Reagan Fields had some considerable pluck when he turned up. I'll never forget when they introduced him to us. I fell in love right then. He had gone missing from an intake room just before open meeting. They had left him alone in there and so he lifted a ceiling tile, climbed up in there and was going to wait it out and just leave after everybody went home. At some point during the evening, though, he lost his footing and came crashing down into the staff office.
I had always planned on looking him up after I lost the extra weight, acne, funky haircut, fleurescant tan and had time to get the Program shuffle out of my walk and speech. By the time I did, Reagan was gone. He'd been liberating some bottles of whiskey from someone's house when either the owner or the cops came through the front door. Reagan bolted out the back right through a plate glass sliding door, cutting a major artery in his leg. Rather than go through the hell of getting caught, he hid under a bush while people were looking for him, calling out for him. He stayed silent and bled out.
What a fucking waste! And more fucked up than that? I'm not entirely sure that wasn't a sensible way to play it. I don't know how much hell he'd been through already. He was still there when I left in late `82 and things had already started to go beyond the pale even for that place. Maybe he really just couldn't have taken any more. RIP you balsey mother fucker. Wish we had been able to share more than that fucked up nightmare.
