Between the scratch I bring in and her salary, we can get by about as well as we've ever gotten by. Catching up is a distant dream, and one that I don't think about very often. Too depressing. Maude thinks about it a lot; she has her third eye focused on that ethereal moment you see in stock broker commercials during the Sunday morning talk shows. Lately I've begun to feel like I'm letting her down. She hasn't said anything like that; but the weight is still there, bearing down on us both. I'm starting to wonder about her old age, how she'll live, how we'll get by. I don't worry about myself so much because I figure I'll keep going until I collapse on the street; maybe still writing about chili cook offs, maybe mumbling to myself and scribbling odd two line poems on the back of fast food wrappers. And I'm really okay with that … for me. But Maude deserves more. It's just difficult for me to see that far forward.
When I don't have anything on the burner to write about, that means foraging: which is by far the most meaningful part of my job. I think of it as loafing with purpose. That means I hang around looking useless, eavesdrop on conversations, pay attention to local gossip. One of the problems with being a small town freelance hack is that most of the news isn't really new. Everybody knows what's going on before the paper even comes out on Wednesday; so it's not really a matter of informing people as much as confirming what they've already heard. This frustrated me, initially. But once I realized that I was under no real obligation to inform anybody of anything, I was free to write about whatever I could find that was timely and interesting. The highest hope I have is that I can at least dispel the inevitable hearsay that's a part of every well-established ear-to-ear gossip network. This may not be the kind of illumination I always looked for in poetry; but it's something.
Then I figured out that no one really read the paper except to get the high school football, basketball (boys) and baseball scores.
But in a way it was also a liberating experience to realize that regardless of whatever got printed in the paper from one week to the next, people most likely choose to believe the shit they overheard in the line at Blaine's Farm and Fleet instead of anything I carefully researched. Then I came to understand that the issue was not that I wrote it as a member of “the liberal media”, or that it was too honest, or even that they saw my articles as an out and out lie. The major hurtling point was that I actually took the time to research it instead of just talking to the Pharmacist or getting my facts from the grizzly old bastards who ate lunch every week day at the Moose Head. They sat around this one large round table, where they were often joined by the County Clerk – who had the clarity of mind to get most of his opinions and at least half of his ideas from the eight men sitting at that table – and called themselves the Round Table. Most of them were round, too... though that had less to do with the table and more to do with a diet consisting of fried food, salt, and shit beer. They meet each work day at noon for the lunch hour, order whatever the special is for that day (Monday Chili and Fritos, Tuesday Tacos, Wednesday Open-Faced Pork, Thursday Pizza Burgers, Friday Fried Fish Sandwich) and solve all the world's problems. They loved politics and especially loved that each of them agreed with one another on three basic tenets:
- Country life is the only way God intended man to life;
- Cities are bad, and only made worse by all the blacks and illegal Mexican immigrants living there; and
- The only thing worse than blacks or Mexicans is a democrat.
Their solutions for all the world's problems: war, poverty, the national debt, the educational crisis, gun control, or anything else not listed, were as uncomplicated as they were predictable:
- Shoot the democrats;
- Shoot the blacks and Mexicans; and
- Shoot anybody that didn't look like they belonged there.
As a matter of fact, they often sat and talked about the advantages of full scale nuclear war, which they saw as the sum total solution to all the world's problems:
- All of America's enemies would be destroyed.
- Most of the cities and tainted horrible people in them would die. And
- The ones who didn't die right off would eventually because they didn't grow up in the country and didn't know how to take care of themselves. Plus, they'd be deformed and if they wandered into town, they'd be easy to spot.
It took them the entire hour to actually say these things. Or things suspiciously similar.
Not much going on, and I still had some cash and nothing to do. It was important that I be productive, that whatever I do that day in some way relate to getting paid; I decided last night that I would get work done, no matter what.
It's harder than people think... not working. You drop a enough points below the poverty line and you have to be smart. Sneaky. Like being turn a few pennies into a hamburger. Or being able to turn the money for one scotch on the rocks into several cocktails and maybe a beer or two. It requires finesse. And if I was careful, I might be able to extend my scotch and get a story or two for the week, and earn a little scratch.
That, I told myself, was all I really expected from a good day. That, and a night of restful sleep.
But I have to get through today first. And then... we'll see what happens.
But I have to get through today first. And then... we'll see what happens.