Lawn Boy(36)

On the bus ride back, wincing through my toothache, I read a half chapter of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, and I’ll be honest, ravenous as I was, I didn’t really buy the conceit of the whole thing. First of all, the hungry people I knew weren’t bandying on about philosophy all the time. They talked about cheeseburgers, if anything. Also, they tended to look for jobs instead of wandering around refusing help. The guy in the book was basically kind of a pretentious bum.

Anyway, the bus broke down at 305 and Hostmark, right where some kind of protest was going on with a dozen or so picketers. So I watched it out the rain-streaked window while waiting for a new bus to arrive. The picketers’ homemade signs were running and bleeding so badly from the rain, you could hardly read them, and they were all wearing those cheap ponchos, the thin kind they give away at sporting events. Nobody, it seemed, was paying attention to the protesters or their cause, which was presumably why they were there in the first place.

After a moment, I recognized the ringleader as Andrew the librarian, he of the big Adam’s apple and the messed-up grill. He was the least miserable looking of the crusaders. In fact, there was something heroic about the way he was waving his sign defiantly, like a challenge, as though the weather were just one more oppressive force thwarting his cause, a cause I was still unable to ascertain, since his picket sign looked like a fucking Rorschach test. But I’d be a liar if I said the protest wasn’t sort of inspiring, whatever it was about. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish, if only for a moment, that I could be like Andrew, waving that sign as though he believed he could deter the ruinous forces of greed and global warming, as if he believed he could actually save the world with it.

I confess, I’m one of those people who complains about the world and doesn’t do shit about it, aside from a little recycling, and only when it’s convenient. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to see past your immediate struggles, you know? But for a minute there, watching those miserable protesters, I felt the stirrings of a social conscience. How the hell else was anything going to change if people weren’t willing to take to the street and air their grievances?

But just look at me, what could I do, especially in this rain, with this debilitating toothache? And shouldn’t I be saving myself first, anyway? Wasn’t it kind of like the oxygen masks on airplanes? Wouldn’t I be more help to everybody else if I could breathe myself? Still, it got me to thinking that I could probably be doing more to make the world a better place. But first, old Mike Mu?oz had to save himself, and that meant making some money—someway, somehow.





Stop-Gap Measure




Selling all my shit amounted to what Chaz would call a “stop-gap measure.” I was “creating a little cash flow,” “liquidating a few assets.”

Freddy and I paid our fifteen bucks, and the organizer pointed us down to the end of the line. I pulled the Tercel around and started setting up shop next to the kid with the pit bull and the tattoos. Leaning against the car, Freddy drank an orange soda and watched me unload my fishing rod, my tackle box, my lawn mower, the Billy Bass, everything I’d bought at the flea market last month. Not to mention my Felcos, my rake, and my post-hole digger.

“Grab my stuff while you’re at it,” said Freddy.

Freddy had two VCRs and three cardboard boxes of porno tapes.

“Freddy, I’m telling you, you can’t sell that shit at the flea market.”

“Says who?”

“There might be kids here.”

“Ain’t no kids at no flea market. ’Sides, your mama say I got to get rid of this shit if I’m gonna live under her roof. Kills me, man, kills me. This shit is classic, dog.”

“You’re gonna get us kicked out.”

“Hell no, boy. Discretion is my middle name. Why you keep grimacing, boy? Shit ain’t that heavy.”

“My fucking tooth.”

“You want me to pull that shit?”

“Yeah, right. Because you’re a dentist.”

“Shit. Dentist ain’t like no doctor. More like a mechanic. All you need is the tools and the basic idea.”

“Thanks, but no thanks, Freddy.”

I displayed the mower, scrubbed to a shine, right out front, with a tag marked fifty bucks and a sign that said LIKE NEW! I stuck the post-hole digger straight into the ground, so that it looked useful—ten bucks. Nine for the old Felcos. Six for the rake. I priced the rod and tackle box, fifteen for the pair. The few records my mom contributed were two for three dollars—Chaz calls that “bundling.” It’s a good way to “dump inventory.”

When I finally finished laying out my wares, Freddy set to work methodically unpacking.

“Nobody gonna buy those VHS tapes, yo,” said the kid with the pit bull, watching Freddy lay them out discreetly behind the Tercel.

“Shit,” said Freddy. “Boy, if you knew anything, you wouldn’t be sittin’ your ass on that ratty towel. And you sure as shit wouldn’t have no homemade scorpion tattoo on your neck, either. I want your business advice, I’ll ask next time.”

Well, that shut the kid up. He went right back to organizing his stolen DVDs.

Freddy was a hell of a salesman, as it turns out.

“Sir, I noticed you admiring that post-hole digger. You like movies?” Wink wink, elbow elbow, nudge nudge. “You know, like classics?”