It's the conclusion that always comes up even when "the best in the world" put their minds and hearts to something.
Way back people finding out about fire felt the same.
When our team USA came up against a wall of impossibility hypothetically in the middle of the country as the coasts cleaned up and re-ordered people and place because of warring there were relatively few people with full faith and confidence in the notion of In God We Trust.
The phrase on the dollar bill--as a first in a shoebox to help veterans--stood in stark contrast to the barely breathing, soiled uniform'd, extremely skinny men who'd been found near a clothing donation center. Some young people propped them up leaning against each other and as the mist started to lift and the day's traffic sounded like a regular workday, a woman borrowed a camera from a nightstand. The whole camera had to be brought to D.C. said a Peace Officer from a Recruitment Room in an otherwise unoccupied office building.
Some college students smoking and shivering nearby looked at each other and sized up the challenge.
As young adults in the late 1980's and early 1990's we had inklings of who we wanted to learn from. The what-to-learns kept expanding lists and honing ambition. Whether it was well-known or not, almost every person who was professional had "mentors" and traditions to contend with. And there were often group monitors who could be definitive when they needed to be.
One day we were sitting in the diner and in came a stocky person with a large pair of scissors. A few people held up paper aprons and the apron-strings were cut off. Kind of an unrecorded ceremony they agreed to, was explained. The person with the scissors left but in came another person with scissors. He looked all around the room. Hardly no one noticed a person point someone out. The person with the second pair of scissors asked a person who looked like a punk to stand. The person with the scissors cut a string on the sporty winter coat over his leather jacket. The punk's hand went to his heart and tears burst out of eyes, all over face. "Why?" A person with the punk asked. The person with the scissors put those in a back pants pocket and told, " The person you were tethered with is in a truck outside with no pants on and feet are freezing."
We approached the vehicle carefully. The person was eating a can of tuna wipung the darker bits onto a cocktail napkin with the table knife utensil. "Are you okay madamoīselle?"
Clearly a lot of things could've been said. The woman closed her eyes for a long few seconds then opened them towards the sun and said, "I will need something to wear on my bottom." Someone nearby whispered to an older lady being seated in a car. Then brought over a shawl which was pitched onto the dashboard of the truck.
Outside in a two-hour sun is warm window the parking lot filled with working poor. "Come to greet the Alpspeople have you?" Smiles broke across wizened faces. "But where is the cat? Some people have new allergies?"
A couple people made an effort to look high and low. A dramatic man spoke in Italian to a sweater-and-suspenders assistant, then said loudly, "I dun't beweave, there"s aways a cat with that one."
A tall man bent head nearly into the truck cab, didn't seize the small travel alarm clock, and ignored the wiggling kitten in the woman's dress shirt. Before he finished checking, she sent for the damaged winter coat. Me pissing myself shouldn't count as him not minding an elder.
Racey four wheel drives and sedans started to leave the parking lot with perfectly paced movements and a car and a half's space between them.
Back over at Cosby in where it's backpack-in-only a couple friends had been scavaging.
"Listen Muscle," she sighed and spoke to the outside of a tent, "I find that dance move flattering and all, but you might want to come out now and see what kind of equipment has you doing that on TV." There was a swishy-sounding rustle of sleeping bag and sheets inside the tent and the Muscle unzipped the door and knelt crooked-hatted half in and half out of the tent. "What did you girls find this time, my love?"
She showed him a smushed screen in a white plastic frame. "And I was making the moves on there?"
No one said anything. Then he pulled down his hat even above his eyebrows. "Well, I do have some moves, so I'm sure I didn't disappoint." The other girl blushed and sort of giggle-muffled, "Not anyone."
"Lemme see it again."
"It didn't record it."
"Lemme see it anyway."
"No."
"Yes."
"Nah uh."
"Please."
"THERE HE IS," the woman's voice was a loud bark to the nursery of love. One of the girls slunk backwards and some sort of soldiers each put an arm under the Muscle's armpits. They lifted him still kneeling. "Should I beat on somebody's chest?" The girl with the worst crush on him asked.
The captainesque woman who'd commanded the lift plucked the medical device from her hands.
I was just pretending the girl with the crush said to no one in particular as everyone moved in silence in the direction of the parking lot. The tent in tow. "Me too!" The Muscle winced and added, "Is that what the troubles is?"
"No talking."
Some people in hunting gear crossed the footpath before us. The soldier-types set the Muscle down and swung guns hanging on their belts up but did not point them. Women in wool capes and sandals and boots crossed behind the hunters. Then a tall red-headed lady in a shirt, sweater, and dress slacks with a scarf bunned near her throat saw us and stepped towards us. "Is anyone of you hurt?"
The soldier-types looked at the captain woman. "We don't need your help," she said.
"I might," the Muscle braved.
The woman put her hands behind her back like a contemplating person then asked, "whaHow so?"
"Is my fly down?"
She looked sort of over the soldier-types and down at the man's pants. "Who is in charge here?" She asked. The captainesque woman answered, "My husband who is
"And did you
"Who is helping reload the Field Hospital Ma'am."
"And did you find this man in his parachute?"
"Do you mean this?" She fell "out of line" and walked backwards putting a foot on the tent.
"Let's call and find out." The tall St. Marie motioned for a radioman to kneel in front of her.
It was a few days later certain people found themselves at a different campground. "Just for processing," the Muscle kept reminding his grandmother. "Nothing dishonorable," she'd stroke his ego. "You heard that, right?!" He demanded of everyone sitting at a picnic table when she said it one time. He made the motions of shoving away from a table and smacking both hands on his chest.
"What's his problem?" An out-of-work actor asked out loud.
The grandmother spooned more not pasta pasta onto a kid's plate. "Young men sitting with women and children," she shook her head softly, her inside-eyes sifting through years and years of memories, and said, "It's petaine."
"I wish I knew what half these people were talking about," an older man said into a handheld recorder.
At a crowding up train depot train after train pulled in and didn't totally stop as all manner of characters disembarked. Very neat uniformed ticket-takers asked questions like, And how was your vacation? To which people replied stuff like, no comment and got a lot of sun about the bundled up people in their company.
"Your shoe madame," white gloves held up the broken heel.
"Gimme that," a London punk woman snatched the shoe and wagged it heel-floppy in front of the man's face. "Don't call me that or I'll bop yoo."
"Anyways," another woman with her picked up the story she'd been telling.
A unicyclist juggled bowling pins.
"I see that performer everywhere," the punk said.
"Cha."
People flocked to a row of phone booths lining a wall.
"Come on," the punk woman pulled on the shoulder of the other woman's white winter coat. "Let's see what's outside. I could stand some fresh air." She took a wad of chewing gum out of her mouth and stuck it behind her ear.
Back at the diner a row had started when one younger woman had three-fingered a slightly older young woman's ski tags hanging in a bundle from a pocket zipper. "WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?" A New York accent boomed over the heads of some teenagers outside the restrooms. "Dey paid us'n." One immediately confessed. Then asked, "Should I say Suh?" The city man peeled two dollar bills off a wad of money. "That's for being honest," he said as he lifted the chin of the one who'd talked, then he said, "Thank you sir." The kids looked at each other, shoulder-shrugged in unison, and pocketed the money.
Onto a table of books and notebooks a muscled hand squashed the bundle of ski tags in between the readers. A long but clear of nail polish index finger rubbed the kitten's head poking out of dress shirt. "Did you pay children to interfere with our investigation?" The New Yorker asked quietly. "Moi?"
"Right, right, no speakah the Ingleesh I'm sure."
I looked under the table and made sure the woman was dressed. The lapblanket was wrapped tightly around her. The index finger pointed at a bowl of half-and-halfs. A hand made to pass it, then held it away, and asked, "Why all the mystery about where people have been skiing?"
"It's complicated. Cat's hungry. Give me those." One of the five women at the table plucked one from the bowl withheld. "Will you open it please?" She asked me. "Sure," I reached for it, then dropped it as it fell into my palm. "What do you mean complicated? How so?"
"Pick it up and open it."
"I think I might know." I said as I opened the creamer.
"You?!" One woman said and another looked disbelieving and asked, "What could you possibly know?"
The cat licked and licked at the milk on the dunked and redunked index finger. "I know some stuff from college courses and all, but what are we really talking about?"
"I just wish I could read peoples' writing better," an English-accented man bounced a crumpled up piece of paper off the wall beside his table. "Criminy."
At a table across the way a man in a black Scottish cap urged patience, patience my boy. The server put a second cup of tea and some lemon wedges down on his table.
"We are and are not talking about a whole lot of disruption to the local environment. Put that down," she said of a table knife of sausage gravey.
"Say dirt."
"That must weigh four hundred pounds."
"I think I found it."
The person's hair was braided finer than contemporary furniture covers. It was so neatly done it made me feel like our Country was dirty. A dirty, unkempt, nobody cares anymore, cheap, dirty un-neat thing which the guys sitting nearby trying to hassle a black person would probably say thang.
"They're trying to get your goat." A lanky guy in a hoodie sweatshirt and sweatpants said as he tucked his knees in under the table. "Oh, I know. But I have no goat."
Another well-dressed black girlish woman kept pointing at the outline that was taking shape in a warped spiral notebook. A very tan person at yet another table looked over and didn't look away when the braided-hair person looked right back. "We say soil," the young person said.
"Not dirt?" The accent made the question sound different.
"That's the word the writer used about the writer who wrote about" I read the sentence again. "So?". Someone called out. And, "Still a commie."
"So this passage is talking about how people see nation differently!"
"I'm soore we doo as well."
"The book explains that a writer accused of being a fascist saw nation as "the product of history, tradition, and of the long contact of the French peasantry with the national soil."
A girl from thr Cherokee Reservation told a Forest Service mentor, "I'd like to connect with the soil in the form of skiing ella."
"I would too honey. But it's not our turn to be up there today."
"I'll tell y'all 'bout a little tradition us Americans have regarding you darkies," a young white guy said.
"That's a threat," several people said calmly from their seats around the diner.
"It has to do with ROPES," the spittle shot out of his mouth on the "p" as a peacekeeper hauled on his arm to dislodge him from the booth. "And that's touching!" The guy shrugged the peacekeeper's arm off of him. "Then that's assaulting an officer," a Security Guard soft-shoed closer to the table from the doorway. Everyone got quiet.
"And I'd search his pockets," someone hissed.
"You call them them?" A skinny-faced, big nose guy asked the girl who'd rather be skiing. "They are them," she said of the Forest Service workers. "We see them all the time. But they aren't stuck on the Reservation." The guy looked out a window at the highway. "Is this the Reservation?" The girl laughed. "No."
The kitten was sleeping on a bag of knitting in the afternoon sun. "The word is spool," a woman said of a crossword puzzle designed to catch people up to the 1990's technology. People who'd been buried in Academia looked not old, but sounded like old peoples' center as concepts that had taken off in business were thrown out. Some just repeated the words but not with feeling like the words were paper hospital nightgowns.
A man in a heavy work coat, knit hat, and sandy, salty boots came into the dining area obviously looking for someone. He took his hat off and sort of wrung it in his thick hands. "Oh, thereyahare," he said to the young man who'd made reference to lynching. The young man didn't look up. His elbows were on his knees and his head resting on arms folded like a table. The Disturbing the peace citation was taped to his nametag spot. "He didn't learn it from us," the father looked around and said.
"Doesn't look rabid," the braided hair'd person said.
"We're just regular folk," the dad turned and said. "Maybe school. Maybe that's where he picked up garbage talk."
The younger man looked up. Older people could tell it was one of those moments where self sees world. "Sorry Dad," he said and rose. The father walked towards the exit. The son followed. A waft of cigarette smoke filled the foyer. But the inner doors shut out the cold and the smoke. Another FED EX truck pulled away. "Running out of time for today guys," a yellow'd lens eye-glass wearer said. He pulled up his cottony underbib pants and assured, "They know we saw a lot, so they aren't rushing us. Who needs to borrow another ten?" A couple people raised hands. "Just sign this form," he said of a clipboard.
Later in the evening two guys dressed in similar sweaters and with the same haircuts went table to table collecting the few foodscraps. Make sure no bones, no bones.
"What next?" A scrappy leather jacket and acid washed jeans asked of the woman with the kitten. She'd put on washed and dried parachute pants and these were sort of ballooning over fancy high top sneakers. "I'm not the one you should be asking."
The scrappy guy had spent a few hours teansferring all kinds of stuff between vehicles and he blew out his frustration and said, "Sorry. Thought you were the boss."
"Well, I'm not. Not in charge of anything." She handed the kitten to another woman her age who was dividing sheets of handwritten papers into neat stacks. She summoned the man in the black Scottish cap who poo-poo'd her beckoning, saying, "I can't feel my feet." She quickly said, "Don't get up. I'll come to you." Her pants swooshed as she crossed the room.
"I need you
"That's what all the women say," he interrupted in thick brogue.
She gently play-slapped his wrist twisting lemon peel strips. "I need you to find out
"Like I'm a spy?
She snaked a lemon peel twist back to her side of the table. "Find out who that gawoman is. And what she is studying these days."
"There's a finder's fee for that sort of thing in these parts, don'tchya know?"
"I'll let you have my dessert."
"Say no more."
After rounds of coffee and tea, pie and ice cream, and a makeshift birthday cake for all those lost along the way the sticky note was stuck to a glass jar of sugar. People furiously writing barely noticed. It said, Baudrillard.
"Bawd-tree-yard," the brogue-speaking man said to the cat woman as they passed each other in the entryway. "That's not good," the woman said as she tucked hands in the sides of a furry vest like it was suspenders. A writing girl plopped down pen on a paper placemat of scrawl. "What's not good about Bawd-dree-lard?"
The woman blew long stray hairs from her collar and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. "HOW in the WORLD are we supposed to," she put air quotation marks around stop this madness.
A ton of people filed into the diner doing a Congo dance. The man in the black Sottish cap steered them past the studious girl's table and snagged the book. People did another loop around and filled in any empty seats. The book was passed above head over to the cat woman. The studious girl got up in a huff and stalked over and snatched it back.
"And PIE FOR EVERYONE," a small woman with funny crooked teeth told of what some sober people had done for people who'd not drank in a week. She hiccupped and the smell of whiskey lingered out over the French fries. Her dreamy eyes were drooping-tired but she smiled at a very tall, already balding older young guy. "Daht. Daht is yall yat mahters." A short guy looked much shorter next to him, asked "Her smiling?"
"Yah."
"You should hang out with us. They smile at us all the time." The short guy lifted a to-go cup of coffee like it was a long neck beer and some splashed on his little beard. His stubby hand wiped the beard down. A server clarified, "I didn't bump into him."
"Pretty talented sweetheart. No touching and I'm all wet."
"Gross." A woman with short hair said to a forkful of salad.
"Whawhat doos us do?"
"To make 'em smile?"
"To vork?"
"Little a this, little of that. Mostly haul shit around until we get yelled at."
"MAYBEE ME. ME tawk at my honey."
She put her arm on his forearm as he used his butt to make room in the booth. "No," she hiccupped. He looked at her tiny hand on his arm and then at the floor. "Honey." She hiccuped again.
"It's almost gone," a young boy in a tweed cap shouted up to the back entrance of the diner.
Young men and women in dress clothes made way from the Greyhound bus to the diner parking lot. Several beautiful women with instrument cases and briefcase-purses eagerly looked for a familiar face inside the diner. A young man with bushy short hair atop nicely cut longer hair in the back found the man in the black Scottish cap and handed him a roll of money. Said, "There'd be more but that bus driver took a fee for pulling off the highway. Can you imagine?"
The busdriver was behind the young man and said, "Imagine. Imagine getting a ticket for
"Where's the bus? Where's the bus?" An almost hysterical woman tightly clutching her purse asked and asked.
The bus driver turned to her and grabbed her shoulders. "Bessy, I'sah parked it near some trucks out yonder."
"Are you sure Willie?"
"Yes'm I sho nuff," he turned the woman and walked her to the door and looked out. "You see it too? Right, Bessy."
"Hmmmmm-hmmmmm."
"This'n parking lot'sah nevah been so busy."
"See where people are trying to get to. " She patted her purse. "Boss man lemme hang onto those passes."
"Tha Transfers?"
She fished a little stack of boarding pass tickets out of the purse, a little black patent leather square with a snapping gold chain. "Oh Bessy. These ain't for this bus."
A truckdriver with a tank of liquid gas squeezed past Bessy and looked at the tickets. "Now that's called moonshining where I come from."
"Is that bad?" Bessy asked.
"Only if the boss finds out," the truckdriver wheezed a laugh.
"I'll call the Boss man."
"No. You go and wait on the bus." He took the key out of his uniform coat pocket. "I'll call MY boss and find out if he needs those before Monday." She opened the purse and let him drop the key in there. It was otherwise empty. "No sense getting my hands cold 'til I get there," she told me. "Prolly say, these are harmless. Talks like that, he does," the busdriver made way towards a phone for drivers.
A man got change for a dollar bill from a counter person and tried to pay a guy delivering a stack of newspapers a few hours before daybreak. "Not to me," the guy waved both hands. "I don't touch the stuff. Just deliver them."
It was almost daybreak, a lightening sky patch fought the darkness. The man who'd bought the newspaper took it from beneath his arm and rapped it against a towncar window. The window came down in a smooth electric way. "I don't find anything in it about dead babies in garbage bags," the man said to the person inside. A hand took the newspaper. "They don't care my dear."
"What dead babies?" I asked the two people sitting in the truck's cab with me. Sssshhhh.
By the time the newspaper got to our booth the Sports were a wrinkly and greasy four pages on top. The woman with the kitten dug through for International news. The man in the black Scottish cap smelling freshly showered and shaved came by the booth and told her, "You won't find it in there, but Wolly's having a run of success."
"What's that mean? And do you know anything about dead babies in garbage bags?"
She rubbed her temples.
"Worker's movement, Poland."
"Ah, it's called Solidarity or something similar in Polish."
A man in a smooth black zipper-necked sweater leaned hard against his booth seat. The woman said, "Yes Zen."
"May I let you know that local law enforcement asked the big brother to investigate the various garbage left by this year's summer crowds."
"And?"
"And there are Church people involved."
Silence.
"Volunteers. Mothers against drunk driving type groups of them."
"Thank you Zee."
The slender man left a bigger bill on the table. Wrapped his neck in a muffler and donned a velvety racing car coat.
