But many nights after many long days in America, I have forgotten God and thought only of my troubles, of the manner of jobs I was forced to work here, jobs I would not have assigned a soldier under me back in my old life. Here I have worked in a tomato cannery, an auto wash, a furniture warehouse, a parking lot, two gasoline stations, and finally the highway department and this convenience store. Yes, I have earned enough to slow our spending, but each check cashed felt to me like one less bone and muscle in my back, those a man needs in order to stand straight.
My young colleague and I close the store promptly at one in the morning. We lock the evening’s receipts into the small safe in the rear office, and we post our inventory sheet for the day gentleman before removing our paychecks from the coin drawer of the register. We lock the doors and walk beneath the light over the gasoline pumps to our vehicles, and to the young man I only say, “Good night, Rico,” nothing more, and as I drive my Buick Regal down San Pablo Avenue beneath the streetlights so early in the morning, my body feels sewn into the car seat with tiredness, but I nod five times to the east and thank God, my mouth beginning to tremble, for the freedom He has granted me once again, for the return of the dignity I was beginning to believe I would never recover.
F RIDAY WAS THE BEST AND WORST DAY SO FAR. IT WAS BEST BECAUSEI worked it straight through, cleaning my normal residential plus the reservoir house job and the pediatric office I’d skipped the day before. There was a fog bank pushing in from the beaches and on another day it could’ve sent me over the edge, the way it covers the town in gray, but Friday I just tuned it out and cleaned with more energy than I’d had in a long time.
My customers leave me a key in their mailbox or under a rock on their lawn, which means no one is ever there except for a dog or cat, and I can work alone and fast, chewing gum and listening to the Walkman I keep clipped to my shorts; Nick’s old tapes mostly, loud fast rock that keeps me moving at a good pace and keeps me from thinking too much. When I woke up early Friday morning at the El Rancho, I made up my mind I was going to stop wallowing in my problem and start concentrating on the solution instead. I had to turn it over to Connie Walsh. She wasmy lawyer. By the time I was dressed, I’d convinced myself I’d hear something positive by the end of the day about getting my house back. So instead of booking my room through the weekend, I went down to the office and paid another thirty-one dollars for Friday night only.
I got back to the motel just before the end-of-the-work-week traffic heated up on the freeways. My arms, legs, and lower back were tired out, and my sweat had dried three times on my skin, but before I took a shower I called Legal Aid and Gary had me wait on the line almost five minutes before Connie Walsh picked it up: “I’m sorry, Kathy, but evidently the county has already sold your house.”
I stood still and took short, dry breaths. “What? How?”
“The auction date’s been set for months, Kathy; that was in the mail you’ve been throwing away.” I pictured my mother’s round face, her eyes dark and flat-looking. I heard my brother Frank, who told me and Nick the house was ours as far as he was concerned; he might want his half in twenty years, but hey K, One Day at a Time, right? Then I felt the tears come, my stomach twisting up. “Those mother fuckers.”
“Can you get that to me Monday morning, Kathy?”
“What?”
“Your copy of the tax statement. Hopefully I’ll have their paperwork by then, and we can go from there, all right?”
Connie Walsh was quiet on the other end. I wiped my nose and asked her what she was planning to do.
“Just what I said, Kathy. We’ll demand they rescind the sale or we file a lawsuit against the county.” She said not to worry too much, then reminded me to get that paperwork to her Monday morning.
I spent the first part of the night in the steel storage shed across the street looking for the signed tax statement from the county. But it was already too dark to see much, and I didn’t have a flashlight, so I drove to a convenience store on the other side of the freeway to get one. The streets were fogged in and the air was wet and too cool for shorts. Back in the shed I found one of Nick’s old sweatshirts and pulled it on. It was black-and-white with the logo of a band he used to play bass for years ago. It was clean so didn’t smell like him, but I could still picture him in it, lying on the couch while he read a paperback with the TV or radio on, sometimes both. That was always how he read.
After over an hour going through my boxes and bags, my neck stiff from holding the butt of the flashlight between my chin and chest so I could use both hands, I almost gave up when I remembered my trunk. I pulled two full trash bags off it, then lifted the heavy wooden lid. Inside were things I hadn’t even looked at since moving west: old clothes and shoes, towels and blankets, a dozen rock albums from high school—mainly the Rolling Stones and the Allman Brothers, but no paperwork.
“Hello?”
I screamed and swung around and dropped the flashlight. A man picked it up and shined it in his face. It was shadowed and I stepped back, but then recognized the crooked mustache. Deputy Sheriff Burdon smiled, then handed me the flashlight, and I took a breath and let it out. “Shit, don’t dothat.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Well you did.”I put the pictures back in the trunk, then stepped out of the shed and padlocked it, squeezing the flashlight between my ribs and elbow. My heart was still beating fast, and it was completely dark now. Fog hovered in the lot and street. In the light from the security lamps over the sheds I could see Lester Burdon was wearing jeans and sneakers and a windbreaker.
“Did you get hold of Legal Aid?”
“Yeah, thanks.” I turned off the flashlight and began to walk across the lot. My bare legs felt cold, my nipples were hard against my shirt, I didn’t know how I felt about him being here. “You working under-cover or something?”
“Excuse me?” He looked down at his sneakers. “Oh, no, I’m off. I just—I drive by this way. I thought I’d check in on you, see how you’re holding up.”
He sounded like he meant it, and he seemed even softer than the day before when he’d led those men in kicking me out of my house. When we got to his car, a Toyota station wagon parked at the edge of the lot near the chain-link fence, I kind of hoped he’d keep talking; Connie Walsh was the first person I’d had a real conversation with in over eight months, and that was more of an interrogation than a talk. I wanted one, even with a sheriff’s deputy in the fog. He was looking across the street past the motel to all the tractor trailers parked behind the truck stop. I could hear the bass drum of the country band through the walls, cars moving over the freeway bridge down the block. He looked back at me, his face all somber. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee, or something?”
“That’d be all right.” I told him I had to put on something warmer first. He waited in his car in the motel lot and I changed into the same clothes I’d worn to Legal Aid. I rubbed deodorant under my arms and ran some eyeliner under my bottom lashes.
We both agreed the truck stop would be too loud, so we ended up at a Carl Jr.’s a mile past the freeway on the outskirts of San Bruno. The place was brightly lit and smelled like fried chicken and potatoes. I hadn’t eaten and my stomach felt hollow, but I didn’t want to order food and change the offer of drinking coffee together into something else. We sat at a table by the window. Deputy Burdon had taken off his jacket and was wearing a striped golf shirt. His arms were tan, and the gold of his wedding band stood out bright against his skin. His mustache was as crooked as it had been the day before, his dark eyes a little moist. I had to be looking at the most serious man I’d ever met.