Want To Buy A Knife?

I haven't written about Mr. B. in a while. He's the Vietnam-era vet who's schizophrenic and was kicked out of his housing recently because he smokes. He has new housing now in a dicier part of town, but is still often in my part of Capitol Hill. He misses living up here. Anyhow, Mr. B. loves to poke around in dumspters, looking for knick-knacks he can sell for cash. It's his job, he once told me, although his VA benefits are a damn sight better than what most mentally-disabled folks get each month.

Those of us around here who know Mr. B. know that he will occasionally find a knife or a sword in a dumpster. The problem is that we're all a bit uptight for the guy until he gets rid of it at a pawn shop the next day. If the cops found a knife on him or saw him walking around with a sword, it'd be an interesting time for Mr. B. Every cop in this precinct knows that he's harmless--he truly is and I've run his name through court records once just to check--but he's also a schizophrenic, so everyone is pretty suspicious because of the propaganda spread around by the likes of the Treatment Advocacy Center. You know the talk: all schizophrenics are violent and axe-murderers.

Over the years, Mr. B. has tried to sell me CDs, fishing rods, a creel, a nice sports coat and the occasional knife. I bought an Al Green CD off him once. Tonight, as I was having coffee and a smoke outside a local coffeehouse--the cig was illegal by the way under our state's bizarre 25-foot rule smoking ban--Mr. B. walked up and tried to sell me, in his sheepish way, a Janet Jackson CD, a claw hammer and a three-inch knife, a Buck knockoff. I talked to him about the knife--where did he find it? on what street?--and listened to him tell me he'd keep it until he sold it the next day. Mr. B. was released to the streets of Baltimore when he developed schizophrenia in the mid-1960s and he's told me how he regularly had the crap kick out of him by street folks until he learned how to defend himself. He has so much PTSD over those days that I cannot even get into it.

A couple of months ago, Mr. B. found a sword and a local shopkeeper bought it off him for $10. He told me later it was the fastest way to make sure Mr. B. had no troubles that day.

I decided I wasn't going to let Mr. B. hang onto the knife, so I asked him what he wanted for it. "Three dollars," Mr. B. answered. I had no cash on me, so I told him I'd pay him later. I looked the knife over--it's made in Taiwan and the compass embedded in the handle's butt doesn't work. When I looked up, I noticed a few people staring a bit uneasily and I put the knife back in its scabbard and slid it into my coat pocket. People are so easily spooked in Seattle. As it is, I've seen much more interesting items sold on the streets over the years.

And, then, I walked home and along the way it hit me: I'm a soon-to-be unmedicated bipolar who'd just bought a big old knife. What would Fuller Torrey say? What about NAMI? Would they recommend Zyprexa and outpatient commitment?

I put the knife in a kitchen drawer where it now sits with my prized Wustoffs--some of the few nice things I own--and, if I go camping this year, maybe I'll take it along.