Welcome to Oakland

by Williamson, Eric Miles

  “Stop,” I said. “There, stop.”

  He stopped. “You got a cigarette?” he said.

  “Probably a pack in my glove compartment,” I said. “Why don’t you ask your lady to hand you one.”

  He shook his head. “Your glove compartment,” he said. “Well.”

  “My glove compartment,” I said.

  “Far as I can tell, that’s not your glove compartment. Not that glove compartment.”

  “That’s my car you and your friends are breeding in,” I said.

  “Way I see it,” he said. He laughed. It was a slow laugh, like he had pity for me. “Way I see it is this. Ain’t no one been near that car in a month but us. Cops tried to tow it away twice already, and we saved it by moving it round the block. Registration expired three months ago. And in the state of California, squatter’s rights are observed according to the housing code, section 53b, paragraphs 3-18. You can check it yourself.”

  “Squatter’s rights,” I said.

  “Squatter’s rights,” he said. “And if you really want to think about it, that car would have been towed. Sixty bucks for the tow, a couple hundred for the impound fee, twenty a day for storage. That car just got a thousand dollar invest. You owe us a grand you want that car. If there’s gratefulness in this town.”

  One of the other dudes stepped out of my car. He didn’t bother to put on pants. His skin shone like motor oil. He leaned forward and blew his nose onto the asphalt one nostril at a time. The woman giggled, and she giggled more, and then she was laughing. The guy in the car started laughing too. They were having a good old time.

  I stood outside with my flashlight and my knife and I laughed once like a cough, and then I shone the flashlight at the car and I saw the faces of the woman and the man. He was an old man, hair white and close to his head, and he was laughing and so was the woman and then I started laughing for real, and the naked man by the car, he started laughing too. The housing code expert let out a whoop and laughed deep from his belly, and we were all laughing and you could hear the echoes of our laughs banging against the slaughterhouse and the abandoned warehouses and the streets of Oakland and we laughed and coughed and the old man and the woman in the car lit cigarettes and laughed and none of us could stop laughing and maybe never would.

  I went back to the dumps and slept in my rig. I couldn’t shake the image of those rumps bobbing around in my car, those dark asses and the look in the woman’s eyes when she saw me—a look not of surprise or shame or even anger, no—a look rather of intelligence and lust, a look that said she’d figured something out that no one else ever before had, that said, You, you the fool, boy. You, boy, the fool. And curled up on the seat of my rig and listening to the shrieks of gulls and the scrambling of rats and dumps-kids and the all night shufflings of Jones, the Dumpmaster, at work on his screwy iron junk sculpture, the sound of his torches popping and hissing and showering sparks into the methane night—listening to the earth burping up compressed chemicals through the puffed-out lips of dirt-mouths that sometimes caught fire and danced blue and purple when Jones’ sparks touched them off I thought, Well, Pop’s getting married soon, and soon I won’t have to live at the dumps because I’ll have enough checks built up to cover a deposit and first-and-last-month’s rent and utilities deposits, and I’ll keep saving money and some goddamn day I’ll have enough money to get new teeth installed and I’ll have time enough to practice my trumpet properly and get good enough to show my face in Archibald’s and hold my own with the jazzmen and I’ll be able to make a living gigging at clubs and I’ll never get up again before noon as long as I can smoke a cigarette and pour my own drinks.

  If you work hard enough, if you just stay honest and good and true to your job you’ll eventually win out. That’s just the way the world works. Isn’t it?

  Pop laughed. “Now that’s a nigger rig,” he said. “Hey Joe!”

  Joe Rondinone was filling his van and eating an egg sandwich he’d gotten from the catering truck. He said, “That’s me,” and Pop told him the story of my stationwagon. The catering truck driver didn’t have any more people to sell to, but he hung around to listen to Pop’s story and he laughed all the way through it. Pop laughed so much he coughed, but Rondinone didn’t laugh. Rondinone just shook his head.

  “You don’t think it’s funny?” Pop said.

  Some rich dude in a new Bonneville pulled up to the ethyl pump. He told Pop to fill it up and check the oil. Pop stabbed a screwdriver into the oil can and pried the top open and poured a quart into the plastic funnel. The rich dude told Pop to check the transmission fluid, and Pop checked it. Then he told Pop to check the radiator, check the brake fluid, the wiper fluid, check the air filter, the anti-freeze. The pump stopped short of ten bucks’ worth of gas. Check the air pressure in the tires and make damn sure it’s 32 pounds per square inch.

  Pop was sweating, and he wiped his brow with the back of his hand and smeared grease across his forehead.

  “Check if there’s anything else needs checking,” the rich dude said. He was fat and his hair was gray and full. He wore a goddamn tie. He wore sunglasses.

  “Nine eighty-six,” Pop said.

  Fatso gave Pop a ten-spot. “Keep the change,” he said.

  Pop smiled. “Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.” Pop even bowed a little. “Thank you so much. Please come again. Sir.”

  Rondinone and me snickered to each other.

  When fat boy had driven off, Pop looked at us and smiled big. We smiled back.

  “How far’s he going to get?” I asked.

  “Tires’ll be flat before he hits the bridge,” Pop said. “When it rains, and he runs his washers, the windshield will be oiled properly—half a quart in the valve cover, half a quart in the washer-fluid reservoir. Radiator cap’s loose—it’ll overheat once it gets warmed up.”

  Pop shook his head, sadly.

  “And it’s a real shame,” Pop said. “A real shame about those brakes. Fluid’s full, but I just don’t know how far he’ll make it down the road before all the fluid runs out through those loose fittings on the master cylinder. Sure hope he doesn’t have to make any sudden stops.”

  Pop smiled, and so did we.

  I was pretty damned proud of Pop. He was getting back to his normal self. He hadn’t been the same since he torched a house full of Mexicans and they killed my brother Kent in retaliation. That was a long time ago. Years ago. It was about time he got his spunk back.

  Pop said, “Back to the matter at hand. Rondinone, you don’t think it’s funny those niggers in T-Bird’s car? You don’t think it’s funny?”

  “Shit,” Rondinone said. “No. Not funny. I seen that before. They got my son-in-law’s car just like that. They got my son-in-law Joey’s car right before he was going to fix it up. It was only two of them living in his car, but there was pecker tracks all over it. A nice old Ford. He never did get that nigger smell out. Had to sell that little Ford. It was a terrible thing selling that Ford. Poor kid never recovered from it. Never been right since.”

  Pop said, “If they’re in your car, you can kill them. That’s the law. Just don’t let them get out and start running. Then you got to drag them back inside the car.”

  “If I call the cops, the cops’ll ticket me for the expired reg and probably cut me an entire pad of fixit tickets. If I don’t call the cops, I have to fight for my car, and it’s not worth it.”

  Pop’s face got serious. He cut me one of those looks.

  He said, “A car,” he said, “is always worth fighting for.” He pointed his finger at me. “Might be one of the only things worth fighting for.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I’ll make some calls,” Pop said. “After work, tonight, we can help you take care of the business. Hell, there’s plenty sit around for years just waiting for the chance to catch the sons of
bitches and give them some payback. Joey Mason’s boy got knifed by a nigger and the nigger got away. Frankie McMalley’s girl,” Pop said. He lit a Roi-Tan. “You remember what happened to her. Nigger.”

  “I’ll take care of it myself,” I said.

  “Good,” Pop said. “Be a man. Besides, I got shit to do. I’m busy. The wedding.”

  “I thought it wasn’t for three weeks.”

  “Three weeks,” he said. “But there’s arrangements. Mary has me doing all kinds of shit.”

  Rondinone paid his bill. Pop took the cash into the shop office.

  “T-Bird,” Rondinone said. “Come here for a minute.”

  I walked to his van. He leaned out the window and put on his sunglasses. “You be careful with those niggers,” he said. “You be careful now. They’re smarter than they let on.”

  I nodded. “No shit,” I said. “They live in a car. I live in a garbage truck.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Rondinone said. He looked over at my parked scow. He shook his head. “There’s things not right with this world.”

  “Sometimes that’s what I think,” I said.

  Pop had cleaned up the shop’s office. Snookie the dog lay on a new towel Pop had taken from the trailer. Pop had framed the newspaper clipping from the Oakland Tribune that featured a big picture of him and Snookie by the tomatoes that grew wild in the back of the shop, Snookie sitting dignified at Pop’s side, Pop kneeling in his Mohawk coveralls, palms outstretched, huge ripe tomatoes in his outstretched palms. The header of the article read, “The Only Water they Get is Snookie’s!” In the picture Pop was smiling. The peanut vendor was filled with fresh nuts for Snookie—customers would put nickels into the slot and turn it for him, and then Snookie would open the metal flap with his tongue and lick them out. A picture of Mary was nailed to the wall over the register. She stood behind the bar at the Mediterranean Lounge, where she worked, cigarette in one hand, cocktail in the other, smiling, and she looked pretty good. The floor was swept, air-valve cores from inner-tubes and shavings from tubeless tire grindings and brake-shoe springs and leftover screws from rebuilt carburetors and Snookie-hair swept into a neat pile in the corner. He’d taken down the Snap-On Tools girlie calendars and replaced them with a calendar that had pictures of redwood forests and California beaches and the Golden Gate bridge and Yosemite’s Half-Dome and seals and whales and all kinds of pretty shit no one ever sees in real life.

  “Look,” Pop said. “I have to send out all kinds of shit in the mail. Invitations to her relatives and friends, these little pictures she wants in every envelope.”

  He spread them out like playing cards across the counter top. The pictures were of him and Mary standing in front of the big tire service truck, the one Pop used for serious jobs. She wore her waitress outfit—black mini-skirt and white button-up shirt—and Pop was in his coveralls and leather tire-beating apron. They had their arms around each other, and between their heads you could see the “Bud” that was written in red cursive letters on the truck’s door.

  “I don’t like the apron,” Pop said. “I think it would have been better if I wasn’t wearing the apron. It’s not like I’m always busting tires.”

  “She’s in her work duds too.”

  “Hers are clean,” Pop said. “There’s oil and grease and tire soot on my apron. I look like a slob.”

  “You look like you work for a living.”

  Pop bristled up. “Damn straight,” he said. “Some of us have to.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “If they don’t like a man works for a living, they don’t need to come to your wedding.”

  “What I say,” Pop said.

  “Damn straight,” I said.

  “You know,” Pop said. “She’s one swell bitch. Really swell. I could get used to having her around.”

  “She’s swell,” I said.

  “One swell bitch,” Pop said.

  Pop asked me to meet him at Dick’s after work, and I got there before him. I’d finished my rounds and cleaned up with the hose at the dump and I had some money in my pocket. Not enough for a deposit and first-and-last-month’s rent, but I was pretty flush.

  Everybody was there, and they were complaining about their ex-wives. Joey Polizzi had to live in a tool shed because when his wife divorced him she was boning her divorce lawyer and could afford to rack up nine grand in legal fees for Joey and he finally had to quit fighting. Joey was an old biker, a Hell’s Angel, one of the dudes my mother used to ride with after she dumped Pop. Polizzi’s wife got the nice house, the kids, the cars, the fishing boat that had been his business, even his high-school yearbooks and his penny collection he’d put together as a kid. Joey got all the debts.

  The tool shed Polizzi lived in was behind Dave Campos’ shack, which was all he had left after his divorce. His wife got both the good houses, the roofing business, the kids, even all the old cars from his backyard, cars he was going to fix up someday and now would never get the chance to.

  When Shapiro’s wife tossed him, the next day he went to his apartment and it was cleaned out—nothing left, not even his work boots. He’d never seen her since, not even during the divorce. She lived in Texas somewhere, and she’d married a lawyer, like they all do. His wages got attached, and he had to work side jobs mowing lawns and pouring driveways and being a Mr. Fixit just to pay for the trailer he parked on the lot of the slaughterhouse where he worked.

  Carlo Mendez, who didn’t come to Dick’s much anymore, came home one night and found his wife humping Bob Foutz, and he just walked out of the house. The next day he went to Oakland City Hall and got a wrecking permit. He came back to his house around noon with a dozer—he ran an earthmoving company—and he chugged right on into that house of his, plowing. His house wrinkled and splintered, and we were all there watching because he’d told us what he was going to do at Dick’s the night before, and his wife and her fuck came running out of the house, her titties a-flapping and his dick shriveled. Carlo dozed the house, razed it clean to the foundation, and he spent the whole night rolling back and forth across the ruins crushing his couches and tables and family pictures into pulp, and we had a barbecue when he was done and that was a really good time. Carlo’s joy-day made the papers, and Louie had the clipping behind the bar, framed, the bulldozed house, Carlo standing in front of the wreckage and smiling big.

  “Bitch got a boob job on my credit card two weeks before she left me,” Joey Polizzi said.

  Shapiro’s head was already hanging low, and he swung it.

  “I never even got to squeeze those titties,” Polizzi said.

  “Buy him a drink on me, Louie,” Dave Campos said.

  “It’s been three years, and I’ve only paid one of them off,” said Polizzi. “When she dies, I want those puppies back. I’m going to use them for bookends.”

  “You don’t have any books,” Campos said.

  “Doorstops.”

  “A pound of plastic,” Shapiro said. He laughed, but his laugh was ugly and swollen.

  “It’ll be all right, Shylock,” Polizzi said.

  “No,” said Shapiro. “No it won’t.”

  “Why shouldn’t we trade you in?” one of the old waitresses said. “Why shouldn’t we trade in our fat drunks on better models, ones that make money and get us something better than a six-pack of Schlitz on Valentine’s Day?”

  Somebody said, “What you want? Heineken?”

  “Why the hell you have our children, then?” said Polizzi.

  “Good hardy stock,” the old waitress said. “Wouldn’t want to breed with any of those faggy rich boys. We want their money, just like you do, and if you could marry them, you would too.”

  That was her usual joke, the one she always made when they guys were cranking it up about their ex-women. And the way she said it was always just ri
ght. We knew she was serious, but we knew she loved us, and that’s why she was at Dick’s and not some snot bar on Lake Merritt.

  Shapiro slipped off his barstool. Another one of the old waitresses came over and helped him back up, planted his forearms on the bar. “Get him a stiff one, Louie,” she said. “He needs it.” Then she laughed. She thought that “stiff one” joke was pretty damn funny. It was kind of funny, actually. The old waitress was the only one laughing, though.

  We all knew what was going to happen now. Shapiro was going to start crying. He used to be a school teacher before his wife threatened to leave him unless he got a better paying job, so he took work at the docks as a lumper loading and unloading boxes on and off rigs. He’d been to some college back in New York, and all he ever wanted to do was use his education to teach kids things about the world outside of Oakland, teach them things other than how to fix cars and lay concrete and tar-mop roofs. He was going to cry and blubber and howl and someone would have to drive him home.

  Polizzi put his arm over Shapiro’s shoulders. “The offer still stands, Shylock,” Polizzi said. “Me and the boys can take care of the business pronto. Just give me an address, and I’ll make some calls, and I can have some friends waiting outside that lawyer fuck’s house in the morning, and when he comes out in his robe in the morning to get his paper, after he finishes pissing all over himself we’ll cap him and that bitch ex-wife of yours. Just give me an address.”

  Jorgensen took the stool next to Shapiro. He said, “I can take care of it with no one knowing. From three hundred yards I can cap his knees, cap his elbows, take out his dick. We can make things better. Say the word, Shylock, and it’s done. Say the word. Please, say the word. I’m itchy.”

  Jorgensen’s eyes were big and twitching like they always did when he was thinking about being happy.

  Shapiro was crying even louder now, moaning and choking and slobbering on himself and shaking. “But I love her,” he said. “I still love her. I’ll always love her.”