The pastor who runs the house knew what he was getting when he hired Aquil—someone with a different approach, someone who would govern with lenience because he believes that men should be inspired not pushed onto the forward path.  And while the pastor didn’t entirely agree with that approach, he was willing to give it a try. 

Aquil sees the house as a fort on the front lines. Its fortunes, which rely almost totally on private donations and car washes, have dipped in the past two years, and when the House of Joseph relocated to Olivehurst for the cheaper real estate, it came to one of the area’s most drug-addled neighborhoods. But that’s a dynamic that charges Aquil. His desire in life, he says, is to save souls “next door to hell.”

He lingers outside after the meeting, in the evening sun that’s still hot along the side walkway. He’s keeping track of the comings and goings; several guys are walking around the corner and down the street, heading for their drug and alcohol recovery group meetings. Technically, this is a breech of house rules, because the program requires a “blackout” period for a resident’s first 30 days, a time of confinement to the house and back yard, a time for thinking things over — for tilling the soil, as Aquil puts it, for the planting of a new seed.

House rules say that when guys leave the grounds, even for recovery meetings, a staff member or a veteran resident must escort them. But being the sole staff member, Aquil can enforce only so many rules.  This is one, among several, that he overlooks, meanwhile making sure that the guys know the rules exist, and why they exist.  It’s because of the surroundings, the neighborhood; it’s because the House of Joseph sits just off Olivehurst’s main strip, where drug deals –easily spotted from the house’s front yard – regularly take place.  It’s because most of the guys come from around here.

It’s a place that Nick Romano has haunted for years, alternately nursing and fighting a heroin addiction that has gripped him for most of his adult life. Nick is in his early 50s, but his soft, somewhat hesitant demeanor makes him seem younger. He’s not small, at about five-ten, but his build is slight, and his gaze has a fragile, weathered quality.

He reminds Aquil that it’s time to take his medication, but Aquil tells him to attend his recovery meeting first. Aquil has been holding the medication, an addiction-treating pill, since Nick overdosed a week ago, downing far too many pills during the first few days of heroin withdrawal. It’s always unsettling when a resident suffers a setback, but there was something else that happened the morning of the overdose, a comment that was made that struck a nerve in Aquil.

It was mid-morning, well after Bible study, after the residents had checked off their morning chores. The usual handful of guys had sneaked around the corner for a cigarette, breaking the house rule against tobacco, another rule that escapes enforcement these days. Nick had shuffled along with them, in his flip-flops and cut-off shorts. As he walked, rolling a cigarette, his movements began to slow, and before long, he’d stopped moving altogether. His eyes had widened, and his gaze had receded into a hollow distance when fellow residents Craig and Steve caught him, propped him up, called his name a few times. They waited a minute or two, then stood him up, one on each arm, and began a slow, halting retreat back to the House of Joseph.

At the side door they lowered Nick into a wheeled desk chair, pausing to fold down each stiff leg, rolled him into the nearest bedroom and eased him onto a bottom bunk. An ambulance arrived a few minutes later, and one of the paramedics, as he began writing on his clipboard, commented off-hand: “Oh, yeah, we know Nick — we’ve been chasing him around town for the past few years.”

It rubbed Aquil like sandpaper, fired his motivation. Nick had shown up at the house a number of times in the past several years, staying for as long as a few days and as short as a few hours. This time, he’d been off heroin for five days — no small feat, but he’d done that before only to fail. Aquil thought about this as he watched the medics.  Then he punched the air in front of him. “We are gonna beat this thing!” he said forcefully, stubbornly, trying to keep his voice low.

Now, a week after the incident, Nick is thinking about the future. He talks with energy about enrolling at Yuba College, about learning a trade, earning a certificate, as other residents have done before. The guys keep up-to-date on Nick’s progress, helping him count the days. The recovery program involves selecting a personal mentor, and Nick has told Craig that he’s considering asking him the favor. The only trouble, he says, is that Craig has no history with drug addiction. Craig is a strong presence, a man with a certain resolve and motivation — but he came to the house for different reasons.

Craig is a trim 58-year-old whose troubles started a year and eight months ago when his wife died. He began heading downhill, the pieces of his life soon crumbling away. He was sleeping on the sidewalk outside a Sacramento homeless shelter last spring when a storm erupted overhead. After pondering his despair for a time, he offered up a desperate prayer and looked skyward to see a clearing sky with a lone cloud drifting north, against the wind. That, Craig says, was an unmistakable sign from the Lord, saying “head north.”  It wasn’t long afterward that Aquil came through the Sacramento shelter, spreading word about the House of Joseph, a place where a man could find the support he needed to start fresh.  It was 45 minutes north up the highway.  Craig made the trip.