If there was a way to skateboard in a flood, we would find it.

Business as usual.

Intervention Is.

Sometimes impossible.

I have learned the hard way that you cannot impose interventions on adolescent boys twenty-four hours a day.

It’s not my fault. I didn’t raise them.

I am merely the substitute teacher.

Shirking responsibility.

You have to pick your battles.

Drugs. Booze. Sex. What the fuck ever.

HIV.

Sex work.

In the past couple of years, three battles have been with forest fires, hurricanes, and major, biblical flooding.

We slept in a shelter filled with people last night. I needed a break from the tent.

I will never sleep (there was no sleep to be had) in another shelter ever again. Crying babies. Crying toddlers. Crying women.

Men are too stupid to cry.

Most of these people have lost their homes. I have no idea what the word home means anymore.

Yer in yer skin. Yer home.

The boys had left the mountains because we had to find ways to feed ourselves.

Sex work is plentiful anywhere there are tourists. This meant the beach. Everything is up for grabs.

Which is what hurricanes do. They grab you, and they shake you, and they throw you around. Up against the wall is nothing. All the dumpsters were under water.

We went to rescue the boys on the beach. It was the first time all of us had been together in several months. I lose track of time.

Then, we had to wait.

Riley had been hospitalized in Chapel Hill. He was ready to come home. But the entire state had been thrown into chaos with the current hurricane and flooding.

Two-and-two.

It hit me. The chaos, and the flooding, and the sick kid were not unrelated.

We were being warned not to touch the flood waters.

In many places, waist deep. Or deeper.

Tens of thousands of pigs on hog farms had died in the storm and flooding. You could see the carcasses floating down the rivers. The water smelled like pig shit.

The environmental devastation was extraordinary.

So far, no one has even mentioned — THE SOIL — because we are just in the people are leaving the shelters stage.

Earlier in the summer, Riley had gone home to help his parents tend to their tobacco farm.

Cryptococcal meningitis is an infection affecting the membranes that line the skull and spinal cord. Cryptococcal meningitis is a type of meningitis caused by a fungus called Cryptococcus.

The fungus C. neoformans causes most cases of cryptococcal meningitis. This species is commonly thrives in dirt.

Tobacco plants are raised as small seedlings. After they begin to grow, the seedlings are transplanted in the ground.

Tobacco and the soil is a way of life in the Carolinas.

The fungus can kill you. Especially if your immune system is compromised.

Pigs, kids, cigarettes, and natural disasters. Good times.

To say nothing about eating out of dumpsters.

Sometimes, the money they make doing sex work seems relatively safe in a place where nothing is.

They can seem like normal kids (if unruly). I know better. Even here, you want to pick your battles. Especially here.

We retrieved Riley.

It got a little hairy.

It’s amazing what you can do by simply wearing a lab coat. I keep one around for emergencies.

Walking around any big hospital in a lab coat will open doors for you because people are busy. Films don’t get it right. Never look anyone in the eye.

Between the hurricane, the flooding, all the usually sick people, car accidents by people who thought their vehicles were boats, and accidents (many in shelters) had left the hospitals looking like war zones.

We are finally home. I am watching Riley carefully, and have his meds. We know where all the dumpsters are. I have no fucking idea how I am going to feed anyone.

Don’t write to me.

Don’t talk to me.

Don’t ask me dumb questions.

Don’t. Go. There.

You aren’t here. You don’t smell like pig shit. We do. You have no idea, and your judgements are ephemeral.

Intervention is when you sit them down and tell them you can’t do this by yourself. After grubbing around Food Lion dumpsters, everyone takes a shower.

House rule.

Intervention is when I find booze, I pour it on the ground. Cryptococcus thrives in whiskey.

If there was a way to skateboard in a flood, we would find it.

Business as usual.

Intervention Is.

Sometimes impossible. I would drink the booze, but I’m washing my hair that night.

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Tim Barrus

Tim Barrus Blog

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I’m Washing My Hair That Night