Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 00:11:11 -0800

Here is another episode in the series of semi-fictional works I call "Tales
from the City" which are true episodes, but in most cases I have changed the
names of everyone to protect the innocent. Tales of the City was first begin
in 1994, and to this day, there are approximately 45 works in this series,
nearly one-third of which have been published in various publications. 

                          The Return of Mr. Jitters
             An Exerpt from a series called Tales from the City
                                by Dave Laird
                        Copyright 2000 by Dave Laird

I didn't want to tell this story about Mr. Jitters because I promised I
would save him the embarrassment of everyone knowing all about his life. On
the other hand, I didn't want to be like the rest who have gotten to know
him over the years, and yet not tell the truth of who he is. As you will
see, Mr. Jitters was a hero, if not from the virtue of his combat experience
in Viet Nam, then by what took place behind the Bon.

Mr. Jitters is what some would term 'perennially homeless', although he's
not really, as he has a home over at the Otis Hotel. He suffers from a mild
but long-term mental illness, has a serious speech impediment atop his list
of ails, aches and pains, from having his jaw half shot off in Viet Nam.
That, perhaps is why he is normally reluctant to say a word to anyone unless
they happen to be wearing a blue suit and a badge. Last week, however, Mr.
Jitters demonstrated for everyone in the crowd that gathered behind The Bon,
that beneath his crusty antisocial exterior, there is a lion of a man, who
is capable of uncommon courage and decency in the face of danger.

He is called Mr. Jitters by nearly everyone because, among his ails, he has
a compulsive disorder of unknown origin which makes his walk in place even
when he isn't moving forward. It is nothing to drive by and see him standing
still waiting for the light to change, but with his legs both pumping
pell-mell, as if he were running in the Decathalon.

It was one of those late fall/early winter days when nobody walked any
further out-of-doors than they absolutely needed to. The temperature, which
had slouched around twenty degrees since after the sun rose that morning,
was made even more miserable by a sharp wind that careened around the
buildings in downtown, driving most people indoors nearly as quickly as they
tasted the weather's mood outside. However, because of his shabby appearance
and past performances downtown, most places where people went indoors to
escape the bitter wind chill were off-limits to Mr. Jitters. Especially
after he had forgotten to take his medication last week and wandered
throughout much of the downtown area, jabbering insanely in people's faces
as they went window shopping during their lunch breaks or simply were
attempting to transact commerce of some kind.

As if not to be outdone by this previous performance, however, this time he
went on a one-man mission, looking for a female prostitute he once
remembered from before his synapses started frying inside his head, asking
for her by name in a number of nontraditional and some very traditional
ways, thus upsetting most of the jet-setters who were shopping downtown
during their lunch breaks or simply in town for one of the four conventions
stewing over at the Convention Center. 

Somewhere along his miraculous half-hour run through various shops and
stores, eventually people became alarmed at his increasingly bizarre
behavior, especially after he blew kisses to all the manikins in one store
window, leaving wet sloppy marks on the otherwise spotless glass behind him
as he walked in place, and someone called the cops.

Lieutenant Bud Fatherly finally caught up with Mr. Jitters just as he was
exiting the front door of The Bon, having just meandered his way through the
main aisle, attempting to establish meaningful communication with each and
every one of the manikins, as well as half a dozen trendy shoppers who
happened to cross his path. A number of people, particularly the well-to-do
types wearing their designer pants suits, spiked high heels and elegant
outerwear jackets and coats, wanted Mr. Jitters out of The Bon, hopefully
put someplace where he would never bother them again.

"That filthy old man was down in women's apparel soliciting one of my
manikins for sex!", one of the store clerks screeched, as Fatherly snatched
Mr. Jitters by one arm. "And you should have heard some of the indecent
things he was saying! What a despicable little pervert!" she concluded,
looking around the circle of gawkers and shoppers, as if seeking some sign
of support from anyone. Most of the crowd that gathered, however, were there
out of sheer morbid curiosity, to see what would happen next, not really
caring, but wanting a good vantage point should anything really serious take
place.

To Fatherly, a gentle-voiced Irish cop, whose red hair was slowly beginning
the transition to graying baldness, had seen everything the streets of
Spokane had to offer after nearly ten years on the force. Mr. Jitters, known
to law enforcement as Elroy Higgins, was a familiar character in a cast of
hundreds, mostly the homeless, but some merely the victims of a mental
health industry that dumped the mentally ill on the streets like so much
castoff newsprint laying in the gutter at his feet. It wasn't that Mr.
Jitters had ever broken any laws, at least none that Fatherly would
willingly choose to enforce, but he had bruised the law sufficiently that,
on several occasions, he had received stern warnings from various angry beat
cops to 'beat it, get out of here, and don't come back'. He was harmless,
even when he forgot to take his meds, but a genuine pain in the ass, and a
real nuisance who posed no real threat to anyone, save himself when he
forgot to take his pills.

Still, among the hugger-muggers, thieves, bunco artists, meth heads and the
general riff raff that drifts downtown off the river banks or from passing
freight trains, Mr. Jitters was actually one of the more innocent players.
That was why, once Fatherly put Mr. Jitters in the back seat of his squad
car, away from the store clerk who was still screeching for all she was
worth, and after the vapid uninterested crowd of rubber-neckers had begun to
thin out, he quietly drove Mr. Jitters a few blocks over to the Otis Hotel
where he knew the old carnival worker lived off his pension, escorting him
up to his room on the fifth floor. He stood by in the tiny eight by twelve
room until Mr. Jitters took his medication, washing the two shiny green
pills down with water from a glass that, in his opinion, was probably a
peanut butter jar in its former life.

He waited around several minutes, until Mr. Jitters had slowed and finally
stopped babbling to himself altogether, and then with a stern admonition to
stay away from manikins and to remember to always take his medication, he
left the old man standing just outside the Otis Hotel, watching as he merged
into the post-noon hour traffic heading up the street.

The afternoon wheeled on down the moving calendar called the progress of
man. Two assaults involving two homeless men from the shelter duking it out
in the middle of the crosswalk, and a shoplifter caught in the act of
stealing a pair of women's pantyhose later, Fatherly was about to signal for
his lunch break, when the dispatcher broke in with an assault in progress in
the alley behind The Bon, involving three or four men, including a man who
fit the description of Mr. Jitters, whom he had left standing in front of
the Otis scarcely two hours before.

Sure enough, it was Mr. Jitters, and once again, he had already attracted a
crowd of onlookers. There were two men sitting on the pavement, slouching
with their backs against the adjacent building, both sporting bloody noses,
with various lumps and bruises all around their faces and heads. There stood
Mr. Jitters, with someone partially hidden behind his back, standing
wide-eyed facing the crowd, his bruised and battered fists still
half-cocked, his body tensed up, as if ready to swing another punch.

"What the hell," Fatherly softly swore to himself, as he climbed out of the
squad car. "You just can't stay out of trouble today, can you Elroy?" he
asked cautiously approaching the pair sitting by the building, keeping a
wary eye on Mr. Jitters and whoever was hiding behind him.

He quickly noticed that the faded jean jacket Mr. Jitters normally wore was
missing, just about the time the female store clerk eased from behind Mr.
Jitters' back, his tattered, faded jean jacket draped across her shoulders.
Her face was badly scratched, her blouse torn halfway down the front,
exposing her bra, and a tiny trickle of blood was oozing from an ugly bruise
across one side of her face as she stood facing him. It was the same clerk,
the one who only hours before had been screeching for him to get Mr. Jitters
out of The Bon, away from the manikins and put him in jail where he
belonged.

"It... it isn't what you think, officer," she stammered. "These two men
jumped me as I was coming out the employee entrance just a few minutes ago.
They ripped my coat off me, and while one of them was trying to steal my
purse, the other was tearing at my blouse. They threatened to kill me if I
screamed. I've never been scared in my entire life!"

"Was he..." Fatherly had already started pointing toward Mr. Jitters who was
standing his arms akimbo, staring defiantly at the gathering crowd.

"No, this man, here", she stated emphatically, pointing at Mr. Jitters,
"came to my rescue beating these two men off with his bare hands, despite
being outnumbered two to one. God only knows what would have happened if he
hadn't happened along."

While Fatherly and his partner, who had just driven up into the head of the
alley, were loading the two badly-beaten men into the back of his partner's
squad car, Anita Maddigan, a female officer from the next district over came
walking down the alley from the other direction and immediately began taking
a statement from the store clerk and the one bystander who had witnessed the
entire assault, start to finish.

After the crying store clerk had calmed down a bit, and completed giving her
statement the officers, and as the last of the onlookers either faded away
in search of something better to do with their time or because they were
encouraged to do so, the clerk finally spoke to Mr. Jitters, shivering in
the cold, dank alley in the frigid afternoon air. Fatherly had just
explained to her that Mr. Jitters wasn't normally quite as strange as he had
been earlier, so long as he remembered to take his medication each day, and
that although he still could be a nuisance at times, she stilled owed him
her gratitude.

"I suppose you will want this back," she said, shyly handing him back his
faded jean jacket, somewhat nonplussed by the strange turn of events of the
day. As one of the officers gently put a blanket across her shoulders,
covering her torn blouse completely, she held out her hand to Mr. Jitters,
and to everyone's surprise, gently leaned over and gave him a gentle kiss on
his weathered unshaven cheek.

"I don't know what else to say, but thank you," she said softly, still
clutching his hand in hers. "That was one of the bravest acts I've ever
witnessed, and I am so sorry I was being such a bitch earlier."

It was said by some that Mr. Jitters, a crotchety old dump of a man who had
spent most of his life traveling with the carnivals, who had little more to
live for than a daily dose of the psychotropic drugs that temporarily leased
him a spot on the road of sanity, suddenly blushed as red as a beet. He
hastily donned his torn jean jacket, and stammering a few hastily-contrived
words, got the hell out of that alley just as fast as his bandy little legs
could carry him.

Several weeks passed, and although the incident that took place behind The
Bon faded into some layer of obscurity for Lieutenant Fatherly, for there
were always more crooks and thugs, several weeks later, as he was parked
directly across from The Bon watching the morning rush hour crowd waiting at
the light, he heard a familiar voice ring out over the sounds of the street.

"Good morning, Elroy!" 

Mr. Jitters, sporting a new jean jacket and the first pair of decent shoes
that Fatherly had ever seen him wearing, faltered in his bizarre dance a
moment at the light, looking across the street at The Bon where the store
clerk he'd rescued was waving at him. He looked down at the ground, as if
remembering something from a long time before he compulsively walked in
place at stop lights. Then, with a look of proud determination, he shakily
raised his right arm shoulder high, and waved back, his head upright, his
feet suddenly stilled. Then quickly lowering his hand, he proceeded across
the crosswalk, fading into the crowd as it began to snow.

"Welcome back to civilization, Mr. Jitters," Fatherly whispered softly to
himself. "Welcome back home, Elroy."

                                    -30-

The City tosses and turns both by day and night. While most of us live and
reside here, occasionally there are some who, through no fault of their own,
are only residents here part of the time. Occasionally, however, they come
home, and we should always welcome them. The city lives...

NOTE: On August 13th, 2003, the real-life counterpart of Elroy Higgins
passed away quietly in his sleep of natural causes in his room at the Otis
Hotel. There were approximately 30 people who attended his low-budget
funeral held at the gravesite, including an impressive number of employees
from The Bon who had "chipped in" together to pay for the lovely casket
spray.