Jose Rodriguez: Snapshots of Modern Love

Copyright 2009 Jose Rodriguez

Like a wanted man, I' m leaving Youngstown, Ohio. The Greyhound station reeks of hot rubber and oily fumes and pulses with strange life: a skinny old Nigger in white cowboy boots and a red Stetson nervously moves around the other awaiting scum who hides into the anonymity of their winter coats with collars drawn high. Mud and grease splatter under my feet and dad' s as we walk to the platform. The droning of an idling diesel engine shields our conversation from prying ears but we don' t have much to say to each other.

Fred and Tony got busted, and I should have been busted too, but my quick thinking saved my ass, bolting out of Fred' s car on my fours and hiding behind a pile of farm machinery. The cops got them both; I heard the cuffs snapping around their wrists. At least they kept their mouths shut and didn' t say something like "Hey, where' s Ken?" Believe me, that wouldn' t be beyond their stupidity.

Anyway, I was the stupid one by agreeing with them to go into the District looking for Christmas trees to sell. We dragged those sorry looking pines for miles of knee deep snow, heaved them over a chain link fence and hog tied them on top of Fred' s car – which is still sitting at the police lot. Just as we finish strapping the loot, we see a flashlight beam moving up the railroad tracks, sniffing the snow. "Cops!" screams Fred and the light beam connects with us. Thanks Fred.

Cops and a tow truck chased us all over town. The pine trees clung to the roof of Fred' s car for dear life as we bounced between snowbanks and frozen sidewalks. Fred and Tony are going to see the judge in a week, and my dad, who knows people at the D.A.' s, advised me that it would be a good time to pursue an out of state education. A friend’ s loyalty is sorely tested when the D.A. promises sweet deals in exchange for accomplice’ s names. I know Tony’ s mute stubbornness is beyond the reach of leniency offers, but I’ m doubtful about Fred’ s loyalty. As they say, there is no honor among thieves; not among the likes of Fred.

My dad agrees with me, so here we stand, huddled shadows expelling frozen breaths under cold and anemic lights.

The old nigger is the first to board the bus, cutting through the line, obviously in a hurry to skip town. We all have our reasons, I suppose. I' m heading for Florida, Daytona Beach, to learn to be an airplane driver, and to get out of this cold and mud and the pathetic sight of abandoned steel mills and unemployed drunks.

From my seat I scan the station for cops rushing toward my bus, but only dirty slush and snow and a darkness jagged by the spillover of electric lights lie under the cold air. My dad waves good bye as the bus departs and I reciprocate. He turns his back to me and starts for his rusted pick up, sloshing through the station under his burden of incoming solitude and college tuition.

It' s a heavy load for the old man, but he didn' t hesitate when he offered to help me. Tough old Polack, he would eat his own old boots to save money to feed me. It' s not stinginess; it' s just that every penny he earns adds a layer of rough skin to his already too callused hands.

The bus accelerates, and lurches and continues to accelerate, and I look in the direction where the old nigger sits, and his grin full of white teeth greets me, glowing in the semi-darkness like a half moon, and he says," It' s good to be outta here. Yes sir."

Debbie' s bus heads north on Interstate 95, leaving south Florida behind, maybe for good. At least that is what Debbie wishes. Her window' s tinted glass reflects a translucent outline of her young face with hard lips caught between a smirk and a frown. Outside the tinted glass the orange groves bloom with myriad white specks spread like white caps against a green sea of orange leaves. She can not smell the blossoms but she can remember their fragrance, strong and sweet, and she remembers how that fragrance used to pervade the otherwise stale air of the apartments and rooms and shacks and trailers and holes in the wall where she grew up.

The fragrance came through the apartment' s window riding on shafts of dusty light. The slanted rays filtered in through the interstices in the Venetian blinds to prove to twelve year old Debbie – who had slept on the worn out couch – that the morning was still young, turning from orange to yellow, preparing to turn into intense, blinding white. Snorts slid underneath the closed door where her mother and her mother' s boyfriend shared their hangover. Boyfriendsare what her mother called them, mostly alcoholics and white trash, one nighters, good for nothing. She got up from the couch, used the toilet and went to visit with Franky, the next door neighbor who was always nice to her.

Debbie cannot smell the scent of the blossoms inside the bus, but she remembers it anyway, and the memory of that smell brings with it the links of memories as if by pulling one in, the others would follow, like pulling a chain out of a dark, bottomless well.

Franky' s face comes to her somewhat diffused, like her own reflection on the bus' s window, but much more distorted. Memories fall apart after so many years, just like a newspaper left on a water pond, and that' s fine with Debbie because, like old newspapers, who needs old memories? It' s his face all right, but she cannot make out the line sunder his eyes or the stubs on his cheeks. They sat and smoked together because that' s what they always did, smoke, and Franky always gave her cigarettes for free. Now, looking at the groves hurry pass her window, she realizes that even then nothing came for free.

First, he gave her cigarettes if she touched it. The more she touched, the more cigarettes she got, and she liked, likes, smoking, so touching it was not a problem for her. Putting it in her mouth took some money, the first money she ever earned, and the longer she kept it in her mouth, the more money Franky gave her.

The moment she felt Franky' s body wince at the touch of her lips, she discovered that she had the means to make men do things for her, like give her money and cigarettes. A revelation flashed inside her young head and she understood why her mother did the things she did, unashamedly, without remorse, and with business shrewdness.

Too many problems at home with mother, and her boyfriends who wanted her to do tricks for free. And drugs. And money. And cops. To hell with everybody, she had decided, and she had taken the first bus to Daytona Beach where the spring breakers were having a ball.

Tall southern yellow pine forests flank the highway in a blur of greenery slashed by brown trunks, and she cannot connect those tall, gaunt pines to any smell in particular. She cannot even remember what a Christmas tree smells like. They never had one.

I don' t like picking women up on my old motorcycle; it' s too obvious, and even the most retarded of passersby knows what you are up to. Picking prostitutes up is a very private matter, at least for me. This is my first free night in a long, long time. Classes and flying during the day keep me busy. Damn, it gets awful sweaty in those airplanes when they make you hold on the ramp or the taxiway. At night things don' t get easier, working as a bouncer until two o' clock in the morning, you know, trying to stretch that student loan and dad’ s and my own money as if they were a piece of bubble gum. But tonight I' m free, and horny, and cash is burning a hole in my pocket. It doesn’ t take but a few dollars to put a hole in my rather thin pockets. Getting a girlfriend is cheaper, they tell me, but at least doing it this way I don' t have to put up with any bullshit, and God knows I don' t need any.