The Wheelbarrow Man of East Hastings Street by Harrison Kim

As Travis crosses East Hastings Street, he hears the high trembly voice of Sasha Asputi.  She’s trilling a speech, waving her skinny arms in the air in the centre of a small circle of men and their shopping carts, “Tonight we homeless will take back our rightful space.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Travis agrees, wheeling his bike up beside her.

Travis needs a wheelbarrow for his organic garden, which is south facing, behind a vacant lot.  He plans to grow pumpkins and corn, to make and sell pies and buttered cobs.  He’s already found some loam underneath an old garage.

“We are stronger together,” Sasha cries, holds her long necked head to the sky, her voice cracking.

Travis is into any adventure, law breaking included. “I’m totally spontaneous,” he says to his acquaintance Eddie, thin haired and tic faced beside him. “You know where I can obtain a wheelbarrow?”

“I have no idea,” says Eddie.  He whirls his arms around.  “I have no frigging idea.”

“We are going to break into a vacant mansion in Shaughnessy,” Sasha tells Travis.  “You can be part of the people’s resistance.”

“Yeah,” Travis grins.  “I like search and rescue missions in the rich part of town.”

Sasha’s there with her long-haired smiling husband Adam who blows his trumpet to punctuate as Sasha speaks.  Sasha believes everything should be free.  Free homes, free drugs, free food.

“There is enough for everyone,” she says.  

A few college students are gathered among the homeless crowd, dreadlocked types with sticker covered vests.

“Not too bad looking,” Travis remarks to Eddie.

“Hideous,” Eddie says, “Right f..ing hideous.” 

Travis leans over to Janine, a young woman with wild black hair and big brown freckles on her nose “I’m growing an organic garden,” he tells her.  “If you come across any corn seeds, let me know.”

She looks at him for a moment. “I have a plot uptown” she says.  “Where’s yours?”

“It’s in a vacant lot just around the corner,” says Travis “If you have a spare rake I could use.”

“Wow, guerrilla gardening.” Janine moves closer.  “I will definitely bring you a rake.”

Travis makes a horsey sound.  He possesses a long thin face, cheeks sunken, eyes hollow, he’s always moving and now he’s walking with this crowd and hobnobbing with Janine as everyone marches up the street.  Travis gazes up at the sky as Adam trumpets “It’s A Wonderful World.”

“Music, this what life is all about!” Travis sings.  “The pumpkins will be huge!” he yells at Eddie, who’s twitching against the wall of the vacant lot, letting the spring light warm his pock marked face.

That night, Sasha, Janine, Travis and fifteen others invade the vacant west side mansion. Janine packs some bolt cutters.  “A friend of mine lives up here,” she says.  “She told me the owners are away until the fall.”

Immediately upon yard entry, Travis notes huge pink rhododendrons all in flower under the light of the moon, and lush magnolia blooms from a huge tree to his right. He stands transfixed and breathes in the scent of new green and flower perfume as blossom petals drop.  He stares up at the trees and he scans the stars, just like back in the flat country where he grew up.
“It’s pretty darn dark here,” he says.

The others shadow past him, flitting over to the main doors.  Travis rubs his hand across his face and lopes round the yard, searching for a wheelbarrow.  Janine uses bolt cutters on a padlock on the back door.  “My friend told me this was the best way in,” she says.

The group clusters behind her.  Adam forces the door open with a large crowbar. The group rushes through, clutching their sleeping bags and signs. 

“There’s no alarm!” Sasha says.

 Janine informs her “it’s a silent one.”

“We have some time, then,” Sasha says, and shines her flashlight forward.  Someone finds a light switch.  Several people discover the kitchen.

“Here’s a toaster,” shouts Travis.  “Looks in pretty good shape.”

“We’ll eat later,” Sasha tells him.  “We must prepare for the police arrival.”

Janine’s on her phone “Are you calling the media?” Sasha asks.

Janine nods, her bushy hair swinging up and down.  Travis sees Adam’s white teeth flash as a light from outside beams across them.

“Someone’s investigating,” he says to Eddie, and there’s a loud knock at the front.

“Goddamn nosy neighbours,” says Eddie.

Travis puts the toaster down.  He picks up a hammer and an electric can opener and shoves them in his big coat pocket.  He spies an interesting photo on top of the fridge. He grabs that, too.  He opens another door and finds some stairs to the basement and descends, using his own mini light he bought on the street for a nutcracker and two dollars that very afternoon.

The basement’s musty and cobwebbed, piled with boxes and there’s a wheelbarrow in one corner, a good big blue one, next to some concrete steps leading to an outside door.  Travis pulls the wheelbarrow up these stairs.  He trundles the wheelbarrow across the yard and out a hole in some bushes.

He rolls along the back streets whistling a song from his youth “She’ll be a comin round the mountain.”  He nods and smiles at the occasional passers-by, crosses Fourth Avenue and heads across Burrard Bridge. He gazes at the dark line of the beach below, and all the high-rise apartments, lit full of lives and electricity.

He arrives at his single room occupancy rooming house, backs the wheelbarrow up the stairs to the third floor.  It thumps a bit, but he doesn’t think he wakes anyone up.

His room is piled with boxes and driftwood pieces large and small, and on the boxes stand the animal replicas he’s carved, turtles mostly, but a few bears and elephants.  He pulls the wheelbarrow into the last vacant place by the window, then he lies in bed with his coat wrapped round him.  He rummages in his pockets and pulls out the photo he took from the mansion, tapes it over the wheelbarrow’s edge.  It’s an image of a young family with a kid waving from a verandah.  He lies back in his bed and waves back at the photo.

The next afternoon, Travis is out early hauling the dirt from the strip of lawn outside the old garage to his plot.  He’s down near the sidewalk scrabbling out the soil when he sees Janine coming.  “Did you bring that rake?” he asks.

She shows him her phone.  “Look at this from last night.”

He peers round her shoulders and hair to see a video of dark shadows and flashlights and police voices intoning “you need to leave the property now.”

“Sasha’s been on Vancouver News!” Janine exclaims.   She flips to another video and Sasha’s waving her arms, talking about people taking back their rightful space.  Her voice is slightly accented, and the reporter lets her talk for more than a minute. 

“Did anyone get to sleep at the mansion?” asks Travis.

“The cops arrested us,” Janine said. “Sasha’s still in jail.  But look at this media exposure!”

“Yeah,” says Travis.  “Your cause is known.”

He scrabbles up some more soil.  “I could really use a rake.”

Janine looks at him, down on the ground with the top of his head and his arms moving above the dirt. “I’ll see what I can find,” she says.

Travis humps his wheelbarrow over to his plot and dumps the soil down.  He arranges his wood pieces into a rectangle.  In about an hour, he’s used his hammer and straightened out enough nails to construct a solid garden frame.

As he’s going back for another load of soil, Sasha, Adam, Janine and a number of other group members lope into the vacant lot with rakes and shovels. 

“They let us out on our own recognizance!” Adam says.

“We’re gonna grow our own food!” Sasha tells them. “It’s all your idea, Travis.”

“I was thinking to have the whole lot for myself,” Travis replies. 

He steps back, looks at Janine. 

“Can we use your wheelbarrow?” Sasha asks.

Travis nods. “Okay,” he says. “I won’t charge you rent on the first day.”

“You’re an enterprising fellow,” Janine tells him.

“I’m the farmer here,” Travis says, and he tells her how he grew up in the mountains and watered the fields for his family.

“Why did you move?” Janine asks.

“I’m always moving,” Travis grins. “My Dad kicked me out when I was fifteen and I haven’t been in one place since.”

He directs Janine where to find more dirt, he sends Sasha to buy seeds. Adam brings a crowbar from his van and digs down under the gravel. Curious bystanders watch and a few panhandlers come over to ask for spare change.

“I’ll be back tomorrow with a rototiller,” one guy shouts from his pickup.

Eddie scuffs the dirt with his foot and drops in some corn kernels.

The work continues all the next day.  Two security guards stroll in and ask what everyone’s doing.  “It’s a guerrilla garden,” Janine explains.  “No one’s using this lot right now.”

“At least you’re not doing drugs,” one guard says.  “Gotta hand it to you, even though its technically trespassing.”

He talks at length to Sasha.  The other guard takes a shovel and throws a few chunks of dirt around.

Nobody shows up with a rototiller, but a fellow with a flatbed brings in buckets of water, and the college students and Sasha haul it over to the garden.

“How did you get into this save the homeless business?” Travis asks Janine.

“It’s not a business,” Janine tells him and adds “And it’s not a joke.”

“You might do better growing marijuana,” Travis says, “but you’d need a greenhouse.”

In a few days, the vacant lots become an internet charity project. Janine shows Travis a new video, “Homeless Group Arrested for Mansion Takeover Now Guerrilla Gardening.”

The owners of the lot, Henry and Sheffield Lee, say that they’ll apply for a court injunction to remove the gardeners. 

“Those people stole electric appliances and garden implements,” Sheffield says.

“The Lee property has been a vacant space for three years,” Sasha says in response.  “If building a garden is anarchy, then maybe anarchy’s not so bad.”

Travis sits in bed and regards the family photo on his wheelbarrow.   Do these people seem happy?  The man has his arm around the woman’s shoulders.  That’s a good sign.

The next day, he trundles the wheelbarrow down to the garden plot.  He talks to a few of the activists.  “Do you want to buy this?”

“This is not yours to sell,” Janine tells him. “It’s from the mansion.  It belongs to all of us.”

“No,” says Travis.  “It’s mine.  I rolled it all the way here to plant my garden.” 

“Why don’t you want to join us, Travis?” Sasha asks.  “You started this.”

“When I sell the wheelbarrow, I’m going to buy some juggling balls and become a busker,” Travis tells her. “I’ll save my busking money and buy a van like Adam’s and drive back up into the hills and camp under the stars beside my parents’ graves.”

 “I think you belong with us,” Janine tells him.

“I don’t like crowds,” Travis says.

“You know how hard Sasha has to work?” Janine continues.  “She’s exhausted every day for her cause.  For you, life’s fun.  You ride around on your bicycle; you do a little gardening… you take a wheelbarrow.”

“I want to make money,” Travis says.  “I’ve got to survive any way I can and find my brothers and sisters.”

“I could be like a sister,” Janine says.

“You still haven’t found me a rake, sister.” he grins.

He trundles his wheelbarrow over to Hastings Street and sits in it at the open-air market.

“I have never taken drugs,” he tells everyone who will listen.

No one gives him a good enough price for the wheelbarrow.  He sells the electric can opener and a few of his animal carvings.  Then he buys a few small rubber juggling balls.

                                                             ********

Travis stands by the garden, practicing with the balls.  He’s got three in the air already.

“You have a natural talent,” says Eddie.  “Nothing’s dropping.”

“I don’t think,” Travis tells him.  “I just do.”

In the evening, he cycles over the Burrard Bridge, carrying a small flaxen coloured box in one pannier.  He looks across at the high-rise apartments, their windows all golden, reflecting the setting sun. 

It’s dark when he arrives at the mansion, still empty since the night of Sasha’s break-in.  He slips into the yard, hides his bike under a bush and stands facing the rhododendrons.  Then he stands the other way and breathes in the scent of the magnolias.  Petals fall around him, their purple colours twirling by in the near dark.  He pulls his juggling balls out of his pocket and throws them in the air.  He lies on the grass, gazes up at the sky, and watches the stars.  Then he steps to the front door.  He takes the family photo out of the box and leans it against the wood, turns and wheels his bicycle out of the yard.

On his ride back, Travis stops on the bridge to inspect his box.  Six or seven magnolia leaves crisscross inside, along with several rhododendron blossoms.  All for Janine. He remembers his driftwood animal carvings and concludes that he could give a few to her as well. 

“She’ll be comin’ round the mountain,” he whistles.

Across the inlet, the high-rise apartments glow with electric connection.  Travis imagines he and Janine live there.  They grow pumpkins on their spacious balcony and the wheelbarrow’s parked outside, brilliant with wildflowers.

“All we need is a rake” Travis says to himself.

He closes the gold-painted box and pedals on towards the garden.

Harrison Kim

Image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay – a blue wheelbarrow turned onto it’s front.