cleanse

The large scoop carried small hills stone from the gigantic pile and laid down rows about sixty feet way. The machine rocked on its struts, rolling over the uneven stone between. The scoop loudly dug into the stone piled fifteen feet high. There was a heavy sigh as hydraulics in the scoop’s arm brought the filled bucket up and turned it vertical. The machine backed from the pile and the motor yelled. The engine slowed, the arm whirred and the bucket poured its contents. The stone dropped, thundering against the stone floor, breaking into smaller stones and finally settled in the rows. The process repeated itself.

The constant bombarding noise morphed into a dull hum by mid-morning. Still, among the three of us, we sometimes had to yell to be heard. The effort was often too much and conversation reduced to short comments or odd questions without context. I had just graduated high school with one of them. He was more apt to toss his conversation in my direction, but I was sometimes too far off to hear. The noise reflected off the walls, sound waves crashing into themselves, all day but for our two fifteen minute breaks and half hour lunch. He took to talking to himself.

The three of us had started on the same day. We walked into the office, watched a safety presentation, signed our names and were officially employed. We were given a tour of the multiple quarries and shops. We were shown where we’d be working for the summer. The next day, we stamped our time cards at the office and met at the quarry. We received a brief tutorial before the operator of the earth-mover got into his cab and the banging and crashing began. That morning in the office was about two weeks ago.

My arms and back are already accustomed to the strain. I can feel the increased strength in my hands and legs. I’m starting to slim. I enjoy the tediousness of stacking the stone on pallets. One pallet for stones over four inches thick without color. One pallet for stones four inches thick with color. One pallet for stones under three inches thick. I sledge stones too large to carry. I walk to the row, select a stone, lift it to the pallet and try to stack the pallet square, without too many gaps. I repeat this hundreds of times each day. I can stack about eight pallets in my eight hour shift.

I’m used to the dust. It clings to me as soon as I start to sweat. It not only sticks in my hair and cakes on my skin, but makes its way into my clothes until, by the end of the day, I’m completely covered in it. I routinely cough it up or spit it out. Today, though, the dust isn’t a problem.

The clouds grew dark about an hour into the work. Soon after, they gave way to light showers. Now it’s raining large cool drops continuously. My t-shirt and khakis cling to me. I feel thirty pounds heavier. My gloves are soaked through, sliding off my hands and slipping on slicker rocks. My boots are soaked through and my feet are starting to feel cold. Typically, I complain, but now it’s the other two trading grievances. They want the operator, who is our on-site boss while we’re out here, to permit us the rest of the day off. Instead, he sounds his horn twice, notifying us that our fifteen minute morning break has started.

On the way to our cars, about a hundred feet, the boy from my school makes his case against being forced to move the stones out in the rain. I don’t know why he’s here. He was awarded, in a ceremony I attended, a scholarship which pays his tuition, room and board and part of his books for four years. It was the only one given out and ensures he’ll only need living expenses for the years to come. Why did he choose working here?

I climb into the back of my car, sprawl across the seat and cover my face for my usual micro-nap. The rain pelting my shins forces me to curl up slightly so I can shut the door. Ten minutes later, I wake to the sound of the earth-mover starting up again. I climb out of the car, stretch quickly and make my way back to the rows. The break has strengthened Scholarship’s resolve in leaving early.

He walks around the piles, lifts a few stones and places them back, but only brings the smallest to the nearby pallets. He wanders with his sledgehammer dragging behind him while he spouts complaints ranging from how cold he is, to how wet he is, and back to how ridiculous it is that we are still there.

I enjoy the rain. It’s refreshing. Instead of the dust-filled, dry, suffocating air that usually filled the giant hole we worked in, it’s fresh and crisp. My clothes are caked in mud where the stone rubbed against them, but otherwise they’re clean. I’m stacking a bit slower, but keeping a good pace. I’m not discouraged by the dampness, but his complaints are starting to annoy me. The breaks in conversation, loud, constant noise and tedium usually let me slip into introversion easily. His shouting and pouting is making that impossible.

I suggest we flag down the operator and ask about leaving early. The others agree. The third boy had started to chime in with Scholarship’s complaints and looked all too ready to be dry. We wait until the machine is closer, wave at the operator and walk up to the machine just as he is cutting the engine. “Is there any way we could duck out of here early because of the weather?” I ask. I don’t expect the acquiescing nod. “I’m surprised you lasted this long.”

Scholarship’s face lights up like a child opening presents on Christmas morning. He’s almost jittery. The third worker’s face washes with relief. I don’t know what my face looks like just then, but, responding to our combined reaction, Operator says, “You can head out now or whenever you want, ’far as I’m concerned.” That, like the final bell of the day, immediately marks our hasty exit.

I take a long, warm shower as soon as I’m home. There isn’t much on television, but I set it to something while I take time to cook a couple boxes of macaroni and cheese. I spend the afternoon switching between channels, spread across the love seat, relaxing. It’s lethargic.

Two days later, the third boy quit. He was replaced by a talkative kid, who never really said anything, the next week. He stayed for just over a month. Scholarship didn’t show up for work about a week after Talkative started. I haven’t seen him since. Half-way through the summer, the company’s safety manager informed me of my twenty-five cent raise and that I’d be the only one working this quarry for a few weeks. He said I could start wearing shorts. After that, I spent my days with the constant hum of the earth-mover and almost nothing else.

Sometimes I hummed a song as it came to mind and sometimes I talked to myself or the stones, but mostly I thought about where I was, what I wanted to do, and why things were as they were. Things had been going on around me at too fast a pace, but now I was able to slow down and participate. I learned more about myself than I had, purely out of boredom. I adjusted to who I was—or who I thought I was—while mindlessly stacking rocks and wrapping them in plastic wrap. I cleared my mind of the unnecessary and thought more of the substantial. Like the cool rain that dreary day, I used the solitude to rinse away the social cliques, unimportant nonsense and unrealistic expectations. Aspirations, quasi-confidence and a much stronger sense of self were exposed under the trivial dust.

tactics

I woke up to the bleeping alarm after hitting the snooze button for the third time. I slathered on deodorant to mask not taking a shower. I dressed, snatched a package of Pop-Tarts and was out the door with my usual haste. Tuesday and Thursday morning lectures were hard to get to and I was already a bit late. It was only the second week of class, so my truancy was still at a minimum. The walk was only three blocks, but it always felt like more before ten.

So early in the semester, the building was usually teaming with students and professors headed in all directions. This morning was different. I ignored it. I came up the stairs to enter the lecture hall through the side doors, expecting the professor to be in the first moments of her tedious monologue about design history. Instead, the seats were almost completely empty. A few students were quietly inking their crosswords. A couple others were half-asleep, lounging over multiple rows of seats. I stepped down and sat next to one of the girls I had met already.

She set down her magazine and we recounted our weekends for a few moments. There was a small group of students off to our right that were talking somewhat excitedly. I ignored it. Megan and I fell into silence, waiting for the lecture to begin. A full fifteen minutes late, a man walked in with an odd look on his face. He approached the front and solemnly made an announcement of class being canceled because of the events in New York. Megan looked at me with an inquiring expression, but when I shrugged back she turned and listened intently. He went on to say that we were encouraged to go back to our dorms or apartments and that we’d be emailed in the afternoon about the University’s arrangements for the rest of the week.

He walked out. I picked up my bag and asked Megan if she was up for breakfast at the dining hall. She agreed with a shrug and a look that said, “what else do I have to do?” She followed me through the student center, up the stairs and down the hallway to the glass paned walls of dining services. I was surprised how empty the hall was, because there was still an hour and a half before breakfast ended at ten. I ignored it.

The cooks were mumbling about something while we got our food. They were looking off at television in the back room. We filled our trays and wandered to a table almost to the wall. There were only three other people eating. From behind me, the television, muffled by distance, was explaining some horrific event. A bombing or explosion or something had happened in New York. Megan leaned over, looked around me and a strange look—something like horror—flashed across her face. She asked if I wanted to move to the other room and hear what was going on.

It was the first time I saw the video, now etched into the memories of everyone. The smoke was billowing from the towers. People were running through littered streets with cloth over their faces and ashes in their hair. The news team was trying to piece together what was going on. I didn’t know what to feel, say, or do. We both barely glanced at our plates, finishing our meals almost silently. I ate my waffle without tasting it.

We packed to leave, dropped our dishes at the door and walked sullenly to the bus stop. She made a humorous, off-hand comment and boarded the connector. I turned to walk up the hill to my dorm just as my cell began to ring in my pocket. It was my father, calling to see if I had seen or heard the news, knew anyone from New York, or if anyone was discussing the attack in class. I reassured him that I was informed, said there was no one from New York, or even the east coast, in my immediate circle and that classes were canceled for the day or longer. We talked briefly about possible implications, but he was at work, so we cut things short. I walked up the hill, tossed my bag onto my bed and turned on the television.

I sat there, half in a daze, watching the news a few hours. A few friends stopped by, on their way back from classes or after waking up, to see what I was up to. Really, we just sat there, watching the events unfold. Watching as the towers collapsed under their own precarious weight. The University emailed all of the students, informing us that classes were to go on as scheduled tomorrow. There was grief counseling in designated areas all over campus.

I, personally, felt awkwardly unaffected. I didn’t feel the agitation. I didn’t feel the remorse and dismay that filled the faces of everyone on the news that day. I was sympathetic to those that were directly effected and impressed with the handling of the aftermath, but felt no awakened patriotism. I felt that I should feel differently. I saw all the sorrow and thought I was supposed to feel it, too. I ignored it.

Since that day, there has been a dramatic shift. Soon after, I stopped talking with Megan, though I still remember as the only one that shared those events with me. The mayor of New York made a desperate attempt toward the nation’s highest office on a platform exploiting that day’s events, failing miserably in the eyes of anyone informed of his disastrous missteps that day. Seven thousand people were injured that day and three thousand perished, but more than that have died in the undeclared, illegal war that used that day as its justification. Hundreds of patriotic rescue workers died that day and more than a hundred patriotic soldiers have taken their own lives since. To this day there is still a massive hole where those iconic towers once stood.

The media, driven by fear and a thirst for advertising dollars, breezes past prevalent issues in favor of hot-topic celebrity gossip or the latest scandal. The government, with vague terrorism and isolated unsubstantiated threats, has systematically removed freedoms. Corporations have exploited a post-9/11 patriotic ideal in order to increase consumption and profits while shipping more production jobs overseas and crippling—or destroying—our middle class. Oil companies, now raking in record profits, use middle-eastern turmoil to introduce “green” programs that increase carbon emissions or spike the exponentially increase the price of grains and corn to build an infrastructure of fuel consumption that, instead of providing sustainable, renewable energy, shift their profits from oil to ethanol or liquid coal.

In the wake of that morning, when I ate silently as our nation felt the weight of the first foreign attack in the continental United States since the War of 1812, things have only gotten worse. My calls and internet use is now monitored by corporations giving information to, and being protected by, the government. My government is sending mercenary warriors with no direct accountability into a land I, and they, don’t understand and can’t keep hold of. The middle-class, once cherished within the “American Dream” and where my parents try desperately to remain, is dissolving into the poor and working poor.

The government, media and influential elite use wordplay and positioning tactics to keep us in fear. That fear has kept us in a dull state of cultural shock. That fear has kept us from searching for the real reasons behind the attack. That fear has helped them destroy what this country stood for. That fear has us paranoid and weak. That fear makes other powerful nations of the world look down on us. We ignore it.

Our soldiers don’t enter Iraq, but a well-guarded, town-sized, Americanized zone therein. They listen to the same music, play the same games, eat the same food and isolate themselves from the culture they are oppressing. Our consumerism infects the world at an alarming rate. The imperialist fingers that grip the globe, unilaterally invading sovereign nations, are being bent back. This, as far as our perspective, is labeled terrorism.

This country was born out of terrorism. We used it to define our independence and institute our own governance, based upon freedom of expression and ideas. Current tactics of abuse, fear and suffocation of freedom are obvious. Our country is faltering. We are being led, not by ideals and a greater good, but by corporate financing and men or women with a stranglehold on this nation’s power. Our country has been hijacked with terrorism used as an excuse. Too many people are ignoring it.

prestige

The house is small, at least compared to the six-bedroom monstrosity yesterday. The yard is green in patches, but generally unkempt. The siding is stained and chipped. The windows are hazy and the gutter on the front edge of the roof hangs low on the left. The sidewalk around the back is cracked and uneven. Dave and I exit the truck.

I tuck my shirt into my shorts and roll up the sleeves to my thermal undershirt. We already had a move this morning that was as quick as it was easy. There was no tip, but those moves always leave me in a better mood. This one doesn’t feel the same.

At the door, a small boy answers. He stares up at us with a somewhat confused expression, but lets us in without hesitation. Dave, clipboard in hand, steps ahead of me in order to start the paperwork. The homeowner is out of sight, but is yelling angrily into the phone. The voice travels from the direction of the kitchen, then trails off slightly as she walks down the hall. The house has that familiar stale smell of too many piles of dishes and too few passes with a vacuum or mop.

I’m trying not to eavesdrop, but her voice booms through the walls. I awkwardly stand just inside the doorway. From her tone, things with her and her husband or boyfriend, presumably the little boy’s father, did not end well. She is on the phone for about two minutes. Before she finally enters the room, I know she is being kicked out, is taking her son with her to her sister’s, and doesn’t think highly of him.

Her son has set himself down on the far end of the sofa. He seems to be completely tuned out. She glances at him before she comes to greet us. She looks like she hasn’t slept in weeks. Her eyes are distant. She’s barely there while she leads us from room to room, explaining which items we were taking. I follow quietly through the halls and out to the garage mentally preparing myself for the annoyance to come.

Each item we’re taking surrounded by things we aren’t. We’ll have to avoid a chair and one arm of a couch to get things out the front door. A pile of boxes blocks half of the path from the basement out the side door. The furniture is mostly cheap. The boxes are over-packed. The things that aren’t packed into boxes or plastic tubs were hastily forced into plastic bags. There’s no good way to stack these into the truck.

From the items shown to us on the brief tour, it’s clear she is poor. The cheap furniture is covered in Wal-Mart sheets and packed with K-Mart clothes. Her own t-shirt and jeans seem to be older than I am. Before taking this job, I never thought I’d run so often into the lower income sect. I thought the only people that would hire out a truck an labor would obviously have money and were too lazy for menial labor. Walking through piles of five dollar toys and second-hand clothes is far more common than I expected.

I’ve become desensitized to it. The people are generally friendly, if not a bit crass. They appreciate us more than those that give us large tips. They don’t watch us intently through paranoid stares. They seem accustomed to their situation. I can sympathize. The pay is terrible, but I don’t mind the work. I see the sadness and defeat in their eyes. If I weren’t so young, they’d likely see it in mine.

This move is different. Her distance doesn’t stem from her lack of financial freedom. She seems disheartened more by the situation than the instability. She’s forceful and has the attitude of someone determined to get her moneys worth—or, more precisely, her mother’s moneys worth. And then there’s the matter of the television.

Her fifty-inch projection television is flanked by full-sized, black shelving units with a shelf laid across them. It rests a few inches above the screen. The entire set covers an entire wall. The shelves are layered in dust with clear spots where DVDs and other items used to sit. Most of the worth of the items scattered throughout the house, added together, wouldn’t total much more than just this television and entertainment center.

She is in another area of the house while we load all the boxes, bins, and bags. She briefly glances at us while we move her chairs and personal gym from the garage. We wrap the furniture while she busies herself elsewhere, but as soon as we begin to disassemble the entertainment set, she’s in the doorway of the kitchen watching. My sympathy for her faded. The paranoia in her eyes was disconcerting. Only after the shelving units and television are hauled with a shoulder dolly out to the truck and secured against its walls does she revert back to her uninterested supervision.

We move the truck to the alley behind the house to load the larger items in the garage. She periodically brings out freshly filled bags and boxes. She packs a bag for her son and meets us by the truck just as we’re shutting the doors. Dave gets in behind the wheel and climb up the other side. When I turn back to shut the door she’s standing there gesturing her son to climb up. Dave, noticing this, motions for her to stop and explains our policy against driving the customers.

I apologetically mention that there’s not much for room in the cab anyway. She points to her car and says she could meet us down there, but was just in an accident and doesn’t think her car would make it. Dave, never wanting to go out of his way, quickly convinced her to give it a try. He said he’d follow her and if he noticed anything or she didn’t feel the car would make it, we’d stop and wait for a cab or another ride.

From the cab, we watched her set her son up in the car, get in herself, and then start up the engine. The engine started, but with a small squeal of metal on metal. Dave turned toward me with an awkward laugh. The car pulled back and reversed until it was directly in front of us. We both started saying “um” simultaneously and before I reached for the handle of my door, he was half out of his.

The front tire on the driver’s side was at a forty-five degree angle. The fender was caved in about seven inches and the tire rubbed against it when the tire slowly spun backward. The car visibly quivered when she turned the wheel to pull down the alley past us just before Dave got to her window. He threw up his hands and she stopped, startled. She rolled down the window and he started talking to her. They talked a few moments, but I couldn’t hear.

He returned to the truck, shaking his head, with half a smile. “She’s going to try and get a hold of a friend for a ride. The key’s at the place in the mailbox, or something. That front end is fucked up.” I laughed, but uneasily.

Last year, as a nation, we saved less than we spent. While the majority of Americans don’t have credit card debt, almost ten percent owe more than nine thousand dollars. Debt is entirely too easy to accrue. Only thirty years ago, most financing was associated with the purchase of a car or house. Now, financing is a way of life for far too many. No matter how disrespectful her watchful eye was while we removed the television from her home, it was completely understandable.

It takes us almost twenty minutes to find the key, hidden behind the address tag in the mailbox. We start to unload the customer’s things into her sister’s small bi-level apartment. Just after the television is inside, she arrives in a black S.U.V. that immediately pulls away after her and her son are on their way to meet us at the truck.

They help us unload the unevenly loaded boxes. It’s obvious she’s concerned with the time. We’ve been at work for a few hours and it’s likely she’s budgeted the money according to our office’s estimate. She’s more conversational and funny, in a way. The rest of the work goes quickly.

While Dave finishes the paperwork, I stand near the doorway and look around. The basement, closet, dining room, and living room is littered with boxes and plastic bins. The apartment is small. The furniture is more expensive than hers, but bland and uninteresting. The walls are almost completely bare. The yard in back is tiny, with a cracked cement pad that held up a grill. The building itself was run down.

From the looks of things, her sister wasn’t any more well off than she was. She had just ended what seemed to be an intense relationship. She has a son to support and no where to live. Maybe her gigantic television was a small bit of hope that things would be better soon. I can feel for her now, but what about when I get a full-time position somewhere and don’t live check to check?

Dave nods to me and we turn to leave. The gigantic television is planted in the center of the living room, only leaving a small path between the front door and the dining room. It’s facing her sister’s slightly larger television and matching silver entertainment center.

malodorous

It seems like I helped him clean his brother’s bar for years. He would wake me with roughly a half hour to dress and prepare myself before we would drive out to the next town. The sun was still on the other side of the globe. I wouldn’t see it for another few hours. At first I was too young to care much about being tired and as I grew older I would sacrifice the lack of sleep for some quality time while he erased the exploits of the alcohol-enriched patrons of the night before.

The drive there never took long, but was longer after the years caught up to him and he drove far slower than the marked limits. Memories from the mornings, spanning the years, blend together in a puddle of fond experiences. The mornings at the bar may have helped shape my affinity for small, local bars over chain drink-dealers and crowded clubs. Later, I would meet someone who frequented the bar and remembered my great uncle, the owner, as the man that chewed glasses for the entertainment value.

I never witnessed the spectacle of such an event. In the early mornings, the only remnants of the night before were the mud-caked linoleum and the smell. The odor hit me as soon as the door swung open. Now I can equate it to the morning after a raucous house party, but at the time there was no smell quite like the one wafting from within. The cloud of stale beer, body odor, smoke, spilled liquor, and over-used bathrooms was enough to tickle the gag reflex, but within moments sensory adaptation would take hold.

In the early years, I’d barely help. I couldn’t reach the bar, wasn’t strong enough to mop, and wasn’t allowed to use the powerful chemicals necessary to battle the bathroom. I would wander from the shuffleboard bowling table, brushing the silica around with my fingers, to the dartboard, tossing the plastic projectiles with no hope of accuracy, and to the pool table where I could roll the balls into pockets for most of our time there.

Once I was able, I’d wipe and polish the bar, sink, and stools. I’d run rags over the pool table, dart machine, and the few tables to clear them of dried beer and food crumbs. I’d help wipe down the bathroom and restock the paper. I’d bag the aluminum cans, even with the concentrated smell, and bring them around back.

No matter how much I helped, I’d always find an inexplicably large amount of coin money throughout the piles of dust. Various denominations littered the floor and bar. The bar, the size of a large living room, would somehow produce a few dollars. First, I thought people were far more irresponsible with their money than even I. Over the years, I came to realize it was more likely that he was dropping the coins as he cleaned ahead of me. He never admitted as much, though.

Just before mopping, after which the morning cleanse would be complete, he’d walk behind the bar and purchase a few pull-tabs. He considered it my compensation for helping him through the last couple hours. I would sit on the stool, like any self-respecting adult, and slowly pull away the cardboard strips to reveal the financial windfall that I was sure awaited me. I never won more than twenty dollars, but the experience was an exclamation point to the experience.

I grew into my teens, and into the selfish absorption that comes with them. I was too cool, too old, too tired, too anything to avoid the fetid, stale air and menial labor. My cousins took over assisting him rinse, mop, and polish.

Now he’s unable to clean the bar, doesn’t drive, and barely walks. It’s been over a decade since I last walked into the cloud of stink that is my great uncle’s bar. Still, sometimes when the smell of stale beer crosses my nose or I wake in darkness, I’m nine again. I’m wiping the pool table, spinning on the stool, or mopping the floors. I’m talking with him about things I don’t remember. I’m surrounded by the stench of smoke, beer, and any number of cleansers. In those split seconds, when I’m back in time at the corner bar, I’m reassured.