A lone man sat at the Formica table in the galley. His thin face was framed by ratty-brown hair that curled on the shoulders of his dirty, blue-woolen shirt. He held a fork upright in his left hand a steak knife in the other while he continued to chew on a last piece of meat. Like a European, I thought.  He turned his face toward me, but did not speak. I wondered if he was seeing me. Or, was his gaze fixed on something else, some place or time far, far away?

“He’s a hungry one,” the cook said, grinning at his guest. “But, we got him warmed up, and fed, I think.” The inviting smell of coffee and fresh baked bread gave the steel-walled galley of the Aqua-Train tug a comfortable feel.

“The mate found him sleeping under a railcar on the barge,” the captain explained. “He must have snuck aboard while we were loading cars in Prince Rupert.”

The man’s brown eyes leapt from me to my partner, George. His face was lined, his mouth wide and taut. It was hard to judge his age, but he appeared to be in his forties.

“We are officers of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service,” I said, unfolding my credentials and holding them out so he could see. “You have just crossed the U.S. border.”

“I want to be an American!” the man proclaimed, trying to rise to his feet. He was trapped awkwardly between the bolted-down table and bench, but he nevertheless shot out his right hand.

”What country are you from?” I enquired, ignoring his hand.

The man looked puzzled, but tried again. “I love America,” he pleaded, settling back into his seat.

“He speaks pretty good English,” the cook interjected. “We’ve had a good conversation. He says he’s from Bosnia.” The man sat with his elbows resting on the table, hands clasped uncertainly in front of him.

“Do you have a passport? Any papers?” I asked.

After first glancing at the captain, he reached for his back pocket and retrieved a tattered billfold, pulling out a rumpled white business card. “Jeam Jack Johnson,” the card read, “Private Secret Agent.” In smaller letters, the card claimed additional qualifications for its bearer: “The hunt for the Red October,” and, “I will find the missing children.”

“Is this you?” George guffawed over my shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” the man replied, breaking into a smile. “I am Jeam Jack Johnson.”

Back in our office, George fingerprinted Jeam while I tried to sort through his story. He was born in the village of Prosici, he said, in what had then been Yugoslavia but was now Bosnia.

“What’s your birth name?” I asked.

Jeam produced an envelope from his backpack and extracted a carefully folded document. A petition and order from a state court in New Jersey declared that Mik Soljo Prosic had been granted a change of name to Jeam Jack Johnson.

“What about your parents,” I asked.

“My mother and my father were killed by the blood-sucking communists.” Jeam’s voice rose. “I hate communism,” he exclaimed.

“Calm down,” I said, struggling to regain his attention. “The communists are no more. We need to know about you.”

Jeam looked stymied, as if he was grappling with information his mind wouldn’t let him believe. “I hate communists. I want to fight the communists,” he muttered, slouching back into his chair and folding his arms across his chest.

Patiently, George and I coaxed Jeam Jack Johnson through the remainder of his story. The communists had driven him out of Yugoslavia, he said, and he reached a refugee camp in Belgium. British officials interviewed him, but they didn’t offer him resettlement in the United Kingdom. He left the camp and stowed away on a container ship in Rotterdam that was bound for the U.S. and wound up in New Jersey. Once ashore, he tried to join the U.S. Army. He wanted to fight the communists, he repeated, but couldn’t because he had no immigration papers. Finally, he walked into an immigration office in Newark.

“Did you have a hearing before an immigration judge?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“What did the judge say?”

“I don’t know,” Jeam responded vaguely.

“He probably said you had to go home.” George said impatiently. Immigration violators who voluntarily turned themselves in were not held in custody and, failing to get legal status at their deportation or political asylum hearings, most simply faded back into the community.

We housed Jeam in the state jail for the night, and the next morning called the federal immigration office in Newark. They confirmed Jeam’s story. He had told the judge he’d been beaten and imprisoned in Yugoslavia for having written, “I love the United States of America,” and, “I am against communism and socialism.” However, his claim for political asylum was denied because by then the communists were no longer in power in the former Yugoslavia, and Jeam couldn’t show that the new Bosnian government would persecute him if he were sent back. As we suspected, he had not been taken into custody. But then civil war broke out in Bosnia, and since he ignored further notices sent to him by mail, he wasn’t aware that the Immigration Service was permitting citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina to remain temporarily in the United States.

Suspicious that Jeam might be lying about his origin, George searched atlases at the public library to verify his story. He located the village of Prosici, Jeam’s claimed birthplace, just inside the Bosnian border. With no else to go on, we were going to have to let him go.

Later in the morning, George brought Jeam back from the jail and returned his belongings. “Okay, you’re the lucky one,” he said to the refugee. “I’ve got to let you go. There’s the door, now git!”

Jeam looked startled. I doubt that he expected politeness from any official, and he nonetheless grabbed George’s hand and then mine. “I love the United States!” he exclaimed. “I love President Bill Clinton.”

George winced. He didn’t love Bill Clinton, but he said nothing, hoping the scruffy man would just pick up his bag and go. Continuing to profess his love for America, Jeam backed and waved his way through the door and onto the street.

“I think you’re taking this personal, George,” I said.

“We’ll never get rid of this guy, you know that,” George responded testily. “He’s just another bum that we’ll have to support for the rest of his life. What makes him so lucky? You don’t know what diseases that guy’s carrying, and the do-gooders who make these laws don’t care. If they had to pay for this guy’s groceries, he wouldn’t be here.”

George hoped that Jeam would move on to another town, but Ketchikan was on an island, the next town six hours by ferry away, and the refugee had no money. It was too early in the year for cannery work, and little else was available. George didn’t want to have to think about how Jeam would sustain himself; the thought of the man living on the street as an indigent annoyed him.

Of course, Jeam didn’t leave. He was often spotted hanging out in the public library, a common downtown gathering place for street people seeking respite from Ketchikan’s ceaseless rain. John Berry, the third member of our small staff, volunteered at the Salvation Army soup kitchen and regularly reported Jeam’s attendance at the free lunch. George believed John was needling him about Jeam, becoming convinced of it when John refused to relay his alibis when the homeless man appeared at the office and asked for him. Having no place else to go anyway, Jeam would patiently wait on a chair by the front door until George finally appeared.

On one such visit, Jeam said, “Mr. George, I want to visit North Korea.”

“What in the world do you want to do in North Korea?” George asked, exasperated.

“I want to urge them to give themselves over to the United States,” Jeam said, leaning forward in his chair, eyes sparkling. “The United States is a good country, the best country in the world. Every country should give themselves over to the United States.”

“There’s no way you’ll ever get into North Korea,” George scoffed, incensed at Jeam’s naiveté. “That’s still a communist country, and they’ll never let you in.”

“But, Mr. George,” Jeam pleaded. “I want to fight the communists. They are bloodsuckers. I hate them. Help me. I want to join the American Army. You can make it possible for me.” George couldn’t have helped him join the Army had he wanted to, but Jeam never gave up. Nor did he believe George as time and again he tried to explain that communism was dead, dying out everywhere, that the iron curtain was gone.

“If communism didn’t exist at least in his mind, he’d have no reason to live,” George muttered to the rest of us after one of Jeam’s visits. “I think that illusion is the only thing keeping him going.”

During a particularly bad stretch of rainy weather, George got a call from the Ketchikan Police Department. A homeowner had complained that Jeam was sleeping underneath his house, and he had been arrested for trespass.

“What were you doing under there?” George asked impatiently when the jailers produced Jeam dressed in an orange prison jump suit.

“It’s warm and dry, a very good place.” Jeam said, his brown eyes lighting up.

“Did the people in the house know you were under there?” George asked.

“I don’t think so. I tried to be very quiet.” Jeam responded.

“The home owner must have heard him snoring and complained.” The booking officer volunteered. “But, I imagine the charges would be dropped if you’re going to ship him back where he came from.”

“I can’t,” George responded. “He’s like a bad penny; you just can’t get rid of him. I wish he would move on, but he won’t. At least in here he’ll have a warm place to sleep and a shower once in a while.” Like it or not, and he professed that he didn’t, George had begun to feel responsible for Jeam.

Soon, the summer cruise ship season flooded downtown Ketchikan with thousands of tourists. One day, the Visitor’s Bureau called.

“Do you think you can do something about this European guy down here on the dock?” The caller sounded irritated, and I guessed that it was about Jeam.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“He’s passing out crazy handbills to cruise ship passengers.”

“What do the handbills say?”

“They say, ‘Please turn away from communism and give yours — that’s what it says, yours — country to the United States’.”

“Do they call Karl Marx a terrorist and say that Vladimir Lenin was blood-thirsty?” I asked. There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then a chuckle.

“Guess you know about him, huh?”

“Yeah, but we’ll be right over.” I said. George sighed when I told him about the call, but he wasn’t surprised.

When we arrived on the wooden dock, Jeam’s long brown hair, red plaid shirt and blue jeans were easy to spot among the throng of older tourists in pastel leisure wear disgorging from the towering black and white hulls of the ships. The visitors politely accepted the single sheet of paper Jeam thrust at each of them, stopping a few steps on, smiling, chuckling to their companions, and then searching for a trash receptacle. “At least he’s reasonably clean,” George said.

The flyers were hand lettered and run off on a copy machine, probably at the library, George speculated, wondering how Jeam had come by so much copy paper. I could tell he was chagrined, but still George was having a difficult time summoning up the anger he so frequently felt when having to deal with Jeam.

George hated communists too, and like Jeam he was outspoken about it. He, too, disliked people who he believed didn’t appreciate the United States. And that day I could tell George was struggling to find a difference between himself and this alien, homeless man. For reasons I don’t think he completely understood, the line George placed between himself and Jeam Jack Johnson had begun to fade.

Once we had Jeam back at our office, George abruptly left. He returned a few minutes later with a bundle of small American flags purchased at the five and dime on the next block. “Here,” he said gruffly, thrusting them at Jeam. “If you have to pass something out, give people these!”

“Thank you Mr. George!” Jeam beamed. “Thank you! I love America! I love President Clinton! I love you!”

We hadn’t seen Jeam for awhile when one day John spotted him at the Salvation Army and asked how he was doing.

“I live on an island,” he announced, happily. “I have a boat.”

Then one day not long after, an Alaska state trooper came to the office. “Do you know that Bosnian fellow that’s been around town the past few months?” he asked George.

“Jeam Jack Johnson? Yeah, I know him. What’s he done now?” George asked.

“It appears that he had an accident. I wonder if you can identify him for me?”

“Whew!” George exclaimed, rocking back, as we examined the grisly photos the trooper presented. “That’s him, all right. How did it happen?”

“He apparently fell off a cliff over on Betton Island,” The trooper said. “The back of his head is pretty well smashed in, and from the way he was lying on the beach it looked like he had taken a fall. He built a lean-to on top of the cliff, and I found his personal belongings there. A guy up in Knudson Cove says he lent him an old skiff, and he used that to row back and forth to the island.”

“You don’t know of any enemies or anyone who would have had it in for him, do you?” the trooper asked.

“Everyone seemed to like him,” George said. “He just kind of bummed around town. You know, he was just kind of there. He was a happy guy; never let things get him down. He spent his days telling people how much he loved the United States, if you can imagine anyone doing that. He was kind of goofy — don’t get me wrong — he was smart, you could tell that. He learned English. But something happened to him somewhere along the way.”

“He claimed that he had been tortured by the communists in Yugoslavia,” I added. “I believe something like that did happen because he wasn’t quite right. At some point something changed his life, and he was never right again.”

When the trooper left, I resolved to try and track down Jeam’s family, but there was nothing in his personal affects that offered any clues. I searched directories for a representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the U.S., but the new country was deeply involved in a civil war with the Serbs and had yet to send a diplomatic representative to Washington. I called the United Nations Secretariat in New York and soon was on the line with the country’s ambassador to the U.N. I gave my condolences over the death of his countryman, and explained about Mik Soljo Prosec, relating such details as his date and place of birth, known places of residence in Bosnia, and the names of his parents.

“You must understand, we are at war, and have very little ability to contact people in certain parts of our country,” the Ambassador said. “We receive requests to contact people back home almost daily, but we have very little staff here, and almost no capacity in our country to travel to Proseci and enquire about relatives. The best I can do is keep your information, and after the situation returns to normal perhaps we can locate and notify his relatives.”

I wondered what to do with the small box of Jeam’s personal belongings the troopers had dropped off at our office. Jeam’s skiff was returned to its donor along with the few pieces of useable gear from his camp on Betton Island.

On the day of Jeam’s burial, gusty coastal rain marched across our island in wispy-grey sheets, fading the hemlocks that lined Bay View Cemetery into a formless dull green drape. George, John and I were unprepared for the sparseness of the event. Along with the undertaker and the Lutheran Pastor, Reverend Stan Berentsen, we helped carry the cheap coffin across the muddy turf to the open hole in the ground. The rain ran off the matte, grey cover in rivulets.

I thought back to the day Jeam came into our lives, how we couldn’t have anticipated his fate, and how stunned we were now, the sole mourners for this childlike stranger whose comically contrived name and unkempt appearance we had ridiculed.

“None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s,“ Reverend Berentsen said, his voice muffled by the beat of the rain which ran down his lined face and dripped off the tip of his short, brown beard. The verse from the Book of Romans seemed to make Jeam’s itinerant life seem less lonely, I thought, and helped ease my own inexplicable feeling of guilt.

George was somber, businesslike, as he helped with the coffin, striving to avoid the appearance of grieving. Burying an indigent was Christian, he had said, feeling he needed to explain his reason for being at the cemetery. Deeply conservative, Calvinistic in viewpoint, he viewed Lutherans as touchy-feely people, liberals, Scandinavians, yet he seemed to welcome Pastor Berentsen’s presence, and I think he, too, found the minister’s words comforting.

“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to almighty God our brother, Jeam Jack Johnson, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him. The Lord make his face shine on him and be gracious to him.” Reverend Berentsen read from the Lutheran Book of Worship. Then he made the sign of the cross, his wet sleeve dripping rain. “The Lord look upon him with favor and grant him peace.”

We stood silently for a moment, heads bowed, wet hands loosely clasped in front of us. I could hear George take a deep breath. Then he reached inside his rain-jacket and pulled out a small American flag like the ones he had given Jeam just a few weeks before. Stepping forward, he laid it on the coffin. The rain snuggled the cloth tightly to the wooden cover.