Ghosts of Tom Joad (21 page)

As a kid, I never understood funerals. The person was dead and no amount of pound cake, covered casseroles and flowers
was gonna fix that. I got over-dressed up against my will and dragged out to my grandpa's and then my grandma's funerals to sit and watch people cry while I struggled to unbutton my shirt collar. Funerals were big affairs in Reeve, because growing up, living and dying in the same town left a lot of loose ends to tie up. I came to understand that these funerals were for the living, to figure out what to do with the memories, decide which connections were gonna stay intact and which were gonna, well, die. My grandparents passed when I was still a kid, old enough to be sad, but mostly just 'cause I knew I wasn't gonna see them again, like death just made things permanently inconvenient. With my old man, the memories were funny colors I didn't fully understand yet, mostly too fresh to have been washed and folded away neatly the way time does.

We had the wake for him at the VFW hall. It would have been wrong to make much out of the church part, but he was a drinker and so it seemed appropriate to gather at a bar. It was a pale Wednesday morning outside, but inside it was dark and damp and whatever day you wanted it to be, and eternally felt like 3 a.m. I recognized a lot of the people, odd though, them seeing me mostly for the first time as an adult. I got tired of decrepit men and pinched old women coming up to me and saying, “It's Ray's boy, Earl,” like me and him were always tied together that way. My mom wasn't talking much, and I found shelter at the end of the bar. The door to the kitchen kept swinging open, the sticky green fluorescent flash half interrupting me and half keeping me awake as I looked to set down the burden I carried around from my old man.

“You know Ray?” said the guy who was riding the bar stool hard right to me. Stubbed out a butt, lit another one. Teeth stained yellow from a lifetime of unfiltered Camels. Thin lips, just a line.

“Smoke?” he said to me.

“Nah, thanks.”

“I hear you. I've been trying to quit for thirty years. Sure you don't want one?”

“Thanks, no mister. So how'd you know Ray?”

“Me and Ray served together in Korea. I hadn't talked to him but maybe twice since, then two days ago Sissy found my name in some of Ray's old stuff and called me. I drove down here to say goodbye.”

“Not from Reeve then?”

“Nah, home is near Pittsburgh.”

“Steel?”

“Yep. Thirty years on the big bucket, pouring out two hundred tons of steel a day. Lookit my right arm—muscle's twice as thick as on the left 'cause of that lever I pulled every day. I got that job right after Korea in fact. My old man sent me to see the foreman while I was still wearing my uniform.”

“How's it up there now? I heard the president say he's creating more jobs, so I was considering moving up.”

“Moving on isn't a bad idea. I wished I had done it at your age. Hell, I wished I'd done it last month.”

“So there's work where you're from?”

“Same there as it was four years ago and four years before that. Every four years the president comes back into western Pennsylvania like a dog looking for a place to pee. He reminds
us that his wife's cousin is from some town near to ours, gets photographed at the diner if it's still in business, and then makes those promises to us while winking at the big business donors who feed him bribes they call campaign contributions. I'm tempted to cut out the middle man and just write in ‘Goldman Sachs' on my ballot next election.

Another cigarette.

“Smoke?”

“Nah.”

“Meanwhile the coast reporters will write another story about the ‘heartland' and then get out as fast as they can, acting as if something might stick to them if they stood still too long. We got so few families in town anymore we can't hardly come up with a football team. I had to drive thirty miles last week to find a dentist, nobody closer still in business. The new mayor has this idea of encouraging art galleries and boutiques to take up in vacant buildings to revive the economy. So that's us now, building a country on boutiques.”

He cupped his smoke in his hand, hiding the orange dot at the end just like those soldiers in the war movies on TV did, like there was gonna be a Nazi sniper there in the VFW hall or something.

“Helps me remember,” he said. “Remembering's the only thing I got.”

Some kid slipped up to the bar.

“Were you were a soldier, sir? Thank you for your service. You're a hero, sir.”

The drunk barely looked up. Made it seem like his head was too heavy to lift.

“Was in Korea. I wasn't no hero. Don't thank me for what I did, 'cause you don't have any idea. No fucking idea.”

“Sorry sir, see, I'm going to enlist, and I wanted to thank you for protecting us.”

“Get away now son, there's dangerous objects around here.”

The kid popped away, more confused and threatened than chastised.

Back to me and the drunk.

“So, I guess Ray and you had a pretty good time over there in Korea. To hear him tell it, it was all booze and broads.”

“Is that what he said? My memory is a little soggy right now, more like a scar to me even when it's working right, but I seem to recall it a little different.” It was a smile, but shaped like a sickle the farmers around Reeve used to use. “Name's Miles by the way.”

“Hey Miles, I'm Earl. Lemme buy the next round. I'm drinking beer. You?”

“Whiskey. Beer's a good foundation, but it don't have the octane no more, just leaves me drowsy.”

I should've known. He had empty shot glasses lined up on the bar like they were on sale on a shelf at Bullseye.

“So c'mon Miles, how was Korea, really?”

“There wasn't a whole lot of broads anywhere near us and damn little booze. Mostly local-made hooch that kids would wander up and trade us for C-rat cans of Spam and some goop called ‘Fruit, Peach, Canned, Syrup-Type.' The Korean kids would wear tin cans salvaged from us around their necks, clanging and clinking to warn us they were comin'. I learned how to say ‘hello' in their language, so I'd yell that at them. But it
wasn't no fun. Ray and me spent most of our war on some fucked-up hill freezing our asses off.”

“Is that so Miles?” I said. “So old Ray was a liar then in addition to everything else. To hear him talk about Korea and the service, you'd think it was New Year's Eve with a cherry on top every night.”

“Isn't my place to talk ill of the dead, but Korea was no cherry. Look at me—throw a white ball against a dirty wall and it comes back dirty every time. I never had no great dream, and in return I never expected to feel like this. I came back a drunk and have been happy to be one every damn day since. Thinking on what made me start drinking is worse than all this any time, my young friend. Hand me them cigarettes, willya? You want one? Cheers.”

He threw back a shot, then another one right on top of it. In the light of the kitchen door swinging open, I could now see he was a real old-school rummy, a catalog of tells. Light bulb nose, red spiderwebbed veins in his eyes, broken blood vessels on his face, tobacco-stained voice, lots of old blue bruises from falling down, skin yellowed from the jaundice, like Grandma would say about Grandpa. It took years of whiskey for that. You get there different ways, but in the end pain is all the same. The trip's all you have until you arrive, right? You had to have a reason to keep working at it that long, 'cause the fun of drinking must've passed away a long while ago.

“So c'mon, what was it really like, Miles?”

“Korea? Ray? You keep asking me—you really wanna know? I'll tell you: we threw snowballs at each other, so okay, there, now you know, smart guy. You think we hadda choice out there?
Fuck no, just like here, now, we did what we was told and then shit we couldn't control happened to us. What more you want from me boy, to confess to my sins? You think you're some sorta preacher? You think I don't have a reason, hell, a right, to stay quiet and just drink myself to death?”

Another old timer came up, spilling beer on me as he tried to regain his balance, then bumping into me as he had to choose between that and spilling even more beer. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of too much cologne. Lotta these yahoos around here don't know about dressing up. Tie never tied right, you can spot them a mile away.

“Oh Earl, that you? Goddamn, honey look, it's Ray's boy, all grown up. I ain't seen you for years. Sorry about your old man. You wanna 'nother drink son?”

“You're Ray's son?” said Miles. “He had a son? He never told me.”

“Yeah, that's me, um, what was it, Miles? And he never told me about you neither, so go kiss my ass.”

“Well, if Ray didn't find the reason to tell you any stories about Korea, then it isn't my job. I ain't your father, thank God for that. You seen it all every day anyway, him drinking, it was written on his fucking face same as me. Now c'mon, we're enjoying a friendly drink here in Ray's name. Let's just have a toast to the old son of a bitch and leave it there. He's dead now, got his new job to do, so let's cover him up and let him get to it. To the dead, may they stay buried! You wanna smoke? Here, pass me the pack.”

O
NE NIGHT AFTER
dinner at the shelter we all got to talking.

“Preacher, we heard in Reeve that it was the immigrants, Koreans I guess, who took all the jobs at lower wages. Ain't that what's always been said?”

“Yeah, preacher, what about America for Americans?”

“Everyone of us are the sons of immigrants,” Casey said, “so don't be foolish about Koreans.”

“But we was here first, preacher.”

“Unless your name is Chief Full-of-Shit, shut the hell up and listen to the preacher now.”

“It used to be the Irish who took all the jobs, then it was, who? Maybe the Italians next? I forget,” said Casey. “I can't keep hate in chronological order any more. I think the Mexicans were blamed after that. See many Koreans in your factory in Reeve before it closed? No, of course not. Immigrants will lower the low-end wages certainly. Plenty of them too, so they are easy to hire and fire, disposable labor, spare parts. But you've seen the Koreans in Reeve and none of their small business places took any jobs from you, and may even have created a few. We don't need fewer workers, we need more decent jobs.”

“But I've seen on TV they said the economy added thousands of jobs this month, so that's good, right?”

“Yeah maybe, but those are likely mostly minimum wage jobs. Like eating all your daily calories as candy—”

“—Or booze if you're Earl.”

“Shut up. Preacher, you know I'll take any job. I just want to work. I still know how to sweat.”

“Easy, Earl, I believe you. But even if you'll accept a lower wage, how far is a couple of dollars an hour throwing
construction crap into a Dumpster going to get you? What if they did pay you minimum wage. How far is seven bucks an hour going to go? We're back to thinking a few crumbs is better than no bread at all. You going to do five hours of labor for the phone bill? Another ten for the groceries each week? Another twenty or thirty for a car payment? How many hours you going to work? How many can you work? Nobody can make a living doing those jobs, even if you have two or three of them. You can't raise a family on minimum wage. And you can't build a nation on the working poor. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, folks say, as a way of blaming the working poor for being swept up in a change they don't have a snowball's chance in hell against.”

“But the jobs will come back someday … right?”

“No,” Casey said, in that way he had of being patient and frustrated at the same time, “the system is reaching for its natural conclusion. The lines of lower costs and higher profits are converging. My friend says, ‘A rising tide lifts all yachts.' Our society is dividing into a very narrow band of the super wealthy, and us—everyone else—what they call the working poor. This has been a mass migration, an Apartheid of dollars, money leaving the majority of us into the hands of just a few. Saying today it is one versus 99 is probably wrong in the absolute percentages but dead solid perfect as an indicator. Reeve isn't the exception. You just got hit in the back of the head earlier than most.”

“What concerns me deeper is the effect this is having on people not working—or working at deskilled jobs. For things to be better, you have to be able to wake yourself up, swap
yesterday for a another shot at tomorrow, and too many of us stopped being capable of that. We broke down. Like bending metal, you can never get it back to its original state. You lose your resistance to sorrow. Work earns you money, but a job creates some value in yourself. Jesus said on the Mount, ‘You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything.' Some chance to feel you contributed, made something, did something, accomplished something, however small and likely unimportant, that's inside us. I'm a preacher and so I'll call it a soul. That was taken away. Without a soul, that salt, there is no hope, no redemption. You don't just scroll to the bottom and click accept. Work saved more souls than most preachers.”