People being people

  I call Hanson “wheeler dealer” because he’s always up to something. What I saw in him when I hired him I still don’t know. Truth is I don’t remember hiring him. He just popped up in my warehouse like a spore. One day I needed a delivery driver; the next day Hanson was there. My warehouse staff watched me each day for that day when I’ll flip my lid I understand their hatred because I make them work. Hanson I can’t make out at all. He moves so slowly a turtle would beat him in a straight out race. Yet somehow he manages to get his work done, even when I deliberately lay it on heavy. I’m convinced he’s convinced someone else to do the work for him. But I pay him so little, I can’t see how he can make such a scheme profitable. God knows I’ve never actually seen him do any of the work. Around the warehouses, he’s always off in day dreams so I have to yell at him when I catch him at it. I’m sure he does the same when he’s on the road. Yet he manages to get back to the warehouse on time...

  Look baby, my change is running out. Why don’t you call me back? You sound lost, baby And scared. And I hope it’s not about me. Yeah, I know all men are creeps, and maybe I’m a creep, too. But you’ve got to call me back so we can keep talking I feel like a lost sheep out there without you in my life I never meant to hurt you or drive you away. You’ve got to believe that, even if you don’t believe anything else I say. Baby, please, call me back. The change just dropped and the operator says if I don’t put in more money she’s gonna cut me off. What’s that? I can barely hear you for all the static. Long distance and all that, you know. Are you crazy? Is that what I hear? Baby, please, you’ve got to call me back. We can’t leave it off like this. What guy? What did he do to you? Okay, so he seemed nice when you meat him at the bar. What did he do? Operator, get off the fucking line. This is important. Baby, you still there? Call me back. I need to hear you without this bitch of an ope...

                                                                  I spend the day alone in the hills, soft grass ticking my bare feet. I’m 17 and a free female, living a life most boys would envy. My father’s ranch stretches out before me so far even General Sherman couldn’t burn it all in one day. With the war over, my father has nothing to worry about but me. He thinks Indians will be me or worse if I wander off alone like this. I guess he already knows the truth. And wants to know who I’ve been with and whether he can expect me to deliver him a grandson soon. I wonder if I ought to keep going. Even the wild can’t be much worse than the cot in the kitchen and the bruises my brothers give me wrestling with them at night. My father would kill them all if he found out. I love my brothers too much to let them die like that, an...

     ONE   We make a big deal about leaving Hollywood because so few we know can actually escape Until we bought the VW van, we thought we’d live out the rest of our known existence here, wandering these same streets in a pointless daily ritual of pretending to be hip. I love this hunk of junk metal, this 1959 German-made ark, rust spots and all. Our neighbors thought us strange when we parked the thing in the driveway off McCadden and used cans of spray paint to hide the rot – taking our cue from Easy Rider by painting it red, white and blue. I stole the slogan “Multi-colored rainbow roach” from an Arlo Guthrie performance I caught in the Bitter End back east. Folks on the streets warned us that the other slogan “Battlewagon for Peace,” would only get us stopped by the Nazi’s in Arizona. Some even come out to watch when we drive out, as if they expect to see us explode the moment the van crosses Vine. Some flash us peace signs. Some just shake their h...

  Jeff comes home late from work. This is the fifth night in a row that he’s made me keep his supper warm while he wanders. I demand an explanation and as his wife, I deserve one. But he’s in one of his fidgety moods and wants to go out again. He’s worse than any of our children, although Jeffery, our eldest, acts just the way Jeff does, and that worries me. Of course, I wonder why Jeff always has to go see Sally after he leaves here. Sally and I used to be buds – so much together through high school people used to call us twins. Now my husband sees her on the side and I hate her for it. Still, I’m scared to confront him about it. Partly because Jeffery’s sitting at the table, and he’s old enough to understand while our other two aren’t. Jeffery wants to leave, too. To wander off to some devious deed the neighbors will report back about later, as if I’m to blame, as if I’m being a bad mother. But he walks in his father’s footsteps and I’m helpless to stop him. I tell Jeff if he nee...

  Right away I see the boy is scared and I’m sure he’s running away from something. But when I tell Martha, she tells me to mind my own business and go back to sleep. Normally on long trips like this, I sleep a lot. Something about the rumble of bus wheels makes me weary. But this boy has me miffed. His short hair in this Dylan age tell me he’s served time in the military or jail, and since it’s still so short I think he’s just gotten out. He must like me since he nods at me each time he sees me looking his way. Maybe it is because I look a little like Col Sanders with my white suit, white hair and tiny white goatee. It’s the Florida in me. No matter where we go, I need to wear white, and blend in a little too well when we get above the snow line. I keep thinking I’m going to disappear altogether someday and wonder what Martha will do without me. Who will she have to scold? When Martha nods off, I ask the boy where he’s headed, which only makes me look that much more frightened. Hi...

  The water here as an icy chill and I step into it gingerly, bracing against the cold and wondering how it could be so chilly when we are in the middle of July. I’m also scared about the fish that bite. A girl shows me a round red spot on her upper thigh she claims she got from a fish. I think I see teeth marks, then shudder and look away. I have bad nerves and have come here to relax. I’m 12 years old but feel ten times that age. Mom’s in the hospital again for being crazy, and I’ve no way to tell when she comes out again or if she’ll be the same. Those places change people even if they can’t find a cure. You don’t always get your money’s worth, even with charity cases like my mother’s. My grandfather keeps bring her back as if she has a warrantee, then sends me off to the country to calm down. My uncle always tells me to go for a swim so he and grandpa can discuss what to do with mom if the cure doesn’t take this time either. They are practical me. They see the world as one larg...

  I’m the girl high school jocks dream about when they’re in the game I’m a real cheer leader, not some flirt who wiggles an ass and then makes the boy promise marriage before she gives in. I give in right away, taking a man in my mouth or butt, just to prove how much I approve of him. Maybe it’s foolish, me not getting something in advance, some words of love or promise for the future. But we all know these boys don’t mean it, even when they’re held hostage. So I don’t ask. Mike’s different. He likes to use the word “love,” telling me again and again, even when I don’t always go with him to old motel. I remember the first time we did it, in a sleeping bag on the mountain because we had no money for the motel and he couldn’t get his father’s car. He said he loved me and stuck it in me, and I never felt so happy, even when the whole team won the state championship and I helped them celebrate in the locker room, one boy after another until I did them all. Maybe I know down deep Mike ...

  Kenny always talks big , telling me about the money he steals the windows he’s broken or the trouble he’s caused at school. This is not so much bragging as some need to tell somebody about it, and I’m the only one he can trust. But when I listen, he never talks about the reasons why he does these things. Kenny never tells you what he really thinks either. So he always sounds like he’s lying even when he’s telling the truth. This time he tells me he’s just stolen $100 and I make him show me. Nobody I know ever took $100 without the roof falling in. He pulls out the bill with Alexander Hamilton’s portrait staring up at me like a dead fish. So I believe him. Of course, I tell him he can never spend it since we can’t walk into any store on either side of Crooks Avenue and pass that off without someone knowing we swiped it. Ken, naturally, tells me he’s got a plan. Then he showed me the note he intends to take to the bank in the morning, asking the teller to give us five $20 bills in ...

  Our laughter sounds hollow against the stormy night outside. Our glasses clink as we sip booze to dull some inner pain we have no other way to cure. Each drink seems to fill up the emptiness nights like this inspire. If we have enough money to buy enough drinks, we might even make our way to closing and get home to sleep before the ache get acute again. After years of nights like this, we’re sick of each other’s voice, that last comfort old friends exude when all other options fail. Loneliness is the wolf circling outside our small circle, searching for someone to feed on, and we toss our empty laughter at it like table scraps, hoping it is enough to keep it from feeding on us. We feel its gnawing most acutely during those hours when we are away from each other, between waking and sleep, waking and work, waiting and the walk to our cars. We try never to think one of us might break the circle and leave a gap through which the wolf might lunge. We look at each other as if calculati...

    Something changed inside of me when I saw the Beatles play on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. But I didn’t know exactly what until a few years later when the Vietnam War started and nobody in my town cared. I grew up in a town full of jocks and geeks, where girls had to fight to keep their virtue against locker room gang bangs. It anybody was poor, they didn’t admit it, and black people made it a point to hide out in parochial school rather than suffer the daily abuse public school handed out. Maybe I was deluded into believing all Americans really wanted out of life was to steal land from poor rich farmers in Vietnam. But each time I brought up the subject in social studies class, the teacher told me it wasn’t in the curriculum. When I persisted, the teachers sent me to the principal’s office. Inspired by people like Abbie Hoffman, I even tried to grow my hair long. Yet even my parents said I looked like a girl, and made no protest when members of the football team held me ...