and I know his friends from the corner where the bottle department meets the Rona. His hair was grey and he smiled a lot. I could never give him a ride in my truck because he was a man, but I tool his sister and cousins. He didn’t ask for money, but a smoke was appreciated every now and then.
His real name wasn’t George, of course. I cannot use his real name because even after death, a man’s name means something. When his family searches the internet for a news story or something when they find out he is dead, I don’t want this post to come up. But seeing as he was homeless, I doubt a news story will ever come up. There won’t even be a police file.
I guess a person could say that this is the way that life goes for a street person. He didn’t have a job, lived off of free meals and begging. He was drunk as often as he could be. His fists didn’t quite close all the way because annual frostbite had killed off the nerve endings. His nose was flat from being broken countless times. He was not an angry man- very few of these guys are. But he was a man who didn’t want to take part in society the way he was told. He was unable to ‘cope’ with a life of systemic abuse. When you ask George what he’s been up to, he says “just havin’ a laugh.”
George was beaten up really badly two weeks ago. Badly enough to get angy. One of the last conversations George had was with his friend Randy. George wanted to stab the guy who beat him up, who had knocked out his teeth and left him swollen for days. George had a plan. Randy told him not to do it, that it wasn’t worth it to end up in jail.
It amazes me that these guys don’t want to go to jail. They are sleeping under cardboard at -30 and would forgo the opportunity for a warm bed and real meals to maintain their freedom. Especially in the native guys, that sense of freedom is integral to their identity. As long as they can come and go as they please, they have hope. Randy gave George the money he had and sent him to the liquor store for a cure-all.
A few days later George was beaten to death. George had let go of his anger and carried on living. A few days later, he found himself behind an unlit building, his known attacker close behind. Hard living, childhood polio, and frostbite leave many of the men with an awkward, stiffened gait. It would be easy to be overtaken. He couldn’t run away. His attacker closed in quickly.
When emergency services came to take away the body, the skull had been smashed in. Bones were broken. Organs ruptured. The body was put on life support for a day. Because he has no fixed address, they could not contact family to ask what should be done. His family is in Fort Chip. I know that. Randy knows that. Everyone downtown knows that. With no brain activity, though, it was a warm body taking up a bed. So on Friday morning that body was taken off life support. It was a decision made by a hierarchy of policies. I don’t resent it, though- there was nobody there to make the decision.
So now there is no George. For years he’d been living outside, making do. Even on the street there are respects to be paid to a man who didn’t steal and didn’t rough up women.
There is an economist living in one little part of my brain who says that it’s not as though this guy was contributing to society or anything. And that thought is a little startling because it reduces life to what a person does- it steals away the inherent value of breathing and thinking and conversations over shared cigarettes. There is a family out there who just lost a brother and a father and an uncle and may not even know it.
I think about the kids that George had; the years between him and his children did nothing to diminish his fatherly pride. I think about a daughter coming out of the foster system in five years and trying to figure out just where she came from. She goes downtown and starts asking questions. Parts of her don’t want to be there, facing the cultural legacy that took her parents. She asks questions. She is pointed towards Randy or to Dave, and she finds them by the river at their tent.
“What’d you say? George Faultain’s kid?”
“Yeah. Do you know what happened to him?”
Dave won’t look up. Won’t say anything. Randy speaks. “Yeah. He was beaten to death about 5 years ago. By Adam Burnrobe.”
There’s a pause.
“What did the police do?”
“Nothing.” Randy start to busy himself at his fire. “They don’t really do much about that kind of stuff.”
And just like that she has lost a piece of her identity. Death is loss. It’s always a loss. And it’s a loss that hits right between the shoulders. An invisible fist against the lungs.
The violence on the streets us unreal. It’s accepted as part of the package. HIV, hepatitis, violence, exploitation… How do you reach back out of that and live within the walls of society ever again?
A number of George’s friends from the streets showed up in church yesterday looking for solace after losing a friend. One is disruptive. People must think he is drunk. He is actually mentally disabled. He does not understand that getting up in a service is a problem. The pastors wife comes over and speaks to him as a child, telling him is it not okay to disrupt. He understands. The other two can barely take the inactivity of it. We get up and walk out early, and talk in the lobby.
The woman is quiet. I’ve known her for a while. She came sobbing into my office when she was first diagnosed with Hep C. She was afraid I would get it if I touched her, so I kissed her face and we held hands. She is not a prostitute. She doesn’t use needles. But when she was a teenager and her uncle raped her she knew her home was no longer safe. So she went to the streets where she couldn’t be found; where she had freedom. She says she won't live in walls again.
We are sitting in the lobby. She looks at me. “It just isn’t right. He didn’t do nothing wrong.” Silence. Tears start to silently form in the bottom of her eyes. “I don’t want to die out here. I don’t want to die on the street. Where will they bury me?”
