Jimmy Wright and the Woodpecker (end)

It was a homelessness Christmas for us, but we had the best Christmas in the world. We stayed with friends, the whole town came to our aid. We had clothes within hours, that very day. People brought envelopes with Christmas cards and money, invitations to stay at their houses, offers of lunch, dinner and friendship and more money. It was overwhelming, for me. I was the most effected by it all. I was in denial for a week. Betty and I went to see our house, there was no house. There was nothing but a bare hillside that dropped into the river. A big part of the bluff was missing, as if scraped off by a giant hand. Others were not as lucky as we were. Jimmy's cabin was pushed to one side by the slide, crushed.
I had called Jimmy at the hospital to tell him about what happened. He was doing fine, they had him on some drugs and he slept most of the time. He was ready to leave, but they were making sure. No woodpeckers in the city, he joked. We never talked about what was going on, with the woodpecker hallucination. I asked him what he planned to do. He didn't know. Maybe move somewhere else.
In January I sent Betty and the kids to stay with her parents. I was slowly coming around, I had been depressed after the excitement wore off. We were starting over, waiting for insurance money, trying to decide what to do. I joined my family in March. We started over with the help of her parents.
It was always hard to talk about Jimmy and the "incident". I was a little obsessed with the meaning of it, what it pointed to, things impossible to comprehend. The kids missed him, Betty was worried and I was humbled by it all. Who would have known that he would be so important to me, when all I really wanted was to be rid of him. I really should look him up and see how he is doing. Maybe he would move over here.