“Sorry! Sorry, Mr. Cactus, or Joshua or Bill, Ted, whatever your name is,” she called out.
“Okay,” he said, “not bad. Now you try by yourself, Killer. Hit that bad man.” She liked that he called her “Killer,” like Malouf on a good day. She turned back and aimed at the injured saguaro. “Steady your right hand with the left.”
“I know. I’ve seen Law and Order. I’m gonna hundred-percent Hargitay this shit. Or maybe go full-on Wonder Woman.”
“Wonder Woman had a lasso.”
“You didn’t see the reboot.”
“The lasso of truth.”
“Shut up, Mr. Powers. Inhale,” she said as she inhaled, “exhale, pull.” She pulled the trigger, the gun recoiled, but that was that. There was no sign that she had hit anything at all.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Paintball,” he said, “whiff.”
“You mean I missed the earth?”
“Apparently, and that ain’t easy out here, there’s a lotta earth.” He laughed. “Try again. Use your sight there. Inhale, exhale, pull.” She did as he said. She squinted through to find the sight and fired. The bullet plunked into the lower half of the cactus. “That’ll work,” he said. “Good shot. You’re a natural with a mean streak—you got him right in the cojones. Hyrum calls that a ‘balls’-eye.’”
The sun was going down by the time they got back on the horse. She was getting tired of balancing with her inner thighs, and wrapped her arms around Bronson’s waist. The desert was a beautiful peach-pink. She thought she could see the house in the distance. They must be close to home.
“Back when I used to be in movies, they’d call this the magic hour. But it’s no hour, more like twenty minutes. Ain’t that the way.”
“All Hollywood lies, huh?”
“All lies.” He sighed. The landscape was barren and lunar and glowing. Maya swelled with feeling at the sheer unwelcoming, almost hostile beauty of it all.
Maya put her hands on Bronson’s shoulders and turned him to her. She liked making the first move; it jibed with her preferred image of herself. She kissed him deeply. He returned in kind. He tasted of sand and rock and sun. The observer in her watched and thought these two beautifully backlit golden-hour riders were lovers, and then flew back into her body, making her one, whole, no longer split, in that moment, between the one who observes and the one who does. She lost all thought and self-consciousness and was filled with something wordless and electric.
Though the observer in Maya had rejoined her, what the two on horseback didn’t see as they kissed was that there was still yet another observer out there in the desert, coming from the house, riding out to meet them, hidden in the lengthening shadows of sundown. Pearl, bored, frustrated, and angry at school, had come back to see Bronson, had run away from the city, unbeknownst to Mary. No one knew. She’d gotten her Adderall/Ritalin/Xanax-dealing senior buddy to lend her his motorcycle with vague promises of future favors that could haunt her one day but so what. Bronson had taught her how to ride on his Frankenbike when she was ten. She arrived quietly at the house when Yalulah and the kids were inside having dinner and, unseen, went straight to the barn, saddling up to go meet Bronson in the special place where she knew he must be. She’d only gotten a few thousand yards from the house when she saw Bronson and that woman from LA making out on the horse. Same as she and Bronson had before.
Pearl gently turned her horse back to home, before Bronson and Maya knew she was there. She easily beat them back to the house, jumped on her motorcycle, and roared back to Rancho Cucamonga. An apparition.
20.
DEUCE CONSIDERED SCHOOL and BurgerTown equally as loci of learning, but at work, he really came into his own. The industrialized, inhuman speed coupled with the very human give-and-take of fast-food service was for him an education in the modern world and its ideal of efficiency, ease, and faux friendliness. But there was nothing “faux” about Deuce. He was sincere and well intentioned, whether playing goalkeeper with the Mexicans out back, constructing perfect burgers to company specifications like a flesh machine in his silly hat, or making Spanglish small talk with customers.
BurgerTown was fast food but with a homier, more personal vibe than McDonald’s or In-N-Out, and on a much smaller scale. There were fifty BurgerTown franchises in California and the Pacific Northwest. After being trained and programmed to avoid them like a killing virus his entire short life, Deuce found that he actually liked people and liked to be helpful. He liked serving people, being of service. He didn’t even mind the lame, mustard-yellow-and-baby-shit-brown uniform. He made the California state minimum wage of $11 an hour, but he didn’t do it for the spending money. He gave his paycheck to Mary anyway, to put into a college fund for himself and for his siblings.
He was set on going to college now. His teachers were already pushing him Ivy way as their very own “success story,” but those were long shots. Even though his daddy was worth easily a couple hundred million in real estate, the family had zero liquid money. Bronson Powers didn’t have a bank account or a credit card. He hadn’t paid taxes in twenty years. He had a big stash of cash hidden somewhere in the house he’d pull out like a magician to pay for seeds, gas, and parts, but that was all. Deuce figured he’d get better financial aid if he stayed in state—so he was looking at UC Berkeley, UCLA, maybe Stanford.
Of the twenty-five BurgerTown employees, only a handful were students, though fast food was the quintessential American student temp job. But in the twenty-first-century economy, in Rancho Cucamonga in the county of San Bernardino, California, the United States, fast-food work had become predominantly a full-time job for an adult citizen. Deuce was one of the few white student employees. He took two eight-hour shifts on the weekends and two four-hour shifts after school, on Wednesdays and Fridays. The manager, Frank, put Deuce out front at the main register. He said, “People like seeing a white face when they open their wallets.” Deuce was self-conscious out front with his skin, but he did as he was told. Raised by a strict father, he had a natural respect for the chain of command.
Deuce’s favorite at work was an old Mexican man named Jaime. Old man: he was about fifty and working full-time at BurgerTown, pulling double shifts whenever he could, bringing cold burgers and fries home at the end of the night to freeze for his kids and grandkids; he must’ve worked sixty hours a week, usually showed up an hour early to do what needed to be done, always a smile on his face. Deuce just dug the guy. One day, Jaime brought a guitar into work and played “some José Feliciano shit” on the nylon strings. Deuce had never heard it; he was blown away by the speed of the old man’s fingers; it sounded like three guitars playing at once. Deuce asked Jaime to teach him to play like that, and he did, for free.
One Saturday, Deuce got to work about twenty minutes early to open at 6 a.m. As usual, Jaime was even earlier; Deuce saw him high up on a ladder, silhouetted by the rising sun, beholding the foot-long magnetic letters of the restaurant sign out front about twenty-five feet high. The sign was supposed to read:
BURGERTOWN
COME ON IN
OVER 100,000 CUSTOMERS PLEASED
But it had been rearranged by some Friday-night drunken tomfoolery to render the dirty haiku:
MI UGE BONERS
COME
OVER 100,000 CUNTS R PLEASED
R T NOW
Jaime looked down from the sign and sighed. “This happens three, four times a year. Pretty boring. First time I seen ‘cunt’ though.”
Deuce looked up and said, “‘R. T. Now,’ huh, that’s a great name, maybe it’s the signature of the guy who did it, cool villain—R. T. Now!”
“They need to buy an ‘h.’ They don’t win the jackpot, Sally,” Jaime yelled down.
“What?” Deuce yelled up.
“Wheel of Fortune, dude.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know Wheel of Fortune? You lyin’, Sally.”
As Jaime laughed and reached to unscramble t
he twelve-inch letters, he leaned way out over the ladder, which he had placed in the soil flower planter beneath the sign. The feet of the ladder shifted in the soft soil with his weight, the top of the ladder pitched, and Jaime came crashing down onto cement, breaking his left leg and his pelvis, and sustaining a concussion.
Somebody called 911. Deuce didn’t know to do that. But Deuce went to visit Jaime in the hospital that day, the next day, and the next after school. He’d never seen a hospital before, let alone been inside one. He’d never been to the doctor. He met Jaime’s wife, Lupe, and his five kids.
One day, maybe a week after the accident, Deuce came for a hospital visit and Lupe was crying in the hallway. Deuce asked her what was wrong. Lupe’s English wasn’t great, and neither was Deuce’s Spanish, but he could make out that Lupe sure was Catholic and she sure was thankful Jesus Christ had saved Jaime’s life, but that Jaime wasn’t covered by BurgerTown and didn’t have any health insurance, that he may have entered the country illegally twenty years ago, that he’d been fired by BurgerTown, that the hospital bill was going to be $100,000, that they would have to leave the country for cheaper care in Mexico or be thrown in prison here for not being able to pay the bill, and they’d have to stay there because Trump wouldn’t let them back in the country, but the kids would stay here and get thrown into concentration camps and she’d never see them again.
Lupe was understandably distraught with these worst-case scenarios circling around and around in her head. One hundred thousand dollars seemed like an impossible sum. Deuce’d been told that’s about what he’d need to get through two years of college, and when he watched the $11 an hour add up, he saw that he’d never get close, and without a scholarship, he’d be saving his pennies from BurgerTown forever, and Lupe and Jaime would never get there alone.
These were issues that Deuce was acquainted with from his nightly dose of Hayes/Maddow with Mary, but this was his first firsthand experience of such systemic pain, the pain of a family breaking up because a government was negligent and corporations were greedy. He liked what Bernie Sanders said about universal health care. He’d seen YouTube videos of the Black President Obama speaking and promising. He liked him. He saw a lot of old men say the made-up word Obamacare, derisively, a lot. He liked what Elizabeth Warren said about free college for all and erasing student debt. But none of that was law, it was all talk.
He read far and wide about Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Chris Hedges, and saw them as the righteous, rightful heirs to Marx, Debs, Hofstadter, and Zinn (the brilliant worldview founders that Bronson had taught him), but they seemed so grumpy and not to like anyone and to believe we were already doomed by capitalism and its careless usury of the planet. They were in possession of the Truth, he thought, they should be happy and radiant with the social gospel the way Bronson was with his Mormon truth, like Bronson had taught him to be.
Deuce wished that he could call Reinhold Niebuhr, who brought a vital, living Christ to social justice. He was unable to reach Chris Hedges to have that discussion. He wished he could call Martin Luther King, Jr., as well. He wished he could friend Sheldon Wolin on Facebook. He had arrived in the world too late for the heroes of truth and justice his father had turned him on to, but Chomsky and Klein were alive and kicking. He got their phone numbers easily enough and called both; he wanted to ask what he could do. He wanted to ask, Where is the front? Just point me in the right direction. He reached the colleges and institutes they were affiliated with and spoke to an assistant in both cases who assured him of a return call.
Neither Klein nor Chomsky had called him back yet. But he was sure they would, and then he would start the good works. He imagined they lived together, Naomi and Noam, in a simple hut somewhere, like Thoreau, cooking vegetarian meals and being grumpy geniuses together. He was gonna call them again to ask them about Jaime. He told Lupe about Chomsky and Klein and that they would know what to do. Lupe said she didn’t want lawyers and didn’t have time to wait. But hold on, he thought, and he tried to tell Lupe, my family was broken up over money, too. He tried to explain the “bet” that brought him to Rancho Cucamonga, but then realized this wasn’t helping.
Compared with all the big problems that he wanted to address after college when he was more expert, this one seemed pretty easy. This wasn’t saving a planet, this was saving one man, one good, hardworking man. He told Lupe not to worry, because he knew the boss at BurgerTown, his manager, Frank, and that boss knew the big boss, and surely once they understood what was going on and a clear line of human communication was forged, a quick remedy would be found and everyone would live happily ever after. He believed this must be a big misunderstanding and he assured Lupe that he’d take care of it.
He left the hospital and called his manager, Frank Dellavalle. Frank was at home with his kids, but he said Deuce could come right over. Frank was broken up about Jaime, too. Frank thought the world of Deuce. Called him “Ace.” Thought that was clever. Deuce didn’t get it. He’d never seen a deck of cards.
“Welcome to the slums of Rancho Cucamonga,” Frank said, as he opened the door of his home. It seemed okay to Deuce. Certainly not as big and shiny as some other houses he’d seen, but nothing to be ashamed of, although Frank Dellavalle seemed ashamed. Frank was a smallish guy, about forty-five, the kind of average man about whom saying he was nondescript might be too much description. “What’s up, Ace? You want some water? Gatorade?”
“Gatorade? Sure. Thanks, Mr. Dellavalle.” Deuce had a thing for Gatorade now. Orange and red. He thought about joining the track team ’cause Gatorade was expensive and the athletes got as much as they wanted for free at practices.
Deuce sipped his Gator and led Frank through what Lupe had told him. He didn’t seem surprised by any of it. Frank kinda nodded and made sad little expressions and sounds, faces like he was trying to figure out an impossible math problem, all furrowed brow and pursed lips. He said, “Here’s the problem: well, first, you know I’m not the boss, right? I mean look at this house, this isn’t the boss’s house.”
“It’s a nice house.”
“Thanks, Ace, but the bosses live in a galaxy far, far away. Anyway, the thing is, the accident occurred at what time?”
“Right before we opened.”
“Right, that’s in the accident report, before six a.m., right. Before Jaime was on the clock.”
“Jaime always gets to work a half hour early, at least, sometimes an hour—he finds things to do.”
“I know. I love that guy. Wish I had twenty-five more just like him, like him and you—I’d never have to leave the house. If only he was white.”
“He’s not white?”
Frank laughed at him. “Where you from, Ace? No, he’s not white, he’s Mexican.”
“He’s the same basic color as me or you. I don’t get it, then, why is he fired, ’cause he’s Mexican?”
“I didn’t say that. And I would never say it. I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” Deuce started to get a weird feeling. Frank continued, “He wasn’t on the clock when the accident happened, that was on his own time. It doesn’t qualify as an accident at work ’cause he wasn’t at work yet, officially.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“If he had an accident doing work around his own house, cut off his finger slicing an avocado, is his employer supposed to pay for that, too?” Deuce started to feel Frank’s tone and temperature change. Frank seemed angry now. “And who asked him to go up on a fucking ladder, excuse my French, from his own truck, a truck which is nicer than mine, by the way—to do company business?”
“Some kids changed the sign to say something funny.”
“I’m aware of what assholes do to that sign. And I’ve asked corporate if we could change the old removable letters ’cause it happens a few times a year. But they say it’s part of the company’s ‘legacy,’ that they’ve had that sign since the ’70s, yadda yadda, nostalgia.”
“But wait.” Deuce tried to get back on
track. “You’re saying that ’cause Jaime hadn’t officially started his workday, even though he was giving you more than you pay for, that he’s fired and you won’t give him any paid sick leave and you won’t pay his bills.”
“Sick leave is like the bogeyman to a shop like BurgerTown. I got a better chance of getting a BJ off Britney Spears than Jaime has of seeing dime one of paid sick leave.”
“A what off who?”
Dellavalle took a deep breath. “I’d love to pay his bills, Ace, I would, but he should have health insurance, that’s on him, and Obama, but really, it’s corporate. There’s levels. There’s me—down here, I’m a drone, a worker bee. And there’s a wall for Jaime to climb between each level. There’s a wall between you and me, me and my boss, my boss and his bosses, and each of those walls is higher than the one before it. So if you get past one wall, there’s always another wall.”
“That’s why we need a union.”
“What? Union? Who said anything about a union?”
“No one.”
“Good. If there was a union formed under my watch, I’d get fired, and then I’d be fucked all over again. Pardon my French.”
“No, Jaime is f’ed.”
“You should relax, Ace, you’re gonna go to college, you’re on the winning side of the walls. You think I’m the bad guy? I make seventy K a year, my dude, and I got three kids and an ex, and taxes up the wazoo, in-debt man walking.”
“Seventy thousand a year?! That’s so much!”
“You’re funny, kid.”
“Why is there no union?”
“Why is there no Santa Claus? I dunno—maybe because of the high turnover of just kids working.”
“Jaime isn’t a kid. It was permanent to him.”
Dellavalle sported an ugly smirk now.
“Maybe it’s the fact that it’s unskilled, excuse my French, but you don’t need to know fuck-all to work at BurgerTown. A monkey can flip a burger, no offense. Takes me a week to train someone to do Jaime’s job, max, and real unions are for skilled workers. It’s the system, it’s rigged.”
Truly Like Lightning Page 23
