Copyright © Michael T. Daffenberg, 2013
Publerati e-ditions
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published by Publerati, LLC.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by William Oleszczuk
Publerati ISBN-13: 978-0-9850504-6-7
Publerati ISBN-10: 0985050462
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Dedicated to Lydia.
I
“It’s about will.”
He told me this after it happened. With an addendum a few seconds later.
“And action, of course. Without action, will is meaningless.”
He didn’t say this immediately after. He told me this outside the room, in a teaching tone, mentor to student, like it was some fact of the universe very few knew. And I wondered exactly to what He was referring.
The hall was hot and dry. And smelled of stale urine. The only other person who could have heard Him was Hattie. She sat next to the wall, one of her hands hooked over the handrail, her thin legs pulled in, crippled, her other hand gripping a soft, cotton handle made just for people with awful arthritis. She looked stiffly brittle in her hospital gown, and like a wrinkled child, too small for her wheelchair.
I simply stared at Him in silence. He grabbed the carpet scrubber, which was parked right by the door to Albert’s room and wheeled it down the hall, singing, “I can see clear-ly now the rain is gone, boom chk, boom chk-a, boom chk, boom-chk, I can see all obstacles in my way, boom chk, boom chk-a …” And on past the nurse’s station, up the main hall toward the north wing. He hit notes, His voice was okay, He wasn’t great, but He wasn’t bad either. And as He passed Vera, one of the residents walking in her walker, she smiled at Him.
It was New Year’s Eve, the middle of the day, but the window on the fire door at the end of the hall was darkened, ice around the exterior edges, spotted by hazy frost, heavy snow falling fast outside. The dismal, cold images were counterweighted by the sparkling green and red and metallic garland that framed it, and the cardboard cutout Santa Claus that hung beneath it.
I thought about Albert Hansfeld, Santa’s beard bringing me back to him. How I had prepared myself. How I had known. How I had seen all the signs from my experiences here at the nursing home. Hell, the only thing he was missing were the death rattles. I thought they were next. But I was wrong. He intervened. At least that’s what it seemed like. I hadn’t bought in yet.
But I couldn’t deny what I had just perceived.
It was a good thing I wasn’t the only one there, for no rational, thinking being would have believed their own senses in a case like this—evidentiary support was needed, others with senses that detected the same things I did. No one was ever convinced by sole witnesses who reported this kind of thing. I think of UFO’s, poltergeists, Bigfoot, Chupacabra—these, like “miracles,” are things that generally have very few observers at any one time.
Thank the gods for the others who were there. Thank the gods I wasn’t one of those lone claimants. Two housekeepers were there. One nurse was there, RN. Two aides were there. He, the Floor Tech, was there. Every one of us saw that “miracle” performed. Saw it. Witnessed it. That’s what we did. We witnessed it.
But not all believed what they witnessed.
The nurse believed. She was already religiously slanted: wore a rosary, said she’d pray for you just as a morning greeting, let everyone know when it was National Prayer Day. She was sure it was a miracle. She even thought He might be The Savior returned.
One aide believed. It was the very event she witnessed that converted her. No real religion in her life before this. She believed in a god, but never thought about it. Then, it was almost like she was a disciple of Him. She adored Him. Not like some high school crush, more like some sort of universal brotherly love. She and the nurse had never really spoken to each other before, yet afterward they became members of the same church and were emphatically best friends.
The other aide denied everything she saw—a broken psyche reaction in my opinion. I mean, she denied the witnessing of an event everyone else in the room affirmed. Bothered by talking about it, she started looking for a new job.
One of the housekeepers, a middle-aged Mexican woman named Lettie, believed. She was terrified in that room, witnessing that event. Later she told me she had been paralyzed with fear, she couldn’t move. But then she was in awe of Him—another disciple, making the total three, three women who adored Him, three women who believed.
There was the resident, Albert. He lived another few weeks when he should’ve been dead that day. He loved telling that story, the story of his big comeback, the story of his miracle, or rather, His miracle. Though, the real miracle was the aftermath. An estranged daughter had not seen him in over twenty years, but when she heard what happened, she came immediately and they made up. She even took a hiatus from her work and was there when he went on hospice for the second time and actually did die. Albert never smiled and laughed so much as he did those last weeks with his daughter. And when his daughter let me know he passed, I looked in on him to say goodbye and swore I saw peace on his face instead of the usual ghoulish appearance of dying people.
There were two kinds of reactions in this regard to a loved one becoming debilitated to a state of nursing home need, at least from my observations at the one I worked. Some people showered their close ones with love, daily visits, special holiday outings, sweet tasting candies and sweet smelling plants, and all the love they can handle. Then, there was the other kind, hard to describe because I never saw that kind. They ignored their close ones, never visited, no phone calls, no presents or treats, and most important, no love. Albert’s daughter had gone from the latter to the former all because of one person.
The Floor Technician—that’s Him of course. He performed the so-called miracle.
And there was the other housekeeper—me. I never believed it was a miracle, but I never denied what I witnessed, either. I convinced myself there had to be a rational explanation: a feat of nature not often seen; an amazing sequence of events with connections unknown to us but possible; a rare, hopeful coincidence … uh, hell, maybe sunspots? Global warming? Aliens? There just wasn’t an answer for me. Not at this point, anyway.
The first words spoken in that room after He performed His “miracle” were, “Who the hell are you?” I said that.
After I spoke, which was preceded by a roomful of mouth agape silence, Lettie wept, not moving except for an occasional spasm in her chest.
And the unbelieving CNA, Trish, then said, “Whaaaaat the fuuuuuuck?” in a slow, drawn way, quietly, the opposite of how one normally uttered that phrase.
And Albert said, “Watch yer mouth, lil’ lady. I’m hungry, when’s breakfast? Why’s everybody standin’ round here starin’ at me for?” It was 12:45 on a Friday afternoon and he hadn’t opened his eyes, said anything, nor eaten since the Wednesday before. The feeding tubes to which he was connected since then had been removed just hours earlier, though he still had his nasal oxygen hose hanging from his ears, the buds up his nose.
The Floor Tech and I were the only ones laughing.
The nurse, Betty Marie, pursed her lips in a tight grin, creases of age emanated from her mouth, her glassy eyes dripped slowly.
The converted aide, Janie, had a strange look, a barely there, half-smile, her forehead wrinkled in question marks about her eyes, like she was confused but happy, maybe pensively joyous. Or just plain dumbfounded.
Upon hearing the news of the miracle, like any workplace it spread fast, the Mexicans in the kitchen immediately believed he was The Savior. In Spanish, they all called him “Miguelito Angel.” His name was Michael.
Since we shared primary monikers, I knew the root meaning of his name. It came from the name Micah el. Micah meaning “he who is like God.” The “el” is a title, similar to mister, meaning “of God.” There was a time when I used to tell people this, tell them that my name said it all, that it explained my big ego. Michael, literally translated, means “he who is like God, of God.” How could I not have a big ego? But I later found out my interpretation was slightly askew—the name is actually interrogative. He would teach me that. And much more.
There was a small circle of nurses that laughed at all of us behind our backs. Another set took us seriously but dismissed that it was any sort of miracle. And the rest sort of believed the story, but needed something else to become hard believers like those first three women.
But before you read Michael’s story, there are a few things you need background on first.
I guess I have to go back to the first week of December, back to before my wife was diagnosed with cancer, back to when I wanted to kill myself.
II
I sat on a park bench, leafless tree branches hanging over my head, thin tendrils reaching down for me. I exhaled and watched the water vapor of my breath wisp around in the wind, and then I looked up to the clouded ceiling, up through the creepy fingers of the tree, to watch the grand exhalation of the world move above me. But it wasn’t moving. It was still, like a real ceiling. And as I stared, the clouds closed in on me, pressuring me.
I looked at the amber, opaque prescription bottle in my hand, the white cap distinct against the dying colors of late fall and the maroon of my winter coat. My lips were chapped.
Two months earlier a young girl had been murdered here. Her remains were found in the woods, burnt. It was some crime of opportunity for some inhuman being who had a life worth nothing to nobody. It came out later that he was in Section 8 housing and on Illinois’ version of food stamps, the LINK card. Most of this guy’s adult life had been and will be supported by taxpayers of the state. And he had the gall to murder somebody. A nineteen-year-old girl. College student, art. From the newspaper articles I read, she seemed to be pursuing what she loved and I wondered how important that was in one’s life.
It seemed epically important to me. It was part of the reason I sat in that vacant park—vacant of people, vacant of leaves, vacant of life—holding a bottle of OxyContin, debating how many it would take to go to sleep in this uncomfortable, first week of December cold.
December. My birthday was a few days away. I would turn 40. It felt over. I gave a shot, definitely not my best, but a shot, and the miss had left me feeling a failure, a loser, worthless, like the murderer. But at least I wasn’t on welfare.
I evaluated my life. Quickly. At his execution, Socrates said something like, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, what he failed to tell you is that sometimes the examined life is not worth living, either. I thought of who I wanted to be and who I was. I wanted to be something instead of nothing. I was a housekeeper at a nursing home. I was nothing.
Since I had deduced I was nothing, after taking Socrates’ suggestion, I decided that I would make nothing a reality. It was nothing to me; I have no religious affiliation. I don’t believe in any sort of deity and have no toleration for those who think morality is more than our natural urges to exist, to survive. Something was either wrong with me, or with society, because I think it’s safe to say there is nothing “natural” in killing oneself when in perfect health. Physical health. Now, mental health was different.
I often questioned the validity of clinical depression. Really? Your brain can be defective and force you to think counterproductive thoughts, thoughts counterproductive to the only real point in life which is to survive? And what is the point of surviving? Eh, questions for the philosopher. And that’s when I started tracking my life, and how I got to this park bench, because I was one of those philosophers—my degree was in philosophy. Another dimension to my depression.
When I started college, I was around twenty-seven, fresh out of the Navy. It seemed everyone believed college was key to decent employment, to a future where you’re not riding a register or wearing keys on your belt or steering a mop or asking if one would like fries with that.
So I steeped myself in academia, stayed at the school all day, worked on the school newspaper, hung out in the library always researching something for a class or for myself. Military service taught me to appreciate my educational opportunities.
Morality, the nature of knowledge, linguistics, logic, big issues of life itself, all explored in philosophy. I loved the intellectualism, the immersion into a group who always wanted to talk about these matters. It was great for someone like me because most people get easily annoyed talking philosophy. Like ordinary animals, most people cannot intellectually handle the deeper questions of life.
I excelled the first two years—straight A’s. But sometimes things lose their color, their brightness, their luminescence and my grade point average slipped to a B over the last two years. Within a year after graduation, I married Lara. I loved her and she was one of the only women I had known who could match my level of intellectual curiosity and analytical thinking. She had two kids from two previous husbands, and I loved them, too—the kids that is. She called me “lucky number three.”
I had high hopes that my degree, even though it was in philosophy, would carry me into at least a tolerable job. I had a naïve assumption that people who hired wanted intelligent, reasonable, quick learning, college-educated employees—qualities I had strived to get.
I, as many of you can see, was an idealist.
The reality was most people didn’t want smart people working for them. I had my assumed reasons, but they sounded like sour grapes to most, even myself occasionally, and who knows, maybe they were. It just seemed a lot of jobs were mechanical, robotic, repetitive and un-intellectual and most people who hired for these jobs didn’t want a smart person because that smart person might prove themselves better and then “steal” the hiring person’s job. I also believed that when one saw “philosophy” as a major on a resume, they instantly saw the phrase, “smart-ass” instead. I had doomed myself because of my desire to learn and be intelligent. It’s true that happiness and stupidity go hand-in-hand.
I struggled to find any decent work, drowning in a pool of ugly industrial factories and prison-like warehouses. I couldn’t get the jobs I wanted, and I couldn’t get the jobs I didn’t want but paid decent, so I ended up in a job I hated with low pay. I sensed an injustice somewhere.
My first job after receiving my degree was clerking at a convenience store. Minimum wage, shit work. It was over forty hours a week but still considered part-time—some strategy the corporation had hatched that saved them money somehow.
Lara and I rented a small apartment that was more than we could really afford. It was two bedrooms, us in one, Coral and Johnny in the other. My esteem took hit after hit. Every time I brought home my paycheck, every penny was gone to bills, rent and food. Our checking account was constantly in arrears and there was never money for extras. We just weren’t making ends meet, so Lara and I decided to go to the welfare office to see if we could get some help, legitimate help. We didn’t need much, just some extra money for rent and to ensure groceries, just until I got a real job. This was before my jaded view on welfare. This was before I was disgusted at all parties involved with that department: the politicians who voted shit like that into law, the jerks who managed your account at the office, and the people who took full advantage of working taxpayers of Illinois. Not to mention whose partial fault it was for the perpetuation of the welfare department—business owners who didn’t pay their full-time employees reasonable wages. Their dissociative greed pushed us that much closer to the left-wing agenda. Ironic because I didn’t think most business owners saw this. Most of them would have considered themselves right, politically speaking, yet their actions betrayed their very own political philosophy. Too many people worked full-time hours and were still on some kind of government assistance. Want the state to cut back on welfare? Pay your employees a livable wage.
This was the kind of blind ignorance and wholehearted selfishness that really made me desire an end. This was the kind of primitive, simple mode of thinking that had me sitting on that bench in the cold holding a bottle of pills that should be used for pain-killing or partying, not terminating.
I stared off into the woods where that girl’s remains were found—Bobbi the art student. I traveled back years looking for a benchmark in my mind, a place to go to in order that I might know the foundational reasons I was there, on that bench, in that park, with those pills, wondering about a dead girl I never knew.
III
“I’m a writer.”
That’s what I told people. I was a writer. Sometimes that felt like a half-truth. I was a clerk.
I worked third shift the first four years at the convenience store. The memories are fuzzy at best. I didn’t do well staying up all night every night.
Part of the store was a deli and I was responsible for making anywhere from fifty to a hundred sandwiches in a night. So, three hours of my shift would be a terrible tedium, something like this:
Five pairs at a time, lay out the bread on the wooden sandwich board—wheat, white, multi-grain, dark rye, light rye. Next, slather mayo on each slice. Then, lettuce, tomato on one side, cheese on the other—American, cheddar, Muenster, Swiss, provolone. Lastly, the meats—Polish ham, oven-baked turkey, roast beef, pastrami and salami.
The sandwiches were placed in the cooler for the lunch rush the following day. Once I finished making them, usually around two or three in the morning, I’d serve the exiting bar crowd. No matter the day, I would have at least three or four drunks around this time come in for anything from aspirin, to bottled water, to all sorts of munchies, including some of the sandwiches I had freshly placed. I was getting to know these drunks. In a college town on the non-college side of town, they’re quite regular.
“Hey, duuuuude!” It was one of those drunks coming in on a Thursday night. Actually, Friday morning. I had seen him many times before in the store late at night, tipsy.
Here he was again, off-balance. His face was sweaty. He had a large kidney of a birthmark swimming on his right forearm. And there was what looked like silver and white paint dried in cracks, spider-webbing on both his hands. His jeans were dirty and shared the same dried paint stains.
“Good morning,” I said, friendly enough, as I walked to the register to wait for him to make his free-market selection, and put his powerful, earned dollars to use. I wondered if he had a decent job, a job he liked to do, a job that paid him enough so he didn’t have to even think about government assistance. Of course, I guessed he was some sort of painter. Because of how the paint appeared, and the colors, I further estimated he was an auto-body guy.
For whatever reasons, I had a thought process like that with almost everyone who came in. I had one of the lowest jobs on the food chain, so I wondered where others’ links were. He grabbed one of my sandwiches, ham and provolone on dark rye, a single-serving-sized bag of chips, and one of our bucket-sized fountain drinks.
“You’re always here, man. You work every night or something?”
“No, but I work like forty to fifty hours a week.”
“Oh… I thought maybe you owned the place.”
“Yeah, no. Even if I had the money to own this store, I wouldn’t buy into this type of business. The profits are far too thin. The company wants you to have two-hundred fifty-thousand dollars liquid just to be considered for franchising. All that money and you still don’t actually own anything except the product on the shelf and the rights to use the name “Red Hen.” No thanks. To top it all off, do you really think they pay me enough to actually have the ability to buy into one of their franchises?”
“Oh. That sounds like a rip-off. No, no I guess not.” He leaned left slightly, then corrected himself. His eyes were unfocused and there was the distinct smell of liquor about him. Mixed with his body odor, the experience was uncomfortable to say the least. I took his money and gave him change, leaning back, keeping my nose as far from him as possible.
He walked out the door, got into his car, backed out without looking and peeled out of the parking lot onto the two-lane blacktop. Drunk drivers seemed much more rampant when you worked overnights.
I stood at the register staring into the summer darkness. I wondered if that story was worth writing, a drunk in the middle of the night at a convenience store. I waited there, daydreaming about what it would be like to actually earn a living off of my passion for writing. I decided I needed practice. I had started my own blog, not for readership reasons, at least at first, as much as for rehearsing for my big break, my novel, my way out of having to sell my soul to people who were not as intelligent nor as moral as me, and who really couldn’t give a crap about the things that were important to me.
I must’ve stood there in my reverie for at least twenty minutes. I was gone. I was published and was providing good things to my family. I was paid big money and gave my wife a big house, my son a nice car, and my daughter would never have to take the shit jobs no one ever wanted. And headlights passed over me, waking me from the fantasy. A guy got out, another late night regular, later than usual, and stumble-stepped to the front doors. I stood at the register—maybe this was my blog for which I had been waiting.
He was there for ice. And as soon as he got up to the counter, he mentioned how he had just come from the strip club.
Along with the “bar” odors of stale smoke and beer, I smelled a topic possibly entertaining enough for one of my writing exercises, one of my stepping stones to being good at what has already come naturally to me. I turned my mind to writer’s details, remarking, remembering, feeling the textures of the moment, seeing the colors, hearing his words and the shuffle of his feet. And I wondered how much of this story I would have to embellish.
None of it as I found out.
IV
True Stories of the Lowly Clerk—This Week’s Episode: An Exchange of Services
by M.W. Gilbacher
He was twenty-seven. He had a dark beard, full, but close-cropped. He was stocky, portly. His eyes were drunk lazy and drunk red. He piled two bags of ice onto the counter, “Hey, man. Me an’ my buddies just got back from the strip club.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Where are there strip clubs around here?”
“Out by Hampton. A place called Toddy’s Hotties. It was my friend’s birthday.”
“Hampton, huh?”
“Yeah. An’ some shtripper drew a big dick on my friend’s back with a permanent marker. Then she wrote, ‘I like it in the ass.’ Oh, man. We had a great time. Those shtrippers loved us.”
“Three-twenty-two, please.” His eyes goggled. “Yeah, I know—ice isn’t cheap at convenience stores.” He paid and left. I began preparing for the doughnuts to arrive, starting the coffee, stirring and sugaring the muffin mix while the oven preheated.
Ding ding.
Two young women walked in: a blond and a brunette, a Betty and a Veronica. They were casual—both in sweatshirts, jeans, tennis shoes. “Hi,” said the Betty. “Can I get a sandwich?”
I looked around at the morning rush prep I had laid out on the sandwich board. “Uh… is it complicated?”
“No, no. It’s easy,” she sang, chipper. Meanwhile, the Veronica leaned on the counter, brooding, looking at the single-dose packs of medicine that hung on the wall above the register.
“Go ahead,” I said, donning the plastic sheaths for my hands.
“Do you have any sub rolls?”
“You do want something complicated. You can make it yourself.”
“Sure! Can I?” she sang again.
“No, yeah. That’ll be alright. Come on around. There’s the mayo, lettuce and that stuff, rolls back here and the meat is under there.” I walked to the counter and asked ‘Veronica’ if I could get her some medicine.
“Yeah, two of those Nyquils.” She spoke softly and seemed annoyed, like she had a hangover. I grabbed them and rang her up.
“Two dollars even.”
“Betty” chirped again, from the crowded sandwich board, hands busy spreading mayonnaise on a twelve-inch sub roll, “you’re probably wondering why we always come in here at this hour. We’re strippers!”
“Really? Where at?”
“A place out by Hampton—Toddy’s Hotties—you ever heard of it?”
“Sort of, not before tonight. This is kinda weird.” I related the story about the drunk man earlier. “Then he said one of the strippers drew a dick on his friend’s back….”
“Veronica” finished, bitterly, without smile, “Yeah, and then I wrote I like to take it in the ass. Those jerks were makin’ us work so hard and then givin’ us one single at a time.”
That was when I thought about the two crinkled ones resting in my cash drawer and where they might have been earlier that night.
“Betty” finished her sandwich as we all made small talk about strippers and jerky men. She stepped back to the customer side of things and asked how much she owed. I told her that she saved me work, that she could have the sandwich for nothing.
“Oh, thank you. You’re very nice. You ever go to strip clubs? Cuz if you come down to ours, I’ll give you a free lap dance.”
“Uh, yeah … strip clubs aren’t really my thing. Besides, I don’t think my wife would appreciate that.”
“Sure. What, you’re into porno, then?”
“Hmm…. that’s one dollar even for the chips,” I said. The blonde handed me a crinkled single.
That same single was change for the next guy who came in—he got a coffee, a paper and a doughnut.
7 comments:
Hera said…
Yeah, well, guys only go to strip clubs or jack to porn, uh, right? Could only be two options there …
Dagny Taggart said…
Ahh, the chronicles of a dollar bill. That’s enough to make me compulsively wash my hands.
Jack-off All Trades said…
“Oh, the places your money has been.”
Visa’s next ad campaign.
HatesBush said…
Heh. :=D Great blog. Great writing.
And blogrolled, as well.
Pope Ben-Wa Balls said…
Seriously, Visa should use it as an advertising strategy, “why sully yourself with the currency of the masses…..”
Malignant Photo said…
Well if it was five bucks, maybe!
Ten? Definitely!
Sylvia P said…
Would Visa really work in strip clubs? From what you’ve written I can’t see it as being possible and typing your PIN number really would be a sore waste of time.
V
I don’t remember how long I sat on that bench, reflecting.
A lady bundled up against the bitter wind in her tan overcoat walked her dog, but she didn’t go into the park proper; she stayed on the sidewalk. After Bobbi’s remains were found, this became typical. Her murder weighed heavy on me for many reasons, but one that haunted me was that it happened two blocks from where we lived in a park where my family had gone many times. Evidently we weren’t the only ones who felt uncomfortable about coming down here.
It’s a rare emerald of a park for our community. There’s a paved walk through a good chunk of woods. And in the woods are dirt trails winding down to the shallow river, to prairies hidden within the trees, to swampy areas. And all of that was tainted darkly by one piece of shit taking away a lifetime of opportunity from an innocent girl with a passion. He murdered a park at the same time he choked the life out of Bobbi.
I knew there were some homeless people who camped out deep in those woods, lived in those woods. After Bobbi’s remains had been discovered, all the homeless people were exposed, questioned and told they couldn’t live there anymore. One of these homeless situations involved a family—dad, mom, two kids. I could not imagine what it would have felt like to fall that far. Near the end of the third summer that I worked at the Red Hen, we had been close, but I stooped to the lowest moral value I could justify in order to avoid a permanent camping trip to the local park.
VI
I awoke at ten from a dream, sweaty, groggy and grumpy.
The kids were in bed.
I only had two hours of sleep.
I headed for the bathroom to brush my teeth. For some reason, my mouth upon waking tasted worse when I was on third shift.
Lara heard me from the kitchen and came and stood at the bathroom door while I put the toothpaste on my brush.
“I’ve got kinda bad news.” She was sheepish, being coy and cute. But I knew the subject matter before she said anything. It was that same cutesy look that gave it away to me. Even with cutesy, I still didn’t want to hear it. So, I started my own conversation.
“I had a dream. It was like I was in a musical. I was singing and dancing behind the deli. There were two sandwiches I made right next to each other on the sandwich board, a turkey and a roast beef.”
“Did you hear me?” She was calm, maybe slightly confused. I looked into the mirror at her reflection—it was easier that way. I could stare right into her reflected eyes and keep on going.
“They became friends, but when I wrapped them up, they were separated. Then, when I put them in the cooler, they ended up next to each other again, and they were singing, ‘reunited and it feels so good.’ And they were happy.”
“You’re crazy. You didn’t get enough sleep. Wanna hear the bad news?”
“You know I’m gonna buy that sailboat for you someday? Someday.”
“Mike? Are you there?”
“I know; I know, we’re broke.” I shoved the toothbrush in my mouth, closing my eyes, imagining I can see inside, cleaning the gum line, getting those back teeth, scrubbing that bad taste off my tongue.
“Yeeeeaaaah,” she said, “we’re a hundred dollars negative in our checking.”
“Oh! What the fuck!” I half-yelled through toothpaste, spraying white, foamy spots onto the mirror. I spat in the sink. “Lara. I don’t get paid until Friday. What’s today? Saturday? Sunday? Shit!”
“It’s Saturday. And we don’t have much food, either.” She kept speaking to me like this was a business meeting of neutral news.
I went back to brushing and looking at her reflection. She felt bad. I saw it in her reflected eyes. She hated seeing me upset and I hated seeing her upset. All she wanted for me was happiness and all I wanted for her was happiness—that’s what love is about. But people generally have to make their own happiness, as I would find out later in life.
“Lara, we can’t live like this. We have to check into Section 8 housing or food stamps or something. The Red Hen is the best I got right now. I mean, I haven’t had one interview from all those applications. And …” I caught my face in the mirror. I didn’t like the expression of desperation on it, toothpaste on my lips, so I just stopped.
“I know. Since the car isn’t running, I’m going to stop making the car payment. And I’ll call the social services office on Monday.” She sounded as defeated as I was. She didn’t want to not pay our bills, she didn’t want to call the welfare office, but she felt we had to do it. Her part-time job, my “part-time” job—neither were allowing us to live.
“Okay. I’m off to the Bloody Chicken. And don’t worry, I’ll figure something out for this week.”
And I did. To this day, I am ashamed, but it was for my wife, my kids. When you are protecting your family, nothing seems immoral.
So, off to work I went with the heavy question of how I was going to feed my household for the next week. But I didn’t have to think hard, I knew what I was going to do.
I arrived at the store in the balmy, eleven pm darkness to relieve a thirty-something woman named Eddie. She was white trash with a hillbilly accent, face zitted and pocked, and very slutty around the male customers. She saw me as I entered, already having her purse and sweatshirt over her arm and we passed in the doorway.
“Hey, anything I need to know?”
“Nao!” she said, stepping quickly to her car. “Have fu-un!” It was Saturday, so I assumed she had some zit-faced, hillbilly slut plans, like fucking men other than her husband, which she always bragged about. I noticed her purse; it was huge like a duffel bag. And it looked stuffed, and squared off, like it was full of small, rectangular boxes. Knowing her, probably stolen cigarette cartons. Later, I would find out I was right.
When in Rome…
After sandwiches, while the muffins thawed, when I knew I might have up to an hour without seeing anyone except possibly the strippers, I began filling a garbage bag with groceries. Milk, bread, eggs, some deli meats and cheeses, a couple frozen burritos, cereal, just the bare necessities, just what I needed to get my family to the next payday. And I went back to work, leaving the bag in the cooler.
Sunday mornings at the Red Hen were notoriously dead, and the college kids who usually worked on weekends were notoriously late. Seven was when I was off, but I often stayed to seven-thirty, eight, waiting for my relief.
Around six-fifty, when nobody was around, I took out the garbage. This Sunday morning I had two bags instead of the usual one. I made sure the real garbage was facing the camera as I walked out to the dumpster. Then, I hid the groceries around back. My relief was on time and I made haste to get my booty and get home. It was daylight and I must have looked ridiculous carrying that bag of groceries, like a tall, skinny garbage-man without a truck. Thank the gods for Churchies and their obligations, thank the gods for late Saturday nights and people sleeping in, thank the gods for dead Sunday mornings.
We survived to my next payday on that minimal amount of groceries, with no money at all. I ate a meal a day out of the deli at work to save the groceries we did have for Lara and the kids.
Thank you Bloody Chicken for feeding my family that week, admittedly unknowingly. I’m sure there’s an ugly little hillbilly out there also thanking you for providing half a dozen cartons of smokes to her poor family.
And after bending my moral backbone as far as it could go without snapping, the old cliché, “ya gotta do what ya gotta do,” haunted me.
VII
I was getting worse and worse at applying for jobs. It was hard to maintain motivation about selling yourself to people with whom you would never associate in any other situation, to people for whom you had no respect. It wasn’t like that at first; I was bright-eyed and motivated. But life’s lessons were dimming my sight, idling down my will.
I had another problem I couldn’t get around when it came to employment—if I didn’t at least minimally like what I was doing, I didn’t do it very well. Bad for me, but worse for employers because I really needed a job and was willing to cover this aspect of my personality just to get income.
Welcome to survival of the fittest—more about bank accounts and deceptions than the perpetuation of beneficial random mutations.
In a college town the first and most obvious place to apply is the self-same college from which I got my BA. Decent pay, good benefits. But they won’t hire anyone in default on their student loans. It was a horrible toilet flush. I needed to make more money to pay off my loans, and I couldn’t get one of the best jobs in town at the facility from which I accrued that debt, therefore, my loans continued in default. I felt myself slipping lower and lower on the social Darwinian scale. I felt my link getting adjusted further and further down. I felt myself flowing with the waste into the drain, straight into the sewer.
But, I kept applying for every job I thought I’d be good at, every job I thought I’d like. Then, it was jobs I could do and could tolerate. Then, it was jobs I wasn’t qualified for, but could tolerate. Finally, I gave up and just kept applying for everything. No one was calling me despite the dozens and dozens of applications and resumes I had dropped off in person, despite the hundreds and hundreds of online want ads to which I sent my information. I had one interview in that first four years I worked at the convenience store out of all that applying, and that was for selling extended warranties over the phone—less than minimum, paid commission only. I needed more reliable income than that, I had a family.
If life is about doing what you hate for forty or more hours a week for forty or more years just so you can go into unrecoverable debt, then I didn’t want any part of it. Welfare started to smell better and better. It’s bad in a society when the welfare program becomes more appealing than any job you might be able to get.
Lara made the appointment with the county office on a morning after one of my nights off, thank the gods. Over half my difficulty with working overnights was that I would go right back to staying up all day after getting off my last shift, and then sleep at a regular time the following night off. I never found a routine where I slept regularly during the day.