Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 Read online

Kingman, Arizona

  Last night we crawled into the dry, sandy riverbed next to the Texaco station across the road from the Liberty Bell Lounge and slept. It is warm, and we are waiting for Al, the Apache guy who rescued us from the Hoover Dam. Ronnie and I were there for hours. At one point a patrolman stopped and told us we were in a bad place to get a ride. Duh.

  It got dark. Camping meant climbing sharp rocks to more sharp rocks. By the Coke machine at the Mead Lake lookout point, we ate a can of kidney beans. I can’t recall the brand. No change, so no Coke. Then Al and Phil stopped. Their car was packed, but Al said he couldn’t bear to see anyone stranded like that. They spent the night at the B&R Motel but promised to fetch us this morning and carry us on to Phoenix.

  Someone said a few days ago, “Whatever you do, don’t get stuck in Kingman,” but Phil says, “Don’t believe everything you hear or fifty percent of what you see.”

  November 12, 1977

  Tucson, Arizona

  There are a lot of older hitchhikers in Tucson. At the urinal I met Jimmy Buck. He offered us a ride to Texas—six hundred miles—if we’d help him unload a truckful of grapes. We did and are on our way.

  November 16, 1977

  Temple, Texas

  Civilization means not waiting five hours for a ride. Round Rock is civilized, Austin is too, but I’m not sure about Temple.

  Right after I wrote that, a Scientologist in a Rambler drove up, a mural painter from Dallas. A good guy. Ronnie left her guitar in his car. So long, guitar. The Scientologist played tapes. We smoked pot. In Austin we were picked up by an alcoholic. He’s been arrested for drunk driving four times. “SOL,” he said. “Shit out of luck.” He said he wasn’t drunk now but would definitely be arrested if they gave him a Breathalyzer.

  November 21, 1977

  West Virginia?

  Ronnie and I went our separate ways in Cullowhee. She’s heading to Raleigh, and I’m underneath an interstate bridge waiting for the rain to calm down. Several of the drivers that stopped today took off laughing just as I reached their cars looking grateful and relieved. There are a lot of dead birds down here. I feel itchy.

  November 23, 1977

  Kent, Ohio

  I got here yesterday afternoon. Then Todd and I each took three hits of sugar cube acid. Too much. It was a real bad trip, like torture, enough to turn someone into a Christian. I’ve been up for two days.

  Coming here by myself from Cullowhee, I had my first bad ride—a thirty-five-year-old with flag decals on the windshield of his pickup truck. Ray T., his name was. He picked me up in Knoxville and said he’d take me forty miles. First he spent three hours playing pool and drinking beer. I waited outside in a rocking chair and smoked a joint. I should have left, but the highway was deserted. No cars, and I was twenty miles from the interstate.

  After Ray T. left the bar, he was weaving and slurring his words. I figured I’d get out once we hit a busy road because you really don’t want to be in a car with a drunk. His conversation was hard to follow, and he stopped every mile or so to pee or light a cigarette. When he saw two girls hitchhiking, he picked them up and gave them a ride to their door. Then he had a cheeseburger. It started to rain. When we hit the interstate, I said, “You can just let me out here.”

  He said no, he couldn’t let me hitchhike in this weather. He said I had to spend the night with him. He was drunk and yelling, “Ray T. always gets what he wants, and this is what I want.”

  I asked him again to let me out, and he said no. Then he started asking me questions. “When was the last time you jacked off? Sometimes does it get hard just thinking about it?” He told me to move close to him, and when I said no he grabbed me and yanked me over and stuck his hand down my pants. I was afraid. It was late, raining, and he was speeding and drunk. If I’d hit him or tried to get away, we could have had an accident. I was scared and humiliated. When he pulled off onto a smaller road, I opened the door and jumped out. He stopped and I grabbed my wet knapsack from the back and ran.

  It was cold, and I heard him come after me. Then he got back in his truck, and when I saw it heading in my direction, I hid. After he drove off, I turned and ran onto the interstate and waved my arms. In a few minutes three assholes stopped and took me to Cincinnati. They were from Illinois and threw cans out the window. One of them said that niggers should still be slaves. I thought, Oh, boy. What a day.

  December 1, 1977

  West Virginia

  I’m in a seafood place drinking coffee. I need to get to Raleigh, but so far rides are sparse. I have a joint and $3. I remember being appalled when David Larson hitchhiked to North Carolina with $1 in his pocket, and now here I am. I started the day with a ceramic pig but abandoned it after it got to be a drag to carry.

  December 15, 1977

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina

  I found a job today, just like I told myself I would. Three dollars an hour washing dishes at the Carolina Coffee Shop.

  1978

  January 13, 1978

  Chapel Hill

  1. I’m cold.

  2. I’m bored.

  3. I spilled a full glass of ginger ale on the floor and have nothing to clean it up with.

  4. I went to the grocery store and spent $5.37 on total crap.

  5. I made beans and franks on my hot plate and it was just a mushy mess.

  6. I want to be in school.

  7. My radio is suffering from me falling asleep on it.

  February 23, 1978

  Chapel Hill

  I am totally frustrated and can’t relieve it. Nothing to go back to, and nothing to look forward to.

  ?, 1978

  Raleigh, North Carolina

  Last night Dad caught me off guard by asking me to leave and not come back. We can’t begin to reason with each other. I said awful things, and he said he wanted to smother me. I cried and am glad. Gretchen says the three best times to smoke a cigarette are:

  1. after food

  2. after sex

  3. after crying

  I hadn’t cried since I started smoking, and she was right—it was a good cigarette. Then Gretchen cried. She always comes to my defense. What would I do without her? And Mom cried, and Lisa. Everyone cried but Dad. Now he says that Thursday night he wants to talk to me. I’m guessing the topic will be self-respect.

  April 19, 1978

  Chapel Hill

  Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh

  June 14, 1978

  Atlantic Beach, North Carolina

  Overheard:

  “I always thought I was close to God, but climbing those mountains, I mean, it just brought me closer.”

  “If welfare can buy these niggers a Continental, it can buy some poor white kid a horse.”

  June 23, 1978

  Chapel Hill

  I have $211 and it doesn’t make any sense.

  September 6, 1978

  Odell

  I’m back in Odell finally. In the trailer instead of the cabin. Promoted? Norm begins many of his sentences with the words “A guy oughtta…” He told me that the cherry crop was good and that his dog, Ringo, died. I have five days until apple picking starts.

  September 10, 1978

  Odell

  I scrubbed my trailer floors with Janitor in a Drum and listened to the radio—country music mainly. Talked to Rodrigo, who uses camebackir as a verb meaning “to come back.” Nosotros combackamos. “We come back.”

&n
bsp; September 13, 1978

  Odell

  Picking started. Apple Betty, the cat I let in, is eating a tea bag and I’m too tired to stop her.

  September 18, 1978

  Odell

  Norm came by, very drunk. We both smoke menthols. He likes to explain things about farming. He says, “Why, heck, Dave…” “Why, heck, Dave, you should come here in the summer and hike and camp.”

  He has confidence in my picking, though I drop a lot and sometimes break branches. Breaking branches is called trashing. Skirting is picking the low-hanging fruit on someone else’s tree. This is what Norm calls an Okie tactic.

  September 22, 1978

  Odell

  We began the Bosc pears today, just me and Jesus. Norm dismissed all the others, all Mexicans. They liked to have a good time at night, using their car headlights as lamps and always with the radio on. They were late this morning, so that was it—fired.

  Tonight I went to the grocery store. I ran up a bill of $6.50 with only $1 to pay for it.

  September 26, 1978

  Odell

  While picking today I thought about capital punishment, Alaska, Eudora Welty, and blindness.

  If you talk to people, you can have whatever you want.

  No matter where you go, you cannot escape the Bee Gees, either on a radio or on a jukebox.

  I once considered suing Farrah Fawcett for invasion of privacy. Hardly a day passed when I didn’t see her on a magazine cover, an ad, a poster. She was destroying my life, but now she’s OK.

  Ronnie was the first person I met who didn’t live at home. That year in Cullowhee we went to see The Day of the Locust, my favorite movie. The man at the box office gave us a discount, saying, “I can’t charge full price for something without a plot!”

  September 28, 1978

  Odell

  In 1951 Norm worked at the sawmill and a guy named Barney Bailey gave him the nickname Peewee, which is what everyone here calls him. Barney Bailey has a wife he calls Buffalo Grass. Buffalo Grass Bailey. After filling the final pear bin, Norm, Jesus, and I drank beer. I made $211.24 this season. Back in Raleigh I have $150 in savings. That’s a total of $361.24.

  I am optimistic that things will fall into place, and one day I’ll be sitting in New York City with correct bus fare in my pocket.

  September 29, 1978

  Odell

  I hitched to the employment office in Hood River and talked to a woman named Sylvia. She is sending me to a fruit-packing plant—$3.41 an hour to sort the bad apples from the good. She said, “And, my, it’s tedious.” I would work from four to twelve at night.

  October 1, 1978

  Newport, Oregon

  Leaving Hood River, I was picked up hitchhiking by a man named John who wants me to work for him cutting and polishing jade and taking things to the crafts market in Portland. I can also clean his pool, help finish his sailboat, and install solar panels on his house. He said at one point or another:

  1. “You haven’t lived until you’ve sailed.”

  2. “I had a bubble put on top.”

  3. “The day will come for you to marry.”

  4. “I have wooden legs.”

  He’s invited me to his workshop on Tuesday morning.

  October 2, 1978

  Odell

  Yesterday was one of those miserable days for hitchhiking. It took almost thirteen hours to get back from Ted’s place in Newport, most of it walking. My first ride was with a Catholic priest. He was in robes and had a rifle in the backseat. Later I found $14.50 worth of unwrapped gay-sex magazines in the woods when I hiked off the road to pee. What are the chances? I think the guys posing were all in jail at one time or another. They’re all skinny with acne and it’s pretty clear they aren’t enjoying themselves.

  October 3, 1978

  Odell

  I went to John’s and saw his studio. He explained what all his tools do and then he suggested that he could pay me in Christmas gifts. If he has a pool, two cars, two Streamline trailers, and a home with two fireplaces in it, he can pay me in real money. I don’t think his wife likes me too much. Christians are strange people.

  I went to the packinghouse at four. The presize machine is broken, so now I won’t start until Thursday.

  October 4, 1978

  Odell

  John wants me to go to church with his family this weekend. He tells me that my life is empty, but it isn’t quite because I bought some pot today.

  October 5, 1978

  Odell

  Halfway through my first shift at the packing plant, I realized I had never imagined anything could be so boring. I remove leaves from pears and discard them into a wet, ever-growing pile. All of us in rubber gloves, our eyes dead. In the break room, the women talk about canning their backyard fruit.

  October 12, 1978

  Odell

  I am now a Teamster, Local 607. I had no choice. I asked the women on the belt what it means exactly, but no one really understands it. Membership is $25; dues are $12.50 a month. There’s free medical and dental but only after three years, by which point you’d be insane.

  October 16, 1978

  Odell

  After I paid my membership and first month’s dues, Duckwall–Pooley cut its night-packing crew. Workers with seniority were given the sixteen jobs in presize, so until at least the middle of November, I’m laid off and will have to live on John’s $2 an hour.

  On the way home after getting the news, I came across a very drunk Mexican guy whose car was in a ditch. It was Jesus’s brother, and because I didn’t know what else to do, I brought him back to my trailer. We were up until four, me talking my high school Spanish. Now it’s seven. I’m at Scotty’s Café and he’s asleep in my bed.

  With the layoff, I’m worried about money. Two people at the plant told me about a possible job picking mushrooms underground with a miner’s hat on. I’m not so sure about John. On Sunday he took me to his church. There was a lot of swaying back and forth, a lot of crying and praising His name. Then I went to lunch at his house. They don’t allow their kids to trick-or-treat. On the way home he told me how he lost his legs. Then he removed one and showed me the stump, which made me think of a denuded chicken wing.

  October 17, 1978

  Odell

  Today my shoes are twice as heavy. They’re also green. Everything is green from the chrome oxide I used to polish John’s jade. The insides of my ears are green. So is my snot.

  John has a fifteen-foot-long, five-foot-tall block of jade that was originally bought by General Perón in Argentina, who wanted a statue of his wife Eva carved from it. John says it cost $100,000. Minus, I guess, the $14 he paid me today to polish a few thin slices of it.

  October 30, 1978

  Odell

  Sylvia from the employment office invited me to have dinner with her family. Everyone ate something different: her husband, meat loaf; her grandson, a pork chop; me, a hamburger; and her, cottage cheese. She played Fiddler on the Roof and danced around her kitchen. What a delight she is.

  John’s legs were aching at work, so he took them off and rolled around in a wheelchair. He was in the merchant marines. Meanwhile, I hear the plant is laying people back on.

  October 31, 1978

  Odell

  I gave a guy at the plant my address, and last night he came by. Tom has a rose tattooed on his shoulder and two hearts on his forearm. We went to the trailer where he lives with his mother, and maybe one day I’ll get into what happened there. Right now I want to take a bus to Kent. I want to be with my friends, not going to church with John or staring down a dildo collection at Tom’s. It’s up to me. In a week I could be in Ohio, or I could still be here.

  November 9, 1978

  Odell

  Tom came by, mad. He said, “I thought we were friends.” Then he said that friends have sex, and it doesn’t matter whether I want to or not. I should just do it because he wants to. Before he left he told me that I’ll never find anyone to love.
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  To hell with him. I’m saving myself for marriage.

  I seem to grow more confused every day. Sometimes I think I was better off in Chapel Hill or Kent, just getting high and hanging out.

  Also it’s so cold here, too cold to do anything but sit in front of the space heater. Right now I’m wearing long underwear, a flannel shirt, a pajama shirt, a sweater, a jacket, a coat, and a hat. Inside.

  Later:

  I plugged in a second space heater. It worked for two minutes before the circuit blew. Then it was back to the cold, only with no lights. I tried to cry, but nothing came out, so I coughed instead.

  This morning Norm fixed the circuit and I began to winterize my trailer with a new sense of urgency.

  November 30, 1978

  Odell

  John hung a sign in the workshop that reads JESUS IS LORD HERE. The good news is that I start back at Duckwall–Pooley on Monday. Two weeks later I’ll be on a bus headed home.

  December 5, 1978

  Odell

  I don’t pull leaves off apples and pears anymore. Now I’m in bin repair. My hands are bloody ribbons. I lug, staple, and nail the 150-pound crates the fruit arrives in. When there’s nothing to do, I don’t have to pretend there’s something to do. It’s humiliating to have to look busy.