by Barry Graham
“You can joke. I could see myself as a grumpy old fart, telling other old codgers what’s wrong with the world while I cut the three hairs they’ve got left.”
“To be like that, you’d just have to get older. You’ve already got the rest of it down.”
“Quit picking on me. In one day, I get you a job, I feed you, I fuck you –”
“Not yet.”
“Soon as you like.”
“Let’s eat first.”
“See, that’s why I should cook for a living. You’d rather eat my food than fuck me.”
“Not always. I’m just hungry and horny right now.”
Later, as they were finishing dinner, David said, “I want it to always be like this.”
“So do I,” Laura said.
It wasn’t the same world anymore. Frank had heard all about the Internet while he was in the joint, but he couldn’t have imagined what it was really like.
Virtual girlfriends. Webcams. People talking about “visiting” a web site, like it was a place you went to instead of just turning on a computer. Frank tried to remember if people used to say they “visited” a T.V. show, but the memory wouldn’t come. He looked at message boards and blogs and chat rooms, and he saw how angry, grasping, needy, mean and crazy people were. It reminded him of prison, but in prison there was nowhere else to go. He couldn’t believe that there were people who weren’t in prison, who could go wherever they wanted to and do whatever they wanted to, who chose to spend their time sitting at a computer, trying to upset people they didn’t know and never would know.
He wondered if most people were like that, and if you put them in prison or let them go on the Internet, out of the regular world, they’d show who they really were. He wondered if many people behaved that way in regular life, and he realized that, because of where and how he’d spent his life, he didn’t know.
ELEVEN
You could tell that summer was coming to an end. If you couldn’t actually feel it, you could hear it on the radio as you drove somewhere in your car and the talk show host would say, “It’s definitely cooling down – only a hundred and five degrees today...”
Then it was fall, and you could tell because, while visitors from out of state wore shorts and tank tops, the residents of the city wore sweaters and coats. Leaves fell from the non-native trees people had planted in their yards. The palm trees in the streets didn’t change, and the sky was as blue as ever.
Laura was still working full-time at Keating Accounting, and was also doing some work for Bob Headman on the side. Sometimes she would have to interview witnesses to serious crimes, or track down family members of people facing charges, in the hope that they might be able to say something in mitigation. That was close to what she’d done at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, and she loved it. Sometimes Bob would just have her go look up public records for him. She didn’t love that, but she didn’t mind it, and she liked it a lot more than she liked her other job.
Bob said he’d like to hire her full-time, but he didn’t need that much investigative work. He told her that’d he’d like to have her combine that work with being his personal assistant, and she said she’d be willing to consider that, but Bob already had an assistant that he liked well enough, so there wasn’t going to be an opening unless she quit, which she had no plans to do.
David had run out of money, had borrowed some from Bob, and still hadn’t paid him back. He’d finally managed to get a job at a nonprofit organization that provided services for people who were trying to quit booze or drugs. David’s job was a hybrid of counselor and case manager. He liked it, and he knew he was lucky to find such a job without a college degree, but the pay was so low that he couldn’t cover all his bills. He was driving without insurance, because there was no money left over after he’d paid his rent, car payment and utility bills, and put some groceries in the fridge. Laura wouldn’t have been able to manage on the salary from her weekday job if she’d had a car payment, but she’d paid off her Subaru a year ago. There were days when David was so broke that it was only because of Laura that he was able to eat – and he had already begun baking bread every day.
He had asked Bob Headman and a few other people with money to risk if they’d be willing to lend him some start-up funds. Bob had said yes as soon as he was asked, and the others had said maybe. The more David had looked into it, the more cautious he had become. To start a bakery, he would need so much expensive equipment, with no idea of whether he could find enough customers to make it worthwhile.
So he’d decided to start slowly. He’d approached a couple of independent grocers and they’d agreed to take a few loaves every day.
He’d come home from his job and immediately turn on the oven. By the time he went to bed at ten, he’d have made six loaves. He’d wake at three in the morning, chug some coffee to clear his grogginess, and then start work on another six loaves. While the yeast raised the dough, he’d catch another forty minutes of sleep – or fuck Laura if she’d spent the night with him – then drink more coffee and put the loaves in the oven. He’d have made more, but six was as much as the oven would hold, and even that was a tight fit. While the bread baked, he’d eat breakfast, take a shower, get ready for the day. He’d let the loaves cool on the counter, and then he’d put them in paper bags labeled Bread by Regier, the six he’d made last night, now cold, and the ones he’d just made, that would stay warm for another hour or even two.
He’d drive to the shops that carried his bread, give it to them, and then head to his job. He’d spend the morning trying to stay awake while counseling addicts and working the phone to get services for them. When his lunch hour came, he’d quickly scarf some instant noodles, then set the alarm on his cell phone to go off forty-five minutes later. He’d lie down on the floor of his office and sleep until the alarm woke him. He told Laura that he was often so spaced-out from exhaustion that some of the people he counseled must have suspected that he had the same problem that they did.
The bread sold well enough that the shops were willing to keep carrying it. Even on weeks when every loaf sold every day, the money David made from it didn’t do much more than cover the cost of ingredients and the gas required to deliver the bread. But, he told Laura, and told himself, it was a start.
Working at the dealership, Frank realized that he was just like he had been all those years ago. He only had to talk to people for them to like him and trust him. He saw that people responded to him more warmly than to even the best salesmen who worked there.
He wondered if he could get out of working security and get into sales. He found himself thinking “back into sales” as though it was something he’d done recently. It felt sometimes as though the last eighteen years hadn’t really happened, and that it wasn’t long since he was a young man selling cars in the sunshine. He felt as though he could easily go back to that life, even though the dark hair he’d had back then had mostly turned to silver. Sometimes those years, the time in prison, didn’t seem real, and what was real was the time before and after.
But he knew there were records that made it all real. He knew anyone could look up those records, and the records wouldn’t tell them about all the sadness, all the regret. He wondered if all the good places to work would do background checks. He wondered how he could explain his lack of verifiable work history. He wondered and wondered.
Laura was still running up A-Mountain a few mornings a week. David kept saying that he’d like to join her, but that he was too busy baking in the mornings. She said they could do it some Saturday or Sunday, and he said he didn’t think he was in good enough shape to run up a mountain.
“Poo widdle Davy-Wavy,” Laura said. “So do you really want to run, or are you gonna wuss out?”
“Yeah, I want to run. I want to get in better shape, but I think I should start with something that won’t kill me.”
“How about Encanto Park?”
“Sure, that’ll work. Are you okay with going there?”
She didn’t know that a couple days after she’d told David what had happened, he had gone to the park and walked around, trying to imagine how it had been, trying to see it, wondering which tree Laura and Frank had sat under.
When they went to the park on a Sunday morning, he had to fight a temptation to ask her to show him exactly where the first conversation with Frank had happened. He forgot about it almost as soon as he and Laura started to run.
He already knew she was fitter than him, but he hadn’t realized how much. He had to dig in hard just to keep up with her, and she wasn’t even breathing heavily. If she’d talked to someone on her cell phone while she ran, they wouldn’t have been able to tell that she wasn’t relaxing on a couch.
When they’d gone maybe a mile, Laura said, “Okay, that was a good start, but it’s probably enough for your first day.”
David nodded, not wanting to even try to speak. They slowed to a walking pace and then they both lay down in the grass – David to rest, Laura to do fifty push-ups.
Frank liked to walk in that park too. He wasn’t sure at first if he would like it or if it would be horrible, and the first couple times he walked there after his release, he didn’t know what he felt, or if he felt anything. He walked the same steps he had taken before, towards where Laura was sitting. He’d expect the park to look different, and in some ways it did, but it was mostly the same. The tree was still there, and he could sit under it, and Encanto Kiddie Land had closed, but it was still there, and he could sit at a picnic table and eat a hot dog and drink a Coke. He did that and tried to find some feeling he could give a name to, but nothing came.
The more he went back, the more he could feel. He liked it there, because it helped him to wipe out the eighteen years that didn’t seem real, and he could feel like a young man and remember how it felt to sit on the warm grass with a child who needed him.
After running in the park, David felt fine, but the next day his muscles hurt so badly he could barely move. It wasn’t just his legs, it was his back and shoulders and even his neck. He laughed about it with Laura, but it scared him. He thought that this must be what it’s like to be old, and that was something that terrified him. He had once interviewed an old woman who lived alone and kept being beaten up by people she invited into her home. Now, as he limped around his house, he felt afraid of being like her, old, alone and vulnerable, preyed upon by brutal strangers who’d take advantage of his loneliness. She’d told him what a nice neighborhood hers had been when she and her late husband had moved in, and now it was in one of the worst parts of town. He wondered if he would ever have enough money to live in a “safe” neighborhood, and if it would still be safe when he was old.
He asked Laura if she had the same fears, and she said no, because she couldn’t imagine ever being too old to fire a gun.
Thanksgiving. Two days earlier, Frank had gotten word that his mother had died in Florida, where she lived in a retirement community. It was still the best Thanksgiving he had ever had. A friend had gotten out of the joint, and he and Frank ate cheeseburgers and drank beer and drove in the sunshine, Tommy feeling it all for the first time in years, and Frank feeling it for the first time all over again.
Laura and David spent the day together. Laura had mocked David a few days earlier when he’d asked if she had any plans for Thanksgiving. “Yeah, I’m gonna head up to Flagstaff and spend it with my parents,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”
“You retard. Why the hell would I spend it with them? I don’t even remember when I last talked to them.”
“Uh... I don’t know.”
“I’m spending it with you, asswipe.”
“Okay, cool. I just didn’t want to presume anything.”
“Well, I already presumed you wanted to spend it with me. Was that wrong?”
“No, of course not.”
David wasn’t fond of turkey, saying he found it bland and could never understand why it was so popular. They discussed getting a ham, but when they went to Trader Joe’s they found some ducks on sale, and bought one. When Laura arrived at David’s house the next day, the bird was roasting, and David was singing, “Be kind to your web-footed friends, ’cause a duck could be somebody’s mother...”
The meal was so good that Laura couldn’t stop eating. When she finally got up from the table, she felt bloated. “Damn, that was awesome,” she said. “Thanks.”
“You should thank the duck, too,” David said. “The bird showed commitment.”
They’d drunk a bottle of Trader Joe’s French Market Merlot, and as Laura went and sat on the couch, David went to the kitchen for another bottle. He sat next to her, refilled both their glasses. Curtis Mayfield was playing on the stereo. They listened for a few minutes, then David said, “Mind if I turn off the music?”
“No,” she said. That was something she liked about him. As much as she loved music, sometimes she preferred silence. She’d once dated a guy who’d always had music playing, and sometimes had the T.V. on at the same time. First thing in the morning, he’d turn on the T.V., even though he wasn’t going to watch it. He couldn’t stand silence, and Laura wondered at the time if it was a fear of being alone.
David turned off the stereo, went back to the couch, sat next to her. She leaned against him, and closed her eyes.
“You tired?” he said.
“No, just full, and buzzed. It’s a good feeling.”
Frank and Tommy were sitting in Pomeroy’s, a dark bar on Seventh Street and Bethany Home. They drank rich, dark beer and didn’t say very much. The place was almost empty. Frank could tell that the bartender felt sorry for those who had to spend Thanksgiving in a bar, and he wondered what the guy would have thought if they’d told him they were happier than anybody else in the city today.
Frank thought about his father, who’d died while Frank was locked up. He thought about his mother, how much she’d loved his father. Frank was thankful for her life, and he was thankful that she had died.
It was three weeks from Christmas, and the closer it got, the worse Barbara felt, because the crowds at Wal-Mart, where she worked, got bigger, faster and ruder. She knew that the only way she was going to be able to get any real presents for her daughter, Whitney, would be if she somehow managed to steal them from work.
But that wasn’t likely. Employees at Wal-Mart were watched so closely it reminded her of the Durango Jail, where she’d once spent ten days on a D.U.I. bust. At Wal-Mart, during a ten-hour shift, you couldn’t even take a break from your station to use the restroom. If you did, they called it “time theft” and you got written up.
The pay was shit. Barbara and Whitney lived in a motel room, and the rent, food and gas wiped out her paycheck. If she didn’t have Whitney to think about, she might have tried living out of her car for as long as it took her to save enough money for the first month’s rent and security deposit on an apartment, but she couldn’t do that to the kid, even though she was now thirteen and wanting things – wanting clothes, C.D.s, wanting to live in a place where she could have her own room.
Barbara wasn’t good at much. She couldn’t type fast and she couldn’t spell. She hadn’t graduated high school, and had tried a couple times to get her G.E.D., but that just wasn’t something she could do. She’d gotten knocked up at twenty by a guy who didn’t want to know. For a while she’d gotten by on welfare, but Clinton’s welfare reforms had put her out of her apartment, and she’d had to put Whitney in a group home for a while until she got the job at Wal-Mart and could at least pay for a motel room.
A social worker had told her that since she wasn’t on welfare anymore, and had a job, she was one of the successes of welfare reform.
She finished her shift, drank a bottle of water, and went to the rest room. Her piss was thick and yellow because she was dehydrated. She and her co-workers avoided drinking fluid
s while working, so they wouldn’t have to use the restroom. She’d seen people get fired for too many write-ups for time theft.
She sniffed her armpits, and smelled the sweat that had overwhelmed her deodorant. She thought about getting back to the motel room with some food from Taco Bell for her and Whitney, eating and then taking a shower and then getting some sleep before she had to get up for tomorrow’s day at work.
She didn’t realize how shredded her nerves were until she got in her car, turned on the ignition, and nothing happened.
She kept turning it, and still nothing happened. She got out of the car, started to walk away from it, then got back in it and tried again. It still didn’t start. It didn’t even seem like a car, like a machine, just rusty metal and torn upholstery. She got out of the car again and started to walk back across the parking lot to Wal-Mart, and then the tears started to come. She fought them down, knowing that if she started to cry she wouldn’t be able to stop. She almost managed to keep it together, but then she slipped out of her own grip, and she was crying harder and harder, getting angry at herself for crying, getting angry at the car for not starting, and she turned around and stumbled back towards her car, wanting to get away before anyone from the store saw the state she was in, but not knowing how she was going to get to anyplace else.
The guy who saw her was in his fifties, athletic and not bad-looking. He was carrying two plastic bags with the store’s logo, and he had a kind face. He walked towards her, where she was standing next to the dead car, and she didn’t know she was going to speak to him until he looked at her and started to speak, and she didn’t hear what he said but she heard herself say, “Will you help me?”
She got in his car with him. They didn’t drive anywhere at first, just sat there in the parking lot while she told him what was wrong. Not just that her car wouldn’t start, and that her daughter was waiting for her back at the motel room, and that she had no money to buy the kid anything. She also told him about her job, and how even though she was tired every night she didn’t want to go to sleep, because the sooner she went to sleep the sooner the next day would come when she had to go and work for another ten hours, her body drying out, her legs and arms aching.