Climbing the rust stained concrete steps, with the black metal hand rail which could not be trusted. Two of the three posts had already broken free from the concrete, in some time before mine, by a combination of rust and weathering, leaving the middle one which had already been encircled with cracks. I knocked three times before I tried to enter, the door was locked, and then the sound of movement from within. The sky was dark and clear, cold, the moon was like a scythe preparing to reap the stars. Inside the house smelled sweaty and old, and it was an old woman who greeted me, someone I had not met before. She wore a black knitted coat and black pants; she had a hunched back and moved slowly, her face was very kind. She introduced herself as Pat.

“Good evening, I’m filling in for Dave tonight” Was the first thing I said inside the house.

“Oh good evening! I was wondering who they would find for tonight,” were the first words I heard in the house. “I was afraid I’d be here all night.”

The house was a duplex which housed four people. Pat gave me the tour: there was the living room with its couch, its arm chair, and its standard definition TV in an oak entertainment center; beyond this, opposite the front door, was the kitchen doorway (without a door) and the hallway running off to the left, with the big bedroom at another left, and terminating at a narrow door, which was to remain shut, leading to the middle space of the duplex, and right from there was the bathroom; in the kitchen, there was a door leading to the laundry room at the back of the house, and a door to the right leading to the small bedroom, which was meant, I think, to be an office.

Pat said “good bye” and I said “good night” and then I was alone in the house except for the occupants who were both sleeping. I could hear their snores through their doors. I sat down on the couch and opened an energy drink. The TV was playing infomercials; I turned the volume all the way down and opened a book. Six minutes passed and the door to the small bedroom opened, and I met Jeff. He was short and stout and had a very large forehead covered in zits. He stepped out from around the corner and smiled at me. He held out his fist, and I bumped it with mine.

I had heard about Jeff before. He liked to spit on people, and one time he broke his staff’s leg by kicking him. The stories I heard described one of the most notorious of our clients. Jeff stood in front of me smiling for a moment so palpably awkward that I couldn’t help but smile back, and then we were both laughing. Jeff spent the next several hours asking me questions from his bed. The house was small, and he didn’t have to speak very loudly form me to hear him. Jeff was one year, one month, and one day younger than me; he liked cars and anything that focused on cars, and he liked to talk to people. He spoke more clearly than I expected, and he was very polite. He had lived in this house for two years, which meant he had been around about as long as I had. He entered to program from foster care, and his foster mom applied to be, and was hired as, his first Head of House. Within a year or two she would quit however, or she was fired, I never heard the same story twice, but I was told that if and when she called the house, I would have to listen to her conversations with Jeff on the other line and take note if they ever mentioned the company or started talking about money. She called twice that I can remember in all the time I worked with Jeff and their topics for conversations were no deeper than the weather. Before he was in foster care, Jeff lived with his mother and father and ten siblings in Idaho. They were a religious family and the kids were all homeschooled. Both parents were abusive to their kids, especially Jeff who was diagnosed with autism when he was about 15, and this abuse the kids absorbed and projected on to one another, while they were children, and at the world, when they were adults.

3am finished Jeff that first night, as it finishes so many, and I would not see Jeff again for another two years, after I had gotten tired of graveyard shifts and of always being tired. When, at talent show practice, I was introduced to Jeff again by my sister, his acting Head of House. He was the only one there who had nothing to do with the talent show. He sat with his face glued to his Gameboy, ignoring everyone. In that moment, and many times in the coming years, I saw something of myself in him. I would be his new swing staff, the hours between 3 and 11 pm. My job would be to become a positive influence of Jeff’s life. For the next few years, swing shifts at first and then days, I tried to help Jeff develop healthy habits, like showering every day, eating healthy and exercising. The habits I tried to instill in him ended up sticking with me as well. I had to set an example or else I would have no grounds to expect him to try to change his old habits. The habits his family had taught him in those crucial first few years of life where a person is building his or her entire framework for how the world is supposed to be and what are normal healthy ways to act, which, in Jeff, were even more deeply established due to his autism. In the years I worked with Jeff he became, to me, both a reason to give up on college and make helping this young man my career, and to continue with college and hopefully help more people like him, perhaps save them before they become like him.

That first night with Jeff passed peacefully. Other days and nights with Jeff were less peaceful. In the morning there came a knock on the door a good twenty minutes before I expected, and before the sun was rising I was in bed, guarded from its obnoxious radiance by a double layer of black garbage bags taped over my windows.