Ghosts of Tom Joad (15 page)

Jodie continued talking.

“Chris said at first he just wanted to play around cooking the stuff in the basement, like a hobby sort of, tryin' it out to see if he could do it. But somewhere his hobby turned into a felony. He was bringing home money, but he was more and more violent towards me and the boys. He'd slap at me outta frustration and I understood, but with the boys most of the time it was real rage. I think because they were still young and Chris saw they still had a life ahead, that made him hate them. Meth made him angry right off, but then he'd see something on TV about jobs going, or some commercial for something he wanted, and he'd just turn purple. The boys would do something kids do, you know, trying to get Chris off the couch during the day to play or to get them some jelly sandwiches while I was working, and he'd just lash out at them with his fists. I knew he didn't realize how hard he'd hit them, but they were just kids, you know, and it scared me more than not having money. Lotta rotten in those times, but then he'd say, ‘Come over here,' when he wanted to make up with me, but I'd already been there. It was a hard calculation, but one night when Chris was out I packed up what I could, took as much of his shit as I could find, put the boys in the car and left. We spent a couple of nights out, spent some time with my sister, and after I sold Chris' gun and stupid
man-bracelet, we got a small place. At first I worried he'd show up some night, but he didn't. Deputy Sheriff came to the house twice, once looking for him on a skipped warrant, once to tell me they'd found him, wrapped around a .45 hollow point.”

“The future scared me. I think it was only my own cowardice and the thought of what would happen to the kids that kept me alive. So this Bullseye job is a Godsend. I had no medical insurance and pay $60 a month on an $8,000 medical bill from after I fell. I just hurt my ankle, but going into the emergency room costs. I'll have it paid off in maybe seven or twelve years, if things go well. I gotta pay on it so that I can go back to the hospital with the boys when I need to. If I don't pay, they list me into collection and the hospital won't touch me. This way though, I'm working one day a week for the hospital really. Not sure how to get ahead 'cause Bullseye caps us at thirty nine hours a week so we're not full-time employees that receive benefits. Seems they just hire more part-timers instead of letting anyone jump to full time. I keep telling the Team Leader I just need more hours, not the benefits, but he only thanks me for my contribution, like I can feed my boys that shit. Then they keep changing which hours I work each week, so I never can plan nothing and it's hard to have a second job. I got an hour bus ride here and an hour back, so when I get just a three hour shift it's hardly even worth it. My friend at Jimba Juice, she says they even factor the weather reports into scheduling, so when the temperature drops shifts get cut without any notice.”

Bullseye was okay enough for me about the schedule though, as pretty much everyone who could find one worked at least two jobs. Had to. If the other job would agree to always give you
Friday hours, then Bullseye would block those out. They as a business really adapted to this new economy thing, gotta give them credit. Only problem was on holidays, when everyone wanted workers in, and of course weekends, when people with better jobs were free to come out and consume. Bullseye had an electronic time clock. It wouldn't let you punch in more than five minutes early, and if you were more than five minutes late it'd send a message to your supervisor. You got deducted half a point for that; get six points in a six-month period and you were automatically fired. If you got three points in six months, the supervisor was required to give you a verbal warning, which they took way too seriously. If you called in sick, it was one point off, so most everyone came in coughing and sneezing no matter what. You also couldn't clock out late, even if you were in the middle of something you were told to finish or else. You had to put it down, clock out on time, and then go back to finish up off the clock, 'cause even five minutes of unauthorized overtime bought you a half point off. Coming and going. It wasn't about the money, 'cause at minimum wage the minutes were only worth pennies to Bullseye—it was about reminding us we should do what we were told to do.

That was it, right there. The trick to doing a good job was to learn how to do just a good enough job. Too much thinking and you'd surely step on some Bullseye rule, or cross some invisible line Kevin the Store Manager felt strongly about in his heart. You had to pay attention, but not too much. Enough time in this retail minimum economy and it was trained into you for life, but for newcomers like me it was a slow process of getting pushed
back into the ground every time we had an accidental growth spurt. None of us were trying to be great, just satisfied.

Guests, which was a Bullseye word for what we used to call customers, were something. They were us, but a damn darker version of us. One of them made one of the high school girl associates cry, saying she was gonna ruin her kid's birthday because we sold the last of some stupid ass toy before she got there. Kevin the Store Manager came over and apologized, stepping right between the red-faced consumer and the crying valued associate, promising a rain check special order and a swift and courteous checkout when the time came. Another one threatened to call the police on us because we closed earlier than he said we said we would.

Funny thing happened one time. I was walking in to work, hat and jacket on outside so no one could see my Bullseye nametag and all. Some woman bumped into me by accident. She turned and apologized, said something about the weather getting colder and said sorry again, smiling. I then saw her like ten minutes later inside the store, me dressed as a Bullseye associate and her pushing a shopping cart. She almost ran over me, but didn't say a word. Me, a person in the parking lot, but just an item inside.

I had to work closing one time. Walking out to my car, which was still working at that time, with the others across the open empty parking lot, Kevin the Store Manager called me. I don't think he remembered my name, because he said, “Hey Ryan,” but he said it towards me, so I walked over anyway. He saw me parked right there, and said employees couldn't park closer than thirteen rows to the store so that the good close spaces would be
for guests. I wasn't sure what to do. I thought about asking him why thirteen rows and not twelve or fourteen, but I thought about it more and remembered it was better not to think about it. Then I noticed I was the only car parked anywhere near the front of the store. Everyone else but me believed already.

This one older guy worked with us. He didn't talk much, but said he used to be an accountant who got retired and then worked on the floor at Bullseye providing superior customer service because he had no pension. One day this customer like half his age called him stupid and said, “I suppose there's a reason people like you have to work in places like this.” Somehow that set him off, and right in front of Kevin the Store Manager the old guy said, “fuck you” to the customer and, “I quit” to Kevin the Store Manager. The guy said to me on the way out that he doubted the woman he told to fuck off learned anything and that she likely took some pleasure in seeing him quit, no doubt a validation of her own superiority. I said “okay” because my break was ending and I couldn't be late back to my station, especially with Kevin the Store Manager likely in a shitty mood.

Then one day Jodie really got beaten up on by a customer. She wanted something we were out of, and Jodie told her we were out. The lady just lit up: “Where's the manager, why won't you check in the back again, when will it be in, what time does the truck come?” All over some thing she didn't even know she wanted until the weekly ad came out and told her to want it. Jodie just stood there, not crying though, and apologized over and over, like we were told to do, waiting on the manager who would come and apologize some more, basically until the
customer had enough or maybe was given enough. Man, some of them people would stick around like a piece of gristle between your teeth. We all learned the look, the minimum wage stare, the look that pleads with the customer to please just give up because we can't fix it, but we won't care about not fixing it. There was nothing else we could do; Bullseye brought the shit but didn't give us a plunger. In return, the customer can say just about anything to us. Bullseye values its guests, so much that for a $4.99 purchase they can treat us this way. Self-respect goes cheap in Aisle 38.

Most of us were just trying to make a little money. But some people were spayed. They'd been yelled at too many times, or were too afraid of losing their jobs. They were broke. People—and dogs—don't get like that quickly; it has to build up on them, or tear down on them, like erosion, one thing after another nudging them deeper into it. Then one day, if the supervisor told them by mistake to hang a sign upside down, they'd do it, more afraid of contradicting the boss than making an obvious mistake. You'd see them rushing in like twenty minutes early to stand next to that clock so they wouldn't be late. One associate broke down in tears when she accidentally dropped something, afraid she'd get fired on the spot for it. They all walked around like the floor was all stray cat tails, step on one and set off all the cats screaming. It was a shitty way to live as an adult, your only incentive to doing good work being they'd let you keep a job that made you hate yourself for another day.

Fear controlled a lot of us, but there was something worse I think. Like with Muley and those sadistic bastard football coaches, some guys at Bullseye just didn't get it. They really
seemed to believe this shit about customer love and working harder. Most of us understood we had to pay it lip service around the managers, and they mostly knew they had to say it back at us. Both sides were looking the other way, a lot like whores and their customers saying “I love you” to each other I guess. But then there'd be a guy who just lived it, like a religious convert. He had a bunch of pins and buttons on his name tag lanyard, saying shit like Y
OU'RE
M
Y
N
UMBER
O
NE
C
USTOMER!
And if someone said thank you for something, he'd say, “It was my pleasure to provide you with five-star service!” like he even knew what the hell that meant. I didn't.

In the break room I heard one valued associate say to another, “Man, I'm your friend, so I gotta tell you, you smell.”

Then the other associate said back, “I know, I ain't had a shower for a few days. No hot water at my place 'til I can pay the gas bill.”

“We're six days away from the next pay day.”

“I know. I talked to my old guidance counselor and he's gonna let me sneak into the high school and shower there.”

That associate got fired the next week for stealing food, other associates' lunches in the break room refrigerator.

But most everybody found their way. It was all about money, surviving, providing, like with Jodie and her two kids and no boyfriend. Jodie wasn't so unique; half of all single-parent families live in poverty. Our life at Bullseye wasn't unique. Me and Jodie were actually part of a trend. Look at WalMart. I read somewhere they had revenue bigger than 170 different countries, including some of the Arab countries that have oil. Hell, Wal-Mart has more than two million employees, so if Wal-Mart was
an army, it would be the largest military on the planet behind China. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the U.S.

Jodie did ask me to move in with her. Her apartment was a mess. Junk from Bullseye, stuff from the used furniture store, paintings of Jesus in gold frames, a mix of Goodwill and pictures I'd seen of Graceland. I spent a few nights, but I couldn't handle the kids tryin' to get me to answer to “daddy, daddy, daddy.” She was always tryin' to set up these domestic scenes with me and the kids, putting one of them on the floor with me piling up blocks, saying, “Want to grow up and work at Bullseye like Mommy and Uncle Earl?” while the other banged a spoon on the table for attention until I thought I'd go fucking nuts. Then one night in bed we was just lying there and she pulled my hand over to her warm belly and said, “Imagine one for us kicking inside.” I could, and then saying no was as simple in the doing as it was long-standing in the consequence. One time earlier when she was late and before we knew it was a false alarm, I was secretly ready to force myself to stay, hearing of all things Angie's voice in my head telling me not to do to Jodie what everyone else was doing to me.

As for them kids, the one was always trying to slide into bed with us, and the other, he never said much at all, just watched TV in a kind of creepy way. I had no idea how to be a real father to them. I would have loved to push my own kids on the swings, saying, “back and a-wwwway” while they laughed. But I was too poor to do it. Hell, my mom served portions, and threw away portions, that would have fed Fred Flintstone. I knew these kids was going to grow up never having enough now, meaning they would never be satisfied, never really full, later on. A lot like my
dad's foreman, Depression Kid—he kept old aluminum foil and shopping bags folded in the basement, never threw out anything, used to lick the dinner plates clean in the kitchen when he thought nobody was looking. No matter what he achieved, Eagle Scout, college degree, captain's rank, he could never rest. Nothing could ever be enough.

Before I gave up, there was a potential, a white shirt maybe a little dirty, but with another good washing left in it to carry it into tomorrow. I had known prosperity, I had a place, at least in theory, I could bounce back to. Not these kids. They are never going to know where back is. They ain't never gonna trust no one, never gonna trust nothing they didn't put down with their own hand. When I was little, we all wanted to be astronauts. What do they have to grow up to be? To work at Bullseye? Jodie and those boys wanted me to give them some kind of a future when I couldn't see down the road for myself, never mind for three other already wounded people. She said “I love you” to me a couple of times, but we both knew it wasn't love or lust—maybe just comfort, or something practical. If they were lies, and you wanted to choose to believe them, then there wasn't no sin. Sometimes that's all you can expect, and sometimes that's enough.