Hands On (excerpt)

“There has to be a better way for this motherfucker to happen. Nothing is as powerful as fear, Jack. Not even Maiden.”
We’ve been on the job now for over a year. Crack’s been dying for three. Some kind of motor deterioration or something to do with his nervous system. He lights his smoke and swallows his serum,
“I’ve been taking triple the required minimum. If I could get more, I’d use it. It tastes like shit, but it chases that white shit like crazy.”

It’s really crank, but everyone calls him Crack because Crack’s a lot funnier. Crank has longer staying power, and it kills Crack’s pain. He’s saving money for experimental surgery somewhere in Europe. We’re five miles off the Mississippi Delta. Two more weeks on this fucking rig and we get released for three weeks. Crack jumps on a plane for Austria, come to think of it, and I head back to Texas. My wife has her own troubles, a jaw full of TMJ and a busted wrist. It’s been one thing working on this shitpile but it’s been decent being away from the house during all that.

We have one daughter, a so-called miracle baby because my wife was told she was sterile by two different doctors. We raise her and she runs off at seventeen. Now she moves in and out of the house. She’s been married four times and hasn’t had one single kid. I don’t know if it’s her luck or ours. But it makes her living with us a lot easier. She’ll be twenty-nine in August. Miracle my ass.

But Crack’s problems outweigh any of ours. Especially Goate’s bullshit. He’s trying to tell us that it’s harder to stay rich than to be poor. He’ll rip off some bullshit about how some asshole stole the Mercedes symbol from the hood of his car, how his wife can’t keep honest help around her shop and a bunch of other droll and sickening shit we have to wade through long enough to get our checks. We stand there and empathize with the cocksucker. It never occurs to him that if he dropped dead none of us would blink.

Crack snorts what has to be his sixteenth rail of the afternoon. I’ve never seen him off the shit and I never want to. He assures me that he screams in pain without it. Crack has a funny voice due to the blow and the vaccine. Not cartoon funny or strange funny, but damned-near-dead funny. It creeps me out, to be plain rude about it.

We’ve been drilling here for weeks on end. It doesn’t make me feel one way or the other about how much the industry of my employ fucks Mother Nature in the ass. The way I see it she’s got it coming. I don’t know why that point of view is so offensive to people. Only difference is I face it directly, I don’t get to hide behind a regular life. Ask Crack about Mother Nature.

(short story excerpt)

I always hated walking home from work. I never made any real money. My manager was worse than my landlord. Her name was Shelly. Shelly was 6 feet tall. Once I called her Michelle. She told me she wasn’t a Michelle. I’d see her in Chinatown once in a while with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend worked in the kitchen. They lived together. Shelly had to have a spotlight shining on her. She’d walk back into the kitchen with her long bird legs and long black straw hair.
"I wish these guys would leave me alone! I keep telling them, I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!"
Which she never did. She never told them. Her boyfriend was short and muscular. I didn’t like him. His brain was propelled by jealousy. He threatened me every other day.
"Hey, man, when you talk to Shelly you keep it professional."
"Give it a fucking break, Manny."
"You just keep it professional."
There was nothing professional about the job. I was either sick from the food or I was dodging the old gay men who lived in the smoking section. One time a professional basketball player stayed at the hotel. Shelly was on fire. She was going to his room and bothering him. She came into the kitchen. I had just turned in an order. Manny took the ticket.
"What the fuck’s this word?"
The word was Benedict.
"The word is Benedict. Eggs Benedict."
"You sure?"
"Poached eggs over English muffins with hollandaise sauce."
"Don’t tell me how to do MY job, motherfucker."
Shelly came in around the corner. Her face was weak and crazy. A film of sweat formed tiny beads on her make-up. She was playing with her hair.
"Manny, can you handle things down here for a minute?"
Manny’s eyes lit up. He looked around and pressed his tongue against his cheek.
"Yeah, I can handle it, baby."
"Good. I’m taking Jamal Dupree a fruit basket. His team lost the game. I want to make sure he stays here next year."
Manny was horrified.
"Why the hell you doin’ that? He’s just a big dumb ape. He’ll get over it."
She tossed her hair behind her shoulder.
"Manny, I don’t appreciate your tone right now. We are working. I am the manager. I am trying to secure this account. You have nothing to worry about."
She took off. Manny went to work. Half an hour later Shelly hadn’t returned.
I walked into the kitchen and folded napkins. Manny was on the other side of the wheel. He talked to me through a skillet. It hung there between us.
"Don’t you say a fuckin’ word, prick. You so much as give me one of those sarcastic smirks of yours and I’ll break your fuckin’ nose."
I’d been putting up with him for two months. I never said anything to him because I didn’t want to lose my job. But the job wasn’t worth it anymore.
"Tell you what, you sorry sack of shit, after work tonight I’ll meet you in the basement. I’ll give you the first swing. After your girl gets done screwing that big black cock I might even take a shot at her."
"Your fuckin’ order’s up, dead man."
But after work he had a fight with Shelly. I was waiting for him by the back door. He walked by in a huff,
"Your lucky day, motherfucker."
I never got to fight Manny because he had narced me off to Shelly about what I’d said to him. Shelly kept me after work. I sat across from her in her little office.
"We need to talk about what you said to Manny."
"Shelly, I only said that to get to him. I don’t think you would fool around like that."
I was lying through my teeth.
"Manny’s just worried that I’m going to try something with you. I would never do something like that."
I had steered the conversation away. She looked at me.
"Why not?"
"Well, for one, you’re with Manny. For two, you’re my boss. And for three, let’s face it, you’re way out of my league."
Her eyes lit up like Manny’s. They both had dull and dumb eyes.
"I was going to fire you. I called you in here to let you go."
I sat back and lit a smoke. King Calm. I had never shown an interest in her before because I had no interest in her. I could get that kind of trouble from a good looking woman. It wasn’t worth it with her. Her and her long bird legs and long black straw hair. But it was mostly her face, the way she needed attention. She would dry up and blow away without it. But sitting there facing the end of my job it occurred to me that I didn’t want to look for another one. It also occurred to me that I would have sex with her, if I had met her in a bar and I was leaving town the next day, some circumstance like that. For a second I thought of walking in Manny’s shoes. I’d rather eat a bullet. She crossed her bird legs and smiled at me.
"I never knew you felt that way."
"I’m just saying."
We heard the back door open. A pair of shoes came running down the hallway. There was a slip, a grunt, and then walking. I shook my head at the desk. Manny peeked his head around the corner. She stared at him.
"Sit down, Manny."
He sat down next to me.
"I don’t want any more trouble between you two. Shake hands."
I smiled at Manny and put my hand out.
"I ain’t shakin’ his fuckin’ hand, Shelly."
"Manny, shake his hand."
He did it. It killed him. She told him to wait in the car. She had to tell him a few times. He left.
I asked her, "How’s Dupree?"
"Oh, he’s fine. We had a good talk..."
I put out my cig.
"I guess I’ll be leaving."
She uncrossed her bird legs and sat forward,
"I should go, too. Listen, you were wrong about my being out of your league. I want you to know that."
"Thanks, Shelly. See you on Monday."
She watched me leave.

March of Time and Skin (chapter excerpt.)

The boat was rocking so bad you could run up and down the door frames. People like to imagine the ocean as being blue and beautiful. I used to imagine it that way. When you're that far out at sea the water is black. Day or night it is black and deadly looking, like obsidian in slow motion. Black as far as you could see. Everyone was grabbing their survival suits. Some were crying and some were scribbling down their wills. I laid in my rack and lit up. Let them fire my corpse. I sat back and thought how it figured that I would end out there. I masturbated one last time, lit another and closed my eyes. If the boat capsized then their survival suits were useless. The boat crashed through the swells and you could hear the waves roaring into the sides. My last thought before I made myself sleep was Angela.

It was calm and dark. I didn't know what to expect. There was no light or movement. I heard nothing. I reached out and pulled the curtain back and stood in the dark. Then I felt it, a gentle rocking beneath my feet. I walked to the door and went outside.

It was warm out there. I was shirtless. The Sun sat dark red on the horizon and it was huge, and the black water stretched out to reach it. I lit a smoke and held the handrail; watched the horizon melt around the Sun. How small we were against the grace of the heavens. Our petty dreams, our need for self. Our weak assurances.

I was the only one out there. I saw a whale emerge from the water and twist out there in front of the red. It hung there upside down in front of the Sun, it hung there careless and lazy, totally oblivious to us, to the human refuse on the boat, sacrificing our luck and lives for a goddamned dollar. It went back through and my heart swelled in my chest so fast that it cracked my bones. Something happened to me which I could not understand. I wept. I stood there and wept at the beauty of what I saw. I wept when I thought that the moment was meant for me and me alone, as I badly wanted it to be that way. I wanted to be chosen by the Gods there, to be pulled out amongst the clean cold blackness of the water, to stand naked on the back of the whale before the harmlessness of a Sun which was now trained for damage. I wanted that scene, I wanted to be transcended into that scene forever. I wanted everything to be beautiful again. I wanted to be beautiful again.

I never told anybody about the whale, ever. That day we circled the Aleutian Islands and headed inward over Alaska's horn. It was the first land we had seen in over a week. They were dead, white capped volcanoes atop small isles. It was unlike anything I had seen in the contiguous states. It was a completely different planet. We were up there now, during the six months of light. We were on the southern end of Alaska, so the Sun would only fade out for about 40 minutes, then jump back up.


...The boat slowed into the bay and set anchor next to the processor. A plank was drawn and secured. That day in the galley, the lady who hired us was choppered in she and introduced us to the main foremen. They were both young guys with attitudes. They had already been at sea for four months and they were salty. Their eyes sunk into us like dirty teeth into clean food. Then we all walked the plank and sat for the main medic's lecture, listening to him spew out bullshit about him being able to recognize us by our coughs within a week. He talked about how filthy the fish were. He said that if a scale would reach into a slice on our fingers then it was possible to lose the whole hand. I didn't like him. I knew he was perverted, but it was his eyes I didn't like. They were beady and they peered at you over a fat, hairy face. He went on about the billions of tons of salmon:"Never will you see so many fish..."

Wind and Years and Blowtorches

friday afternoon
15 minutes before I shove off
to work
back spasms
suppressed lung
my place
a junkyard
in the fields
of strawberries and
lust
all the rain outside
comes together upon
my roof
it’s a perfect nature
of illiterates
all the pretty girls
gone
all the sunflowers drowned
by the wind and years and
blowtorches
the flames now
scars
set upon my body

upon yours.


















Fall



red eye scream
thorn shadow
cancers
sunlight
stone
we are this and more
the sun shines through
the leaves and
streaks the wood from
where we sit.

warm and waiting.





Insomnia



the ghosts come sideways
diagonal
vertical
forwards
backwards
and up from the floorboards
angry fellows
one holds a clock
the other a ring
one a set of keys
two are cradling a marble coffin
and one has my face on a pole
my heart wedged in my mouth
that’s a new one, I think to myself
normally he just laughs at me
Christ, don’t tell me he’s running out
of ideas, too.






7 a.m.



outside
bright, freezing
hungover
fighting the acids in my throat
steam rising off my forehead
waiting on the WORKTRUCK
so I can roll off to Hell
for 9 hours
No way out of it
I look around
at the frost
I see a frog
banging dope
under my car
I see a deer break dancing
on the rotted riverbed
while I feel my stomach turning
my cells hardening
across the road
an old man waves from his lawn
fine day, he cheers, fine day
it sure is, I say
and he goes back inside
and I can feel the pot and booze
battling all over
inside of me
and I think back to
where I may have slipped up
and lost it
maybe last year, maybe a lot earlier
I hear the wheels rolling across the
gravel behind me
I don’t need to look.

In our youth we were lemmings against
the sun
the birch trees
laughed
and the water
held wonder
green shades
covered our hair
from the teeth
of age
and the captains waved from
cloud scorched horizons
and the wood
of the pier
was fresh
the dust clean
and cool
the girls were beautiful
and bright and loving
our tan
sculpted
bodies
locked together
free of charge
and money was optional
and morning was optional
dying a distanced joke
our skin pure
and uncombed
by addiction
our heart
an easy power
our stomachs
a warm orange
life was a theater
of experience
and the music smiled
and the sky told truth
and all of our
hands
showed
promise.

Untitled # 3,056


the exact nature of the cactus flower
the devils and
pitchforks and tongues snare together
for one long orchestration of heat,
of love once ours.
You are safe there, in your rain, your culture
your absent eyed men
still you are safe and sound
better off there than here with me, in the sole of the desert
sweating and typing
you were here through
time
through the changing of tissues
and metabolism
through the addictions and my
right hand fucking shadows
you were here whether you wanted to be or otherwise,
you were here in my head
while your body fucked other men, told other men your
stories. 8 years now since we have touched skin.
eight
long
years.

The Colors Of Failure



the colors of
failure and the colors of
evil and the colors of love
and the colors of us
wax together
into
a sludge
that slimes
about our hips our shoulders
and within that sludge
I see paths and glories
and
ending
the jade vine
carved through the green
of our bodies
the twisting
hands reach
out and rip the walls
in long lines of blood
and grief
and uncertainty
the colors darken into agony
and they darken down
the slime dripping against
our bodies and hitting the
ground with the sound of ping pong balls
dropping
dripping
I look again
we are skeletal in form.






Bellflower



on the way back from the grocery store
I watched a man throw a grenade at a group of cops
no open fire
no explosion

just a dead bomb
on a dead afternoon

in many numbers the
cops took him down
hauled him away from there
back at the house I stayed inside
and on the TV there were even more
cops
this time in a canoe
paddling into a swamp in Georgia
where out in the middle a large and shirtless
black man, under the impression that
he was Christ tried to drown a baby boy
he held him under while
a deputy cracked him over the head with an oar
snapping it in 2
they wrestled the boy from death
one of the cops appeared to be crying
but I couldn’t buy it
so the tube went off
and I sat back on the couch
while the ghost of my mother
sat behind me
sad, sorry, disappointed
I can still hear her:

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SOMETHING.







Scab On The Orient



these days and nights of life
on the shit
-the cancers, the songs and fear
the illusion of minutes
blend like us
the way we were meant to blend
green and yellow
green and yellow and white
us against the beat
you said I was sick
and I laughed
you came out of the kitchen
with my tea
-blew out the candle and raised the blinds
you were without kimono
but as gracious as any of them
and I haven’t spent an hour apart
from the visions
of our old shithole living room.














Fucked



completely awestriking
says the spider
yes
I agree, I shout up to him
-my arms in the air
smoke in my mouth
in my boxers on the couch
bent over this typer
good work, man
says a fly upside down on the ceiling tile
my finest
I say to him
thank you thank you thank you
and thank you, my man
the spider winks
I point my finger at him and shoot
I keep the keys rolling
man, you should be in Hollywood
says a roach from my coffee table
I nod at him
yes, my boy, was there once. almost made it.
damn, he says.
I finish the page and stand. they applaud
I bow to them all, my gut hanging over my
shorts
thanks, boys. you realize, of course, my best work is yet
to be written
of course! shouts the roach, wiping the tear from his face.
there, there
I say,
we have much more ahead of us.
is it true, asks the fly,
that you’ve made love to over 3,000 women?
right as rain, I say, raising an eyebrow at him
and isn’t it also true, asks the spider, that
you are the greatest living writer?
No comment, I say, giving him a devilish grin
and by far, includes the roach,
the most handsome?
cut and dry, I say, pointing at him.
they all whistle
and cheer.
I raise my hands for silence
I sit back down and
roll a new sheet through
look at them waiting
I crack my knuckles over the machine
pause for effect
then start again
the first sentence hammers out
they applaud wildly.






My Heart...



is a black man with a gun in
his back
my heart is a pigeon frying
on the shoulder of a statue
my heart is
a blade against a brick wall
my heart is an unexplained
pain in the groin
my heart is strands
hanging
from a creature’s fang
my heart is Miracle Whip in an Alabama fridge
my heart is green in a dark green world
my heart is an overprotected
pimple
on my eyebrow
my heart is a broken pack of smokes
my heart is 4,000 confusing pages
my heart is a joke at the end of a serious movie
my heart is static on the radio
my heart is a fish broken in half
by a boulder
my heart is an overworked protruding sexual
organ
my heart is dust on the Vegas strip
piss on Massachusetts Avenue
strewn entrails on Ming in Bakersfield
my heart is right in a gay universe
my heart is a human spine at the bottom
of Elliot Bay
in February
my heart is a semi in Tampa
a pheasant’s heart blown to bits
in the shrub
my heart is a pimp at Walgreens
my heart is a long scream
after the slip
on the edge.





Peoria, Illinois.



the wind of the midwest
has finally crushed me
the words the greyness
the lies from the mouths
the greed from the oppression of this place
has turned them crazy
but the bullshit,
all the bullshit
has finally crushed me
every minute meaning
a greater loss
that typer on the table
the ashen ghosts hanging
around my shoulders
the bridges burned of man and nature
nervous stomach
stress aches all over
coughing out anything I try to keep down
everything everywhere stained
I feel for death,
a door in the dark but
I don’t have the guts
for that
I look back to the wires of youth
I look on to the wires of age
I see destroyed power lines of family
and old love
cables now useless
-unstartable, untrusting
so swept up in front of each other
that they can do nothing
a push lasts for seconds in grey wastelands our hearts
cigarettes burning down now
to knuckles
the sun mourning
the devil screaming
under oceans
falcon sized ants marching
cliffs of dark time
weak and hungry
as the flies harvest
blackwater sucking the claws of blackhawks
the heart’s retainment of sorrow
the uncertainty of the midwest has finally crushed me
your heart’s release of laughter.






Choreography



monday afternoon in the warehouse
finally wrapping my mind around
the concept of dying
laundry day
cleaning day
a day of solid dark rain
on the tube I hear
and old cartoon
choreographed
to the Blue Danube
you’ve probably seen it,
the swans strutting across the water
ducking under branches
keeping the rhythm
the little one trying to catch his shadow
across the water
when I was a boy I never thought I’d be here
typing to it
funny how I’m in the same town
I was in when I first saw it
24 years ago
only then I was wrapping my mind
around the concept
of instrumentals.





.

Seattle



the pine needles swing
in the Northwest wind
Seattle-
the bars, the kids, the hair
the work
tired in the afternoon
my head across the oceans
August in the alcove
pen glides smoothly across the page
I look to her dress
and to her tattoo
and I think about the road
crowding over 3 decades of
life
the sparrows outside now fall to death
time makes his move
my engine sits patiently
outside.






Pornography



a picture of a woman
hangs in my mind
she has no particular face
no bones
no paint
just this feeling.






Something Sick



Something sick is inside of me
something that will not
come out and face off
square itself up
knuckle
to knuckle with me
been with me forever
gets me fired
disrespects the nature
of the ordinary
Something sick inside of me won’t
let me love
or hate
but provides me
with plenty of fear
Something sick inside of me
can’t let me live or die fully
but strings me along
like a half torso.

March of Time and Skin (novel excerpt.)

An old Indian walked out of the station eating an orange. I nodded to him and smiled. He said nothing. He stood next to me under the hood.
"What is it?" His voice was angered, aggravated and aggravating.
"I don't know."
"What happened?"
I told him. He walked away slowly and came back with another. He got behind the wheel and cranked it. His buddy stayed under the hood. I walked inside the station and bought a drink.

They were standing over the engine, laughing. His buddy had one tooth in his head. I asked the first one what was wrong with it. He wiped his hands down his shirt and shook his head, smiling.
"Is very bad."
I stared at his friend. He nodded and smiled. I looked at his tooth.
"How bad?"
The other one answered. He was the boss.
"Head gasket blown. Much money."
"How much money?"
"We do it for nine hundred."
I only had six hundred on me. I told him.
"No. Fix here or we tow to junkyard."
I had the extra key in my wallet.
"All right. Fix it. Nine hundred."
I asked them him long it would take. He said, from what I could make out, one solid day. I took my bike out and rode into town, into that place.

The car lots there were useless. They either had nothing I could afford or anything I would trust. I rode back. They had the van on the lift in the garage. I found the boss again.
"Listen. I really only have six hundred dollars. Can't we do something here, I mean, we are both people."
He scowled.
"You not my people. Nine hundred dollars. That good deal. Somewhere else maybe you pay twice as much."
"Well, I don't have it."
He looked me up and down.
"Where you live?"
I shook my head. He smiled.
"Maybe you work here for money for van."
I asked him where around here that was possible.He laughed.
"I make call. Job very hard. Very hard. Maybe you quit."
I asked him what it was. He uttered one word: digging. He told me I could sleep in the van until I paid it off, but that he would charge me a little extra for rent. I thought quickly about catching a bus, but there was nowhere I wanted to go. I couldn't hitch a ride out with my bike and my things. Arizona was not an option. I told him to make the call.

I slept in the van that night in the garage. It was still dark when one of the Indians banged on the door. "Git up! Time for work!"
I had the sheet of paper with directions and set out on my bike. It was a four mile ride through the dusty roads and paths. I saw the site. A long, long line of Indians on their knees with narrow shovels trenching into the ground, a truck going slowly in reverse with a giant spool of cable they laid carefully into the trench. They were shirtless and moving quickly, the foremen screaming at them. That endless line ripping a tear in the desert, that line of dark red backs and elbows moving like a long machine. I was my soul after death and I was standing at the gates of hell.
I found the lead foreman and told him who I was.He yelled.
"YOU LATE!"
I tried to explain. He threw a shovel in my hands.
"Three feet deep and two wide. NOW!"
I squeezed in between two big Indians. The foreman ran up and nudged me with his boot.
"NO! You bring up FRONT!"
He walked me up to the front of the line. It was a long walk. The Navajos peered at me with my shovel. They were jeering me. At the front of the line the foreman pushed me to the lead. I'd had it with him. I turned and held my shovel as to swing at him. He jumped back and pulled out a long blade. I yelled at him:"FUCK YOU!"
The line burst into laughter. The foreman laughed with them.
"Just dig, white boy. You quit before a hour."
He put the knife back in his boot and walked away. I dropped to one knee and saw the ditch. I would work the day then sneak out with the van before the Indians came back to the shop. I began digging. The other boys laughed. Their laughter made me angry. I dug furiously for an hour. I was always at least eight feet in front of them. One of the boys yelled at me to slow down. I heard his friend.
"Don't worry. He get tired."
I thought of all the things that sickened me. I found this reservoir of hatred inside my arms. I dug on. Three or so hours passed. It was time for everyone to drink.
It was a long wait for the water ladle. There was a huge steel trough and we all lined up to drink from that ladle. When my turn came I took two or three gulps then another foreman grabbed it.
"That too much, white boy."
Everybody laughed. They still had ten minutes. They found corners of shade by the trailer and sat. I walked back to the ditch and kept at it. They were all screaming at me to take a break. The foremen told them to keep quiet, that they were disgusted that a white boy was making them look so bad. I kept digging. I was yards out from them.
They had to cut their break short. They were moving as quickly as they could, but I had plenty of hatred in me. At one point a foreman blew his whistle and we stopped. He ran over with his tape measure and stuck it in their part of the ditch.
"Too damn shallow!"
A big worker stood up and looked at me. He ran his finger under his throat. I asked him if he was tired. The line howled. I kept going, faster and faster, delirious from the heat. My skin was burnt.

After the next hour everybody hated me. I didn't care. I would never see them again. We worked until dusk. At the trailer where I had my bike chained the tires were knifed. They were watching me. I paid them no mind. I picked up my bike and carried it on my shoulder up over the hill where they could not see me. Then I set it down and collapsed. I watched the hot and dead sky turn circles over my body, and I remembered the pier in California, meeting Greg, my genius painter buddy from Vegas, and Billy, his young protégé, and they were in town for a week, and we rode our bikes all day, practicing new tricks in front of the ocean. I remembered jumping on a Greyhound bus from Phoenix to Venice Beach, with three hundred dollars in my pocket. I remembered my first girlfriend. She lived by the beach, and I escaped her one morning while she was sleeping. On that hot dirt, I thought back to the beach house where I had been a renter, living with an after-hours alcoholic and her lazy eye and her husband, Cliff, who was a psychologist and latently homosexual, which occurred to me on that hot dirt was the reason he always had a pipe in his mouth. I remembered my laundry getting stolen from the dryers in San Diego, and I remembered going to jail in Tijuana and being beaten over and over. But mostly I remembered nothing, and it was supposed to be dusk but the sky wouldn’t budge. I heard the rumbling of tires coming behind me. I picked up my bike and kept going. They blew by, yelling, hooting, flipping me the bird, leaving me in a cloud of dust. I set it down and walked it.

A mile before the station the two mechanics pulled up in an old car. The boss nodded at me,
"We fix van."
I nodded.
"See you in morning."
I nodded again. They wouldn't see me in the morning. They wouldn't see me again.

The van wasn't in the garage windows. I walked around back and dug the key from my wallet. I threw my bike in the side door and sat behind the wheel. I could see the last traces of Sunlight crashing into the desert. Then it was dark. I turned the key. It purred. They had done a good job. I crawled in back and laid on the couch. The van had no wheels, they had it set upon jacks.

That night I slept on my stomach. I passed out right away, woke up about five hours later. I was stiff and sore. The flesh on my knees was raw. I didn't know when the Sun would appear. I found the road and walked. Every step I took my pants would hit the exposed skin on my knees and stick to them. I walked, thinking if this were the way it would have to be then I would show them. I would show them all. I found a strange vigor within that thought. I moved on, trying like hell to ignore my body.

An old truck coasted past me then slowed to the shoulder. I approached it cautiously. An old Indian with a white ponytail and a cowboy hat. He asked me if I wanted a ride. He lived right near the site. I asked him what time it was. He didn't know. He asked me what I was doing here. I told him.
He shook his head.
"Good luck."
There was a pleasant calm to his voice, deep and casual. He lit a smoke and shook one loose for me.
"Don't smoke."
"Good for you. Don't start."
We drove by a billboard advertising the new Jeep Cherokee. He chuckled:
"They totally obliterate the Indian Nation then name a fuckin' automobile after it."
I laughed. He peered at the road.
"You got any native in you?"
"I don't know."
"Just a mutt, huh?"
"Yes."
He dropped me off.

I worked the day through. By the end of the week I was adjusted to the labor, and the workers gave up on hazing me. Once or twice my friend would see me walking and give me a lift in. We had weekends off if we chose them. I worked. I found out that I was making minimum wage, which at the time was $3.35 an hour. Weekends were overtime. If I worked the maximum I would pull down around $240 a week after taxes. The Indians charged me twenty dollars a week for rent. I survived on food from the station, mostly orange juice and fruit and candy bars. I bought a battery powered clock with an alarm at a drug store. In bed by 9, up at 3. Walking to work took an hour.

Into my second week I was allowed to ride to and from the site with the boys in the pick ups. This peeled me off an extra 2 hours a day. My sister in Illinois offered to bail me out, but I could not take her money. I hated the work more and more, but I felt a bond with the desert, with the deadliness of it. At night I would write in my journal and fall to sleep with no trace of sound around me. I tried to take a weekend off but I fell bored with everything and went back to the ditch.

Payday was once every month, paid to the day the checks were issued. I had started the job on the third day of the new pay period. I came to stand at peace with the Navajos, though we hated each other. I was a symbol of war and death and dominance to them. To me they were just more assholes I had to see every day in order to make money. They were no different to me than anyone else. I was not responsible for their holocaust. I wasn't even alive. They dealt with me the way someone deals with a fly they cannot kill. I found a nice mindset out in the desert; with the job, the boys, the heat, the nothingness. It would do me no good to bitch about it or take pity on myself. There was no time for it. I was a vessel for that cable, for the phone company. I took it. I had no choice.

One day on the job, one of the Indians dug too carelessly and broke open one of the cables. They were fiber-optic lines from the phone company. I learned through an Indian’s broken English and hand movements that if you shined a flashlight through one end of a five thousand foot section the light would come out of the other end. He said it was expensive to repair, something like $400,000 a minute or an hour or whatever he’d meant, for a specialist to come out. We were laying a different type of line next to the fiber-optic that was already in the ground. The guy hit it and cut it open with the shovel. Work was halted for a few hours. He was called off the line and I never saw him again. I remember it because he tried to point the finger at me. I was working in front of him. He was scared. He called the foreman over and nodded at me.
"White boy cut wire!"
I looked at the foreman and shook my head, kept digging. The worker tried to come at me but I stopped him with my shovel, laid it hard across his shins. Another Indian stepped in and defended me to the boss, an Indian whom I had never talked to. I didn't know why he did it. I guess I had earned a shred of respect out there. I was out of myself there, in a certain zone, a haze. Even nailing that Indian with my shovel was in careless slow motion. Everything that happened out there only drifted by with little or no importance; everything that happened was secondary to the ditch.

Payday came. I had not showered in just a few days under a month, saving washing off with the hose at the station. My check was pathetic compared to the work I had done. My rent was $80 dollars -that with the money I owed on the van would leave me with $60 extra. I would leave with a little under what I’d rolled in with. After every one got their checks they had to go back to work. I walked off the site and into town to cash in.Back at the station I showed the Indians my money. The boss opened the register. I told him to get the wheels on before I paid him.
"What? You no trust us?"
"No."
"Half money first."
"No."
"He put wheels on. I watch you."
"Just put the fucking wheels on."
He whistled to his worker. That's how they called each other. That whistle. I was utterly sick of that whistle. Out back he removed the jacks one by one after the wheels were bolted down. They surrounded me. I dug into my pocket and pulled the money out. They eyed the roll. I held my hand out.
"The keys. Now."
The boss dropped the keys into my hand. I peeled off $980 and handed it to him. He looked at me squarely and walked away, his worker following him, watching the money over his shoulder. I fired up the Dodge and pulled out, feeling more indifferent than anything. I headed down the same back roads.


I stopped in Tucson. Downtown there was some sort of carnival. I was rugged and dark. I fit right in. For the first time in my life I wanted a beer. I had never had a drink; saving the few times I had wine with my first girlfriend. The compulsion came from nowhere, hit me from above. The first barmaid asked for ID, so I went next door. The place was dark and seedy. I sat in the back. It was a dismal bar. The barmaid didn't sweat me about my age. I ordered my first beer.