At sunrise the street cleaners go by my open window. After they pass I crash out on the floor. I awake fifteen minutes later, my neck stiff from Dalton’s chokehold. Thanks to the Devil Canyon fire, airborne debris—gray particulate matter—coats everything in the room, including myself.
I stagger to my feet and mope into the kitchenette. I shoo a passel of cockroaches from the stovetop. In turn, they make an orderly retreat into the mini-oven. I fill the coffee pot with water, only to discover I have no coffee, so I drink the water in the pot. Then I brush my teeth with a wedge of bar soap—I don’t remember last when I used toothpaste. I can’t afford it.
There’s no sense in acting like everything is all right today. Because it isn’t. With this as my mantra, I load up my pockets with quarters for the bus. I grab my travel permit card—never leave home without it. I gather the donations bucket and tambourine. I’m off to work.
On a smog-free day you can see San Jacinto Peak near
Palm Springs. Similar to an alcoholic, the smog has good days and bad days. This isn’t a good day—a flat red haze blankets the desert. The foothills behind Patton State are bald and brown. The sun is shadowless.
I bump into four SWAT cops on the sidewalk. Hoarse screams echo from inside the halfway house—five more cops wrestle a middle-aged blonde female in a polo shirt and Calvin Klein jeans out the front door. Tightly handcuffed behind her back, she jerks from side to side, her white face unfocused in the hostile sunlight.
The cops prod the manacled woman toward a Department of Public Security ambulance idling by the curb. Two medics open the ambulance’s doors. The cops push her onto a gurney, the medics strap her down. As the restraints clench around her waist, she screams again, louder than before.
She bares her teeth, save for one missing incisor.
And looks straight at me.
I look back at her.
The SWAT cops twirl their batons like they’re drum majorettes practicing for the big Friday night dance. I turn away, older than I’ve ever been. I flick my tongue over my teeth. Bar soap is caked on my gums—the flesh fails, and the spirit falters. I slouch up the street to the bus stop, one tired footstep at a time.
The Base Line checkpoint is temporarily closed. I’m rerouted to three emergency checkpoints for vetting. At the first checkpoint the line is long, everybody is quiet. Some folks possess no documents. They can’t get to work or home. You get stopped in the streets without papers: bingo. You win the lottery. Three years in county jail. At the second checkpoint a man is handcuffed. I’m patted down by a SWAT inspector in black overalls.
At the third checkpoint SWAT guards ask me for my travel permit again. They look at the card, then at me. My permit is taken to a table where a SWAT tech processes it. The card is returned to me. I notice it has new coding. I ask a cop what it means. He quips, “Top secret.” And that’s it. I’m free to go.
□ □ □
When my uncle returned from the Vietnam War—after two tours of combat duty—he resided in a garage at his father’s house on Sierra Way. For income, he did what everybody in the neighborhood did. He sold pounds of ammoniated Mexican pot. One hundred and ten bucks per pound. The worst weed in the world. My uncle never smiled. None of us did then. Most of us don’t now. You don’t ever smile at a SWAT checkpoint. Not if you want to get through it in one piece.