After half a lifetime spent roving the country in Kerouac-ian arcs, of living bicoastally between the southern states of his childhood and the western lands to which an ancestral sense drew him, James Hux moved to Great Falls. Though he still didn’t have a permanent roof over his head, he stayed there. That was four years ago. In the coming week, the disabled veteran will move into an Evergreen apartment he secured with help from Kalispell’s Samaritan House and the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program.
It’ll be the first time in three decades that he’ll lay his head to rest every night in a home he can call his own.
Hux has a soft handshake that envelops your hand, pale blue eyes, and a full head of hair the color of a cloudy day. He speaks with energy, though sometimes his responses to questions drift around the immense, often fuzzy catalogue of experiences in his head. Something shifted in Hux long ago, when he was stationed domestically with the Coast Guard during the Vietnam War. Near the end of his enlistment, he was critically injured, first in a massive storm off New England shores and later in a six-car pile-up amid Washington, D.C. rush hour traffic.
“I’ve been in Disneyland ever since,” he said.
He doesn’t dwell on tough times, of which there must have been many. He hangs on tighter to other parts of his life, like his love for nature, lasting interest in Search and Rescue, and the years he spent on the Atlantic Ocean with the Coast Guard taking weather observations, performing emergency rescues, and helping planes fly across the ocean with navigational assistance and radar fixes.
Timelines can go out of focus when they’re not moored to concrete places, when events happen with constantly changing backdrops. But Hux’s story begins in East Fairfax, Virginia, where he grew up. It later shifted to Morehead City, North Carolina, a port town halfway up the state’s coastline where Hux was shipped to finish up his enlistment after the big storm. There, he got married, and divorced.
Often, he stayed with his stepfather, who was disabled with a back injury and understood Hux’s medical challenges. The storm and car crash left Hux with head and back injuries that manifested as sciatica, a radiating, constant, and often-excruciating pain along the body’s largest nerve – he calls the condition his body’s “sciatic confusion.”
Over the years, Hux found work at a law firm, a post office, as a farm hand, and in construction, among other odd jobs and short-term labor. His longest tenure in one position was slightly over a year spent as a court messenger. He also completed a two-year course of study in Greenville, North Carolina to become an auto mechanic, but it’s not clear whether he devoted much time to practicing the trade.
“I couldn’t relate to people,” he said. “I’m Tarzan. When your spine, neck, and brain—when that’s injured early on—you black out… it’s a different kind of life, backwards from most people, in touch with the animals… I’m at a different wavelength.”
Somewhere along the line, he got married again. But his wife was killed by a bear in Shasta, California, a small town with a spiritual mountain culture. Hux says the bear wandered through the couple’s cabin’s open door, following the smell of the dishes his wife had been cooking all morning for a potluck. In the wake of that tragedy, Hux went north to Oregon, then Washington. He briefly stayed at an apple orchard owned by his wife’s family. Otherwise, when it was affordable, he stayed in various hotels and motels.
“It stirred up my imagination, traveling cross-country,” he said.
Eventually, he found his way to Montana, a place Hux remembers his stepfather and grandfather talking about. Hux says his stepfather has Cheyenne roots, and that the family’s Montana tradition called him to the state.
And then this past August, he found the Samaritan House, which serves approximately 1,350 people annually as Northwest Montana’s largest shelter. Its 65 beds, 23 beds reserved for Veterans, and 32 low-income apartments are always occupied, and many more thousands of people benefit from Samaritan House’s other services, including free meals and clothing, and assistance finding permanent housing or employment.
“We are always full,” said Chris Krager, the center’s executive director. The rate of homelessness in Montana is 17.2 percent, just below the national rate of 18.3 percent, and between 2013 and 2014, the state’s overall homelessness decreased by 7.1 percent, with 1,745 homeless people recorded, according to the 2015 State of Homelessness Report, an examination produced by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the Homelessness Research Institute.
The report also showed that though most people experiencing homelessness do so while in emergency shelter or transitional housing, the rate of unsheltered homelessness increased in Montana by 6.4 percent over the last year. And chronic homelessness, which is often experienced by people with a disability, increased in Montana by 21.9 percent—the fifth largest increase in the country.
Still, Montana decreased its overall homelessness population by 7.1 percent and its homeless veterans population by 17.2 percent over the last year. Soon Hux will be counted among Montana’s homeless Veteran success stories.
After Hux moved into a Samaritan House bed this past August, staff there helped him begin the involved application process for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH), a government program that combines rental assistance for homeless Veterans with the personal case management services offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Qualifying Veterans like Hux, who depends primarily on his disability benefits as income, receive vouchers to cover part of the costs for approved housing. Right now, the only thing between Hux and his new home is a state inspector’s visit.
“We need to make sure it’s good, safe, decent housing,” said Krager. “The landlord has to qualify as well. HUD-VASH is just like the Section 8 program, but for Veterans. There’s a bunch of different people from all sides helping to make it a successful scenario.”
Hux doesn’t have grand plans for decorating. He’s not picking out matching dinnerware or coordinating throw pillows. What makes him smile is the prospect of having a warm, safe place to return to at the end of every day. A place without closing hours, a private place where he’s not intruding or relying on anyone’s goodwill. His timeline stretching forward is a little bit more certain now, secured by a constant foundation.
“I’m really happy,” Hux said. “The biggest gift is to be in a place of my own. I wish everybody a Merry Christmas.”