The soldier on the street

A middle-aged man walked slowly from the elevator, his face impassive and his eyes like dark beads and he said, 'Think you can feed a hungry soldier?”

The floor of the dining room at the Rescue Mission was still wet from breakfast cleanup. The lights were off and the windows open. Perched on the man's head was a University of Dubuque baseball cap. He carried a smartphone, his belly hung low over his belt and his Nirvana T-shirt showed under his gray zippered hoodie. It seemed clear that he was not a soldier anymore.

'Sure, let's see what we can do.”

He entered the dining room of the Dubuque Rescue Mission and he strode like a tin man. It was 9 a.m. but one of the homeless men in the kitchen brought Cheerios and milk.

'Thanks,” the numb looking man said and announced he was running for president.

He sat at a long table with the sunshine rushing through the windows. He ate quietly. When he was done he walked to the chapel and sat down but began to cry convulsively, tears spilling down his cheeks. He screamed to his absent mother he was coming home. He was inconsolable.

I heard him from the hallway and the signs of psychosis had become unmistakable. I asked him to sit after he exploded at another man's well meaning suggestion that he should get a job. The man escalated like a bomb, aggressive and volatile.

'I train Marines! I'm a soldier!”

He puffed and ranted and it was clear something was desperately wrong. As I stood with him I asked him to calm down and rapped on the window of the mission's administrative assistant, turning my hand to signal that we needed help.

'Let's sit in the office,” I said and guided him to a chair. He said he was a ghost soldier.

He said he'd had an altercation the night before and he asked me if I thought crushing someone's cortex was preferable to ripping out their aorta. I went for the cortex answer as if the question made sense, like Robin Williams had done in Good Will Hunting when addressing the domestic violence choice about being beaten - 'I'd take the wrench ...”. I was growing apprehensive. Scanning him, I saw cutting lacerations on his calves. His conversation was incoherent, a salad of phrases without meaning except to him. He said he wanted a ride to the armory.

'I save lives,” he said.

The tense moments suggested desperate outcomes but knowing most of the mentally ill are more likely to harm themselves than anyone else I stayed with the pained gentleman. When the police arrived we worked together to guide him outside to the sidewalk. One officer noted, there were no grounds to arrest him.

'It's not against the law to be crazy,” he said.

I reviewed the man's symptoms with the officers and wondered abo how they might try to protect a man as clearly afflicted with delusion as he was.

The police showed kindness. One of the cops averted his eyes as if to respect the man's space, as if to offer an unspoken prayer for his well-being, refusing to intrude. Sometimes, it feels like a spiritual issue.

The other cop said, without complaint but as observation, that the community needed more mental health providers. His meaning echoed that early morning.

Without a strong system of mental health what do we have as a people and a society? We are buying more guns and the criminal justice system is overwhelmed. Alcohol and drugs and inequality are scourges.

Life brings us suffering, as the World War II psychiatrist Victor Frankl said. And each age has its own share. This hurting man's mind was tangled somewhere on distant shores.

Before one of the officers walked the man to the nearby mental health provider he said, 'We're not really trained for this.”

It's time to review what we can do to help everyone, all of the ghosts and soldiers in every city and town in Iowa. Is there a resource more precious than spiritual and mental health?

' Tim Trenkle of Dubuque teaches psychology and writing at Northeast Iowa Community College and is a freelance writer. Comments: trenklet@nicc.edu