Part of a series about homelessness on the Outer Cape published in the Cape Codder in 1992.

On the Street in Provincetown

Time is running out for “Ray.”

Living on the streets and drinking yourself into oblivion age you fast, and Ray has been doing both for a long time—22 of his 44 years. Ever since he got back from Vietnam.

“I picked up drinking the day I joined the Army,” says the Provincetown native, a former fisherman.

“I started drinking just to be in the ‘in’ crowd. The thing I used to like was a sloe gin fizz,“ he says.

He liked the opium too.

Before he arrived in Vietnam’s Quangtri Province two days shy of 19, all Ray cared about was playing sports at Provincetown High School.

By the time he returned, all he cared about was drinking.

Ray is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and should have received help years ago, Deborah Bainton of the state’s Department of Mental Health believes.

“He’s really been hurled through the cracks,” she says. “He’s burned a lot of bridges, and burned a lot of people out because he’s been at it for so long”

Ray is scrawny, with raw hands and skin beaten hard and dark by the sun. As dark as he is, you can still see the burn of constant exposure on the back of his neck. His cap bears a patch: “Vietnam Veterans of Cape Cod.”

Sitting in one of the mismatched chairs in Jack Joyce’s kitchen with a Pepsi in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Ray is about as sober as he gets.

This interview is a favor to Jack, and “Ray” requests anonymity for fear of somehow betraying his homeless friends.

Jack’s Standish Street apartment is an informal shelter, a place for Provincetown’s estimated 18 to 30 homeless people to get warm once in a while, maybe take a shower, pick up a loaf of bread and a toothbrush.

You see, Jack has been there ... sleeping under boats on Provincetown’s waterfront in the dead of winter, squatting in abandoned buildings in Boston, bumming change for yet another drink.

“Other alcoholics who had recovered took me out of a dumpster in Boston in 1987,” he says.

He’s been straight and on his feet ever since, but homelessness is not an experience he’ll soon forget.

“It’s as close to me today as if I had just lived it yesterday. That’s why I do the things I do,” Jack says.

Jack and Ray go back a long way, to 1976, when they were drinking buddies who lived under the boats on the back beach.

They laugh as they recall Ray’s occasional theft of limp, plastic-wrapped cheeseburgers from Cumberland Farms, which they shared.

Today, as then, Ray doesn’t always earn enough money from his sporadic odd jobs to buy food.

His veterans’ benefits have been denied since 1983, according to local veterans’ representative Earle Chaddock. That year, Ray failed to pay back about $150 in monthly benefits after earning $600 the same month. His benefits cannot resume until he pays up, Mr. Chaddock says, and the sum must be paid all at once.

Ray is one of the few “wharf rats” from Jack’s old circle who is still around. The rest, Jack says, are either dead or in jail.

“There’s countless dead out there.“

Ray tries to remember who died, who is missing. With some help from Jack he pulls the names from his failing memory: “Dickie, Joe, Bobby, Billy ...”

Jack fears his friend may soon join the list of casualties.

“I have cirrhosis of the liver,” Ray allows.

“I don’t feel well at all sometimes. Sometimes I get a hot spot right here, right under my ribs,” he says, pointing to his left side.

He has bronchitis, too. Or is it emphysema? This is a question in the mind of a social worker named Melissa.

“I lay on my back and cough every night,” Ray tells Melissa and Jack.

He’s in bad shape, all right. On first impression, he seems but a shadow of a human being. In the course of a chat, though, the individual inside the shell of a deteriorating alcoholic is revealed in small ways.

As if reading a reporter’s mind, he says, “I may be a drunk, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve got a heart. I’ve got a lot of soul, sister.”

Each year he faithfully observes the annual Blessing of the Fleet and attends the fishermen’s mass held beforehand at the St. Peter of the Apostle Church. This June, he crossed himself before slipping into a pew at the very back of the church.

At times Ray displays a certain devil-may-care attitude toward life, but he also alludes to the isolation of homelessness.

“Some people don’t know what it’s like to really not have a single friend to help you,” he says, eyeing the linoleum.

More than one friend is helping now, though. Jack and Melissa are trying to get Ray into detox at a veterans’ hospital.

He has been through it before, raising the question even in his own mind: Will he stay straight this time?

“My plan is to get feeling better, sober up and see what happens,” he says. “I can’t predict what’s going to happen down the line. You don’t tell an alcoholic to quit drinking; you suggest it. When I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired, I’ll give it up. I feel like going out and getting drunk right now, and I will.“

After giving Ray a requested “two bucks,” Jack gets in a good-natured parting shot.

Referring to some medical tests Ray underwent recently, Jack tells him, “We got good news! We found blood in your alcohol!”

Ray roars with laughter, and lays a shaky high five on each of us before heading for the street.

Copyright Laura MacKay, photograph by Laura MacKay

Postscript: After this story appeared, an anonymous reader paid Ray’s debt to the Veterans Administration.

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