The Usual Bullshit
Okay, I blew it. What do you want me to say? I probably shouldn’t have kicked the bag of shit. I probably should have driven down to Jiffy Mart and asked for a plastic bag, even if I had to buy something. Then I probably should’ve gone back and cleaned up the mess and called it a day.
But I didn’t.
Dazed and numb with apprehension, I had neither the inclination nor the courage to go home with the bad news. So I took comfort where I usually took comfort: the library.
As kids, Nate and I spent untold hours in the library while my mom was at work. We ate bruised apples and crumbling saltines, napping on the quilted sofas. The library was the most stable thing in our lives, the only thing in the whole damn society that said to little Mike Muñoz: “Here you go, kid, it’s all yours for the asking.” No matter that your ears were dirty and your hair was greasy. No matter that your mentally challenged big brother didn’t have much of an indoor voice or that he tended to throw books and pee on the bathroom floor and scare the clown fish shitless. At the library, a little ferret of a kid like me had a chance. The only currency he needed was a library card.
For two hours, waiting for Nick to get off work at Les Schwab, I scanned the fiction section for distraction. What I wanted was a book written by a guy who worked as a landscaper or a cannery grunt or a guy who installed heating vents. Something about modern class struggle in the trenches. Something plainspoken, without all the shiver-thin coverlets of snow and all the rest of that luminous prose. Something that didn’t have a pretentious quote at the beginning from some old geezer poet that gave away the whole point of the book. Something that didn’t employ the “fishbowl lens” or a “prismatic narrative structure” or any of that crap they teach rich kids out in the cornfields.
I wanted a book that grabbed me by the collar and implored me to conquer my fears and embrace the unknown. I wanted a novel that acted as a clarion call for the disenfranchised of the world. Not 250 pages of navel-gazing about the nuances of saddle making, topped off with some hokey epiphany. I wanted realism. Grit. I wanted my transcendence with grease under the fingernails and unpaid bills piling up on the countertop. Where were the books about me?
Maybe I should write the goddamn Great American Landscaping Novel. Why shouldn’t I have a voice? Just because I never went to college? Because I haven’t traveled the world or lived in New York City or fought in Iraq or done anything else of distinction? I suppose you could make a strong argument for any one of those. But I believe the world could use the Great American Landscaping Novel.
After all, most of us are mowing someone else’s lawn, one way or another, and most of us can’t afford to travel the world or live in New York City. Most of us feel like the world is giving us a big fat middle finger when it’s not kicking us in the face with a steel-toed boot. And most of us feel powerless. Motivated but powerless. Entertained but powerless. Informed but powerless. Fleetingly content, most of the time broke, sometimes hopeful, but ultimately powerless.
And angry. Don’t forget angry.
The problem, I soon came to realize, was that landscapers, especially unemployed ones, and cannery grunts and heating-duct installers didn’t have time to while away their days writing novels. They had bills to pay. Cars to fix. Disabled siblings to care for.
I finally picked up a handful of titles off the new arrivals’ rack, though none of them really appealed to me. One was a dystopian novel about a global pandemic with metaphorical implications. So was another. The last was by a woman named Hannah, who’d won a prize I’d never heard of and was billed as “a stunning meditation on race, gender inequity, and sexual identity.”
“MFA fiction,” said a voice.
I looked up to discover the same broad-shouldered librarian with the mop of dark, curly hair and the prominent Adam’s apple, who had recommended The Octopus to me. He was pushing one of those tan wheelie-carts loaded with recently returned books. Not your usual librarian, this guy, nothing like those formidable librarians of my youth, with their translucent nylon stockings. He was wearing a puke-colored sweater and a T-shirt that said BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT.
“I mean, the writing’s good,” he said. “Lyrical and all that. If it’s sentences you’re after. But so much of it just feels like affectation and craft to me.”
“Got any recs?”
“What are you looking for?”
“Something angry,” I said. “I like the last one you gave me—The Octopus. It made me want to put a brick through a window.”
“Ah, follow me, then,” he said.
He led me back to the fiction section and began running his fingers gingerly over the book spines. He picked out something called The Jungle by a guy named Sinclair.
“Is this guy dead?”
“Yes. You might’ve read it in high school,” he said.
“Not if it was assigned.”
“Then you should definitely check it out. Classic muckraking.”
“Cool. Thanks, man.”
“I’m Andrew,” he said, extending a hand.
“Mike,” I said.
He smiled, exposing a big pileup of crooked teeth that looked like a miniature Stonehenge. It was sort of a heartbreaking smile, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
“You should go ahead and check out the new fiction, too,” he said. “By all means. Don’t take my word for it. See what you think. Maybe you’ll like the acoustics.”
Once again, the library had my back. I left feeling a lot less desperate and scared than when I’d arrived. I clung to that security as I walked down the hill to town, clutching my five books.
Around five fifteen, I arrived in the murky environs of Tequila’s, where Nick awaited me in back. Before I could even tell him about getting fired, he started in on his usual bullshit.
“You see where they’re puttin’ a Mexican market across the street?”
“So?”
“Who do you think’s gonna shop at it?”
“Uh . . . Mexicans? People who like Mexican food?”
“Bingo.”
“So, why do you give a shit?”
“Because this place is starting to look like Tijuana.”
“You ever been to Tijuana?”
“Fuck no. Why would I go to Tijuana? Hey, look at that fag over by the jukebox,” he said.
“That’s Ron Strobeck’s little brother. He’s a youth pastor.”
“He’s a total homo.”
“Nick, do you have any idea what a dumbshit you sound like? I mean like ninety percent of the time?”
“Hey, you’re the one mowing lawns, chowder hound. I stopped mowing lawns for money when I was twelve. I made thirty-one grand last year at Les Schwab. So who’s the dumbshit?”
“But c’mon, don’t you want more?”
“Yeah, more pussy.”
“I’m being serious, Nick.”
“So am I. I’d like to be getting considerably more pussy than I’m currently getting.”
“What about a steady girlfriend, then?”
“Fuck that noise. Then I’d never get laid.”
“See? You sound like a total misogynist when you say stuff like that.”
“Fuck you, I don’t see you getting laid.”
“This isn’t about getting laid, Nick. This is about your life.”
“What are you, my guidance counselor now?”
“Where do you see yourself in ten years? Seriously, Les Schwab?”
“What is it with you tonight?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I don’t see myself in ten years. Why would I want to do that? I’ll probably be fat. And my hair will be gone. You’re really starting to piss me off with this superiority complex of yours, Michael. You work with a crew of illegals mowing old ladies’ lawns. I just don’t see where you get off judging anybody, I really don’t.”
Maybe Nick was right, maybe it wasn’t my place to judge. But his ignorance seemed willful. Or maybe it was just lazy, which was also willful. Whatever the case, I was running out of patience for it, growing weary of the exercise—mostly fruitless—that comprised coaxing out Nick’s good side. Such was my fatigue that over the course of the next two beers, I didn’t even bother telling him I’d quit my job or how I’d struck out with Remy. Already besieged by doubt and insecurity, I couldn’t see how telling Nick anything would make me feel better.
The Pavement
The next morning, I slumped at the kitchen table with a splitting headache, combing through the Kitsap Herald classifieds—all two columns of it. Nate was at the table with me, plowing mechanically through his third bowl of Rice Chex.
“Do you have to chew so loud? I’m trying to concentrate here.”
Actually, it took very little concentration once I conceded that I had no sales experience and couldn’t swing a hammer or program computers or even do an oil change. My broke-dick truck disqualified me from the delivery-driver position or even a job with those fascists over at Uber. And of course, there was nothing in the Herald for landscapers.
My mom emerged from the bedroom, her hair in a sleepy jumble, squinting as she reached for her cigarettes.
“Rained out today, sweetie?”
“Not exactly.”
“Are you sick?”
“Nah, Ma. Actually, I sort of quit.”
She lowered herself into a chair. “Honey?”
“Lacy is such an asshole, Mom. I was only making twelve bucks an hour. I want to do more with my life than clean up dog shit.”
I could see the annoyance in her face as I rationalized the decision. As it was, our EBT card was nearly maxed by the fifteenth of every month.
“I’m gonna find something better, Mom. It’ll work out, I promise.”
I could see that she was anxious, but she didn’t let on. Instead, she patted my hand.
“I know it will, sweetie.”
Don’t get the idea Mike Muñoz wasted any time on his job search, either. Not five hours after breaking the news to Mom, I’d already filled out an application and secured an interview by 3:00 p.m.
The manager at Subway was a three-hundred-pound guy named Jay, who had the perpetual throat rattle of a blown woofer.
“I don’t see any food service here,” he said, perusing my application.
“I’ve made a ton of sandwiches. Just not professionally.”
“You got a handler’s permit?”
“I’m working on that.”
“What about evenings? What’s your availability?”
“Evenings are tough. I watch my big brother.”
He glanced at my application again and scratched his neck.
“My Big Brother, huh? Is that HBO?” he said. “I like Game of Thrones. Even though the end of the last season kinda blew. The thing is, Mike,” he said, releasing a Darth Vader sigh, “I’m really looking for evenings. Let me hold on to this, and if something opens up, I’ll give you a holler.”
Four days passed, and I received no holler from Jay. Undaunted, I continued to pound the pavement, submitting a half-dozen more applications and working up a résumé that included . . . well, landscaping, while emphasizing my enthusiastic personality and sterling work ethic. I was teachable, hardworking, eager, flexible. I had a strong back, a quick mind, a willingness to endure repetition. I was punctual, honest, and conscientious; I sometimes played well with others. So what happened to all the fucking jobs? There had to be jobs out there for a guy like me. Wasn’t the American dream built on the idea of equal opportunity? So where was my opportunity? I wasn’t asking for handouts. All I wanted was a job that provided a living wage and a little dignity. That seemed like a reasonable launching pad for any further ambitions I might have. All I needed was the opportunity to think beyond sustenance long enough to dream.
I was so desperate I even asked Nick to put in a word for me at Les Schwab.
“Not gonna happen,” he said. “There’s a waiting list.”
“Can’t you do something?”
“I wish I could.”
Meanwhile, my mom immediately started picking up more doubles to make up for my unemployment, which left me in charge of Nate 24/7. That didn’t stop me from combing the classifieds and sending out résumés. I began casting a wider and wider net, fudging my credentials with increasing abandon until finally I was applying for jobs that were way over my head. Once, I even applied for a job at the Kitsap Herald itself, though I had zero experience in the field of journalism, no college degree, and nothing more than six measly pages of notes on the Great American Landscaping Novel. Chalk it up to a rare moment of conceit. Why not bluff? Isn’t that how the wealthy and successful folks of the world did it, by demanding more, by not accepting less?
I was shocked when I actually got an interview.
I wore the only tie I owned, the one Mom bought for me to wear to Aunt Genie’s funeral, ten years ago. It was a little short, I think, not that I’m any expert on ties. My ass was sweating like two canned hams as I sat across from the managing editor, who looked exactly like my idea of newspaperman, which is to say gray and unhealthy, with some paunch around the middle. He was wearing a dress shirt, but it looked slept in. A little mustard stain sullied the collar. Here was a guy who knew the taste of cold chow mein and the scratchy texture of a sofa pillow against his cheek. A guy who left little coffee rings in his wake wherever he went.
“Can you type?” he said.
“Yessir.”
“How fast?”
“Pretty fast, I guess.”
He looked at me blankly. “Can you give me an estimate?”
“Sir?”
“How many words per minute?”
“Depends on the words, sir.”
“Look, I’m not looking to make a cub reporter out of you—this isn’t the Washington Post, and it’s sure as hell not 1943. Do you have any idea what a newspaper looks like in 2016? I am the reporter. And the managing editor. I write the obits, too—that’s our moneymaker. How are you on the phone? Can you sell?”
“Uh, I think so, I guess.”
“Wrong answer.”
He sighed, rubbing his face like he just drove from Flagstaff to Fort Collins with a belly full of truck-stop coffee.
“Tell me, kid, what possessed you to apply for this job?”
“Did you see my writing sample?”
“I didn’t ask for a writing sample.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“It’s a fictitious news story about a—”
Without further ceremony, he stood up behind his desk and extended a limp handshake.
“Thanks for coming in, kid. Try Subway. I hear they’re hiring.”
The Guest Cottage
It would’ve been great after my most recent humiliation to come home and find Nate zoned out in front of the TV with Mom sitting beside him, flipping through a magazine. Instead, I arrived home to discover Freddy, the doorman-slash-bouncer from the Tide’s Inn, sitting in my living room, smoking a joint, and eating an egg salad sandwich.
Freddy is this black dude about my mom’s age with a gut like a medicine ball. I’d known him casually for a few years, though to my knowledge he’d never been to our house. Once, when Mom was home with Nate, I ran into Freddy at the Masi Shop, where I was buying a tallboy, and he invited me up to his studio apartment behind the fire station to smoke pot. We sat on an enormous blotchy, cream-colored sectional that took up practically the entire apartment while Freddy showed me vintage pornos on VHS with the volume turned down, providing his own accompaniment on electric bass. Besides casual exchanges at the door of the Tide’s Inn, that was the extent of my experience with Freddy.
“Uh, hey, Freddy,” I said, stepping into the living room. “What’s up?”
Before Freddy could reply, my mom emerged from the kitchen with a glass of weak orange juice for him.
“We found a renter,” she said. “Freddy’s gonna be renting the guest cottage.”
“You mean the shed?”
“I mean the guest cottage.”
“Where’s he gonna keep all his pornos?” I said.
“Hey now,” Freddy said.
“Mom, what am I supposed to do with the lawn mower and all my tools?”
“We need to prioritize, Michael.”
“But somebody will steal my shit.”
“No one wants a dirty old lawn mower, sweetie.”
“She’s right, little man,” says Freddy. “Nobody wants to mow their own lawn nowadays.”
“Shut up, Freddy,” I said.
By the next morning, I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. I could hear Freddy out in the kitchen talking to my mom. I didn’t feel like reading anything angry, so I picked up one of the dystopian novels, which didn’t do much for me. So I picked up a twentieth-century short-story anthology instead and started reading a story by this old British gasser, W. Somerset Maugham. It was exactly the kind of long-winded thing you’d expect from someone named Somerset. I was actually sort of relieved when I was interrupted by a call from an unidentified number.
“Miguel, is Tino. ¿Qué onda, vato? I got a job lead for you, man. You know who is Vandermeer?”
“No.”
“Rocindo’s brother work on his crew. They doing big jobs—business parks. One of their guys got his foot ran over by a backhoe yesterday.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, is not good. He gonna be out of work for six weeks. But now Vandermeer need a guy with a lawn mower and truck. They need a guy like yesterday, so you gotta call right away, ese. Oh, and don’t tell my cousin I called you. He trying to get the job for his nephew.”
“Thanks, man—I mean gracias. I owe you one, ese.”
“Is no problem, amigo.”
I called Vandermeer, and he seemed okay. He said if I showed up with my mower at 1:00 p.m. at the Seaboard Building in Winslow, he’d give me a shot, at least for the day. And all Mike Muñoz ever asked for was a shot.
So I cleaned up my mower before I packed it in the truck. I even hosed the truck down and gave her a coat of wax. I wore my clean green pants and my green sweatshirt, and brought along my ear and eye protection, just to look legit. I loaded up my edger and my rake and my weed whacker. I didn’t even ask the guy how much he was paying, because it didn’t matter. The truth is, after twenty fruitless job applications, I would have mowed a lawn for free, just to win back a shred of my dignity.
Well, you can probably guess what happened as soon as old Mike Muñoz got a little wind behind his sails. Yep, the old crash and burn. My truck gave out about a half mile past the bridge. It wasn’t the usual lurch and stall. This time it was electrical. Everything quit at once. Coasting at two miles per hour, power steering locking up, I found enough shoulder space to pull over across from the Methodist church, right in front of one of Doug Goble’s realty signs.
I actually prayed. Or maybe begged is the proper term. I beseeched God: Please throw me a crumb here. Let this be a loose battery cable. I’ve still got twelve minutes to get there. I turned the ignition over again. Nothing. I popped the hood and checked the cables. I jiggled some wires and tried to work a little voodoo with the distributor cap. I tapped the alternator a few times like it might be sleeping. Then, purely as an act of faith, I patted the hood after I closed it. Climbing back in the cab, I buckled my belt and, with another prayer on my lips, turned her over again.
Nothing. I must have turned the ignition over thirty times. And the whole time Doug Goble leered at me from his realty sign like the smuggest jack-o’-lantern you ever saw. Yes, opportunity finally came knocking and left a burning bag of shit on my front step. The irony is not lost on me.
Well, I didn’t even bother calling Vandermeer, though I probably should have. I couldn’t call my mom, because she had enough problems. And there was no way in hell I was leaving the mower. Freddy, though he was ostensibly a grown man, did not own an automobile, nor could he operate one to my knowledge. Otherwise, he’d probably be living in it—instead of our shed. As for the truck, I didn’t have AAA, and I couldn’t afford an eighty-dollar tow. So I emptied the glove box, unscrewed the plates, and using the stubby blade of my Leatherman, pried off the VIN by the rivets.
Sometimes you gotta walk away, even if you’ve got nowhere to go.
A few fun facts: It’s about three and a half miles from the Seabold Methodist Church to Suquamish, and there are no fewer than six Doug Goble realty signs along that stretch. If you position a weed whacker and an edger just right, you can get them to rest on the bar of a push mower reasonably well, and you can balance the gas can on the motor as you trundle the whole mess along the shoulder of the highway in your green sweatshirt in eighty-degree weather. If looking at the expressions of passing drivers is your thing, you can expect anything, from the bemused grin, to frowning contempt, to the smart-assed grin of some guy throwing a Pepsi can at you. I got one sympathetic look from a Mexican guy in a shitty truck with a lawn mower in back, who was probably headed toward Vandermeer.
I arrived home in the middle of the afternoon as Mom was ironing her slacks for work and smoking a cigarette. Nate was watching Megamind with the volume up too loud, oblivious to the world as he shoveled Cheetos into his mouth. Freddy plucked his bass on the sofa, smoking a joint. You could see one of his nuts poking out the leg of his jeans shorts, along with the inside pocket liner.
There are times when a man needs a garage. A shed. A goddamn tree fort. A little piece of real estate. The place can be riddled with oil cans and rat turds, it doesn’t matter. There can be a lawn mower and a gang of broken flashlights and a busted jar of drywall screws. Half a croquet set, a rusting putter, and a ruptured air mattress. The point is, a man needs somewhere he can go to decompress, shake off all the shit life throws at him, dust off his bong, and feel like the king of his moldering little domain for an hour or two. A place to listen to Mozart or Rush, drink a couple tallboys, regather his wayward optimism, and convince himself the whole endeavor is worth the effort—and by endeavor, I mean breathing. But sometimes there’s a guy living in his shed. Sometimes there’s no optimism left to be gathered. Sometimes there’s just enough room under the canopy to stow his lawn mower.
This was one of those times.
“You all sweaty,” observed Freddy, from his place on the sofa.
“How’d the job go, honey?” said Mom. “I didn’t hear you pull in.”
“It didn’t,” I said. “My truck bit the dust on 305.”
“Oh, Mike.”
“Bound to happen with an old truck like that,” said Freddy, Cheetos dusting his gray stubble. “Boy, you twenty-two years old. Time to jump-start your life.”
“Is that right, Freddy? And how do you propose I do that?”
“You gotta start by finding gainful employment.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then you gotta find yourself a woman.”
“Mm-hm. Go on,” I said, wresting the Cheetos from him.
“And, boy, you got to get your own place. Look around you. Ain’t no woman gonna come around here.”
“You don’t think?”
“Hell, no! Ain’t no woman gonna sleep in no bunk bed. And you got to get yourself into a new truck while you’re at it.”
“And how do you propose I do that?”
“By findin’ some gainful employment. Ain’t you been listenin’ to me?”
“Thanks, Freddy. Good talk.”
“Anytime, man. Old Freddy seen a few things. When you’re black in America, you anywhere from invisible to a bright red. Gives a man a number of different perspectives on the world. You pay attention, Mike Muñoz, and maybe you can learn somethin’.”