Ghosts of Tom Joad (19 page)

Oh, and if you got good clothes you're saving for a good job, give them to the dry cleaners and just don't pick them up until you're ready. The dry cleaners are your closet. Most say ninety days and out, but why would they throw away a customer's shit? They ain't gonna get rich doing business that way. And good shoes are life. You're outside a lot in the weather, and move around a lot more than you're used to. Get used to sleeping in your shoes too, so they don't get stolen and so you can run away quick if you need to. If homelessness had a dress code, it'd include tore-up shoes. Try and keep 'em clean.

After a while the coffee shop people start to know you, and the customers start to shy away instead of lending you their phone on the excuse that you forgot yours. They all know by the way you look that you have no job, and that makes you not one of them, so courtesy stops applying. New rules. You start waiting around parking lots for day work, competing with the immigrants for whatever someone will offer until even that starts to fail, the boss looking at you and knowing he can't bring you into a customer's house even to paint.

Stealing food is where the bus stops next. In fact, it's how I first met Casey. Nobody is proud of stealing, but nobody is proud of being hungry either, and it often ends up you choosing between one or the other. Hunger always wins—it's biology. Those songs about freedom being nothing left to lose, and the purity of life without the burden of possessions are bullshit. Nobody who woke up hungry after going to bed hungry without knowing when they'll eat next sings.

I never stole money, and I never stole from people. I only stole things from things. If a thing could own a business, then I could steal from a thing. So I'd stand up at the fast-food place like I was gonna order, then grab something off the counter and run. Dining and dashing, hoping it wasn't a fish sandwich, which I don't care for, but beggars can't be choosers, right? Important to keep your sense of humor if you can, too. I looked back a few times, but none of the workers was ever gonna chase me, what the hell did they care—they just made up another kids meal for what I stole, and they did it fast. Too slow satisfying the customer and they'd lose their jobs and join my jamboree. Workers like them know they can be fired for anything or nothing, so what do they care about me? When the company tells you it's minimum wage 'cause they can't by law get away with paying you less, it kinda gets into your head, and you start to believe what they say.

I tried to do this kind of stealing as little as I could, but the dirtier you get and the more you sleep out, the less chance anyone is going to give you work. Some fast food places will let you sit and warm up, and some see you homeless and treat you like you got the plague. Try 'em, one by one, you got the time, or ask around.

I grabbed a good—sized bag off the fast food counter that one day and headed to the door, only to run whack into this guy coming in. First time I ever saw him. The counter trash must've had a bad day or something, because she screamed I was a thief and I felt no strength to push past, or fight. If a place with so much food being thrown away wouldn't spot me a Happy Time
Meal Box, fuck 'em, I'd go to jail and eat there. Society cares a lot more it seems about feeding a criminal than a hungry man.

“Imagine that,” the guy said to me, “A man willing to go to jail for seven dollars. I'll pay for it.”

“Thanks.”

“It's okay, I've had hard times too. Want to sit down? What's your name?”

“Uh, Gilligan.”

“No it's not. What's your name?”

“Spiderman.”

“C'mon brother, sit down. I'll buy coffee.”

“Thanks buddy, but I ain't like that. You go somewhere else for that.”

Hell, a lot of guys did a lot of bad things for money, only thing they had left to sell I guess, and he wouldn't have been the first to try with me. I had no job, and they wanted me to have no soul.

“No, no, I'm a preacher. I'm Casey, call me Preacher Casey if you like. I run a shelter at Calvary Church. You're welcome here for coffee, and you're welcome there. You can take the bus, Number 3A. If the driver is Robby, with the dreads, tell him Casey'll pay later. Drop you right at Calvary. He knows.”

So people laugh at you because you were once the shoemaker and now you walk around barefoot. Well, buddy, things can change pretty fast. Back in Reeve a million years ago I had gone to the factory with my father looking for work, but they said they no longer hired “entry levels” or “apprentices.” They wanted younger men who would work for less, but who already knew more or less what the older men who worked for more
did. The new owners cut back to one shift, then sub-divided the jobs so that one man did not need to know very much. That made 'em easier to hire but mostly easier to fire and replace, modular-like. The deal was, take my dad's friends' jobs for less money. My friends would take my dad's job. That would last for a while, until the whole plant closed down and the land was sold to developers. Might be jobs in the retail store they planned to build, I was told while security walked us the way out. At least the economy created some new jobs for those guys. That was it for me and the factory, top of the heap, best job I never had.

I tried to get by for a while on public assistance, to eat. Food stamps sounds like something from an old movie; the first version of the program was created during the Depression, so I guess it fits. Now it's called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or, to make you feel stupid while feeling ashamed, SNAP. In Ohio they pay us out the whole state on the first of the month, millions of people—Pay Day, Food Day, Mother's Day. Most stores open early and stay open late that day, 'cause most people don't—or can't—budget well, and they're pretty hungry come the Day, kind of a mini-economic boom. It's the government keeping families—and businesses—sort of alive, thirty days at a time. The use of actual stamps for food has been replaced by EBT and debit cards, so you can't sell off some of the stamps for liquor money. I qualified for all of $200 a month, and that's being cut across the board to save on tax money for the government to spend on more important stuff. I'm pretty skinny, but only $50 a week for food is hard, my friend, hard. I'm just one guy, and I can skip a meal if I need to, and I do. But it seems like in Reeve these days, a lot of families with kids don't
have enough to eat, and a lot of them are getting some SNAP money to get by. To me, that is a crime, same as burning down their houses.

After you solve the eating problem, you gotta tend to the sleeping problem. I'd held on to my old car as long as I could. But you quickly learn that you can't just park a car anywhere and live in it. Stay away from schools, cops are always watching out for perverts. Churches are better, except on Sundays when people come to pray and need the parking spaces to get closer to God. Best thing to do is hide your clothes in the trunk so no one steals them, and it's less obvious you're living there. During the cold months, get a car cover, one of those canvas things, and nobody knows you're sleeping all cozy inside. That isn't much help in the hot times when the mosquitoes chew you apart 'cause you gotta leave the windows down. Keep in mind while a car parked at night attracts all sorts of attention, one parked in a shopping center in the daytime is just fine. “Just taking a nap, officer, while the little woman shops for God-knows-what. Heh heh, you know how it is. You too, have a good day, officer.” If they think you're just resting between buying things, you're still on the right track and okay. The poor world is a dark place in some ways, but finding a dark enough place to sleep makes you like a shark, always swimming.

At night, when the stores close, you become the enemy. You obviously ain't there to buy things, so you are not wanted or welcomed. Even if the place is open late, cops have been patrolling twenty-four hour stores' lots longer than you've been homeless and know who is consuming and who is trying to sleep. Wal-Mart makes a big deal of offering overnight space to
RVs as a sales gimmick, because those people buy shit, but unless your car is an RV or you buy shit, you are unwelcome. Wal-Mart don't want us 'cause there is nothing left for them to take from us.

Still not sure how it works, brother? The cops will watch over you like guardian angels when you camp out on the sidewalk in front of the Apple store before they're ready to sell something new and you got money.

Location, location, location.

Modern architecture now accounts for us homeless, putting metal bars on ledges and benches so it's impossible to lay down. Stuff like that's invisible to most people, but for us it marks a spot like dog scent: this is mine, not yours, go away. Nobody wants a homeless person around, and I guess I can't blame them. Takes some getting used to, though. At first when someone wanted me to move on, I'd think “It's a public park bench. Why can't I sit on it all day if I want to? There a law?” and I'd get angry, bark back. But sooner than later I'd just move on, same as the wind would blow newspapers off the same bench. Days I'd feel like a ghost wearing a Halloween Earl mask. If you got money you can tell homeless people where they can sit. Most times though there wasn't any law about how long you could sit on a bench, just a sense that we wasn't supposed to be there. Laws nobody made are the easiest to break.

So overall, friends, sleeping outside is tough. Cough syrup works if you're gonna try without getting too drunk every night. After a while you'll probably be ill anyway, so it ain't really cheating. You're always worried about getting sick, but in the end the most contagious thing you encounter is despair. Most
cops'll just move you along if you don't give them guff, but watch out for the odd one with an attitude. The ones to really watch out for, though, are private security, rent-a-cops. Those guys got no oversight and usually want to impress whoever is paying them, and they'll kick your ass for the fun of it. It's a new economy business—a good portion of our labor force is focused on protection rather than production.

So that's eating and sleeping. Next is the toilet stuff. Gas stations are filthy, but you can usually get in. Fast-food toilets are cleaner but sometimes the manager won't let you in without buying something, and they're always watching. Best is the ones in a supermarket, except they are always in the back and you have to make it through the store. And don't fucking steal the toilet paper for later, because I might be the next one in.

It takes three things to get clean, hot water, soap and towels, but hitting the trifecta is rare. You don't get to bathe much, and washing up in a sink only goes so far. Baby wipes are pretty good if you don't have running water. The first time in two weeks you actually are someplace you can take off all your clothes it'll feel weird to be naked again. I do remember the first time I had to go for a while without a shower. I didn't feel right. I smelled a bit, more like old clothes though 'cause I wasn't so much dirty like with real dirt as I just smelled too much like, well, me, I guess. Maybe if I lived in Africa or somewhere poor it'd be okay, but here it was un-American. My hair itched, and other places too. I kept wiping my hands and face with McDonald's napkins, trying to wash up in public restrooms without soap, but being unwashed kinda became how I was, like having a cold, a new state. When I had begged up enough for a night in a motel, it
was like every part of me felt better as that warm water poured over my body. I turned it up hotter than Hell, because I could. I made some lather, and felt my hands over my own body in ways and places like I used to do. Sometimes I'd go deep-dish, soaking up to my nose in the tub. I tried to rub the soap into my skin so I could smell like I had a job again.

It gets real shitty out there when no one cares what happens to you. No matter what you don't have, someone else has less and wants yours. I nearly lost an eye over a pair of boots, got razor-cut because of a jacket. The best way to win a fight is not to be in a fight, so stay away from other people, sheep attract wolves. That band of brothers shit works in hobo movies and folk songs, but not in America where we are too good at business to allow opportunities to pass by. Yes, the romanticized fantasy of street living is entertaining right up until the first time you get your jaw busted over a pair of warm gloves, a soiled old bed quilt, or two dollars' worth of dimes.

You may want a knife or even a gun, but don't get caught with either by the cops, because your best defense to the police is appearing innocent, poor and smelly, but at the same time boring and safe. Lockup sounds like free food and a clean bed, until you been there. Jail is full of criminals, and if your crime is just being homeless, everyone else is going to be meaner and tougher. The people who run the jail could care less what happens inside, and it's easy to get fucked up over who gets to use the one toilet first, or who gets the last serving of lunch. Stay there more than a night or two, and you start looking for someone even weaker than yourself to push around. I did it,
pushed some twink aside to grab his breakfast, but it isn't like normal stealing—it feels worse.

I can tell you that the risks include being physically and sexually assaulted on a regular and ongoing basis, in or out of jail. This is an eventuality, not just a possibility, especially if you are a woman, or a thin-slight young man, because without things to affirm you as a member of society, you are just prey. Sometimes it feels like worse just gets worse.

O
N THE BUS,
Casey remembered to me that first time the two of us met and was starting to get to know each other at that fast food place.

“So, Earl, is it? What brought you to homelessness?”

“I ain't really homeless, Preacher Casey. I just can't find work.”

“Drugs? Alcohol? Been arrested for anything serious? Done any real time?”

“I just can't find work.”