textfiles/magazines/UXU/uxu-521.txt

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         [  Ionization  ]                         [  By Eric Chaet  ]


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IONIZATION
by Eric Chaet


First day out, I only got about a hundred miles south.  Not much traffic
in the woods.  I walked across a strip of grass, in among the trees,
laid down my bag under the branches of a big spruce, where there was no
snow, crawled in, & went to sleep.
    Second night, I stayed in the suburban house of the mother of a student
off for the holiday, who gave me a ride into Kansas City.  The house was
all blond & bright--tho crammed with lamps, stuffed animals, dolls,
pictures, furniture, crockery, little ceramic statuettes, racks of
magazines, drapes, curtains, stacks of towels & napkins, & appliances.
Mrs. Callahan, whose initial alarm & distrust faded during our introductory
conversation, gave me a room of my own, with a firm bed, clean bed-clothes,
& a big, bright towel.
    Early morning, Ernie, the son--excited to be cruising among familiar
malls--took me to a ramp on the southern edge of Kansas City, on the Kansas
side of the Missouri River--which, between limestone cliffs & cranes &
bulldozers, was wide, slow, & muddy-looking.  Freight was being moved on &
off three barges.
    From my position at the ramp, I could see that there was a lot of
traffic leaving town on the highway--among warehouses, railroad tracks &
freight cars, & malls full of big stores, busy parking-lots, & signs.  It
wasn't long before I was on my way.
    At Joplin, I got out of a car & into another; at Oklahoma City, a
trucker picked me up right away.  There was still day-light when I reached
Amarillo.  But it took some time to get a ride across town.  Finally, a
sick-looking young man--just beyond adolescence, yellowish & emaciated,
delivering pints of blood--gave me a ride in an old wreck, the wind-shield
of which was so filthy, I could hardly see thru it.
    I stood along a (perfectly flat) "ramp" at the western edge of
Amarillo, across from a huge department store, lit up by green & red
Christmas lights--with a big, lit-up Christmas tree in the midst of the
emptying football field-sized parking-lot, while thousands of cars--drivers
just off work, I figured--streamed by, headed, I supposed, for nearby
suburban homes.
    I turned around to see the huge orange Sun go down, thru & behind the
perfectly straight horizon.
    Pretty soon, traffic was exhausted, & I was alone.  The ground was
crusted with ice crystals.  There were some leafless sage-brush bushes, & a
couple of billboard structures not far from where I was standing.  I was
shivering.
    About a hundred yards to my left--as I faced east, ready to lift my
thumb, & so to face any driver considering giving me a ride--were two
signs, a small one, &, above it, a bigger one.
    The smaller sign--missing a few lights--showed a cowboy twirling a
lasso, & "ROOMS $14."  The price was so low that my thought was, "Probably
left over from years ago."
    The bigger sign, in perfect operating order, blinked on & off.
"STEAK-OUT MOTEL," it said.
    Billboards & neon steers for a hundred miles along the plain let you
know that there are more steak houses in Amarillo than anywhere else; that,
at one place, you can order their famous 72 ounce steak dinner, & eat for
free, if you can finish it.
    Where I was standing quickly became too dark for drivers to see my
face.  But it was too close to town to sleep outside safely.  I shouldered
the pack, & went to check out the $14 room.  I had $32 to get to L.A., do
my business, & get back.
    The motel lobby was big & swank--couches, cushioned chairs, coffee, &
newspaper vending machines.  Behind the bright counter, a bright young
woman said, No the $14 dollar room sign was for the BUNK HOUSE MOTEL, a few
hundred yards down the cinder road, parallel to the highway.
    So, I went there.
    The large man behind the counter in the more modest office at the BUNK
HOUSE--who looked like he'd be more at home repairing fences or riding a
bulll, said, No, they didn't have any $14 rooms any more.
    When I asked what he did have, he said, "All that's left are twenty,
twenty-four, & twenty-eight dollars."
    "Too much," I said, & walked out, thinking I'd hitch all night, if I
had to.  Or maybe walk a mile further west, to find a safer place to throw
down the sleeping bag.  I shifted the pack.
    "Wait a minute!" the man was yelling, from the door.
    I turned.  He was grinning, nearly laughing.
    I walked back.
    "What WILL you pay?" he asked me.
    "Sixteen."
    "You're hitchhiking?"
    "Yes."
    "Where to?"
    "Los Angeles."
    He was smiling into my eyes.
    "Wait a minute.  I'll talk to my wife."
    He went into a room, thru a door behind the counter, & returned to say,
"All right."
    I signed in, & took a key.  From the door, he directed me to a sad
little stand-alone stucco cottage.
    I went in.  The room was dimly-lit.  There was a Bible on a little
table by a bed with a faded old bed-spread, an old blanket folded on top--&
a little closet with a sink, toilet, & shower.
    I drank some water from the tap, used the plumbing, read about Elijah
being fed by a crow, & slept a few hours.  The blanket & bed-spread weren't
warm enough.  I took the sleeping bag out of its sheathe, & slept in it,
under them.  The bed sagged outrageously in the middle; I curled around it.
    It was dark when I woke up.  Early morning drivers are the most likely
to stop, & the most likely to be going far.  I took a shower, drank water
from the tap, ate sunflower seeds, used the toilet, got dressed, & hiked
back out to the highway.

    The driver of an 18-wheeler braked on the shoulder of the interstate--a
hundred yards beyond where I was shivering in the brightening dawn.  Crunch
of tires on gravel, dust rising.
    I ran for it.
    I climbed up, tried to get comfortable with my pack between my legs, &
listened.
    The driver was a huge young man with a couple of days' growth of brown
whiskers, one of those wedge hats like a deflated piece of pie, suspenders
over a T-shirt.  He spoke with a gruff accent, & shifted
gears--accelerating us westward, slowly building enormous momentum.
Reflection of red Sun rising behind us, in the windshield.  He said he'd
been a TV writer, dissident--silenced--then a movie stunt-man--in Prague.
    On the side, Wocek said, he drove a truckload of milk in from the
Austrian border, daily.
    One day, he & his partner revved up the engine of the truck, climbed on
top of the trailer, & lept over the railing of a bridge into the Danube.
    While they were swimming, border guards shot at them.  The partner was
killed.
    Wocek said he was the first one to make it to Austria in fourteen
years.  Then he drove trucks in Austria, Italy, & West Germany.
    Eventually, he was driving a regular route from West Germany to
Iran--learning nine languages--thru Turkey, where he had to join convoys
for safety against bandits, who would disguise themselves as police, &
command drivers to stop.
    "You did not dare stop," Wocek explained, his voice deep & rough as the
diesel engine, shifting gears as he sought cognates & connectors.
    "They shot & killed my buddy, thru cab window."
    Til the Iran-Iraq war broke out.  Then Wocek went to New York, then on
to a Czech refugee community in Los Angeles.
    At a party, he met a Czech, who owned a fleet of trucks.
    Wocek parked his girl-friend's tiny sport car, & lived in it, in front
of the TransCon headquarters, for two weeks.
    "You're crazy," this owner said--but gave him a job hauling loads
between Los Angeles & New York.
    Wocek drove very fast, constantly checking the CB radio for
"bears"--that is, state police cars.  He said he had paid as much as $750
in tickets on one of the New York to L.A. trips--which he drove in 48
hours, for $600.
    Every other TransCon driver had been fired & replaced since Wocek began
driving for them--for failing to make delivery in the impossibly (if you
obeyed the law) short time scheduled.  You had to break the speed limit,
drive grueling hours, & keep two sets of books.
    "What an extraordinary man you are!" I enthused.
    "Don't want to hear!" he growled, shifting gears.
    Wocek got from my response to his inquiry that I was some kind of
artist, & told this story, chuckling.
    "My artist friend, Tony, from Santa Monica, say, "'Wocek, take me to
New York, I show those people.'
    "After a day in New York, I get call: 'Wocek, I had $200 in my
sock--but the niggers took it!  They took my shoes!  They took my pants!
You come take me home!"
    Suddenly, we were in a wild blizzard.  Traffic thinned out.  The air
was full of millions of flakes--rushing, curving horizontally, across the
road.  Wocek didn't slow down.
    There were cars off the highway, in the median.  One lane was closed, &
traffic in the other lanes slowed, then stopped altogether.  We were in a
long line of 18-wheelers, interspersed with cars & pick-ups.
    Wocek pulled to a stop by a camper in a ditch, its driver standing with
snow falling on his disconsolate bald head.  Another truck driver provided
a chain, & Wocek manipulated our giant truck, & pulled the camper up & out.
After returning the chain, he went over, & put his arm around the shoulders
of the camper's driver.  "You should have CB radio, mister," I heard Wocek
tell him, with utmost solemnity.
    After a while, police managed to remove the vehicles blocking
everything up ahead, & trucks began to crawl forward.
    "My friend, Ron, has a band in Venice Beach--Civilization & Its
Discontents," Wocek began again.  "Maybe I introduce you him.  He tell me,
'Wocek, you stupe-nagle, you work so hard driving trock.  What kind life is
driving trock, you put so much into?  Where you think you driving?'"
    Speeding thru Arizona once, Wocek had been arrested, he said.  Cop
tried to deport him to Canada.  "I'm from Czechoslovakia!" he'd objected.
Cop called in to Washington, but Wocek was legal.  He tried L.A.--legal.
Wocek all along calling him stupid.  Handcuffs attaching wrists to chair
arms.  Cop threatening him with a stun-gun if he didn't SHUT UP.
    Also, he was locked up in Texas--speeding--& he hadn't paid previous
tickets.  But he had a pleasant night.  Cop at the jail pulled up a chair,
& shared coffee with him.  They had a nice talk, Wocek said.  Both hated
Communists.
    Wocek got clocked at 110 miles per hour in New Mexico, one time.  But
it was early in the morning--there was no one else on the road anyway.  A
nice Indian cop just ticketed him at 65 & told him to watch himself.
    America was the greatest country in the world, Wocek said--warning me,
rumbling like a volcano--something in my attitude causing him to suspect I
might harbor some criticism....
    Just across the continental divide, at Flagstaff, Arizona, Wocek
stopped abruptly, & announced that he was going to take an hour nap:  it
would be up to me to wake him.
    I watched the watch-hands--using the cold coming thru the crack between
the window & the top of the door-frame as an irritant to stay awake--&, at
the appointed time, tried to wake him.
    "Wocek! Wocek!"
     But he had no intention of waking, & I had no intention of shaking
him.  I needed sleep, myself, & my mind permutated the old saying, "Let
sleeping dogs lie" into "Let sleeping BEARS lie."
    I tried to wake him again, in another half hour, then again in ANOTHER
half hour.  I was not going to be able to stay awake more than another
minute or two.
    Wocek stirred, grunted, opened his door, climbed down, & relieved
himself against the side of a wheel--I did the same--& we sped
downward--the steep road now flanked by brush & beer cans--toward L.A.  I
was drifting in & out of sleep--my usual dream of being chased, avoiding
capture, only to find myself, again, without shelter or security,
attracting the attention of some predatory gang in street clothes or
uniforms....

    In Pasadena, Wocek parked the truck along a curb on a street of stores,
& we walked a half-mile or so to Hannah Volejnicek's place--"Hello, hello,
Miss Wonder-glow!" Wocek sang, lifting her high--a huge old house among
many such, with few, & dilapidated, furnishings inside.
    Hannah, a slim blond of maybe forty, in sweater & jeans, made ironic
faces at my insatiable appetite--she fed me three helpings of microwaved
sliced beef & white rice.  I wolfed it down, & could easily have continued,
but finally became sufficiently alert to realize I might sabotage the
hospitality.
    Wocek & Hannah drank a bottle of champagne.  Wocek insisted, & I took a
glass, but it was a waste--I don't like the stuff, & couldn't stay awake,
anyway.
    Wocek & Hannah were talking about the hamburger & Italian ice place
that they planned to open on the board-walk at Venice Beach, as soon as
they could afford to buy a place, a project--another niche, another
contribution to the status quo--for which I could not work up any friendly
enthusiasm.
    I crawled into my sleeping bag in a storage room in which children's
clothes & toys were stacked.  A bicycle leaned against a wall painted two
tones of orange--someone had quit half-way thru a paint job, half-way thru
a stroke.  Thru dirty little windows near the ceiling, bright midday
sun-light filtered.
    Next thing I knew, I could hear a television in another room, & when I
got up, changed clothes, packed my sleeping bag into its sheathe, & tied it
to the pack, I found Wocek drinking a beer, & encouraging Christopher
Reeves, who, as Superman, had got himself into trouble, in spite of his
super-human powers, because of his inability to see his adversaries as they
were--ruthless, selfish, unredeemable.
    On my way to join Wocek, I passed thru a hallway.  On one wall was a
poster, showing Hannah, dressed in a low-cut gown--high heels & a lot of
eye-shadow--standing by a shining chrome-covered motorcycle, with the
caption, POVERTY SUCKS.
    Wocek showed me three paintings leaning against the wall, atop the
mantle of a cold fire-place.  "Hannah keeps my work--this is first time in
my life someone keeps."
    The paintings were extraordinarily well executed.  One, I would have
believed had been done by Dali--three bright oranges hanging on a branch in
the foreground, a mysterious, impossible landscape behind.  One, I would
have believed had been done by Picasso--street musicians in bright
clothing, features somewhat scrambled.  The last picture, I would have
believed had been done by Van Gogh.  Everything was alive--trees, sky,
road, water, houses....
    But I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for Wocek's work--Dali, Picasso,
& Van Gogh had already done it--& something else needed doing.
    And this kind of imitating, even of the best, even with the most
proficient technique, was one of the forms of competition that was muddying
the waters thru which my work was seen--or NOT seen.  It was killing me, &
those I was trying to reach.
    (My thinking then was not this clear--if this is clear-- & I couldn't
think of what to say, & said nothing.)
    Even as Wocek was offering me a ride back east, if I called him the
next day, I sensed his willingness to help evaporating.

    When I left Hannah's, I walked for twenty hours, stapling
silk-screened, cloth posters I had made, to utility poles, thru Pasadena,
Glendale, North Hollywood, & Hollywood.  "SEEK TRUTH," they said, above a
simplified, stylized, indignant face, & "DEVELOP CAPACITIES," below.
    Finally, as dark was falling, & with my knees trembling under the
weight of the pack & fatigue, I risked $1.80 in coins at a phone--three
others in the row outside a busy convenience store, in front of which men
in cars were picking up whores, had been ripped out--& called the number
Wocek had given me, which I'd written on the back of my hand.
    Hannah answered.  She said that Wocek wished me luck, but that he had
other plans, now.
    There was no REASON Wocek should help me, unless he wanted to, that I
could think of; no REASON I could think of why Hannah should plead my case
to Wocek, rather than block me.
    She sounded pleased to deliver the bad news.  She had only seen me
eating a lot & sleeping a lot, showing no enthusiasm for their
business-to-be--& I had been competition for Wocek's attention.

    I'd hitchhiked out, broke, from L.A., a couple of years previous.  In
five years there, I'd met no one who--it turned out--I truly cared for, or
who truly cared for me.  Most in whom I confided were offended at my
ambition--to record songs that would be aired on radio nation-wide.  They
were all jockeying for just about any job that would sustain them.
    So, now, as I considered where I could turn for shelter, there were no
good choices.
    I decided--at least, it occurred to me that the only real possibility
was--that Randy would probably allow me to sleep on the floor of his
apartment, grudgingly, one night.  His apartment was about five miles away.
I started walking.

    The early 1980's were years of inflation, high rents, high interest
rates, high unemployment.  Investors in general, especially those on Social
Security & pensions, took their money out of stocks, put it into bonds, &
lived on the interest.
    For about a year I wrote serious songs that would have a good
influence, but in the popular styles--blues, country, rock--3 minute length
required for air-time--& practiced, for months, so I could perform them
flawlessly.  I played guitar and sang.
    Then I bought some equipment, recorded & made copies of a demo, & sent
them out to record companies capable of national promotion & distribution,
with sheet music--weeks of work--& letters explaining my idea--that there
was an immense audience, generally ignored, awaiting songs such as these.
    And was going broke, waiting.
    Finding a small want ad for teachers for a business college, I replied.
As I had taught math on the Navajo reservation, I now found myself teaching
remedial arithmetic & the rudiments of bookkeeping (which I hurried to
master, from a $2.95 paperback, BOOKKEEPING MADE SIMPLE) to students from
the South Central ghetto & from El Salvador, Guatemala, & Belize, plus an
occasional Haitian or west African.
    The school had people recruiting students off the street--on
commission--offering potential students allowances, from $2,000 federal
grants, to sign up.  As there were no jobs, enrollment grew--we didn't have
enough work-books, desks, or chairs.
    Big Horizon College occupied the thirteenth floor of a run-down
building--614 South Day--on a downtown corner.  Department stores stood on
each of the other three corners.  Nearby were two movie theaters that
showed only Mexican films, & an open-air fish & cheap jewelry & appliance
market.
    One day, I looked down, sighing, at the corner below, & saw a ragged
man with a jaw full of stubble, trying to find some direction by joining a
mob of pedestrians who crossed from north to south when the traffic light
changed from red to green.
    Once he'd crossed the street, & the mob he was part of kept going, he
looked around, panicky, & joined the next, apparently equally purposeful,
mob of pedestrians crossing from west to east, when the light changed from
red to green.
    Once he'd crossed, again, he joined the mob crossing from south to
north.
    I lost sight of him, then--he was too close to the base of the building
from which I was looking down.
    There were just two old elevators--always packed full--in the building,
one of which was often out of order, & neither of which inspired
confidence.  They were dark & dirty--& instead of a door, each had a
collapsable gate, that creaked in terrible protest when it was pulled open,
or shut, to close us all--''your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to be free"--in.
    Frequently, I'd walk all the way up or down the stairs, which smelled
of urine.  Sometimes someone would be smoking a joint on the stairs.  From
the third to the twelfth floor were garment-producing shops.  Knots of
young women would be talking on the stairs--in Spanish, Vietnamese, or
Chinese.

    It was at the corner, in front of one of the department stores, that I
met Randy.  He was waiting for a bus, too, & introduced himself with some
kind of a joke.
    I was starving for a friend, & laughed with delight.
    He always told a lot of jokes--cynical ones--but it was also
characteristic that he told, that day, with great satisfaction, of a nearby
merchant, who, finding himself held up on the street, stabbed the would-be
thief in the throat, killing him.
    I learned, eventually, that Randy had gone to New York City, straight
out of high school, to join a rock & roll band--but had been robbed of all
he had, including his guitar & amp.
    He came from a suburb of St. Louis.  I had installed conveyors in a
factory that produced car batteries, in St. Louis, for several weeks, a
decade previously, & recognized that he came from one of the wealthiest
suburbs, Lemont.
    Now, he said, he was a bill-collector on the seventh floor of the Hayes
& Company building diagonally across from 614.  He made phone calls all
day, reminding people that they had committed to making payments they
weren't making, demanding that they begin paying up, promptly--or there
would be consequences.  Or, if they were cooperative, he helped them
re-schedule payments.
    Many of the people Randy spoke with sounded black, he said.  He
demonstrated a black-sounding voice he'd learned to put on, & using black
idioms.
    Randy was short, near-sighted, & club-footed.  He had a very handsome,
masculine face, with light brown hair--& rimless glasses that he tended to
peek over the top of.
    He spoke with a kind of swaggering confidence that was refreshing--most
of the people I encountered were whipped, or else very well-behaved,
diffident, begging not to be despised.
    A tall thin black woman walked up to us, & started kidding with Randy.
After a while, her bus came, & she got on.
    Randy said he worked with her, & he was going to get it on with her
soon.  "Trust me."  Tho it became apparent from other things he said that
he was married, & that his wife was, also, a black woman.  Randy had an eye
for black women.  "Brown sugar," he called them, bending his slow, deep
black drawl.
    Heather had just moved out on me, concluding, finally, that I was not a
rising star, but a loser.
    "I can't live with just any Tom, Dick, or Harry," she said, lifting her
face majestically.  She spoke almost exclusively in cliches.  But, since
she was young, & so exotic-looking--she was Japanese, I'm from
Wisconsin--but lived all her life in a small California town, til she came
to L.A. & began working in the health food store where we met--so full of
bounce & mischief, shapely, but with a residue of baby-fat, thrilled to
find herself attractive--even the outrageously complacent cliches, so
incongruous coming out of a being who looked like that, charmed me.
    It was because of the college Heather began attending--she was much
younger than I--that we'd moved to The Valley, from Hollywood.  There was
so much violence & ugliness in Hollywood, I didn't mind for a minute
leaving it, for anywhere.

    Finding myself alone, I started visiting Randy.  He had a little
marijuana, & liked to beat me at chess.  I liked his wife, Marilyn, too.
Her son, Junior, a teen, small & shy, was hardly ever there.  A caged green
parrot named Cucumber said, "Baby!" & "Taco chip!"
    Marilyn was small, with a gentle, deliberate voice, & a stoic
face--part Cherokee, she told me once--with a steady, inquiring gaze.  She
began confiding in me at first sight.  That Randy didn't do any house work.
That he wanted to put Junior, who was a gentle soul, into the military, as
soon as he was old enough--saying it would be good for him.
    "It wouldn't be!" she said.
    That when she'd found Randy, he was down & out, cleaning up, after
hours, at a bar.  That she'd "picked him up, dusted him off," & got him
moving forward again.
    "You can have her, if you want her," Randy told me.
    He said he had a girl in Arkansas, a black girl with two kids, in a
trailer he owned.  That he claimed the trailer as a business, & deducted
the rent on the space it occupied as a business expense, for income tax
purposes.
    Marilyn, who, I guessed, was about ten years older than Randy or I,
worked for a realtor in one of those immaculate--from a
distance--yellow-white cement cubes in West L.A.  She had been working
there for ten years, & made $28,000 a year, she told me.  She had several
hard-bound business reference books & a Bible, that shared shelf space with
Randy's rock albums--which he didn't listen to.  He listened to a cool jazz
radio channel--no words--all the time.

    One day, while Randy, refraining from any offensive moves, was,
predictably, destroying me at chess--my boredom drove me to rash moves--a
tall, very thin, energetic white man came visiting Marilyn.
    The visitor, Edgar, had come from Florida, where he owned a
construction business.  Edgar & Marilyn had known one another in Hawaii,
years ago.  Both had arrived with almost nothing.  Marilyn had worked as a
cocktail waitress.  Edgar had written a book, HAWAII ON $20 A DAY, had
copies printed, took them around to various stores & counters, got people
to agree to sell them, & made himself "a nice little fortune.  I filled a
need," he said.
    Then he'd gone to Guinea, in west Africa.  There, he was called into a
government office, & invited to leave the country.
    "What are you doing here?"
    "I'm looking for a need to fill.  I'll find it.  You don't want to
throw me out.  I love the people of Guinea.  I love you!"
    They let him stay, & he set up a business importing used medical
equipment from New Jersey.
    After he check-mated me, Randy cleaned his rifle--he & his
bill-collecting buddies hunted jack-rabbits in the desert.
    When Marilyn & Junior moved out, I helped them move stuff into a van.
I helped Randy, too--to move into an apartment in Northridge he would share
with Akebo, a jolly giant Nigerian, one of the bill-collectors--who I once
saw, during a game of pool in the apartment building recreation room, lean
over & pick another player up--a bearded young man several inches over six
feet tall, who was teasing Akebo--& lift him over his head, then, gently,
put the blushing guy down.
    It was to Randy's & Akebo's apartment that I now walked, &, exhausted,
knocked on the door.
    "I am so glad to see you!" Akebo said--British accent--opening the
door.  "I have invited several of my co-workers & friends.  We are having a
celebration.  I have been promoted.  I am now supervising three other
collectors.  I have been given a raise.  I am getting a driver's licence, &
buying a car!  I have visited used car lots.  Have some beer!  Have some
chips!"
    Shortly after the divorce & the moving, Sharon--Randy's (& Akebo's)
supervisor--had fired Randy.  He drank at lunch.
    I now saw Randy nursing a beer, back against a wall, staring daggers at
Sharon, a heavy-set woman with a prominent jaw, the only white woman in the
room, dancing with an exuberant young black man.  A Disco record was on, a
Western on the TV screen was the only light.  Randy approached, squinting
irritably over the lenses of his glasses.
    "What dragged YOU in?" he asked.
    When I tried to start explaining, he cut it short.
    "Well, you can crash on the floor if you can find somewhere no one will
step on you."
    I skirted the dancers, shrugged off the shoulder straps of the pack, &
sat cross-legged on the little balcony.  Below was the lighted swimming
pool--around which the apartment building made a rectangle--& several
anemic palms.
    A Nigerian woman, hardly more than a girl, with a brilliant
smile--Nancy, she said her name was--reached down her hand--small, with
long, cool fingers--& invited me to dance.
    "Nancy, that's nice--but I'm too tired."
    She sat down beside me, & delicately held one of the "signs" I took
from the back-pack to show her--the indignant, undiplomatic face & "YOU'RE
LIKE ME IN THIS RESPECT--WHAT YOU DO HAS ITS EFFECT"--&, while she looked
at it, I told her that I had been stapling them to utility poles most of
last night & all day.
    As I put the sign away, she brought over her boy-friend, William--dark,
serious face--bright, curious eyes probing mine.
    "I think that what you are doing is courageous & noble, sir.  But do
you think you have any chance at all of success?"
    "I think that, before I began," I said, "I had no chance of success,
but that, now that I've begun, I'm changing the odds.
    "In the 1960's, I was part of pickets & marches in Missouri &
MIssissippi--against segregation.  I know that things that appear
impossible to change can be changed.  Do you know what ionization is?"
    "No--what?" William asked.
    "Well, when two substance are put together, & a CHARGE gradually
develops between them--gradually, gradually--& all the while it seems that
nothing is happening--then, suddenly!--there's a new substance."
    "Sounds like science fiction."
    "Yes, it does--but it's NOT fiction.  Things seem like they'll never
change--&, yet, things haven't always been the way they are--so they DO
change.  The only question is how."
    "And when," William pointed out.

    In the morning, Randy & Akebo stood by the refrigerator, wearing their
jackets, buttoned-down pastel shirts, ties, & dress slacks; & hurriedly
devoured cold sweetened cereal--Akebo to head for the Hayes & Company
collection department, Randy to an interview for a job at an insurance
agency.
    "It's a second interview," Randy said, between spoonsful of milk &
cereal.  "I'm pretty sure they'll offer me the job.  I'm going to try to
negotiate the use of a company car."
    I hurried to use the bathroom--& drank water from the faucet--& to
leave when Randy & Akebo did.
    As we were going thru the door into the carpeted, numbered-door-lined
hall--I didn't know how I was going to get out of L.A.--William showed up.
    He said he would give me a ride to the eastern edge of L.A.
    He had an ancient Plymouth.  We traveled about an hour, east on the
freeway--most cars were going west.
    "Good luck, sir!" he said, solemnly, letting me out at the edge of the
hard-dirt desert, just past a couple of hundred cement culverts big enough
to drive cars thru.
    Apparently, there was going to be a construction project beyond where
the city's satellite suburbs now ended--another town would be built in the
time it used to take to build one house, & filled with bustling commuters &
stores & gas-stations to serve them.  Where there was no water, there would
be a lot of water, rushing thru these big pipes.  Or maybe, no town, but
more water, from somewhere, for L.A.
    But, for now, there were no bull-dozers, no men in hard-hats operating
them, & no town--& the road thru the hard flat dirt desert & the big sky
were very quiet--& the huge culverts were a surreal touch.
    I didn't even see a moving vehicle for, maybe, half an hour.
    The driver--who stopped for me--was a guy who had just bought a big
piece of appartus for molding plastic--he'd torn out the back seat of his
car to get the thing inside.   He had a plastic-molding business out of his
garage in a little town I'd never heard of.
     I wish I could remember more of what he told me, now.  He had quite a
bit to say, but I was full of what had just happened, & what lay ahead, & I
didn't focus very well on what he was saying, in the hour or so I rode with
him.

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 uXu #521              Underground eXperts United 1999              uXu #521
                     ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/uXu/
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