Lawn Boy(14)

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.