I started noticing the same couple of cars from time to time, one maroon, a big old LTD, and the other light green, I think, a righteous Camaro for sure. All Detroit iron, when that mattered. They’d pull up nose-to-tail, and the drivers would exchange something. Had to be drugs. Like I said, we had weed in Reeve forever, but the speed and shit Kim took was new, kinda fighting for turf with the home-made meth. Meth was a local product, but this new stuff was factory-made, maybe another import pushing out an American product. I didn’t know much about drug deals, but it seemed odd that they always used the same place, since that’d make it easier to get caught. Once, when they came a bit earlier and it was still a little light, I thought I recognized one of the guys in the Camaro from high school. I waited for the other car to pull away and shouted his name. No response, so I walked outta the shadows a bit so he could see me, sayin’ the kid’s name again, kind of pleased to recognize someone. He tore away, and I didn’t think anything of it until about ten minutes later two cops roll up. I was scared, trying hard to think of what to say, thinking they wanted me to rat out what was going on. The one cop stayed near the car and the other got up in my face.
“What’re you doing here, son?”
“Just lookin’ for a place to stand, sir.”
“You seen anything tonight?”
“Officer, just some cars driving through.”
“Recognize anybody? Seen anyone you know?”
“No sir.” I saw he had his billy club out of the sling.
“Then why’d you shout out a boy’s name and start on down?”
They must have been watching from somewhere.
“What’s that, officer? No sir, wasn’t me.” I was really worried now, and hoping like hell the door wouldn’t swing open and get Kim mixed into this mess. I was sort of mumbling to buy time, my brain trying to catch on the right thing to say when the cop interrupted me.
“Well little boy, listen up close. Nothing here is your business. You don’t see nothing. You don’t call out no names. Them people got friends, and you fucking don’t.”
It was just in between the words “fucking” and “don’t” that he snapped that billy club right into my balls, kind of a hard flick that spiraled me back and made everything turn all purple. The cop gave me a sort of friendly shove so that I landed on my ass.
“Understand now? Hard times around here, dickhead. We all gotta do what we need to get by, just like that slope bitch of yours inside. You look familiar—have I busted you before? Anyways, you’re a local kid I can tell or I’d kick your ass back into last week to make my point clearer. Around here we gotta take care of our own. You don’t see nothing, you keep your mouth shut. Ain’t nobody paying you to watch this go down, and we ain’t gonna tolerate you getting into what we’re doing, or my partner and I’ll be liking you on some sort of vagrancy charge or worse. Maybe pop your ass and find some coke on you, know what I mean? Just spend your time with your whore and everything will work out for all of us.”
The cop stepped back and reslung his billy.
“I don’t want to do this again, I really fucking don’t. You know things are messed up—so learn fast and don’t go pissing in someone’s lunch box.”
It wasn’t over. In a decent world that would have been the end of that day. I would have walked home, had some dinner, maybe dessert. Instead I noticed another guy walking towards me. Wasn’t a cop. This used to not be a problem in Reeve but these days you had to be on your guard. It was dark, nobody paying for new streetlights in this part of the town, and before I could make him out he asked me for change. He crinkled up a plastic bag, distracting me, but I realized there his voice was in the old part of me.
“Muley?”
“Who’s that? I don’t want no trouble mister, just some spare change if you got it.”
“Muley, that you? It’s me, Earl.”
“Earl?” We stepped closer now, less like two dogs sniffing each other out.
“Where you been, man?”
“Where I been? Shit Muley, you was the one joined the Army and been gone. How you been?”
“I been okay enough. Home for a while, just never looked you up right I guess. Looked for a job first instead, but they wasn’t hiring. Plenty of people willing to slap my back ’cause I was a soldier but nobody gave me a job. I called your house once, but your dad said you moved out somewheres.”
“That sucks man, but it’s the same for all of us, no fucking work. What the hell is that you got there? Smells like fucking paint.”
“You want some? Since I been back I started in on this shit, huffin’ until I forget why I started it. Can’t taste food no more neither. Weird, huh? But bein’ on the paint is way-shit cheaper than beer, and a seriously fucked up buzz. Ain’t illegal either, I think. Jest paint.” He had a cigarette tucked behind his ear, and I was hoping he’d not try and light it around those spray cans.
“Earl, you watched that new Star Wars? Kinda sucks, man.”
“Muley, I seen some bad shit tonight, real bad.”
“Earl, we all seen bad shit. It’s the way it is now.”
“Muley, we’re all grown up, man.”
“Then I wish I could grow back down.”
We stopped talking for a moment. I kept trying to meet Muley’s eyes, but he kept looking away. Only sound was him rattling the goddamn little glass ball inside the paint can.
“Fuck man, that paint shit’ll mess you up.”
“Too late Earl, I’m already messed up. Looks like you is too, old friend. This is where we are now.”
KIM’S MOM HAD been in her same business back in Seoul, and Kim grew up thinking her dad might have been an American soldier because they were the ones most often in line, saying “Hey little girl, how’s your mama tonight? I want a blow job.”
“You know, Kim, my old man always talked about all the fun he had in Korea, just booze and broads, like any American soldier overseas, I guess. You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I know dumb fuck boy Earl. My mama was a broad like you say.”
“You really think your old man might have been an American?”
“American, French, Italian, they were United Nations.”
“You never knew your dad?”
“I saw him every night lined up outside my mother’s door.”
“Things weren’t so good between me and my dad either. Some days I thought my crime was just being born.”
“Yeah, you tell me about it puppy dog Earl.”
Kim’s mom I guess really didn’t know who, and Kim said that back then abortions were rare in Korea, legal abortions almost unheard of. Her mom was a Christian anyway, so when she got pregnant she dropped out of the work for a while. Usually such babies ended up in one of Korea’s many, many orphanages to be adopted by naive but well-meaning Americans, going from place to place like they was shopping for a puppy, Kim said. They never knew most of those cute babies were whore spawn. Kim’s mom kept her for her own reasons. She said one day an American missionary convinced her mom to take her to the U.S. embassy and claim her father was a soldier, thinking maybe some money might come of it. Her mom had saved a handful of letters from some random dumbass GI from Oklahoma who thought he fell in love with the first woman to give him head, and she showed those to the embassy guy as proof. The embassy guy laughed at her, having seen his share of whores with babies at his interview window before, and told her to come back with a notarized Affidavit of Support with original signature in black ink only from the father. U.S. law covered the GIs well, saying the baby wasn’t an American if born out of wedlock without that Affidavit; otherwise, the baby was just another Korean slut’s kid, whether she had red hair, white skin and blue eyes or the freaking Star Spangled Banner tattooed under the diaper. Same as in Vietnam, Taiwan, and everywhere else, I heard. Kim’s mom spent three nights’ wages on a terrible fake Affidavit she bought off the street in Namdemun market, and that didn’t even get her past the guard at the embassy gate, it was so bad.
&n
bsp; Jobs were hard to find in Korea then for people without education, especially women. So coming to America was about the same as us packing up and driving to California or Alaska for a new life. Working inside the Korean community was about it, and even that required moving further and further down the ladder sometimes until you ended up in a club without windows in a strip mall in Reeve. Still, it was a go-go economy, we were told on the news, and making money was good in and of itself, no matter what you did for it. Selling stocks, selling your kitty, wasn’t it all about the same? Kim believed so. I became sort of convinced she was right, and maybe a little jealous that I had nothing like that to sell myself.
Me and Kim were talking as usual at that back door between customers, and she seemed more wound up than other nights, sayin’ things a mile a minute, smoking one cig after another. I tried to cheer her up a bit, told her a joke I remembered, said that I really felt that I knew her now.
“Be quiet child boy Earl. You know nothing about me.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me something you think I don’t know about you Kim. One thing, go ahead.”
“My whole life I never got to kiss anyone I liked.”
WE BOTH HEARD Mama shouting “guest, guest,” and Kim went back inside quickly, closing the door and turning up her music. I don’t know if she cranked the tunes for her customer or not, but I wanted to believe it was for me, that she didn’t want me to be able to hear what went on. I usually just zoned out at this point, relaxing, but there was a noise, a loud noise, from inside. This was the wrong kind of sound, somebody falling, and I pulled at the edges of the door with my fingernails trying to get it open, hoping Kim hadn’t slid the bolt lock shut from the inside. My muscles weren’t what they used to be, lack of work and exercise, and I tore the tip of my finger open on a sliver of exposed steel trying to pry that goddamn door open. Blood ran down the door, and I pulled my hand back and sucked at the wound. Hurt almost as much as when I messed up my ankle back in high school. I went back at the door, got it open enough to get my hand around the edge, and saw Mama bent over Kim, with some guy pulling on his pants as he pushed past me into the darkness. Hard almond eyes were too wide and didn’t blink, light drained from them, and she had spit up the little dough balls from the bottom of her last bubble tea. Some blood. I saw Kim naked for the first time, but not in a good way, cum sliding down her leg even as she lay there. Mama was feeling for a pulse at Kim’s wrist, saying too many blues and too many reds for a girl her size in one night. I tried to get closer, maybe just to wipe her off for Christ’s sake, but Mama snarled at me like Satan’s alley cat. “Go away goddamn you, and don’t say nothing,” she hissed, “this ain’t your business.” She turned back to Kim, knowing that as sure as if I had seen the Devil himself, I would turn away and never say a thing.
I never did. Nothing about me was ever completely the same, though. I maybe could’ve done something, I don’t know, called for help or something, but I didn’t. I ain’t saying this absolves me of all I didn’t do with my life later on, just know there was more to it than drink and laziness.
Sermon on the Mount
“JESUS, IS THAT you? Casey, is that you getting on this bus?”
“Yeah man, it’s me. Sometimes I get on the bus too.”
Casey slid into the seat next to me, smiling that little crooked smile that favored his few missing teeth. He looked older, but hell, Casey always looked older, like he was carrying something around that had gotten heavy.
“Earl.”
“Casey.”
“Been on this bus long?”
“Jesus, Casey, I ain’t seen you in, what, years? How you been? What you been doing? That’s all you got to say to me, ‘Been on this bus long?’ Yeah, I been on this freaking bus forever man, my whole life. Casey, it’s really good to see you.”
“Same here Earl.”
“So what you been doing Casey since I last seen you?”
“Long story, Earl, long story, but you first man. You doing okay?”
Casey knew, he must have. He always seemed to hear more than was said anyway. But I told him, about how on and off for the past year or so I had been living in my car. No work, no job, and before you know it, you’re living in your car and glad to have it. Like so many things, it starts easy enough, failing to make the rent and moving into a day-by-day place, a room with a hot plate burner, down the hall from some whores aspiring to become crack heads, then slipping again and taking to sleeping in your car every couple of nights to save a little money. Bitch in the summer, worse in the winter, but in between, with the right kinda seats, it wasn’t so bad. Couple nights in, couple out, stretch the money a bit while staying pretty clean. But what you don’t see is what other people see. Go too many days without a shower, wash your clothes too many times in a motel sink, and you start to look like what you didn’t realize you’d become—homeless—your new history like dirt accumulating on you, you smelling like water broccoli has been boiled in.
You can in fact tell a lot about a homeless guy based on how clean he is, like counting tree rings. There’s the newbies, then the ’tweens like me on the down slide, and then the zombie homeless, more filth than man, covered in street gravy. The whole homeless ecosystem. When the new guys rubbed their eyes, they made black spots like raccoons. When the old timers rubbed their eyes, they made clean spots. Me? I was filthy enough that some days I worried someone would write WASH ME in the dirt on my ass.
At first it was easier. Look around one of those coffee shops the next time you’re downtown and try and spot the homeless and semi-homeless, ’cause we’re there, payin’ for coffee with change. Sometimes I’d just grab an empty cup from the trash outside, because if I got five bucks for a drink, it ain’t gonna be a mocha grande. Fill a table and, when I was cleaner, lean over and make some excuse to use someone’s phone or computer to look for work on Craigslist, because everything found a new home on-line and without devices you couldn’t get very far. People like me fill out applications, we don’t have resumes, and few businesses’ll let you do anything on paper anymore.
And with a job application, don’t write down the shelter address if you’re staying at one, in case they know it, or nowadays, Google it. Use your old street address, ’cause it will take a while for things to catch up with your homelessness. Some store looking for warehouse help ain’t gonna mail you nothing right away, and if you get a job you can always change it later. Same for listing a phone number, as this was all before they had cheap pay-as-you-go cell phones, a real gift to the working poor, showing how everything adapts to new markets. Put down your old house telephone number, ’cause the phone company usually don’t reassign it for a year to two. Nobody can call you with work of course, so just walk back in a few days and say you thought you got a message from them but it was garbled. That makes you seem eager even.
By the way, don’t try and look for work on-line early Monday mornings, when it’s all just slush left over from Friday. For getting jobs, shaving in the car is hard, but I learned from another guy to use sex lube instead of shaving cream. Smells kinda nice. The not-oil kind—it wipes right off with no water, and is smooth enough to work with a dull razor.
Oh, and if you got good clothes you’re saving for a good job, give them to the dry cleaners and just don’t pick them up until you’re ready. The dry cleaners are your closet. Most say ninety days and out, but why would they throw away a customer’s shit? They ain’t gonna get rich doing business that way. And good shoes are life. You’re outside a lot in the weather, and move around a lot more than you’re used to. Get used to sleeping in your shoes too, so they don’t get stolen and so you can run away quick if you need to. If homelessness had a dress code, it’d include tore-up shoes. Try and keep ’em clean.
After a while the coffee shop people start to know you, and the customers start to shy away instead of lending you their phone on the excuse that you forgot yours. They all know by the way you look that you have no job, and that makes you not one of them, so cou
rtesy stops applying. New rules. You start waiting around parking lots for day work, competing with the immigrants for whatever someone will offer until even that starts to fail, the boss looking at you and knowing he can’t bring you into a customer’s house even to paint.
Stealing food is where the bus stops next. In fact, it’s how I first met Casey. Nobody is proud of stealing, but nobody is proud of being hungry either, and it often ends up you choosing between one or the other. Hunger always wins—it’s biology. Those songs about freedom being nothing left to lose, and the purity of life without the burden of possessions are bullshit. Nobody who woke up hungry after going to bed hungry without knowing when they’ll eat next sings.
I never stole money, and I never stole from people. I only stole things from things. If a thing could own a business, then I could steal from a thing. So I’d stand up at the fast-food place like I was gonna order, then grab something off the counter and run. Dining and dashing, hoping it wasn’t a fish sandwich, which I don’t care for, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? Important to keep your sense of humor if you can, too. I looked back a few times, but none of the workers was ever gonna chase me, what the hell did they care—they just made up another kids meal for what I stole, and they did it fast. Too slow satisfying the customer and they’d lose their jobs and join my jamboree. Workers like them know they can be fired for anything or nothing, so what do they care about me? When the company tells you it’s minimum wage ’cause they can’t by law get away with paying you less, it kinda gets into your head, and you start to believe what they say.
I tried to do this kind of stealing as little as I could, but the dirtier you get and the more you sleep out, the less chance anyone is going to give you work. Some fast food places will let you sit and warm up, and some see you homeless and treat you like you got the plague. Try ’em, one by one, you got the time, or ask around.
Ghosts of Tom Joad Page 14