Drop Off

I own my own rig, and do Wal-Mart runs in this area of Oklahoma regularly. When I come through Arrowhead, I get here early, early enough to unload and spend some time in the break room with some of the workers on the morning shift. Queen of the break room is Gladys, with her scowl and protective instinct for the other workers, especially the young girls, like Mary Beth, who get hit on regularly by a stock man named Vic. Now Vic unloads the truck, and also stocks the shelves, and has been around this Arrowhead store for quite some time, so I guess I know him as well as anyone. And I know that, yes, he's hit on most of the women working there at that store, except maybe Gladys herself, who's married, and he's been successful with quite a few of them, and he never gave up on Mary Beth herself, always trying to charm her, often right in front of me and anyone else, shamelessly, relentlessly. It was no secret that he was after her.

Mary Beth, young, shy, pretty, turned pink easily, and was the object of a lot of attention around Arrowhead, I'm sure, although she grew up in the country outside of there and not everyone knew her. But one time I was up front, buying something, and some young local guy had come in, just to talk to her, and it was uncomfortable at her register, because he was stammering, wanted to ask her out, and whatever he was buying was long ago rung up and in its bag. I remember being a little amused because they were both so young, so uncomfortable; I'd kind of had my eyes on her myself, but I'm a little older, not in the area, and all that, so I didn't worry too much about it. Anyway, I figured there were lots of guys like this one, but everyone kind of wondered who Mary Beth would fall for, and Gladys, for one, was trying to make sure it wasn't Vic.

There were some other characters around, Leroy, the huge Indian guy who helped unload; Ferris, the manager, a kind of go-getter guy who wanted to make it in the business world, and was concerned about the image of his store; and one dairy man, Maxwell, who I remember because he'd be there like clockwork, no matter what else happened; he was always putting the milk on the shelves, stopping in the small room to read the paper or grab a cup of coffee before his next drop-off. I had more in common with him, since we were both drop-by visitors, but he knew the town better, since he was from around there, whereas I did five or six towns before the run was over, and never went anywhere in Arrowhead besides this particular Wal-Mart.

The roads outside Arrowhead are deserted; the woods come right up to them, and the hilly country flattens out, I'm sure, to the west, but is pretty wild right there, and foggy in the mornings when I come through. So one morning I see this car dangling off the edge of the road, about four or five miles before I get to Arrowhead, early in the morning, front tires on the road, facing the center of the road, but back tires just hanging in the air over the side of the road, not sitting on anything. I thought, if a person jumped on the hood of the back trunk, that car would go rolling down into the ditch, about twenty feet down, and be hard to get back up off the road. I stopped my truck, which is no small accomplishment, set blinkers going, and walked back to inspect it, see if there was anyone asleep in the seat, or unconscious. Nobody around, not a sound; there were skid marks on the road, but mostly only crickets was all I heard, the sounds of the woods moving in on me. I got back in the truck, and used a cell and a cb to let everyone know what was going on. I'm pretty well connected to the police, the road crews, just about anyone who has anything to do with stuff like this, so it's a big day when I get to really use any of that equipment.

So when I got into town, and unloaded, I really wanted to know what they'd found out, but I almost never skipped my morning break back with the workers, Gladys the queen bee ruling the roost, Maxwell popping in with his creamer and fresh donuts, and old Leroy downing coffees like he was hooked up to a machine. There were several other people there: Ferris kept trying to get someone to clean up a mess up in the front corner of the store, but I also remember Magdalena, Emily, Dorothy, and LeeAnn. I remember this partly because I mentioned the car, a two-toned boat, a Buick or something, and several of these women got a strange look, and Gladys scowled and, I'm sure, intimidated them into silence. What could they know? I was curious to be by my radios and find out the details, but I also wanted my coffee. I didn't want anyone to think anything was unusual.

Now there were several conflicts going on at that time, and one was between Ferris and me; a dead dog had been found in a piece of furniture, a return, that I had picked up at this very Arrowhead store, and Ferris was all over me, trying to figure out how it had gotten there. I don't touch this stuff, I told him; it was their responsibility, not mine. He wanted to know where I stopped after Arrowhead; what happened when I was in these break rooms; could anyone theoretically get at this piece of furniture and slip a dead dog in there if they wanted to, and all that. It's not my problem, I told him, I'm just a driver. You load and unload. Ask these guys, I said, pointing at Leroy, and Rodney too; who was another stockman, a shy, mousy guy who occasionally loaded and unloaded. I noticed at that moment that Vic wasn't around; he usually popped in, eying the women, but he could be anywhere, for all I knew. All three could be guilty, if you asked me, I had no love lost for any of them, though why I assumed it was a guy, I don't know, maybe just because they had the best access, back there where the loading happened, and the women had different routes, to and from their cash registers and all.

So I'd almost forgotten about the Buick when I got back in the truck, but my radios immediately reminded me. I'd barely gotten out of Arrowhead when I heard the details: it was a Buick, registered to one Dale Byrum, who had worked the night shift at the factory, had denied using the car, and had passed all sobriety tests. Usually they're looking for a drunk in cases like this; some guy like Dale Byrum runs off the road, realizes he's in trouble for being drunk, gets out and walks home the dark way, hoping to sober up before they come after him. Not Mr. Byrum- he appeared to be at the factory the whole time. So they were running around town, trying to figure out who could have gotten the car, taken it for a joy ride, and run off the road in the middle of the night, leaving it dangling there for me to find. But they still hadn't found out, when my radio went out of reach to their police scanner, and I hit my next drop off.

To tell the truth, I was still stinging at Ferris' accusation that I was somehow responsible for the dead dog, negligent in the way I handled my truck at the drop offs, or somehow letting someone get in and put a dog in his returned furniture. I retraced my steps, through all the drop offs, starting at Arrowhead, and tried to figure out where someone could get into the back of the truck and put a dog there, but I really couldn't come up with anything. I went through my day like I usually do, more or less helping people with the loading, but not doing much of the really heavy lifting, and this time I stayed more aloof from it than usual; the merchandise was soiling me, ruining my name, and I didn't have to touch it, it said so right in my contract. I had a bad taste in my mouth from Ferris' questioning and the lingering feeling that he'd thought maybe I'd put that dog in there. I figured, that dog could have got in there himself, for all you're paying attention. He should be watching the people in his own store, and not be worrying about what I do on my route. Now I knew that the big boys would be down, asking questions and all, but it was only a dog- how much attention did that merit? Did anyone even miss it yet?

When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine, and when I called it back, it was a detective. This was now in the evening. By now there had been some developments in the Buick case, though the detective was not exactly forthcoming. They had towed the Buick to a police lot that morning, but later in the afternoon another car was backed into it, and they heard a yell come from the trunk. At that point they had opened the trunk and found a man, bound and gagged, stuffed in the trunk, still alive but pretty stiff from sitting in there a long time. I told them the same thing I'd told them earlier; I hadn't heard a thing. I thought of that big old Buick trunk dangling over the edge of that road, though, and wondered if that guy was even awake then, or, if maybe he was put in there later, or what. I remember thinking, one bad move and this car goes down that twenty-foot drop off.

The detective was nice enough, but he didn't get much out of me; I didn't know much. They already knew how the car had skidded; how it had ended up where it was; how the driver had just walked away, apparently. If they'd found the driver, they didn't tell. Wasn't Dale Byrum, he said; we know that. And it didn't look like his wife, either; she, Gladys Byrum, was working at that same Wal-Mart that you deliver to.

Gladys, I thought; she'd been there at the break room that morning, I knew it. If she'd put some guy in the trunk and left the car there in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, she sure did a good job of getting to work and making everything look like normal, her scowl in place, her apron in order. This is what I was thinking as I rolled past that lonely spot on the road, about four or five miles outside of Arrowhead, where I'd seen the Buick. I slowed down, looked at the skid marks, looked at the drop off, looked at the woods on either side. In my mind's eye I could still see that Buick, dangling there.

When I got to Arrowhead, I got the rest of the story, or at least, I got most of the pieces, as time went on. It was Vic who had been tied up and stuffed into the trunk; it was Mary Beth who had not only been missing that day, but had been missing since that time. She was hiding out there somewhere, and not coming to work, apparently. And it was her dog that had been killed, too. She'd been close to that dog, but the dog got in the way between her and Vic, and Vic had done it in, maybe, it was unclear exactly what had happened. Vic had stuck that dog in the furniture. But Leroy, it seems, had caught him, and told everyone. Getting Vic tied up and stuffed in the trunk was a cooperative effort, apparently; there were lots of people willing to help. They were grateful, though, that Vic hadn't been killed; that would have been a burden to carry, if that had happened. But Vic was grateful too; he woke up at just the right time; he lived through it; he came out better than the dog, and he didn't press charges against anyone. I don't think anyone really believed his story of the dog attacking him, him doing in the dog out of self-defense, but, they kind of grudgingly let him work there again, and he unloaded lots more trucks, even after the big boys were finished talking to him. I guess he must have been a dependable worker, or a smooth talker, or both, because he didn't lose his job over the incident, and in some ways, he went on like nothing had happened.

I always kept my distance from him, after that, though. He'd used my truck in his plotting, and that crossed my line. And besides that, I never saw Mary Beth again, and that was too bad; it seemed to me like she should have stayed there at the Wal-Mart, and he should have run off and hid somewhere. But who knows? I'll probably never know the whole story, like where exactly she was going to put him, because, after all, I don't even live there, and I only hear what they feel like telling me, and, because, maybe they didn't even know. Besides, they're the ones who have to keep living with each other, long after the big boys, and the dairy man, and I, have rolled on down the road.

6-07

just passing through- true stories from out there

autobiography and travel stories

I'm working on organizing this: this is what I have so far:

the early years: cleveland and toledo, ohio-1954-1965
canadian rockies train
growing up- pittsburgh- 1965-1970
comm ave, boston
high school - tonawanda new york- 1970-1972
desert train, nevada to utah
west campus, boston university 1972
walking to leverett
in the heart of the university- 700 comm ave, boston
atlanta/clinch mountain
mud season wins another- middlebury, vt, june '73
the farm & new orleans
summer in the hill country - pennsylvania & wv, summer of 1973
rattler's welcome, northern mexico
hearing the music- symphony road, boston, fall 1973
winnipeg in july
on the road- 1974 & 5
drifting south
under the citgo sign- boston, katahdin & back, fall of 74?
guatemala
u of i, stone soup- iowa city, 1975-1977
culture rudder- mexico to florida
wellman & the bakery, iowa 1977-78
al-can highway, yukon territory
turbulent times, iowa city, late seventies
layover: ft. nelson, b.c.
what the hill- cornell college, mt. vernon iowa, 1980-1982
salmon boat, ninilchik, alaska
just off the lincoln highway- linn & jones counties, early eighties
long beach trail, vancouver island
just off local road- scattergood school, west branch ia, 1982-1984
je me souviens, quebec
in the shadow of old cap: first teaching, iowa city, ia, ~1983
not far from normal- illinois
heart in seoul, seoul korea 1986-1988
weekend on the cape
in the shadow of memorial stadium, ashland, ohio, 1988
cold day in new york
little balkans, pittsburg kansas, 1988-1994
one day in amish country, english river valley
sunrise on i-80
eyes on the road- solon road, iowa
trappist monastery, near dubuque
the night i met tom petty, ohio turnpike
the day i met sylvester stallone- dubuque, iowa
welcome to iowa (earlier version of same story)
iowa city and the actualists, iowa city 1975-1978


there is more to come...and i'm not sure about the general order. hang in there- and eventually you'll see a publication!

Pass the Syrup

I was a football star in high school in Ohio; went to the local college and starred again, and then had the luck to be set up with a successful car dealership in a nearby city. From there I was solicited to become a state senator, ran against an evil character named McCarvey and beat him, and went off to Columbus to serve my term. In Columbus I was the darling of the Senate, being famous already, but also being young and naïve, and I was courted heavily by lobbyists of all varieties.

The car dealership was fine in my assistant's hand, but the race against McCarvey had been tight, and I knew he was plotting against me back home in Union City and the area, hoping to beat me again in two years, as soon as he had the chance. I was a Democrat, champion of the poor, the minorities, the working person and the unions, housewives, and the educated professors in Union City, the college town. McCarvey got his support from big business, the farmers, the money interests- you don't want to hear me slander those folks, but you get the picture. Let's just say he was looking for a wedge to drive between any possible segment of my support base, as I would surely would have done to him if I could. And he found it with the big Wal-Mart issue.

Wal-Mart, unable to expand in Union City, had made a deal with a nearby town, Jacksonville, which was to annex land right up near Union City, and allow Wal-Mart to build there. Opposition to Wal-Mart's new SuperCenter came from the academic, anti-growth crowd, and the unions- and I have to say, these were some of my staunchest supporters. But old Walter Cockwiler, the Libertarian free-market capitalist, was right when he said Wal-Mart was the best thing that ever happened to the poor, the underclass, the people living from paycheck to paycheck. Now which was my true base? Where did my loyalties lie?

Every time I went back to Union City or Jacksonville, people would ask. And these were not gentle, friendly questions. I was surprised by the tenor of the discussion, the intensity of the debate. I suspected that McCarvey was planting some of those questioners in the audience, just to trip me up, make me take sides, alienate one camp or the other.

A pure opportunist at that point, I remember not caring much about Wal-Mart itself, whether they got their new store or not, whether the town could annex all that land legally, whether they could move in, drive all those local shop owners out of business. I could see both sides. Frankly, I cared only about beating McCarvey, who was a snake in the grass, an evil man, as I've said. I had to speak carefully, not take sides, or rather play both sides, defend the right of the poor to have cheap prices, while defending the right of the country people to not have that traffic out there, and the right of the traditional businesses to not be blown out of the economy by the megamonster, union-busting, chiseling big box. You get the picture. Sure, businesses have the right to buy land, do as they want, undercut everyone. But do they have the right to move in and destroy a downtown? Everyone wanted to know my stand.

I got nervous and began to avoid Union City, although the campaign was coming up and I would have to show up eventually. At a Lions Club dinner the leader of the anti-Wal-Mart camp, one Jackson Bales, a history professor, cornered me and told me all about the alliance of the country people, the small shop-owners in Jacksonville, the enviros, the local student activists, blah blah. I got worried; this was my constituency. Would I now have to come out against the mother of all stores, America's discount shop? I was sweating bullets. Before I even left town, I encountered the mayor of Jacksonville, who also ran the local bank, Arch Porter, an old friend of mine from football days, but a rich and arrogant bastard, Republican all the way. Of course I should know where he stood- of course Jacksonville needed the business, needed the shot in the arm…of course they had the right to annex the land, and would do what they had to do to survive as a town that needed to attract a few visitors. Yes, the small guy downtown might take a hit, but they'd find a way to get by, they'd adjust, having a little competition was good for them. It was the American way.

I didn't have to worry about what some banker thought, since I knew he'd be voting for McCarvey anyway, but I could tell by his swagger that he had a lot of support; people in this area liked Wal-Mart; they looked forward to a new one; they'd gotten used to cheap prices and getting your towels while you were getting groceries. I couldn't attack the underhanded way he'd pulled off the annexation, or even the legality of making the taxpayer foot the bill for power lines, new roads, new sewer, all that stuff the new SuperCenter would require. And they asked me every time I turned around: Where do you stand on the Wal-Mart tax? The illegal annexation? I felt like saying, let's talk about school funding, or something I'm familiar with, like football.

As I said, I had mixed feelings about the issue personally, but I was beginning to lean against Wal-Mart, and I'll tell you why. Among my constituency, there were far more poor people than anyone else, but they barely read the paper, barely kept up the legal ramifications of annexation and tax law; they were too busy making a living, or putting food on the table. The unions, on the other hand, were the people who went out and got my constituents to vote, every time, and the union guys, my best allies, were beginning to look at me funny. I also figured that the small businessmen, loyal Republicans in the past, might come over to our side if I spoke up against the new store. And finally, there were enough shady deals in the thing- the annexation, the utility taxes, the Union City-Jacksonville rift, that I could probably make it sound like I was on the side of justice and the forces of good. I'm coming out against the new store, I told Wilson, a union ally of mine, who ran the electrical union, and served as precinct captain for years. Just wait a few days, and I'll come out against it.

But two days later, a madman rode a pickup truck right up into the entryway of the Union City store, and actually killed an old woman who was unable to jump out of his way. Orville Tate, the driver, was a 37-year-old ex-union man, carpenter's union maybe, out of work, wild-man look to him, well known in the bars around Union City; nobody knew what had gotten into him. What was that all about? I asked Wilson, a few people I knew; the story was just coming out. I was on my way to Union City at the time, about to speak out against Wal-Mart, but now it was impossible- the poor, the common man, everyone whose grandmother shopped there, was united in grief, horror, anger, and rage. This was an attack against the decency of civilization!

My political instincts kicked in, and I spoke out against wanton attacks against the public, against lawlessness, and for the right of ordinary people to come and go, minding their own business. As long as they had a store here, I said, referring to Union City and leaving Jacksonville, annexation, backroom deals and tax levies out of it, as long as they had a store, they had a right to have normal people come and go without fearing for their lives. I went to the lady's funeral; I grieved with the family. I demanded justice; there wasn't much Wilson could say. The out-of-work carpenter was a dog, a murderer, a madman, and a scourge, who stained the good name of all opposition to Wal-Mart.

Everyone was reacting to the incident. On the campaign trail, McCarvey laughed, said I was trying to sound like him, and what was some Democrat talking about security and safety for? Jackson Bales, the anti-Wal-Mart history professor, was really steaming though, angry as a bull, unable to disagree with me publicly, but outraged that Wal-Mart was again the good-guy, on the side of the old ladies of this world, the victims, the honest local store just trying to serve the people. Everywhere I went, people spoke up one way or the other. Somewhere in there, at a Kiwanis pancake breakfast of some kind, while I was stuffing myself with pancakes and a liberal helping of syrup, I heard Walter Cockwiler, the free market man, explaining that Wal-Mart had kept the American economy afloat all through the nineties, by giving everyone goods at lower prices, and putting money back in the pocket of the poor, the very people who would take another walk down the aisles and spend it all, thus keeping the green flowing even at times when all the manufacturing was moving to China, and there was less and less money floating around the ordinary person's budget. Blah blah. He went on and on about business as survival of the fittest, those who have the best inventory system, keeping things on the shelf, providing what the consumer wants, a veritable Wal-Mart cheering section. Another guy started up with him, saying that Wal-Mart had lousy health insurance, that his second cousin was working there but needed state aid to get her kidney surgery. To tell you the truth, I was glad to get out of there and back to Columbus, where I could schmooze with insurance executives and stay up until all hours of the night, talking insurance riders on obscure education bills, all the while drinking martinis and not missing Union City a bit.

But on the campaign stump back home, McCarvey was hammering away, talking security, freedom, prosperity, your usual Republican issues- he was more or less blatantly for the new Wal-Mart, and didn't care if he lost a few Jacksonville mom-and-pop store owners along the way; he figured there were dozens of free-market pocketbook voters like Cockwiler for every little guy who would lose from the deal. He badgered me, implying that I was against prosperity, against opportunity and even against security; when he mentioned Orville Tate he'd be sure to use the word "union" as if mad pickup-truck drivers, wanton murderers, unions, and Democrats were all synonymous. I had no choice but to come out squarely against murderers and people who threatened the stable life as we know it, business as usual.

But I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach as I saw the new Wal-Mart go up on the farmland between Union City and Jacksonville, and saw them widening the road and preparing to pave over a huge field of alfalfa, where the old Adamson farmstead and a historical cemetery used to be. Jackson Bales and his people could have fought Wal-Mart on the grounds of the cemetery alone, I thought, but apparently the deal was too sweet for the Adamson clan, and they just moved the cemetery to some adjacent land. The annexation had been shady, I heard, and not entirely legal, but Arch Porter was a powerful man these days, rich and powerful- his bank had their hands in all kinds of deals, and those hands and their funding would be yanked right out of the land or the project of anyone who objected publicly to the new store. He was putting his economic power, the power of the bank, to work for him, in the interests of getting a new SuperCenter in his town, where people would come and shop from all over, or from Union City at least. He and his banker friends, the Republicans with their McCarvey bumper stickers, were all about prosperity, new business, new parking lots.

And there was Orville Tate, up for involuntary manslaughter, mumbling into the television cameras, sounding like he hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks, deranged-looking in his orange prison jumpsuit, a living symbol, a representative of the idea that opposition to Wal-Mart and the forces of progress was, at its core, flat-out insane.

I won that election, but I still say, looking back, that it probably had more to do with football than with finessing poor Orville Tate and the Wal-Mart problem. It also had to do with finding McCarvey's wedge issue, which was abortion, and sending some helpers to his speeches to badger him with hard emotional questions, make him squirm, damned if you agree, damned if you don't, damned if you stammer. It was immensely gratifying to pound old McCarvey, if only by 1632 votes, and accept his concession call on election night, smugly packing my bags to go back to Columbus. The whole election had got my competitive juices flowing, my football blood, and McCarvey was history, a loser, going back to his investment counseling. I myself had been lucky, I think, that Orville Tate had come along, so that I wasn't able to, didn't have to oppose Wal-Mart's move. I was lucky, and I was here in Columbus, watching the Rose Bowl, a winner.

Looking back, trying to oppose Wal-Mart in that climate would have been political suicide, although, as it happened, I wasn't long for politics anyway, trading the whole election-circuit schedule for a job representing Ohio soybean growers' suppliers in Brazil and South America, not long after I'd been caught accepting tickets to the Ohio State football games from an insurance lobbyist. In South America, they had never heard of the Ohio State-Michigan game, but countries like Brazil and Argentina had a burgeoning taste for soybeans for their cattle, that would keep me on Varig, Brazilian airline, for over two years. On all those long plane flights, I came to realize how naïve I'd been back there in Columbus, how I hadn't been prepared at all for the big-city cut-throat political scene; I'd been had by sharks, I'd been cut to bits.

But, speaking of naïve, what happened to me in Columbus was nothing compared to what was happening in my own Union City, where business as usual meant a lot of new concrete on one end of town, an empty old box on the other, only a memory of what Orville Tate had done with his pickup. Though of course I could never prove it, little by little I heard stories connecting Arch Porter with Orville Tate- Tate had owed Porter a favor, big time; Porter had taken over one of Tate's big loans, had used the influence of his bank; Porter got Tate out of jail early, and then whisked him out of town to someplace he wouldn't be an embarrassment, and on and on. I came to believe that it was no accident, and I was appalled. Sure, I'd taken football tickets, but I never killed an old lady. My best explanation was that they meant it as a diversion, to take people's minds of the real issues- and it had worked, me falling totally into the trap- and they hadn't planned on the old lady getting in the way and actually getting killed. Either way, Arch Porter was a huge power broker for years, and now even Wal-Mart owed him in a big way, for making their move possible, and allowing them to come into his town. Wal-Mart itself didn't seem to be guilty of anything, of course, outside of just wanting to expand, move into new territory, and keep the money rolling in. But I myself avoided the new store, avoided the entire social circuit, even when I was in Union City for extended visits. I didn't want to make small talk at the registers, didn't want to run into old acquaintances, didn't want to relive those times in any way. I'd won the election, two of them, in fact, but I'd lost my taste for Kiwanis pancakes, and the syrup, not to mention the kinds of stories you heard while you were eating them.

6-07

Customer Service

As a lawyer, I'm asked occasionally to do public defender-type stuff, poor people who can't afford a lawyer, and so I got one Carlos Machado, a worker at our local big-box retail store, who was being held for murder, and had DNA all over the body of a guy who had apparently been found in a stack of peat moss. He claimed, in his broken English, that he had just moved the guy off of the peat moss, before he even realized he was dead. Sure, he was working in the garden section that night, but he was working in other sections too. He was innocent, he said.

The dead guy, a kid, was identified as one James Marker, and his parents, from the suburbs up north, wanted blood. They had a high-powered lawyer and were going after Mr. Machado with all they had. If Machado didn't do it, who did? It was unfair, they said: a twenty-year-old kid, his life in front of him, hit on the head with a metal pipe of some kind, thrown in a stack of peat moss sacks, in the garden section of an all-night retail store in the middle of the night. It just wasn't right; somebody had to pay.

The police said that the kid, dirty, unbathed, hair matted even before it was covered with blood, was part of a group of young kids camping out in the National Forest twenty miles from town or so; they'd been out there for a couple of weeks. The officer admitted that they, the police, were not well-liked in the encampment, and it was very likely that a dozen or so of the campers had escaped through the woods upon first realizing that the police were on the scene. But several of them had taken the time to fill the police in on what kind of character James "Reef" Marker was. Friendly, loving, guitar-player, not an enemy in the camp, no known girlfriend or love triangle, no outstanding debts or bad drug deals, no money to speak of, either. From what people said, virtually everyone in camp was like that, on top of being ecologically gentle on the earth, inclined to smoke marijuana once in a while, and tending to earn a night's meal by panhandling, running through a town's dumpsters, or doing odd jobs at odd hours. The police maintained that they had no known motive for killing "Reef" Marker; if Machado had done it, they didn't know why. They were holding him because his DNA was all over the body; because he was known to have been there at the time of the murder (roughly 4 AM on a Wednesday morning), and because he couldn't seem to explain why he didn't have an excuse; he couldn't say where he was, if he wasn't in the garden section. He'd told me he was in another section of the cavernous store, helping somebody out, no doubt, but in any case, the body wasn't found until the next day, his very next shift in fact, so that struck the police as an odd coincidence, I guess, and they didn't like something about his bearing, his rough insistence that he'd had nothing to do with it.

In the retail store, the manager, one Joseph Parking, I loved that name, said that Mr. Machado had worked there for about a year, was a faithful employee, had some trouble with English, yes, but no criminal record that he knew of, hailed from some small town south of the border, and, he didn't know where anyone was on that night, in spite of the fact that he himself was working. This was suspicious, but I couldn't get any more out of him. Registers were beeping, fluorescent lights shone down on us, as we stood shooting the breeze in front of the bathrooms, in the front of the store. People came by with large shopping carts of goods, mostly food- some of them knew Mr. Parking, and said hello.

Mr. Parking knew of the encampment in the National Forest, though he didn't know "Reef" Marks specifically and had not recognized him at all from the photos he had seen; he had actually been out of the store when they found and removed the body. He had a low opinion of the campers, and said that they never had money; they were a constant nuisance, panhandling and stealing creamers from the coffee machine, or lifting a candy bar here and there, which he suspected but couldn't prove. Sometimes they'd come in on a rainy night, spend two or three hours getting warm or dry, maybe buy one or two cans of beans between them, and head back for the woods, panhandling everyone they met en route. He had very little sympathy for Reef Marks, or his friends, or anyone else who thought the world owed them a living, and a place to spend a rainy night.

Parking was a universally unpopular manager, a chiseler, a cheapskate, an angry man with a grudge, according to other employees, but if Machado had any enemy, it would probably be Max Bacon, another worker who alternated with him in the garden section, but somehow failed to see a body in the pile of sacks of peat moss, on the Wednesday in question. Max Bacon was a hard drinker, spent a lot of time down at R.J.'s bar, which raised a bunch of red flags for me, since R.J.'s was a hard-drinking, low-life, wretched place. Max Bacon hated Carlos Machado, but nobody could quite tell me why. Was Max Bacon low-down enough to kill some kid in order to set up Carlos Machado, put him away, get rid of him? They didn't know for sure.

Down at R.J.'s they knew Max Bacon well, and they knew Joe Ferguson too, the guy Max Bacon had spent that Tuesday night drinking with. They had both left the bar at about 1:30 am. Both were regulars, hard drinkers, not always on the right side of the law. Max Bacon was well-known to hate Carlos Machado, and a number of other people, but was not known to have said anything suspicious, or even mention him on the night in question. Joe Ferguson also hated a number of people, especially his ex-wife, who was taking him for all he was worth, and had been for several years. But Joe Ferguson had no known connection to the retail store, or to Carlos Machado (except through Max Bacon), or to the encampment, that anyone knew of. They had simply drank heavily, and left. Nobody else had bothered them that night, got in their face, or anything. No sign of any of the campers that night, either.

According to the police, or at least Nellie Cather, who ran the dispatch most nights and knew almost everything, Max Bacon hated Carlos Machado because Machado had stolen his girlfriend, or so he thought, and that made Max Bacon a suspect, also because he worked at that same garden section, and could have known about what went on. Though how could Machado's DNA be on the body, and not his, she asked. And Bacon lived out by the Forest, way out that way, had reason to dislike the campers, if not know a few of them; it maybe wouldn't be beyond him to kill one, hide the body in the peat moss, set up Machado. She herself, Nellie Cather, was working on that theory, though she admitted it had some holes in it. Tuesday night had been a quiet night, she said, except for Joe Ferguson, who had come in at about 2 am, angry because some student with a bumper sticker on his car had bashed right through his living room wall, and put a hole in his house, right where his television was. The bumper sticker said, "You can make me go to school, but you can't make me think." That's why he knew it was a student. The guy (presumably a male) had left the scene of the accident. Ferguson had gone to the police station demanding to know who it was. Nellie Cather had refused to give out the information- for almost two hours. Ferguson, drunk and belligerent, said that she could at least look up the motor vehicle and find out who he was through the license plate- but he was drunk, may have forgotten a letter or maybe a number. He'd finally left, angry, saying he'd get the S.O.B. that rammed his car through his living-room wall.

This was just a distraction. Concentrate, I thought, an innocent working man is going to suffer if I don't find out who had it in for Reef Marks. I could try the case with what I knew; I could probably free Machado or at least cast doubt on the prosecution's story; I knew they'd have the best, though, and that they were after Machado's blood. I knew I had to be good. I knew it was an uphill road, defending an immigrant in a small town like this one. I needed more information.

Something stuck in my mind about Nellie Cather's story. It was Nellie Lytle Cather herself. I went and looked up an old yearbook, five years before my graduating class; you'll never guess where I found one, sure enough, there she was. She'd graduated five years before me, Nellie Lytle, married Alvin Cather, the police chief, a couple years later, and eventually came to run the graveyard shift dispatch at the police house. But, there on a yellowed back page, an old photo of Joe Ferguson and Nellie Lytle together, smiling, at the football game. They'd been sweethearts. That was a clue, I knew, but what kind, I couldn't fathom.

So Nellie Lytle had married the cop, instead of Joe. And Joe had married some woman who'd obviously turned on him, driven him to alcohol, to the point that he drank nights at R.J.'s, even drank with a mean old drunk like Max Bacon, drank even on Tuesday nights, stumbled home drunk, to his little house on the T at Hamilton Street, living at that T, he shouldn't be surprised when some other drunk failed to make a stop and slammed into his wall. But he gets mad, comes into the station, and hassles his former sweetheart for several hours, trying unsuccessfully to get the name of the drunken idiot who did it. I now wanted to know who this was, too, but I never found out, even though it was public record, and I could have had it if I wanted it. I was still stuck on the connection to Reef Marks, who, for all I could tell, had nothing to do with any of these people- had never been in the police station, had never been in R.J.'s, had never done more than walked on the road that Max Bacon used to get home from the bar- or possibly hitchhiked on it. I thought I'd pursue that angle.

Marks had no car; he had left the encampment at about 1:00 am, heading for town, for no known reason, and was very likely to hitchhike from the forest to the retail store, though this would have been the opposite direction from Bacon, who was going from town, back to his house, more or less, at about 2 am, if everyone's story held up. It was not unlike these country people to stop, turn around, give a hitchhiker a ride back to town in the middle of the night, and drop them off anywhere they wanted- for no other reason than to drive around, or maybe get some extra drugs to top off the evening. It wasn't altogether implausible for a mean old drunk like Max Bacon to turn against a dirty young kid, maybe for saying too much, or being too political, or even for panhandling. But killing him?

Max Bacon, in his little old house out by the Forest, looked back at me with dark, empty eyes, mean, hung over. Didn't know the kid, he said; hadn't seen him that night, had never seen him. Didn't care what happened to Machado. Didn't care about the campers. Didn't think Joe Ferguson had anything to do with it.

They found the pipe, a piece of toilet piping which could have come from right near the garden section; it was found under another nearby pallet, in the garden section, but had no fingerprints on it. Had Marks' blood on it, but no known mark of a killer, who had obviously worn gloves. Wearing gloves and handling a toilet pipe struck me as a strange combination that said deliberate murder all over it, to me, but I said nothing. They found a guy who claimed to have seen Reef Marks walking on the road, not more than a mile or two from the retail chain; nobody had seen Max Bacon come home that night, or could verify his story that he'd come straight home and gone to bed. Finally, Nellie Lytle Cather shut up- about Joe Ferguson, about high school, about the driver who missed the stop sign- it was police business, she said. She was not able to reveal anything else.

A week and a half had gone by, and I had nothing- I was barely ready to defend my client. Machado could tell me nothing more than what he'd already told me, though he consistently maintained his innocence. He'd been somewhere in the store when it happened, probably helping some customer find some item, is all he could say. He clearly hated Max Bacon, and didn't put it past Bacon or Joseph Parking to trick him, set him up and be rid of him. I told him we'd do our best if it came to trial; I was still on his side; it seemed like he was telling the truth to me.

But we didn't have to go to trial. A drunken Joe Ferguson was hauled back into the police station, two and a half weeks after the murder, and in the course of being charged with drunken driving, public obscenity, and assaulting a police officer, admitted to killing Reef Marks in the retail store that night. He'd been holding the pipe, he said, and wearing gloves, in the back of the store, when some dirty kid came up and asked him for money, and he'd snapped. Yes, he'd been planning a dirty deed with the pipe anyway, as soon as he'd bought it. No, he'd never seen the kid before, the kid had just walked up and asked for money, and he, Joe Ferguson, had just snapped. Maybe it was the lighting, or the colorful displays, or the Made in USA signs when nothing was in fact made in USA, probably. But that's my editorializing. Nobody could find out exactly why Joe Ferguson snapped, only that he did it, and nobody saw it, and it was amazing that he was able to hide the body, and get away with it for two weeks, as he did. And he might have gone a little longer, and he even could have left town, I figured, but he didn't, which may have been because he had nowhere to go. I didn't ask. As Machado's lawyer, I seemed to be off the hook; Machado went free, and I moved on to other clients, ones who paid real money.

6-07