For Daniella
Out in the pasture
today i saw
the noted birds
resting upon
the wire clefs, a
beautiful synchronicity
of music,
lilting, rhythmic, transporting,
rising up
into wider spheres,
black flashes of wing
against the deep blue
morning sky,
their song drifting
down upon
summer yellow grasses.
—Stacey Warde
A black medic treats a young American lieutenant, his leg burned by an exploding Viet Cong white phosphorus booby trap in Vietnam in 1966. http://bit.ly/1CBinSv
by Dell Franklin
Willie Green come into the 25th Army field hospital in Verona, Italy, and he green all right, he so country he don’t know it, he don’t know what to do, he don’t know what to do with himself, and he slow, Georgia slow, don’t wanna talk, and you can’t tell if he don’t wanna talk cuz he so shy, or he ashamed of bein’ slow and dumb.
Top-kick McCray can’t do nothin’ with this skinny kid, he ain’t but 18, and he all hands, got these big old hands, always wavin’ ‘em around, like he don’t know what to do with ‘em. They send him everywhere in the dispensary, and he useless, he go to mutterin’ you ask him do anything and mope in the corner like a dog been whupped up on with a switch.
McCray, he say Johnson, you got to look out after that poor dumb nigger, take him under your wing, like his big brother, or he ain’t gon make it, they send his sorry ass to goddam Nam in the infantry, fight Charlie.
I talk to my bud Thomas, tell him we got to take care of doofus Green, and Thomas mutter how he from south Philly and don’t like no country nigger, a country nigger from the south nothin’ but Uncle Tom slave bait, Whitey gon fuck him over big time and the dumb country nigger gon kiss his ass while he gettin’ fucked over, and I tell Thomas McCray want us to look out for Green so he don’t get his ass killed in Nam like the rest of us poor niggers.
By this time my good buds are gone—Ruffner, DeSimone, Mills, Lamb, Robbie. I been here longer than any of these troops and officers and doctors, they like me, Top-kick McCray got me runnin’ the shot room and emergency and sterilization rooms, got me a promotion to Spec.4 and damn near runnin’ the dispensary, cuz I know what to do, I surprise myself, knowin’ so much stuff, I can suture, I save a Colonel’s life when he have a heart attack, doctor Stein come in after I pound his chest and give him mouth-to-mouth, and say Johnson, you save his life, you ask questions and are prepared, we trust you with the lives of folks, which is most important. Yes.
I don’t try and teach Green the shot room stuff, cuz he too shaky with that needle. He ain’t no good behind the desk with sick folks and their records, so I take him to sterilization. We got suture kits, minor surgery kits, instruments. I pack and sterilize all kits and instruments in the big steel autoclave, hemostats, forceps, probes, scissors, clamps, I wrap ’em and put ’em in the cabinets in the emergency room, and when a doctor prepare to work on somebody, I do what the docs tell me to do, and if it real busy they tell me go ahead and suture up a dude, or wrap a plaster cast, or splint, or bandage folks, I’m good at it, like a pro. Oh yes.
Now Green, he listen but he don’t listen. He won’t look at you. He look down. I say, “Green, look at me. Don’t be lookin’ down like some whupped up nigger. I be your bud. Come on now.”
Thomas and me, we try and explain that hey, Green, you got you a boss gig here, but he mumble and mope, like he don’t care, like he got no life, and we ask him what he do on the outside and he mumble he a “bree-lay since he 12, and it take a while understand he mean a “brick layer,” work with his daddy and nine brothers, and you see why he got them big strong hands, he wiry from layin’ them bricks, he ain’t muscle-strong like me or lanky big like Thomas, but the dude got some powerful grip, and he got ants in his pants, he ain’t lazy, just confused, so first thing I do, I pick up a little wire probe, and I say, “Green, this here a probe. It don’t look like much, but it important, docs use it to dig poison out of folks, rub out cysts, like a knife got no point. Now it got to be sterilized, cuz if it ain’t and doc go gougin’ around in folks, they gon get a nasty infection and maybe croak, so we got to be careful sterilizing this probe, and all the other stuff in this room, it’s powerful important, most especially to the docs, and the docs, they God around here, Green. God!”
Thomas watchin’, arms folded in his whites, pens in his pocket, cuz he runnin’ the front desk and helpin’ me in the shot room, and he know how to handle himself, despite bein’ a stubborn, contrary ghetto nigger angry alla time, ain’t gon catch him smilin’ at Whitey ‘less he got a trick in store.
I show Green how to wrap a probe. Then I let him do it. He do it all wrong. I say, “Green, watch me do it, you got to pay attention, or you do it all wrong and piss off the docs!”
He make a face and grumble and walk out the sterilization room and go trampin’ around post. I guess he angry and hurt. I run his ass down and bring him back, tell him cool down. I tell him they gon get his ass killed in Nam he don’t shape up. Doin’ all this stuff ain’t that hard if y’all pay attention. So I lay the probe on the cotton wrapper and show him how to wrap it, and then I unwrap it and have Green wrap it, and he do so, like I show him, and I say, “Now Green, keep doin’ it the way I doin’ it, you gon be okay, my man.” He grin, sleepy-like, like he proud, he wrap a little old probe, big deal, yeh, but it a big deal to him, so now I show him how to wrap a forceps, and he do it right, and then I got him wrappin’ all the other instruments, and when he finished we lay ‘em in a row in the big steel autoclave tank, got levers and dials and gauges, and then I show him how to operate the autoclave.
I go step by step, then start over. Green do the first step, and we start over. Green do the first and second and third steps, and I see he getting’ a bit fretful, this is enough for now, I do the rest and get the autoclave workin’, so then I take him to the operating room for minor surgery and emergencies and show him the glass cabinets hold all the stuff doctors need—disposable syringes, needles, gloves, swabs, band-aids, compresses, thread, gauze, ointments, peroxide, soaps, instruments a doc use look in a guys’ ear, or up his nose, look up a guys’ ass, his throat, everything in the cabinets I show Green, and I say, “Green, you doin’ fine, you learnin’ MOLTO BENI, my man, now let’s go eat chow.”
This boy, he eat like he ain’t been fed before, and he stuff apples and oranges in his field jacket after we finish. We go back to the sterilization room, and I say, “Green, wrap me a hemostat.” He do it. Then we check the autoclave. Everything in it warm and sterilized. Then I got him wrappin’ instruments all afternoon and tell him what they used for. He get them all down, he learnin’ now, and when the dispensary close we go to chow and he eat seconds and then in the barracks I tell him he got to keep his area clean and neat, like me, not like Thomas. I learn that from McCray, who can’t stand a dirty troop, most especially a black troop, cuz McCray the cleanest nigger in the U.S. Army. Green nod, say okay, boss.
“These Italians cool with us, they got nothin’ against us black folk, they don’t care if we peep at them white chicks, they ain’t gon lynch our asses. It ain’t like back home. These folks, they like to talk to us, like we mothafuckin’ human bein’s.”
Next day I say, “Green, run the first three steps of the autoclave.” He look at it. “Go on now.” He place all the wrapped instruments in the tank like I show him, nice and snug, and he do step one, step two, step three, and look at me. I show him the rest, real slow. We keep goin’, and Green go through all seven steps and got the autoclave hummin’. He stand back and listen to it workin’ up steam, cookin’ them instruments, and he got that little grin, and I say, “Green, you bad-ass, yessir, you a bad man with that autoclave machine.”
Thomas come by and I got Green wrappin’ suture kits and minor surgery kits. He goin’ at it like a pro. He ain’t dumb at all.
I say, “Green, the army give us niggers a chance to be somebody. Look at me. I’m a boss. Run the dispensary for the docs and top. Look at big ol’ south Philly nigger Thomas, he boss, too. Top-kick McCray, he boss of this outfit, tell officers what to do. We all bad-ass niggers in this white man’s army.”
“Sheee-it,” Thomas say, but he grinnin’, like he done a trick.
Green, he grin, like he one of us.
Next day I stand back and watch Green wrappin’, runnin’ the autoclave, stockin’ cabinets, he dustin’ and moppin’, without bein’ told like Thomas, and I tell captain doctor Stein, this new dude, he ready for a little on-the-job-training, so when Stein cut a sebaceous cyst out a GI’s neck, I got the gloves on and I swab and sponge up goo and blood, and when Stein say “forceps,” Green hand him the forceps. “Probe.” Green hand him the probe. Green hand him the scalpel cut the cyst open and ooze blood and pus. When doc done he let me suture the dude up like he taught me, and then I bandage the dude, and Green help me like I help doc. Green, he serious, likin’ this business, likin’ it big time.
Pretty soon McCray say, “Green lookin’ good, Johnson. You keep workin’ with that kid, cuz he takin’ your place.”
A week later Green don’t need me in sterilization or emergency. He askin’ docs Stein and Graves questions like crazy. He want know everything. I tell him keep askin’ questions, so he prepared for emergencies. Green, he walkin’ around like a pro now, so I figure, he got THAT down, now I got to teach him be a man.
***
Come pay day, me and Green and Thomas walk downtown on a Saturday afternoon. Me and Thomas dressed cool, but since Green got no proper threads, we get him some nice pants and shirt in the PX, and he wear the only shoes he own, army-issue low-quarters. We walk along the river to the Piazza Bra, by the ancient Coliseum been here since Roman days, been bombed by the USA durin’ the war. Everybody sittin’ at cafes outside and sippin’ vino or espresso or they paradin’ up and down arm in arm, and I explain to Green Italian customs and what they call ALFRESCO.
I tell him, “Green, these Italians cool with us, they got nothin’ against us black folk, they don’t care if we peep at them white chicks, they ain’t gon lynch our asses. It ain’t like back home. These folks, they like to talk to us, like we mothafuckin’ human bein’s.”
We mosey down to Piazza Erbe, little square where tourists snappin’ cameras at Romeo and Juliet balcony, and we find Bruno’s bar, where dudes from post millin’ around, waitin’ for the whores, so we sip some vino, sit at a table, chum with dudes from the air force base in Aviano. By and by the whores come, and Tom got his regular, Roselee, and he gone, and me and Green watch big blonde Carla come in, she got some fine tittiies and dye her hair cuz GIs like blondes, and she make a big fuss over me, ask why I don’t come around no more, and I tell her I got me an Italian sweetie in town, so then she glance at Green, and he starin’ at her real shy like, and I introduce them, and go off to the bar sit by myself, and soon Green gone with Carla.
I wait. Tom come back with Roselee. We wait for Green, and wait. He gone over an hour. Then when he come out they holdin’ hands, Green grinnin’, Carla grinnin’, noddin’ at me, and alla way back to post Green skippin’ along and say he got a steady woman, he say Carla say she like him and love him somethin’ powerful.
“Green,” I say, “Y’all got to watch out for whores. They don’t love no man. They love money. They love the U.S.A., where it rich, but they ain’t gon like no place a poor nigger live.”
He ain’t listenin’. He get back to post and take his night shower like I train him and next day he gone ‘til midnight, take his shower, and Monday morning he ready to go, waitin’ for me in the sterilization room. He follow me around like a puppy, little brother, friskin’, slappin’ at me with them big old hands. Now I can’t get rid of him. He even come to the gym and play buckets with me and Thomas and though he ain’t played much before he good right off with them hands and the ants in his pants, he everywhere at once, and he got big time hop.
In a month Green a bad-ass medic and a bad-ass bucket man. He growin’ and puttin’ on weight and eatin’ everything and seein’ Carla at night, which mean he getting’ it free. All right! My man.
One day docs Stein and Graves come up to me. Stein say, “Green, he is quite a medic, Paladin. I think he wants to operate next.”
“He has strange powers,” says Graves. “I’ve never seen such hands. Very deft, quite a touch, steady. He retains everything you tell him. He’s amazingly intelligent and a very nice kid.”
“He’s perhaps…an idiot savant,” says Stein. “You know what that is, Paladin?”
“No sir.”
“It’s a person with genius qualities who is backward in most other ways.”
“That sound like Willie Green.”
Stein look at me. He ain’t some dude hand out compliments. “Paladin,” he say. “You’ve done a good job of mentoring Willie. We are all very proud of both of you.” He point a finger at me. “Now you know what doctor Graves and I have been telling you—go to school on the GI bill when you get discharged, and follow up in the medical profession. You can be an excellent nurse. You will earn a good living, you can raise a family, and Paladin, you will be a helper of mankind. I want you to continue with this. Willie, too.”
“Okay, sir,” I say. Because these docs, they are God.
By this time I’m ready to leave the army and go home to my ghetto in Cleveland, Green runnin’ the whole damn dispensary. He givin’ shots, takin’ blood, runnin’ sterilization and emergency, work the front desk, he know how to suture and take an X-ray, he already promoted, and he engaged to Carla.
Night before I leave me and Thomas and Willie party, I already said good byes to my sweetie and friends in Verona I do black market business with, and Willie give me this little beret he buy downtown, hand-made, beautiful beret, he know I want it, and we soul shake and hug, and I say, “Willie Green, you my main man, I so proud of you, love brother.”
He so shy, he just look down and grin, and then he gone to the sterilization room, got work to do, and I leave post and Italy and the army and go home.
Doc Stein write me, cuz he keepin’ tabs on me, make sure I stay outta trouble, go to school. I do. He say Willie marry Carla and re-up. When Stein get discharged he write me from Chicago and say Willie back in the states goin’ to airborne school cuz he wanna be a paramedic, and I write Stein back, tell him I’m drivin’ an ambulance nights and goin’ to nursin’ school durin’ the day on the GI bill. I don’t hear from Stein for a while and then he call me on the phone one night and say Paladin, sit down, I got terrible news, Willie Green killed in Nam. I sit down. Stein, he don’t sound too good, and I ain’t hearin’ too good, but I guess Willie save a bunch-a lives and get a silver star and buried with honors. Shit, that don’t do me no good. I find that beret and wear it for a month. Then I put it in plastic and wear it on Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, 4th of July, remember Willie Green. Ain’t nobody allowed to touch that beret, just me. My little brother. §
Dell Franklin is a writer living in Cayucos, Calif., and is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice.
photo by Stacey Warde
by Greg West
“YOU THINK YOUR DICK’S MADE OF GOLD?!?!” Anne yells, bare heels pounding the triple-digit pavement, tears sizzling down veined face, half-smoked Benson & Hedges between trembling fingers, threadbare nightie she’s been in for days, crawling up old white thighs. She’d have kept coming too, if she hadn’t had to stop and cough. She was up to three packs a day.
At the stop sign he looks in the side mirror and sees her stooped and hacking. If he wants an image, here’s one. It’s rush hour and no one’s letting anyone on the road anyway.
The next time he looks in the mirror she’s on the curb, bent over, clutching her stomach, a safe distance away. The whole point in giving her a week had been to avoid something like this, give her time to vent and yell, purge and talk it out, on the phone mostly, with her best friend Kay Miller, the one who’d helped her conclude that he was an incurably selfish man, a coward, that he thought his dick was made of gold, that it wasn’t, and that he was going to fall on his face wherever he was running away to.
He’d given Anne a week and Anne had told him she’d come to terms with things. Anne had even thanked him.
Hearing his trunk shut in her driveway must have been what changed her mind. He had it in reverse when the front door had opened and she’d bolted out into what could have been her first sunlight in days, leaping off the porch and moving across the dead yard like a stalking panther, lips pressed grotesquely together, kicking and pounding his car, reiterating with each fist and heel, her and Kay Miller’s findings about him, mustering enough strength to leave a fist-sized depression in his hood.
Still no opening on the road, he glances in the mirror one last time, and seeing no sign of Anne, breathes and nudges into traffic. It’s bumper to bumper on this road west, this road taking him and his dick of gold away forever and when he tries to remember how he’d ended up in this smothering grid of hopelessness, or even how he’d ended up with Anne, he couldn’t. It would take an hour for him to clear the tentacles of Fresno and even after that there would be miles of dry beige dirtscape, but by dusk he’d be climbing lumpy hills that descended on the other side into cool moist coastal air.
“SELFISH FUCKING COWARD!!”
Somehow Anne makes it to his window, and with the tears and sweat of a second wind rolling through week-old makeup, eyes pink with fear, beating the glass with forceful rabbit punches, she reminds him in the heat of that city: “YOUR DICK IS NOT MADE OF GOLD!!” Forcing his way into traffic, horns blasting, tires chirping, Anne running alongside and punching, he looks at her through the crackled glass and yells: “I NEVER SAID IT WAS!!” §
Greg West lives in a hole-in-the-wall motel in Nevada where he writes in his spare time between jobs.
Apricots are suede loafers, and
black plums are cordovan weejuns,
both of which are indications that
Summer, however foggy it may be
in this tiny beach town, is upon us.
The tourists, in their brightly colored
shorts and aggressive t-shirts
advertising everything they own
and everywhere they’ve been,
descend to the kelp-strewn beach
and set up their tents, their umbrellas,
and their coolers filled with light beer
and candy flavored malt liquor. The
locals grumblingly take the tourists’
money. It is a grudging annual
symbiosis, but the apricots are
delicious, and my suede loafers are
safe from the flip flop wearing hoards.
—Todd Young
Wilbur, who has his favorite spots to pee, has admittedly developed habits unbreakable. Photo by Jason Vest
by Dell Franklin
Just about every weekday afternoon, at around 3 o’clock, Wilbur, my 10-year-old, 95-pound chocolate Lab, sunning himself on my spacious terrace, hears Randy Crozier, otherwise known as “The Pirate” and resident boozer at the downtown Schooner’s Wharf, returning from work as a builder and approach our residence in his loud, growling 25-year-old truck. Wilbur immediately tears to the railing, tail wagging frantically, drooling, pacing, as Crozier pulls over, steps out and lobs a couple biscuits up on the terrace, which Wilbur instantly devours and returns to the railing to watch Crozier turn down the street below us and park three doors down. Wilbur rewards Crozier for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.
Wilbur rewards Randy Crozier, also known as “The Pirate,” for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.
Wilbur has admittedly developed habits unbreakable. I was walking him the other morning around the corner from Crozier and along the same route I’ve been walking dogs in this neighborhood for 17-plus years when the blinds went up at a new residence and a stern voice blurted, very curtly, “I’d appreciate it if your dog didn’t pee on my bushes, thank you.” His “thank you” was very dismissive and condescending, as if Wilbur and I were trash when for years we’ve been regarded as harmless if a little eccentric and unruly of appearance due to the gentrification of Cayucos.
I paused after Wilbur peed on the bush and faced the narrowly opened blinds and laughed in a jeering manner as the blinds snapped shut. Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it. I try and refrain from allowing Wilbur to shit on any lawn, but in case he does I keep plastic poop bags like a thoughtful neighbor. This little grid of a neighborhood is rife with dogs of all sizes and we’re all pretty respectful and affectionate toward each others’ dogs. So far no signs have popped up of a dog lifting his leg to pee with a red arrow running through it. As far as I know these signs don’t exist. Dogs here and everywhere are hard pressed NOT to pee on every fire hydrant they pass, as well as plants, bushes, mailbox posts, fence posts, tires, trash cans, or any object other dogs have peed on, and if you try to stop them they fight hard and become confused and perhaps unhappy.
This is THEIR time.
Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it. Photo by Stacey Warde
I’m concerned about this guy who lurks near his window so early in the morning laying in wait for miscreants like Wilbur and myself who are used to roving around with impunity. Has he maintained this vigilance with all the tiny dogs and pretty pedigrees walked by ladies wearing designer sunglasses and toting Evian bottles of water? Does he have it in for Wilbur and me? I recall him glaring at us and issuing a muttered, grudging “hello” when I greeted him with an ebullient “hello” one afternoon as I allowed Wilbur off the leash to indulge in some frenzied sniffing and peeing. Since then, I’ve made sure to leash Wilbur and wonder: Has this guy employed a hi-tech surveillance system to catch dogs peeing on his newly planted bushes so he can gather an enemies list and confront them, too?
My problem with this guy is he’s the first person ever in all my 71 years that I’ve ever heard of having a problem with dogs peeing on his or her bushes. What he needs to understand is that before he moved here Wilbur had already established territorial rights on his property and has no inclination whatsoever to relinquish them. Wilbur jerks and pulls me to that bush, threatening my bad knee, hip and shoulder. It is a vital part of his peeing grounds, just as he leads me invariably to the same shitting grounds and shows displeasure if another dog has violated these grounds. And this is all set off by his sniffing mechanism, which controls his every instinctive action and reaction.
The blinds went up at a new residence and a stern voice blurted, very curtly, “I’d appreciate it if your dog didn’t pee on my bushes, thank you.”
Anyway, I’m in a quandary about this situation. One friend warned me about pushing it and advised me to avoid this street, home and bush so as not to trigger a confrontation, which in my past history has led to threats and violence and the police called in. “Be big,” he said. “And let this asshole be small.”
Another advisor said “You’re too old to get worked up and involved over such a petty predicament. And besides, you’re too crippled to fight like in the old days.”
Sorry, but I just can’t get over this. I’ve always hated authoritative tight-asses trying to control my behavior. I’ve got a good notion to purposely have Wilbur pee on his putrid little bush and wait for him to snap open that blind so I can explain to him that Wilbur cannot live without sniffing this bush every day to find out who else has peed on it and then pee on it himself, and if he doesn’t like it, well, build a goddamn fence to keep all the goddamn dogs in the neighborhood from peeing on his goddamn bush!
Or, I could come by without Wilbur while he’s obsessively maintaining his vehicles or premises and explain very diplomatically that it is the destiny of every living dog to pee on any bush any other dog has peed on and if this is interfered with it destroys the harmony dogs have brought to this and every neighborhood in America and perhaps the world.
Is his precious bush so important it antagonizes the entire neighborhood, especially when I’ve lived here so long and know everybody on HIS street as well as the surrounding grid and will soon inform all of them about his antics regarding Wilbur and myself? Does he realize that in a case like this EVERYBODY is on Wilbur’s side and that automatically puts them on MY side? Does he know that his immediate neighbor, Crozier, has lived here since he was a child and loves Wilbur as his own and has a history of unchecked vengeance when he feels his friends are being wronged?
Maybe I should leave a business card from my lawyer, Gifford Beaton, Esq., a heavy hitter who resides in San Luis Obispo, on his bush, with these words, “I am Wilbur’s lawyer and anybody trifling with his peeing habits will be taken to court!” §
Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he and Wilbur spend their days when not peeing on bushes in the neighborhood. He’s the author of The Ballplayer’s Son.
Alfredo pointed to a side road running into the fields and inland hills near Cambria. Barns and ranch houses nestled among clusters of oaks. Cows and the occasional horses grazed. I had cut the meter at $40 and was saving them at least $25. Photo by Stacey Warde
by Dell Franklin
Sitting in your cab when the buses roll in at the Greyhound station in San Luis Obispo, Calif., you pretty much know who your prospective rides are going to be: black women visiting inmates at the state prison, little old ladies afraid to fly, parolees in new issue shuttling down to L.A. from prisons north, tattooed white trash, the occasional student, and Mexican immigrants from the poorest provinces of that country. The very rock-bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in America.
Anybody who departs from a Greyhound bus after having been on it for days exudes an identifiable odor: a distinct blend of cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, sour, dead air, armpit sweat ands crotch rot—all accumulating over years and soaking into seats and clinging to the hair, skin and clothes of a passenger and rising from them like a fetid, septic vapor, a sensory bludgeoning.
I picked up these field hands, or campesinos, always immigrants. Six of them. Since a cab is by law only allowed five passengers, I tried to explain this to them in my broken Spanish, but they pretended not to understand and piled in, five squishing up in back. They were not about to separate and take another cab for the extra $60 or 70$ to transport them to the farm or ranch where they were to cultivate and harvest vegetables and fruit and tend cattle out by Cambria, thirty-five miles away. Besides, they were diminutive people compared to fat Americans, stick-like and black-eyed, no doubt from the farthest reaches south, 3,000 miles from home.
Each of them toted a flimsy satchel with their meager belongings, which I stuffed in the trunk. The five in back were young men, and the oldest, with grey flecks in his abundant hair and bushy mustache, sat shotgun in the bucket seat. He smiled at me hopefully, a sly, wise look on his face.
I was familiar with these people. As a college kid, I had worked part-time and saved enough money to travel to the interior of Mexico with three pals in an old jalopy we eventually blew up. We hit cantinas, beaches, whore houses, and although we were poor compared to most Americans, we must have seemed to these peasants to our south, rich and privileged.
These passengers were not street-wise, big city or border town Mexicans. This was possibly their first time in America. They seemed curious yet wary, like young kittens.
The man sitting shotgun smiled at me. “You geeve me good deal, amigo?”
I shrugged, looking helpless, pointed to the meter. “No po-see-blay, amigo.”
“We have leetle dinero, señor.”
I nodded. “I understand. But it will cost you around seventy dollars.” He winced, as if stabbed. He was possibly a few years younger than me but looked older, obviously having lived a harder life, as they all did.
I remembered how, when our car stalled in little villages and big cities, everybody, even kids and women, came out of buildings or shacks to push us up hills, waving and smiling as we pulled away. I remember, deep in the interior, little dark men like those in my cab buying us beers and tequila when they could not afford it, because, evidently, they liked us, or were too proud to allow us to buy them drinks, or perhaps they were showing us the true nature of the Mexican people—warm and generous, money meaning little in the face of gratitude and goodness of spirit.
“I will try and make us a deal, amigo, but it is very difficult.” I again pointed to the meter, explaining to him that my supervisor kept close tabs on cab drivers. Then I picked up the phone, checked in with my dispatcher/supervisor, informed him I was going somewhere past Cambria and would be gone a while.
The car stunk. It was chilly outside, but I had my window open and the thin-blooded peasants huddled up and shivered in their faded denim jackets. Shotgun, who was named Alfredo, asked politely if I could roll up the window, so I cracked it a little, turned on the heat, but the stench increased and wafted to my nostrils, my gorge rising, like somebody died in my cab. They were, of course, immune from their own miserable smell and had probably been eating food they’d never eaten before, arousing their bowels, causing them to get diarrhea and even vomit. This happened to us in Mexico. These poor kids were used to nothing but beans and rice and tortillas and whatever they could kill.
They were incurious about the passing countryside, sat quietly, like mutes awaiting a sentencing. Alfredo kept an eye on me, occasionally producing his reassuring grin, his teeth white and clean.
Alfredo and I haggled amicably, bluffing, shrugging, throwing up our hands, and eventually arrived at a price.
I asked him where they were from. And he told me Oaxaca. I told him I’d been there, and it was pretty, and was about to comment on how poor it was, but knew this would humiliate him and place me at a disadvantage when we started haggling over the fare. I’d decided to give them some kind of deal. He knew this, sensed my willingness to compromise. I could tell the dispatcher I got lost from poor directions from non-English speaking Mexicans. Perhaps cut the meter at around $40 or $50. That was my limit.
So I relaxed just past Morro Bay, and Alfredo and I talked. My chopped up Spanish was as adequate as his English. He had a wife and five kids. Two of his boys were in back. They lived in a small village outside of Oaxaca. He was foreman at a ranch outside of Cambria. As we passed Cayucos and its glinting bay, my passengers did not bother to look. I studied the peasants in the rearview mirror; they looked exhausted, half asleep, like bags of ragged clothes. Urchin-like, they received little or no help from their government, I knew, forcing their survival on family alone. They possessed the high-cheek-boned, ridged faces of bantamweight boxers toiling in American arenas and on our sports channels on TV—men who could dish it out and take it and ignore blood and pain, never backing up until the final bell rang, bleeding, swollen about the eyes, yet still proud and game. They had perfect skin, were splendid looking people. Their women, in teenage years, before being burdened with multiple children, were breathtakingly beautiful. As a people they broke your heart, but you never let them know. Never.
Alfredo pointed to a side road running into the fields and inland hills near Cambria. Barns and ranch houses nestled among clusters of oaks. Cows and the occasional horses grazed. I had cut the meter at $40 and was saving them at least $25. At Alfredo’s direction, I turned onto a bumpy dirt road; rows of crops on either side. There were orchards and more cows. We arrived at a single trailer situated some fifty yards from a main house and barn and small corral.
When we pulled up, a door opened and five Mexicans who looked exactly like my passengers spilled out of the trailer. Their satchels and a few duffel bags were stacked by the steps. They looked fit and fuller than my crew. Everybody piled out of the cab and I opened the trunk and my peasants took out their satchels and everybody commenced to speak in Spanish at such a rapid pace I could not keep up with it. Alfredo talked to an older man who stepped out and could have been his brother. He glanced at me as they talked.
Occasionally, after a harvest, on a pay day, they’d go to a bar in Cambria and get drunk, shoot pool, become happy and sentimental, stare hungrily at big, healthy white girls, perhaps get angry.
I observed the crew I’d dropped off. They would be here for months, a year, probably longer, working all day, every day. Occasionally, after a harvest, on a pay day, they’d go to a bar in Cambria and get drunk, shoot pool, become happy and sentimental, stare hungrily at big, healthy white girls, perhaps get angry, maybe fight among themselves and be called “beaners” and “wetbacks” before being run out. This was to be part of their lot: Work, eat, drink, sleep, go without.
The two older men approached me. Any Mexican, be he a cab driver, pimp, or merchant involving any kind of exchange, liked to haggle. We learned to do it well in Mexico. They had no respect for you if you didn’t try and chisel them down or were a pushover when you tried.
“How much to San Luis?” asked Alfredo.
“The same, amigo—forty dollars.”
Again the pained look. “Too much, amigo.”
“Other cabbies, they charge you sixty-five, seventy on the way up, the same on the way back. They are not like me. They are not simpatico.”
Alfredo nodded, expressing his appreciation of my understanding and generosity. He turned to the man who looked like his brother and conversed rapidly while the peasants talked in the background. I heard the word “simpatico.” I’m sure they knew from previous rides that if I drove back alone I got paid nothing. Dead time. This was an excellent opportunity for all of us to come to a very pleasing compromise. Since they didn’t tip, which was fine with me, I could make some quick cash and be a true amigo at the same time.
Alfredo returned to barter. He shrugged helplessly. “We are not reech, senor. It is too much.”
Now they were all staring at me, a dozen bantamweights with calloused hands, wiry frames, sparkling teeth, deep leather tans. The departing kids would be returning home with pockets full of cash for their families, where they would be kings in their small village, almost heroes. They had no doubt already sent money home. I had seen their kind break hundred-dollar bills in the Cayucos Tavern to buy pitchers of beer. They spent their money on little else, lived free in the trailer, were fed, had few expenses. They became very generous when drunk, forgetting temporarily how poor they were as they bought local gringos and women shots and beers if they seemed halfway tolerant and interested in them as people. The drunker they became, the more foolish they became with their cash. They dropped it on the floor and left it on the bar and sometimes lost wallets. They requested their honking, tooting, oompah music on the jukebox, but no bar would hear it.
Alfredo and I haggled amicably, bluffing, shrugging, throwing up our hands, and eventually arrived at a price—$60 for a round-trip. I would make myself a $20 tip. For them, they were saving a fortune. Everybody was happy, satisfied. They paid me with a hundred-dollar bill. Alfredo and I shook hands. His brother, Eduardo, nodded at me, smiling. Everybody piled in.
On the drive back, I talked with Eduardo, who was from a family of fifteen. The kids in back were talkative and lively, behaving like jubilant school boys going away to summer camp. It was a quick, easy ride. I dropped them off at the Greyhound depot, where they hauled off their plump satchels and duffel bags. They wore new denim jackets and new leather boots and Levi’s and plaid flannel shirts and white straw hats.
They were freshly cleaned and laundered and smelled good. Such sweet people.
They would stink to high heaven when their bus pulled into Oaxaca. §
Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur.
FUCK YOU, CHINA! At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”
by Stacey Warde
I bought a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, made in China, at the Cayucos Super Market several days ago, a purchase I’ve come to regret.
In less than a week, they broke. Of course.
The white “Made in China” small print along the inside of the temple piece began to wear off in less than two days.
The frame cracked the next day and by the fourth day the flimsy dark plastic eyepiece fell out.
Not my best purchase.
I bought them becuase the sun bears down hard lately, harder than feels normal this early in the season, mid-April, and summer still officially two months away.
Pollens and dust from swirling, drying winds fill the air. Clouds of tiny bugs drift across the dusty ranch road. They fly into my eyes whenever I drive the quad to get to the orchards I tend as a farmhand. It’s annoying as hell, and hazardous to boot.
Additionally, my eyes have been light sensitive, they hurt and they’ve been watering. When I put on scratched-up safety goggles or get sun screen in my eyes, I can hardly see sometimes. A new pair of sunglasses seemed essential.
I might have known better. Buyer beware.
***
It feels like summer already. It’s so damned bright, and hot. We’ve had above-normal temperatures for weeks now, and little of the precipitation this parched country so desperately needs. The governor has put restrictions on water, demanding reductions in residential use.
Farmers and corporations, apparently, are not subject to the same restrictions. Blame and finger-pointing have begun in earnest; last week, it was Nestle® who was most at fault, and this week, environmentalists are to blame for the historic drought.
The dust on dirt ranch roads kicks up much more easily now, and hangs in the air longer, like a faded earthen curtain, blinding and choking, slowly drifting with the breeze, moisture and water obscured from sight and becoming more scarce.
Ticks and snakes have come out, predators and pests are more prevalent. The coyotes sneak closer to drink from the dwindling creek in front of my cabin. They nabbed a neighbor’s house cat recently.
I heard the shrill and sudden scream of the cat in its final desperate act of defiance. Wrong place, wrong time that night. Tooth and claw, foolish cat. The kill couldn’t have been very satisfying for the coyote. The cat was scrawny, no contender, and had snuck out of the house, where it was safe, and went down to the creek.
“That’s what they do,” a friend tells me of the coyotes, “they sit near the creek at night and wait for critters to come drink.”
The night cry spooked me. I thought a bobcat or young mountain lion had screamed. It pierced the night, fierce and defiant, even for a scrawny animal.
When I flashed my light across the creek, I saw the coyote chawing on the victim’s feline remains. I threw a rock at the prowler and it dashed off into the darkness with its prey.
My neighbor was grief-stricken. “She shouldn’t have gone out there,” she lamented. “She never had a chance.”
As water becomes more scarce, we’re likely to have more run-ins with predators risking rocks, ranch rifles and shotguns to get their food and drink.
Some say the unusual brightness and intense sunlight are evidence of global warming, or of fallout from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, or of a government conspiracy to spread mind- and weather-altering chemicals in the sky. Whatever it is, it’s rough on the eyes.
***
Barely two days after buying my new sunglasses, I noticed the flimsy dark plastic lens on the left side popping off the rim.
“Good thing I got these for eight dollars instead of the fifteen they wanted on the sticker price,” I thought.
I had plowed through the pastic-wrapped, toy-like sunglasses on a bottom shelf near the handkerchiefs and beach items and over-the-counter medicines, eager to find a protective cover for my eyes.
“Oh, these’ll be OK, only four dollars.” My eyes, tired from age, and watering from excessive light, wind and dust, missed a digit on the price tag. The nice lady at the cash register, seeing my difficulty, offered them to me at the cut rate of only $7.99 instead of $14.99.
I knew better the moment I touched those shitty, toy-variety sunglasses, that they were worthless, absolutely worthless, and I bought them any way.
At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”
***
I’m working in the avocado orchard today, tending 1,300 or so trees, irrigating, pumping thousands of gallons of water, installing injectors with their chemical magic to keep dying trees in production, cutting out deadwood, and pulling up suckers and sprouted seeds.
It’s unseasonably hot and dry again. I’ve put on my new sunglasses, and that helps against the intense brightness of the sun.
We’re one of the lucky few growers in California. We still have water. This season’s crop of avocados looks promising and we expect a favorable yield, so long as the water supply holds out.
Just over the hill, however, barely a mile or so distant, a friend who also farms avocados has already heard the gut-wrenching sound of gurgling from one of his pumps, indicating that his water source is running low.
“It hurts like hell,” he says, “to watch what you’ve worked so hard for just wilt away. But what are you going to do? You can’t fight mother nature.”
Some growers have begun trucking in water but that’s an expense few can afford.
The green from what little rain we got this season has begun to fade and turn shades of yellow and brown; drying grasses appear the way they usually do at the beginning of summer.
The rolling golden hills of California…are not such a pretty sight right now. It’s going to be a long, hot summer.
Trees have been cut down, stumped and painted white. Pests have turned up, attacking weakened trees and fruit, and will continue to be an issue as water turns more scarce.
The great California drought of the new millenium put a significant stamp on this county’s agriculture in 2014, according to the ag department, reducing yields of avocados. The drier weather was good for strawberries, though, which topped even grapes as the highest yielding crop in a region that prides itself on wine.
The wine industry, meanwhile, continues to suck up the lion’s share of North County’s water. How much more water can be squeezed out of the ground is anyone’s guess but when it does finally run out, we’ll have plenty of wine to drink.
The world-class desal plant in Cambria is a last resort as a home water source but some people still complain about and fight it, arguing they’ll pay more for their water rather than contribute to farming water from the ocean or brackish ponds. But how much will they pay when traditional water sources run out?
“This is bad, really bad,” people keep saying.
Nonetheless, even with water restrictions and hills turning brown, residential landscapes, the little slices of heaven we create to insulate ourselves from the cruel world, manage to stay green. As long as water continues to pour out of the taps, homeowners seem to think, what’s to worry about?
In the Central Valley, meanwhile, the nation’s breadbasket, some water-starved growers have shut down operations and unemployment among farmhands has skyrocketed.
***
One of the benefits of working out here is the lack of distractions from meddlesome and self-important boobs whose only apparent goal in life is to make money, or sell something, regardless of its value.
Not to say there’s anything wrong with making money or selling goods and services but some people I know—and avoid—think only of turning a buck, would sell you a bucketful of dogshit if they could, and tell you what a great value you’re getting.
I despise those people, the crafty, who lack integrity, whose only motivation is to make a fast buck, the hosers and posers, the merchants of cheap and worthless goods, whose only real interest in you is how much money they can get out of you. I avoid them whenever possible. They’re scum.
Then, there’s my farmer friend whose wells are going dry, whose one great joy in life is to put food on people’s tables. He takes pride in growing quality organic produce, and is glad to provide something of value, something that actually improves the quality of people’s lives.
If more people thought the way he did, we might not be subject to cheap imitations and bogus, worthless consumer goods, with which this culture, thanks largely to slave-labor countries like China, more than eager to supply them, seems to have overrun itself.
***
While eating lunch in front of Ruddell’s Smokehouse in Cayucos, friends of mine brought up the subject of U.S. indebtedness to China. [Disclosure: The smokehouse is a sponsor of The Rogue Voice.]
“What’s going to happen,” asks one, “when they finally decide to collect on their debt? Will the U.S. be able to pay? And, if not, what will China do, invade us?”
“I doubt it,” I say, “but if they do, the only thing that will save us will be places like this, places that haven’t succumbed to selling cheap and worthless goods.”
What drives this dependency on cheap goods? Low wages? A lackluster economy? The so-called recovery from the Crash of 2008, from which many still suffer, is being hailed as the “low-wage recovery,” meaning basically that jobs don’t pay enough for workers to survive.
There was a time when, perhaps a fool’s errand, I thought I could avoid buying anything made in China. That seems almost impossible now. §
Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.
