Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey (8 page)

Instead of making a left toward the parking garage, I made a right, down East Lincolnway, on my way back to Buck’s to grab my car before work. When I got there at 6:45 a.m., I asked Buck if the car was done; it was. As I handed him my debit card, I asked if the car needed a tune-up, since I was pretty sure the guy who sold it to me hadn’t given it one since the 1960s. I explained that since I started heading east from Salt Lake City, I had noticed that sometimes when I tried to start her up, I had to turn the ignition several times, which never really happened back in California. He told me that what was probably going on was that the altitude was messing up the engine. He suggested that I wait on getting a tune-up until I was at least two hundred miles east of here, closer to sea level. If he did a tune-up here, the car would be kind of screwed once I leveled out in Nebraska. “I started the car and drove it into the garage myself,” he said. “The engine sounded fine to me.”

When I signed the receipt for the new radiator, I saw that the total was $410. At the rate I was being paid, I’ll have to demolish stuff for nearly a month to pay it off. I shake Buck’s hand, thanking him for his work, and drive the Caliente back around the corner, parking just out of view of the day labor office.

T
he lady behind the counter greeted me as I signed in, asking whether I was going to need a cash advance today to pay my driver. Jesus, there are people in this country willing to do hard day labor who don’t have a measly two bucks on them so that they can even get work? My God. I told the lady that wasn’t necessary today, that I had just gotten my car back from the shop, and I’d be able to drive both myself and the guy I was working with to and from the worksite today.

Just like the day before, about a dozen or so people were patiently waiting for work on white plastic chairs or milling around outside, some seated on the hoods of rusty old cars parked along the curb. I wondered how many of them might have dream boards. One of the guys I had worked with the other day was seated on the bus bench, a crowd gathered around him. I got the impression he was somewhat popular; they were all listening to him intensely, every now and then erupting in laughter as his stories continued.

Back inside, I filled my Styrofoam cup with some coffee, mixed in a little powdered creamer, and took a seat next to two women. One woman was shaped like a pear and had a short haircut. I later found out she worked full-time at a fast food joint, on her days off coming down here in her pickup to jump on day-labor gigs. She asked the woman next to her, slightly younger, if she had ever read a book called
The Purpose Driven Life
. The younger woman told her that a friend of hers had actually recommended the book, but for whatever reason she hadn’t gotten around to it. I’d never heard of it, but I liked the title, so added it to my mental book queue.

I stepped outside for another smoke to go along with my coffee, and walked into a conversation as to which prepaid cell phone service was the best, and which ones sucked ass. The lady standing in the center of the group, wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, was leaning up against a car telling everybody about how her mother purchased her one of these prepaid cell phones, so that she could call her and her grandkids whenever she wanted to talk to them, but that she couldn’t afford the prepaid service, so it was useless.

“I live in a hotel, okay? I got that and three kids to feed; food stamps ain’t cutting it, which is why I’m working here so I can make some extra cash. You know, instead of a phone, I could use that fifty bucks to help feed my kids and, like, buy milk.”

I returned to my spot next to the two women inside, the younger one now telling the pear-shaped one all about how “he” grabbed her arms really hard, so hard that he left bruises on them, and after that, he proceeded to bite her real hard in the rib cage area—“that’s a pretty sensitive area, even for a guy”—leaving a deep bite mark, and after biting her, “he just kept on punching me over and over again, and I was like, you are way too controlling.”

I looked up at the clock. It was getting close to game time, so I wandered back outside over to the bus stop where the guy I worked with was still entertaining the crowd, to let him know that it was time for us to go. Surprisingly, he remembered my name. “Hey, Colby, you ready for another fucking day of bullshit or what?”

Amazed that he remembered my name, I enthusiastically told him that I was. I had forgotten his name. I remembered what the guy I met in Green River, Wyoming, had told me about people here in the middle of the country remembering names.

Once we’d received our time cards and stepped outside, I told him I was parked around the corner. When we got closer to the Caliente, he said, “Shit man, this is yours?”

I told him it was, and he got excited, especially when he saw the California plates. He asked if it was a California car, and I told him that I had driven her all the way here. When he got inside he commented that it smelled like it had been stored in a garage for years; I was amazed that the guy could still smell, since he smokes about a carton a day. As I started the car up, I told him that I had purchased it off a guy who claimed to have gotten it from his grandfather, the original owner.

Since he knew the town better than I did, I asked him for directions to where we needed to be. He told me to make a left at the stop sign. I paused—I didn’t want to make a left.

All my life I’ve liked to wear muted monotone colors, blacks and grays. Aside from acknowledging that you can’t tell when they’re dirty, I had never thought anything of this color scheme of mine other than how I liked the way those tones looked on me, until my sister brought it up. She said I liked wearing “depressing” colors because I don’t like to draw any attention to myself, that people who wear bright colors are more confident. She mentioned that I needed to wear brighter colors more often, which I ignored. A left turn would mean that I would have to drive right in front of the vehicle-less people standing around the agency. Well, this was the direction we had to go. What were the chances that the people outside would notice us driving by?

As soon as we rolled by, with the window rolled down, my passenger yelled out, “Hey, guys!” Everybody looked up. I kept my head down, embarrassed, as he yelled, “Check out the wheels, huh?!” He had a huge smile as we drove away. To me, they all just looked confused as we drove off, but he seemed to be having a blast. Since all the windows were rolled down, at the first red light, he asked the car next to us if they wanted to race for pink slips. “You wish you had this car, don’t you?” He threw his head back and laughed as the light turned green and the two of us headed toward work.

I now knew exactly what I felt like. I felt like that dorky kid in high school that got to hang out with the cool kids because of his car. I was the guy with no personality, who obtained popularity thanks to his wheels. This depressed me.

“This job’s not too bad, man,” he told me as we drove along. “I’ve been on some shit jobs, and this ain’t one of them. You know what I had to do on the last bullshit job that they sent me out on? I had to move fucking rocks, man, all fucking day long, man. I had to move them from one spot over to another. I’m a fucking union man. I used to make pretty fucking good money until the economy took a shit, a couple hundred dollars a day. Now I can’t get shit, fucking Obama, man, fuck him, he’s the reason I’m doing this shit.”

A
portable stereo was plugged in at the job site today, turned to a classic rock station. I continued my project, decimating trees and bushes, wheeling the carnage away in a wheelbarrow, eventually moving on to boarding up windows on the abandoned homes. It was good listening to the Stones, Zeppelin, and Jimi. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” came on, and it seemed to boost our morale, which was sad, but also kind of sweet. I found out the name of the guy I was working with, Dave, as he came up to me several times during breaks, always starting the conversation by telling me in some form or another about how he used to be a union worker, making pretty good coin.

“Winter’s coming up, man, ain’t no fucking way I am going to work out in the fucking cold again this winter, fuck that shit, man. I’m going to get myself a job indoors at a restaurant, man, know what I’m saying? You can make some pretty good money doing that shit, working in a restaurant.”

Nodding in agreement, I told him, “Yeah, you can make good tips doing that,” just trying to do my part in the conversation. Head slightly cocked, he looked at me all confused, like I was reading from the wrong page. “I’m talking McDonald’s, man, or some pizza joint flipping pizzas.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah! You can make pretty good money doing that shit, they start you off at eight bucks an hour at some of those places, and it’s indoors so I don’t got to worry about freezing my ass off like I did last winter. I think I’m going to get myself a restaurant job. Fuck this shit, man; I used to be a union worker, you know?”

A
fter a full eight hours of work, the day was over. Time cards completed, Dave and I drove back, got our money, and went back to our hotel rooms.

The wine I was drinking up in my room did not taste as good as it once did, so I decided to go out on a walk.

The guy I’d periodically noticed sitting outside the hotel was now sitting on an upside-down plastic bucket. He was a tall guy with a thick accent, sixty-two years old. He said, “Hello.” We shook hands, and he introduced himself as Chuck. “My name is Chuck, and I don’t give a fuck.” With his thumb he points to the hotel and tells me that not a lot of people who live there care for him much. “But I don’t give a fuck,” he said.

He looked me up and down and asked where I was from. Unimpressed, he asked if I had ever done any time in prison. “I was in the army for a couple years,” was my answer, and an enormous smile appeared as he told me that he had been a marine for eight years, afterward living on the streets for nine, and loved every minute of both. He loved hopping trains and even had a painting of a train up in his room, he loved it that much.

In front of the hotel was a bike rack filled with shitty bikes, many of which I assume belong to folks who have received one too many DUIs. Chuck told me a story of something that happened a couple nights before. He was outside smoking, where the two of us were now, and a drunk he knows from the neighborhood came along and started trying to steal one of the bikes. Now, he would have, except that he was so drunk off his ass that he kept on falling down to the ground every time he tried to pedal away. So Chuck called the cops, and they came on down and arrested the guy. While the guy was cuffed and stuffed in the back seat of the police car, he yelled at Chuck that when he got released the next day from jail, he was going to find him and stab him. Since the guy was threatening Chuck, the cops asked him if he wanted to press charges. Chuck proudly told me that he told the cops, “I’ve lived here at this hotel for years. If the worst thing that ever happened to me was somebody stabbing me, well then, I’m a pretty fucking lucky guy.”

W
ork the next day started at 9:00 a.m. At 9:30 a.m., Tyrone pulled a pipe out from his jeans pocket, and a bunch of the guys all smoked marijuana. At 10:30 a.m., the boss arrived on the job site with an eighteen-pack of cheap beer. At 11:30 a.m., during a break, Dave pulled out a roach from his jeans pocket and passed that around. At 12:30 p.m. we were already out of beer, and since we had been drinking on empty stomachs, we all had nice beer buzzes going . . . so the boss took off to go pick up another eighteen-pack for us to consume. At 1:30 p.m., with nearly half the second eighteen-pack already gone, we were all sitting around on the porch of a partially boarded-up house, drinking what was left of the beers. Tyrone again pulled out his pipe and passed that around, asking why I didn’t smoke. I told him I usually did, but I wasn’t going to today because I’d driven to work. “Where’s your ride at?” It was parked down the street under a huge tree for shade, and when I turned and pointed to it, he tapped his boss and said, “I told you!”

Told him what? He explained that the previous night while they were out drinking, he told our boss that I had some 1950s greaser thing going on with me, and that he could tell I was the kind of person who would be into older cars like that. I loathe being categorized. Must be the tattoos.

At around 4:30 p.m., the boss signed us out, logging 5:00 p.m. on our time cards. Tyrone was nearly passed out, lying on the ground like a beached whale. Dave and I headed back to the day labor agency. “Man, I’m fucking ripped,” he said. He gave me some advice, which was not to talk too much when we got back, since if we did, they would smell the alcohol on our breath—and that I should let him do all the talking. When we got there I followed his instructions, and the only talking I did was stating my preference for being paid in cash.

I
woke up in the morning the same way I had the past several days since working this job—hung over, with every single muscle in my body aching. I’m in my early thirties, in fairly decent shape, having worked out in the local YMCA every day for several months prior to this trip. Long hours in the driver’s seat, gas station food, empty calories from beer and whiskey, had all contributed to the extra inch or two on my waistline and overall poor health at this point. I really did not want to go to work that day, but since Dave and I had agreed to work, and he was relying on me for a ride, I had to go. After a cold shower, I left the hotel, picked up a cup of coffee, and left to get Dave. Since it was Sunday, the office would be closed, but he would be waiting for me there.

It was Sunday, and early, so I assumed I’d be sharing the road with people on their way to church, since anybody who’d gone out drinking last night would probably still be in bed. I parked the car in front of the labor agency, sipping coffee, waiting for Dave. Finally, at 8:15 a.m., he showed up wearing his brown work boots, an old sun-faded Budweiser cap, blue jeans, and today a T-shirt with a huge rainbow trout on it. He also had a cup of gas station coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He got in my car, and we set off on our way. Taking a sip from his coffee, I could tell by the expression on his face that it did not taste good today, and he said, “This coffee ain’t cutting it for me this morning. You want to go to a bar and grab a couple beers before work?” I said sure, and when I asked where to, he guided me to the local VFW.