"This is NOT A COMMUNE!!!!"

   "Now, get yer crap and leave the Good Book."

  "But, but

  "No.  No.

  "But

  "But NO.  NO MORE BUTS."

  "SLAM IT AGAIN PARDNER AND I'LL KILL YOU"

  "Third time this week I been called out this way to re-glaze that pane of glass." 

  The steam from the thermos'd coffee made one of the men sniff the air harder.  That made him sneeze. 

  "No real

  "At least we switched out the replacement with what's that stuff called?

  A snarl.  "PANES OF glass left." 

  

  "What are you so angry 'bout honey?"

  "Don'tchoo honey me bitch."

  "Girls.  You gonna take a shower son?" 

  "Has everyone gone crazy again?" 

  A soft bass laugh.  "Not everyone no.  Just the people who didn't get any bacon out the pound." 

  "Okay.  Water still rust-colored?"

  "Well, dear, I take it back."

  "All of it?"

  "No m'am just the part about wishing I'd had girls instead of boys or could've been a good Dad if I'd only had girls

  "Don't call me m'am Mr. It makes me feel old."

  "Are you old enough?" He gasped and covered his mouth with a giant hand.  She slapped at him.  He pulled her halter top down. 

  "Told ya.  Their ain't a mature person in this whole fucking county."

  "It's a shame you think so.  Hand me that 2x4 and let's get this going.  It'll go great until people get sto

  He put his hand over her mouth.  "It is that season.  Before they slave us into summering the summering."

  "Must be awful." 

  "You'll see!  No bed of roses around here any season, but just after graduation, whew, there's a stampede of coming and going.  We never really stand a chance of getting ahead." 

  "One job at a time.  Or you'll get like those younger people with ten jobs each and what did the young gentleman call it?" 

  The man sat up spry.  "A young gentleman?  Up here?" 

  "Overtaxed?! Like too much on one plate.  Oversomething.  Lemme think." She put the hankie back up to her face and breathed through the stuffy nose.  "OVEREXTENDED," she yelled.

  "No need to yell.  I can hear you." 

  Someone sittin' sketching on the lawn square that wasn't mud got up and went inside.  Couples inside the house pointed at the two couples outside the house.  "That one can hear again already," the sketcher said.  The man finishing his coffee tossed the cup towards the window so that it would fall short of hitting the window.  Then he put hands in his ears, wiggled all his fingers, and stuck his tongue out.

  "Maybe everyone has gone crazy again," the guy in the bathrobe said.

  From inside the barn came a note: SUBJECTS THROWING WET DOG TOYS AT EACH OTHER

  "Look out, I'm going in." 

  She'd crumpled the note into a paper grenade and threw it at the notewriter.  "Give it up already.  You're not a social worker anymore.  And I'm not a nurse.  And YOU," she turned towards a mud and water splat covered girl, "You're NOT Uncle Tito, you need to come out of the closet or whatever this is."  She looked at the racks of laundered clothing and carefully stacked piles of stuff--islands in the flooded area.  "What the hell is this?" 

  The unicorn crossed her arms and stomped a foot.  "It's NOT hell.  Fact, it's a fucking paradise compared to the "real" world."

  "Everybody's Dad" appeared in the cardboarded door.  "Holy shit.  Wipes?"

  Anybody coming or going with a shopping bag had told him it was wipes. 

  A guy working on the back porch said, "Looks like he's got a whole harem in there." 

  The bone-tired man turned and looked at the heckler.  "Shut up or I'll shoot you." The people outside the barn grabbed tools and pieces of the project and moved further back.  He went inside and closed the cardboarded door.  "We need to talk.  All of us need to talk."

  "We're TOO BUSY." 

  "HIDING AWAY?"

  "PREPARING FOR THE LOCUSTS.  GO AWAY. Please."

  He went out and pulled the cardboarded door shut.  "Good news guys.  The shrews are almost tamed." The unicorn threw a soaking wet dog stuffy at the cardboarded door so hard it bulged outward.

  "You guys feeling sorry for yourselves or what?" 

  Silence.

  "Maybe a little," someone said quietly. 

  "Just thank your lucky stars you're not in the Middle East." 

  "Oh my God.  Are you Jewish?" 

  "Maybe.  Maybe not.  Who wants to know?"

  "I'm called," she mumbled her nickname, "And reason I ask is because I am." 

  All eyes fell on her and some mouths dropped. 

  "Are there others?" 

  "M'am?" 

  "Are there other Jews that got evacuated?"

  "It's not a closet." 

  "Did we say anything offensive?  We usually do."

Bigfoot and the unicorn

  blinked at each other after sitting quietly, facing each other, in the woods all morning. 

  The last of the tripping balls had left the night before as the thick black smoke of the "mile pile of tires" emcroached on the forest. 

  'We did it Bigfoot.  We helped everyone of them."

  Bigfoot was still too shy and not confident in himself enough to smile.  But his head dropped forward the slightest bit and his eyes looked up at the unicorn.

  "They're coming." A man taking a break from his grocery store jobs had removed the portable oxygen mask and gave a "head's up". 

  "Why are you crying Guardsman?" An EMS woman on foot with a lightweight backboard asked through hers.

  He woozed and knees bent but he straightened and he put his mask in a carribiner by the hose and switched its head to a full face shield.  "Must be the air." 

  The EMS woman didn't continue the conversation as the man tightened the fittings.  She offered the backboard but took it back before his hand could grab it.  "Injun."  The man slightly wheezed and the face shield fogged up on the inside.

"GET AWAY from MY chickadees!"

   "That's what she said?" 

  "I've heard it was the end of a rifle that said it."

  Giggles

  Raised eyebrows

  "Can't change us on that.  

  "So quit trying."

  "So in that scene

  "Right

  "Wait, explain it slow so this one can character define, and that one can keep up with plot."

  "MY therapist counseled to get into my life, not hand it over to....to Hollywood people." 

  "So the quiet one grabbed the rifle?" 

  "None of us are exactly Hollywood yet." 

  "Yeah, my husband to be, he, wants the reigns back."

  "Who took 'em?" 

  "Stupid Feds."

  Huh, someone acted shocked.  "They were there that night too?" 

  "Possibly.  But what I mean is that he's very independent.  And it's like the aid people want everyone to be hooked on help."

  "Hooked On Help, sounds like a book I could write about all this clean up work."

  "Oh.  Sorry

  "No need.  I'm getting used to being the fifth wheel.  This creativity thing has helped some," He started to slowly close a notebook.  A skeletal-thin hand put a wedge in the just leaving.  The tenderness made the man cry.  The man crying made a woman cry.

  A group moderator-on-duty poked a head in the door but couldn't quite see that far.  "You better not be talking politics in there."

  "We're not, we're, uh, painting." 

  The door was closed quietly. 

  "Why no talking politics?" 

  A burst of held-in emotions came out in a laugh hiccup and then a gasp sucked back in.  Not everybody knew.  "I mean my mother has the same rule at her table but...."

  "Everything's political."

  "Maybe not everything should be." 

  "Agree." 

  A comfortable silence came over the room.

  "You should see how people are using 'authority' against people." 

  "I see it everyday.  I see it." 

  "You do?" 

  "Girl, I'm a little older.  I think we thought it would change." 

  "If it's not petty officer fights, it's shutting the door on truth."

  "And people can't seem to rise above personal stuff." 

  "That's always hard."

  "Especially on businesses." 

  "These two people called each other out here."

  "Yeah, there wasn't a paint not spilled or pencil unbroken when the table got knocked over." 

  "That sent a bunch of people into their 'bad place' and just about ruinted this 'good place'".

  "Which we need 'cuz we're misfits." 

  The man's slimming from well-fed face sagged sad.  "Misfits?" 

  "Well, by choice mostly." 

  "Yeah, it's not sad." 

  "Did I take it that way?" 

  "Kindasorta looks like it." 

  "Even my face is tired.  Don't judge me too hard." 

  "THIS IS a judgment freezone." 

  "Why are you crying?"

  "Why are you crying?"

  "Must be the fire smoke."

  "Must be."

  Hands instictively re-opened notebook.  "We've got some coffee left.  Want some?"

  "Real coffee?" He just let the tears keep coming out.

  "Well, it's chickory from the Chicago Chicano."

  The man laughed a little and the snots bubbled out his nose.  "Hankie?" 

  Hands passed a clean kerchief.

  "You feel tired." 

  "Honey, I passed tired six weeks ago."

  "Are you also psychic?"

  "Occasionally psychotic, mostly fragile and overly sensitive."

  "Like raw?"

  "When I was younger."

  "Me too."

  "Me three." 

  "I'm not old enough to have been raw and now egg shell."

  "Egg shell.  I like that.  Can I jot just that down?"

  "Do you mean empathic?" 

  "I dunno.  Pass one of those dictionaries over here." 

  The door opened and a fireline worker in a totally blackened face sock came in kind of in shock.  People dropped everything and surrounded her without touching.  She put her exposed face, tear- streaked blackened around her baggy eyes into her hands and let it out.

  She pushed away a hug-giver.  "My breath smells bad.  Real bad." That made her laugh.  But her breath got caught in between upper and lower lungs.  She pointed wide-eyed at the corner of the room and wheezed, bag, my bag.  Someone off-duty from EMSing dove on the bag, ripped it open, found inhaler.

  "SHE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ON THAT SIDE!!!!!"  A man's voice yellscreamed.  And a wall of a barn shaking as someone shoved him into it like a hockey game body slam.  A Chief pointed at the ground.  The man sat down and shoulders slumped like a flour sack emptying.

  "You," the Chief pointed at someone else.  "Go in there and find out." He went back to the SUV he'd driven up in.  "It's borrowed.  Mine blew up."

  In the early 1990's a lot of stuff wasn't as established as it is in 2025.  As States and organizations we learned best practice on a lot of things by doing.  Doing our jobs and pursuing our interests.  After the storm and all during mud season and wildfire season (which was factually longer than typical) because of "factors" we also learned a lot from each other.  

  "It's sort of a cross-discipline approach," a steady-voiced guy with "feelings" explained to a group of people coming aboard situation about what all needed to happen with so many processes going on all around.  "And, the public does need to know stuff too." 

  Somehow there was only minor fighting about the politics of everything.  When lives are in danger is not the best time to protest, make points, push personal agenda.  Better to coordinate, but not share PPE...Joe Shmoe never thought of it that way (didn't have to, someone else got paid to)....it's different in the mountains (well, some things are and some are not....

  Trading information on the why's became dinner talk.

  The woman kept wiping at some unseen spot on her knee.  Nothing's perfect, she wiped at the spot again.  

  "What if our groups like merged?" 

  "Are you just trying to get us to babysit?"

  "Is it therapy?"

  "Sort of.  For some of us." 

  "You gonna sell our ideas out from under us?"

  "I haven't even had paper since the storm." 

  Someone pulled extra notebooks and pens from a knapsack.

  "I been drunk since then."

  "We lost everything."

  "Well, maybe I was sober for a day in there."

  Giggles.

  "That's no better."

  "Maybe it'll never be normal again." 

  "Seems to have triggered everyone's armee-what's-that-word?" 

  "ARMAGGEDON"

  "SEEMS LIKE IT"

  "Hand me that bin of paints."

  "You really think getting creative will help?"

  "Something's got to.  It's like we're stuck."

  "Can't hurt."

  "That's beautiful!"

  "Yeah I guess, but we're ugly."

  "Pretty much so."

  "Pass me that pack of nails.  I gotta get ready for work." 

  "It's like I can't get back."

  "A dream?"

  "No, like I can't get back into my life."

  "You didn't have a life." 

  "Well, I'm here."

"She deserves a moustache."

  Some of us younger girls were flabbergasted that the older girls were being so nasty towards us.  

  "Took every pill in the house."

  "That's really dramatic."

  "And expensive."

  As far as they were concerned it hadn't been cruelty to switch pills collected at a doorway of a party with hormone pills.

  "Didn't even notice for two months."

  "Where the hell have you people been?"

  The mud was everywhere.

  Dried red clay mud.  In spatters and slides.  Abandoned clothing was stiff with the stuff.  Seemed like there was a hardened footprint or tire tread every five inches in every direction.

  An old lady had sat inside the doorway and pointed her cane in the direction of the drugs.  "That'll be in the expense column," a father said of the two inch thick mud on the path through the house.  "It's like having two carpets, quite complaining."

  "We are way past complaining." 

  "This whole thing is on-real," a twenty-something said.

  "Oh LOOK....that one grew a whole beard!"

  A young woman in a teeshirt and bathingsuit felt her hairy, furry hairy face.  She screamed and scattered the contents of a pillow backpack.  "Oh. My. God." She said to the compact.

  Out the back door the steps were practically a mud slide.  "Holy shit." 

  "Surely it's not shit too."

  Other parents were gridding a field, collecting things in post-storm-clean-up-buckets.  A mini skirt was skewered and held up in the sunlight.  A head poked out of a tent.  "The bathing suits worked!" 

  "Another smiling virgin?" 

  "Yeah, just sleeping in.  Thanks." The young boyman grinned.

  "We done good kid."

  "Except for those that seem to have really turned into party animals." The old woman emphatically winked.

  If it hadn't been for the Church Ladies the plan would not have worked.  I thought back on all the work we'd done on ourselves and in relation to each other and suddenly felt exhausted.

  Oh my gosh, little kids were saying near the edge of the forest where the unicorn's horn was laying on the ground.  A little girl cried.  A small boy demanded to know, What exactly happened?!

  A young woman with a serious face but also a huge smile sometimes started to explain how the unicorn got soooooo famous for being soooooo loving and kind when she wasn't fighting to defend innocents, well, they all came 

  To hunt her?

  To trap her?

  To kill her?

  Oh noooooo honies.  Bigfoot would never let anything or anyone hurt the unicorn!  They just, well, they wanted to be loved too.

  Would the unicorn love us????

  Sure would.  In fact I saw that older, old unicorn knee deep in the muddy trenches in the war on good people.  

  You did?

  She nodded and you could tell she was kind of in awe of the unicorn. 

  That unicorn pointed people in the direction where they wanted to go.  And tripped bad people in the mud.  And, demanded that people look inside THEMSELVES instead of fighting each other over stupid stuff.

  But where did she go?

  The young woman looked into the woods and said, Maybe, she went home with Bigfoot.

  Did he leave any big footprints?

  He may have.  Let's start looking.

  "Apparently," Someone said inside the tent, "That was a typical Friday night, traffic-wise, since quote, they put that fucking highway in."

  "Have you seen a woman in a polka dot dress?"

  A guy gathered all the spit in the back of his throat and hucked it up and out onto the muddy grass.  "'Pends."

  "On what?"

  "What I get for giving out infomation."

  "I ain't got nothin'."

  "Come on.  We gotta find her."

  "I seen a dress and I seen a woman but didn't look to me like they was together."

  "You're a jerk."

  "Reckon they say so."

  "Look out she just beat up a raft all night."

  "Beat up a raft?"

  "Better boxer than Brian when he drinks."

  The sun was cracking the landscape into murky and clear.  "Were you wearing a polka dot dress?" 

  "I ain't worn a dress since Prom."

  "One and done."

  She thought back to the previous day.  "It was Norah!  She came with the Church Ladies!"

"I caught the medicine ball"

  We were knee deep in

  Mud

  Children

  Another Country's problems

  Speeches.  The folding chairs had been set up with precisely two inches of space between.  "That is why," a calm stifling tears, "I owe this," the binder of Certifications raised in one arm like the Statue of Liberty torch, "To mi madre y Pops." Perfectly make upped mascara-eye flutter of eyelids forcing self to stay on the Sunnyside.

  The next person-who-got-a-job speech began after a group hugging of people sat down.  People of all ages listened intently.  The young man wove in and out of speaking Spanish and then English.  "So we have to be the generation that CAN."

  "Because we should," someone listening said.

  A cellphone rang.

  "Becauss we can."

  And rang.  Then I realized I have a phone.

  Shut it off, someone hissed.

  "Hello?" 

  "I caught the medicine ball!  I did it!!  I caught that motherfucker."

  I covered the whole thing like it was a mouthpiece on a real phone.  "It's my wounded Veteran friend!"

  "Isss MY speech," the young man said and swept his hands, scoot, scoot.

  Squealing tires and what sounded like gun shots had some people running to the window, some non-plussed, and one woman sit on her pocketbook, so the little mamas with her did the same with theirs.

  "What the fuck?" Someone asked loudly.

  The speechmaker explained just Carlos picking up Uncle Tito who they'd been stashing in the mop sink closet for the few hours before job drop-offs.

  "Probably somebody pissed they didn't get a job."

  "Or a certificate." 

  "Maybe drugs." 

  "My speech.  Iss not done." 

  "Yes it is."

  Caterers started to bring out food.  Again like a ballet in which people just knew what to do, almost everyone picked up their own chairs and moved them to the sides.  Folding tables were set up as Congratulations and plans for the future rolled around the room. 

  Smokers went outside.  A flask of spiked punch was nipped from by some.  A youngish guy waited until there were only a couple people lingering.  Said to one of the cousins, "I'm going to let him know today."

  "Who? What?" 

  "I'm going to let him," drymouth swallow, "know I'm in love with him."

  "WHAT?!"

  "Michael.  He's been so torn up about what to do." 

  'Dios mio amigo.  I would stay out of it."

  "Why?  I would be a perfect first." 

  "No amigo.  You don't get it." 

  "I get it.  He'd gay and so you all hate him." 

  "No boppy.  We don:t hate him.  He's not gay amigo." 

  "He's not?" 

  "Noooo.  He's into music and history!  And he got in the screws because his poppy is construction and his mama is restaurant.  Should he be like his mother or father with his life?!"

  "That's what his tension is?"

  "Yes boppy."

  "Oh man."

Up on the mountainside

  In a rather lonesome feeling trailer a young boy was amassing a stockpile of advice and care package materials for a big brother who was joining the Services.

  Worn out camping gear; the boy thought about keeping that for himself after watching war movies with his older brother and hearing a phone call with a recruiter about modern warfare.  He'd also heard "they" provide "tactical".  

  "What's tactical?"

  "Means like all the 'quipment and weapons.  I think."

  A friend who lived across the hollow had collected everything he could from friends and neighbors.  That included sports cups and pads for different games.  When the older brother saw those he laughed a HA-HA-HA.  But he got quiet and absorbed/into books about hygiene, sex, chemicals, and fitness.  Started taking runs in the morning.  It was nearing time to go when the little brother and the dogs would tag along.  "Pretty sloppy formation there neighbor," a Retired did a big wink when he said so.  The older brother slowed until he was walking beside, an almost perfectly muscled arm slung over the younger's shoulder pressing down, heavy load, heavy load.

"You'll do"

   One day I showed up to try-out for a catering job. This was back in the 1990's.  The "trial room" was a mix of getting close to a high school graduation/retirement party/funeral black.

  From the kitchen came a mix of music that sounded different than the "top five" played over and over on the radios and in the stores.  "What is it?  What kind of music?" One of the cool kids from a local technical college launched into a description as eloquent as writing about fine travel in Italy.  "All local?" 

  Mmmmm-mmmm he savored each sound like it was the food to cater.  And told of late nights traveling the hours between not twin, but something cities: Asheville--Knoxville.

  "Time to pack up the tunes Chico," a middle aged woman tapped on her wristwatch.

  "Iss not Chico."

  "Oh, hi, are you in charge of the catering try-outs?"

  "Depends.  These wise asses threw me a retirement party."

  "That was nice of them.  Did you help?  With the music?  What was your name again?"

  "I am Michael.  My friends call me Miguel.  Not chico."

  "Yes they do."

  "No, they don't.  And besides this, you are not a friend."

  "Well.  Until next week." She made way toward a restroom.

  The boy turned, the broad back of his super-ironed dress shirt almost glaring in the Spring sunlight, and the smell of his cologne left a path for me to follow into the kitchen.  Tall, hansome, bright, short, stout, straight-backed, young people were busy all over in the various spaces of the kitchen.  A couple "goths" were exchanging telephone numbers near a countertop with menus and binders and lists and temperature pens.  "And who are you with privileges to come and go?"

  "Privileges?"

  "Working to get in or out of the prison?"

  I started to pull a business card from a pocket but thought better of it thinking of the high-jinx going on with phones at the time.

  So I studied a book of local photography until the middle aged woman came back.  "What kitchens have you worked in?"

  "Oh, you know,

  "No I don't

  "KFC and Sonic most recently. 

  "Oh, are those kitchens now?"

 "Though I started in fine dining at an old school tavern/inn in the mountains up in Vermont."

  "Move around a lot?"

  "No.  Not really.  I'm just out of college so I don't own any property, yet."

  She kind of looked past her swollen knees at the floor and then out a window.  "Is this job, would this job be your life's plan?"

  "Well, not exactly.  Isn't it catering?"

  "It is.  But it's in the hospitality field."

  "Right.  Well, whatever job I do, I, uh, show up with a good attitude." 

  "And then the day happens."

  "I try to maintain."

  "Do have a temper though."

  "Kitchens are great for working that out."

 Other men and women started to arrive for work tucking jackets and purses into shelves and drawers.

  "You know, I've known Michael since he was this tall," she indicated her knees again.  "Nobody in his family is, uuum, feeling positive about him choosing DJ as career."

  "Ooooh."

  What happened next was nothing short of miraculous.  The professionals needed a win and it played out in a kitchen where people juggling family, friends, and many jobs at the same time appeared to me to be doing a ballet.  And in between trial tastes and rehearsing team moves for serving people actually talked with each other about car repairs, babysitting, church going, drinking problems, and whose elders needed what.  Turns out there was like a whole segment of population in our country just driving around with no housing exactly.  

  Even Michael came back in more casual clothes.  He told me he wassss from/de Brasssil.  "You are not," a gorgeous young mom and kitchen manager said.  "He's Mexicano like most of us here tonight.  I know his family."

  "How'd I do?" I asked of running food between the back and the front of "the house".  "Ask me again after you do the dishes."

  I took it as a challenge.  The practicing chefs had not burned a single thing.  "Easssy clean up?" An older cousin asked before he zipped up his leather jacket.  We didn't have to lie when we answered yes.  "Good job Michael."

  "Thanks." A younger guy came as the older cousin shook the ignition key from a keychain full of keys.  He had, I counted, 4 pair of dress pants on his arm and the cloth measuring tape hung around his neck.  Michael wiped his hands like a pizzaman on the blown out blacks he was wearing.  He took out a slim wallet and removed a ten and a five and a one, paid the man who'd done the tailoring.

  "It had to have been after the mudpit, see, because some of us women who'd been enemies before had teamed up to beautify."

  "Beautify?"

  "Well, see..."

  The Church Ladies had come with each their own make-up cases, bulb light mirrors, and traveling cases of clothing.

  A nephew had ushered them into "backstage"/you mean behind the altar dear

  Do I?

  Mmmmm-hmmmmm, one of the Church Ladies groaned beautifully.  

  On one of those first visits a gangly crowd formed in the parking lot.  Grumpy about being at something Church some people propped feet on dashboards and tailgates and broke open the last of the weekend's six packs.  Quickly tanning arms and necks and faces brought smiles and laughs.

  The Unicorn pushed her way through the stall in the parking lot and pushed her slightly older girl friend up closer still.  An interpreter was signing "an update".  The Church Ladies' particular kind of holy singing was getting so popular they'd agreed to stay in the area for a few Sundays.

  "That sucks!" The Unicorn's friend said real loud because she was "forwarding" questions from back in the crowd and just repeated what somebody else said.

  Inside....

  A man smelling of cedar and aftershave knelt next to one of the Church Ladies called Vangeleese, What'd you hear?

  About what child?

  About us all?

  She swiveled the leather desk chair away from the lighted mirror and shook her head slow and sad.

  Not good someone interpreted.

  Truth be told 'cuz that's the only way, I heard y'all's been ugly.

  Someone gasped.  Said y'all have been acting ugly, someone else passed the verdict.  Now get out. 

  No.  You can't hog them.

  Clean up your act some and maybe....MAYBE....you can come in next Sunday.

  The door was shut.

  What'd they say?

  Said we're too ugly.

  Haw.

  More judgment.

  How dare they.

  Yeah, they don't know what it's like out here.

  Cases of water were dwindling on the back of a truck as a van edged its way in behind without running anyone over.  Ugly.  

  Cans of sweet potatoes and corn.  

  Get a couple cans of corn and we'll go fishing.

  

"Ah, the smell of Spring Thaw,"

  "Especially this year.  After the storm." The wife said leading the way to getting over feeling embarassed.

  "This is that writer I was telling you about dear."

  "From?"

  "Around."

  "It's free, right?!"

  "How about a spot to pitch

  Beep. Beep.  Beep.

  "Dredging."

  "a tent?"

  Beep.  Beep.  Beep.

  "We can't do that."

  "I can stay somewhere else."

  "Did you bring it?" A third campground administrator asked.

  Beep.  Beep.  Beep.

  "Tighter budget than last summer, how it ended and all, the season."

  "Cha.  It's about ye long wait 'til you see it!"

  "And it was in the rafter's leg?!"

  "Don't worry, they scraped the tissue off."

  "Girl, I served Overseas, ain't nothing I haven't seen."

  The three bottles of wine were it.  The in-charge no matter what lady had chosen the make and model.  Had also chosen wine outta respect, for those of us not drinking tonight.  

  "Poor thing.  And stuck with us literary types."

  "I quit.  And I'm not much of a writer anyway."

  Boo's and hisses.  Caddy cats unsure of a new person.  Before totally immersing themselves in the toxifying soothe of the stuff we automatically formed into a writer's group just left of standard high school English class.

  "Whaccha been working on?"

  "NOT journalism.  More of a movie script or like an outline."

  "What kind?"

  "Well, it's a love story and it's about people who care in a crummy world."

  "I'll call Hallmark dear." And one of them took a flip phone out of a skirt pocket.  "Oh, it's no where near done."

  Wine sipping and music made me feel sleepy.  Though it was interesting to hear how whole towns couldn't or wouldn't spend money to remedy storm damage.  "There's just never enough of the stuff," a woman said of money as the last of the sticky red elixir came out of the second bottle.  Someone else reached for the third and skinned the cork.  "Feels like the first time I've sat down since the storm."

  "And tomorrow I'll write!"

  Cheers to tomorrow a husband raised his glass.

  That didn't jive with my burning desire to get it on paper so I tried to excuse myself.  "Are you a pill popper?"

  "What?!  Me?  No."

  "That's what they all say."

  "I'm not part of any they." 

  "Is that what y'all are going to do now?"

  A husband raised his eyebrows.  "Probably.  Pop pills and have group sex."

  A gasped huh and a porch pillow thrown at me.  "Better run little lady," someone warned.  "Yeah, we're fixing to do the nasty as a group."

  "We are not," another pillow was thrown.

  "I want to write some more anyway."

  "Love that puppy love feeling while you've got it!"

  Back at work the pace of business was picking up with the pace of travel.

  "Get these people in and out."

  No response.

  "We'll squabble about chores later.  If you all would just stick to the rhythm sheet we'd all be fine."

  "Clearly not updated to account for busloads of customers having a sh

  "What updates?  Show me reflected in sales."

  "And is the debriefing over?"

  "Debriefing?"

  "Assessment?"

  "Situation?"

  "Let's talk about it as a group before we write anything down on paper."

  "I thought it was the other store that got robbed."

  "Big fat welcome to the neighborhood."

  "No.  This was last night."

  "Here?"

  Noyesmaybe

  Not a robbery

  Possibly drug crazed person, or maybe it was trauma or something

  Didn't "lock" the person in the "office"

  Cops called?

  EMS

  By the way

  Yes?

  It wasn't a presentation on the disc that got (dry mouth and swallow) sent along.

  It wasn't?

  Should I ask?

  Just a title page type image.

  What. Was. The. Title?

  Hand Sex, Sir.

  A newspaper whacked on the bathroom sink.  A glance at baggy eyes.  Pursed lips.

  Somebody's pissed about something.  

  You think?

  Or

 "You there.  With no name tag."

  "Me Sir?"

  "Yes you.  I might have something for you."

  "I don't want anything."

  "I didn't mean

  Another girl took off her name tag slyly and said, "Me, Sir?" 

  "A girl.  Find out if the girls are mad about the childcare issue."

  "Can do.  They don't call me Super Sleuth for no reason."

  "Yeah, I'm not a snoop."

  

"No time to kill,"

  the Country Music song wafted across the grease-thick wall tiles and mixed with the smells of coffee and hashed up meat.

  "What do you mean you're saying you're gay, but you're not gay?"

  "Turns out," slumping shoulders, "It was something else."

  Something, something, and something else.  As people got more and more into therapists and talking to everyone like everyone was a therapist buried life events were uncovered and these influencing emotions became revealed.

  A man in drag but post-after-party so makeup "running" took a smack on the ass by a towel-wielding, bored server.  A man in dusty cowboy boots and tight jeans got up and stretched.  "It's hard to talk about retirement or anything else in this environment."

  "Well, ex-cuuuuuse me, it is the middle of the night."

  "So what was last night?"

  Silent head drop into hands.

  "You tell them Cousin It.  THEY don't own the night!"

  "Look at me."

  "Was that something else too?"

  "I can't.  It's totally UN-professional to let your face fall like that."

  A limp wristed hand to cheek.  A surprised "I look awful?"

  Hands rubbing eyes.  "It's complicated."

"Sorry," "sorry"

  "Sorry ass bunch of ya," she deemed all of us.

  It must've been after the mud wrestling because before that night nobody was apologizing for anything.  It was all, I'll whoop yo ass in the pit and you're going down bitch.  "Alley cats and bitches," she didn't mumble.  Still had all her teeth gleaming white and swore that is NOT how God made you people.

  I tried to explain circumstance and raised up certain ways but could not really account for the landslide of people in my generation cutting it all loose.  Just past our teen years we were more like actual hormones than human beings.  

  "You better get a thicker skin on this yard," she warned when I teared at kamp.  Engines revving and dust on the gravel road was the answer to Can I come along?  Just imagining all the adventures of "road trip" and hitting the road totally compounded the frustrations of being young and dirt poor.  It was hard to separate feelings of jealousy from actual well-wishing.  A biker woman was always saying May your karma bite you in the ass.

  "What's karma?" One of us Christians sort of adopted by local good people asked.

  "You'll see.  It's hard to explain but you'll find out.  'Specially if you fuck with us."

  "Who's her us?" Another biker inquired of "association".  The comversation turned vague.  "She's got ambiguous loyalties," a man said.  

  "No such thing.  I'll find out." The man in the sweater smelling of cedar and aftershave turned and left.  The night's candles had melted into stubs with no wicks by the time he returned and motioned mantalk.  

  In the harsh light of day at the store everyone looked different than the glow of "party".

  "Give me the list."

  "No."

  Giggles and screams at the other store as someone put ice down someone else's shirt.  "Will you two knock it the fuck off?" An MOD (manager on duty) cried loudly.

  "You're not even old enough to buy all the alcohol on that list!"

  "No."

  "We'll see about that one drinking two bottles of beam and a suitcase of beer.  Huh.  Young people."

  "No.  I will legitimately kick that one's," pointed with both fingers, "ASS.  MUD OR NO MUD."

  "Why do I hear children?" A DM (district manager) asked the phone and turned it to everyone standing around.

  "I won't even need to smack you down in the mud you stay so fucked up it'll be two hits."

  "I do not."

  "Do too."

  "Do not."

  "Are you fucked up?"

  "There's no childcare and no Headstart today."

  "How many children are there?"

  "Maybe just drunk-leftover."

  "I'm gonna fuck you up bitch."

  "Let's go."

  The parking lot at the work out center was packed.  But people would get out of their cars and trucks real fast and book it into the building.  "Why?" I asked.

  "Just watch."

  Sharing an electrolyte juice and a bag of orange snack food it wasn't long before we saw bling-bling cars cruising the parking lot.  One's music speakers rattled the dashboard where a piece of leftover baked potato had hardened like plastic in the roasting sun.

  "What's she doing here?" Inside the neon lights were supposed to cut down on wrinkles and splotches.

  "Yeah, what gives?"

  "Besides looking like Richard Simmons?"

  The Unicorn bunched up her lips and put up fists.  "Figured I better reactivate my muskels if'n we're gonna fight."

  Humphs and guffaws.

  Back outside a tiny woman leaned up on her toes and against the tall man's chest and they kissed.  One of his hands kept aiming the keys at the trunk of the car.  Her hand guided the key into the lock.  "My peripheral vision is better too.". They kept kissing.  "Because of carrot juish?"

  "And working out."

  "Working out and working out?"  He reached both hands around to the small of her back and pulled her closer.  The trunk popped open.  "Get you gym bag and we'll get you going on getting in shape again."

  "Okay, okay." More kissing and hugging.  Then they dropped holding eachother sway and the man turned to dig out his gym bag.  He sort of rubbed his forehead instead of smoking a cigarette.  "What is all this shit?"

  "Hmmmmm?" She backed away a step or two.

  The man held up a discount store grocery bag like it was lounge-er-ay or a dead fish.

  "It wasn't just me."

  "Did you people shop before or after you jumped off the bridge?" 

  "Well you guys said to replace what got lost in the storm."

  "Yah, that's true.  But," He pulled the cigarettes from a shirt pocket and lit one.  "But?" "But not kick up a storm of more debt.  You women don't get credit cards and how that works." She put a hand inside the back of his belt.  "Hold up holler-head.  Before you start in.  We did it with cash."

  He looked down at the trunk of bags then turned to her, but her hand was stuck so she went around him as he turned.  "You did?"

  "Aha.  Cash."

  "Get over here so I can smooch ya more," but he kept turning so she couldn't unless she got unstuck.  Somehow they ended up "carrying each other."

  Before long Gentle Boy came along with a guy in a leprachaun hat looking for The Unicorn.  "Been practicing for that battle of the band thing?" "Nope just bong hits." 

  "I grew up on this side of the mountain honey," he covered his mouth for sounding like an older woman everybody knew, then continued, " Ain't nothing I ain't seen."

  No response.

  "Nothin'"

  "What's your point dork?"

  "I'm old enough to come.  To the Thing.  Shindig thing."

  "Oh that.  Might be off anyway."

  "Off?!"

  The workout clothes were tucked almost up under his armpit, hands in pockets.  They went inside but came out right away.  "What'd you see in there?"

  The unicorn came out and ducked behind a trash can.  Poked head up and put the ssssshhh finger in front of her mouth.

  "Just a lot of people in bras."

  "Way too much testosterone for us."

  "Did I say you could speak for me?"

  "For me too," the unicorn came over closer.

  "I get to speak for you?"

  "Way too much weight-lifting." 

  "Did you see those stomach muscles?"

  "I talk a lot.  Might as well speak for others too."

  "Like representing?"

  "Reps and rips in there." 

  "Is there some other option?"

  "We won't have to fight if it's off." 

  "Off?!"

  "Where'd you hear that?  There's way too much alcohol to call it off." 

  Everyone fell quiet.  People started exiting the work out place in pairs and threes.

  "No, because I'm Jewish; we can pick up the kids on the way to the pizza place; what's next on the list?  Laundry...." The conversations blended into one.

"Stay away from my butt."

  The middle aged counselors agreed to hang back at some of the first "community" meetings.  The youth of a local Christian Church had broken free of fortress but not of Jesus.

  The fur was flying as soon as people were under one roof at first.

  "What did you just say?"

  The tall boy mumbled it again.  "Stay away from my butt." He did a quick smile and his face returned to petrified but nobody can tell, right?!  

  "I'm not the one needs saving honey."

  "Oh did you bring your

  Other half

  Partner for life

  Soulmate

  Significant other

  Someone had started a list.  But the young Christian counselor couldn't or wouldn't think of a single phrase on the spot.  This caused her to leave the room tearing up and get another story of Counseling Firsts from the more experienced counselors.

  After people invented social distancing in that room, and individuals proved able and not so much able to hold tongue, listen to each other, make points, and no shortage of outbursts, what followed rivaled Peace Talks of Nations.

  Eventually an older person asked, What if we leave sex out of the equation?

  Like you can't murder us all if there's no actual sex involved in being whatever "this" is?!

  What's the point?

  An older counselor wept out loud.  "Y'all, we are such a mess."

  "I CANNOT...." Someone said.  More people left the room.

  "Gay for a day or Christian for eternity?" Someone asked loudly.  

  "I'm not denying Christ for my wanker's sake." Someone went and sat by him and patted his knee.

  "Let's pray." A pastor suggested and just started talking to God about being neighbors.

  Someone scrawled a note that read: I wouldn't live here if you paid me.  Good luck with all your properties.

  More people left.

  Rome wasn't built in a day!  The Pastor's wife said to dashed looks regarding "community".

  BE QUIET, YOU TOO ARE AMONGST THE ROMANS!  A man said loudly.

  "You'll see," said the Pastor's wife.  

  "The power of prayer," said the Pastor.

  The next meeting was postponed due to weather.

  By the next meeting people had rallied.  Suits, ties, dress clothes; bagged, raggedly clothes; an array of tee-shirt messages and "cultural clothing".

  "Hmmmm-hmmmmm, we ready."

  People had made more lists. 

 Reasons to be a community...

  To move....

  Challenges....

  Damages, losses, irreplaceable...

  The young counselors and the Christian counselors had teamed up to survey let go social workers.  And they all volunteered to ask a simple question of the crowd forming: Why'd you come today?

  One manager was tracking down arrested overnights and hospitalized.  A co-worker of a gone missing "food server" was full of questions.  And added a point blank, and how come nobody's been tipping?

  "Now, now Miss Shirley, you know ain't nobody got cash.  Us truckers had to take up collections of change for the extra miles and time because the highway washed out!"

  "It did?" An elderly person asked.

  "Yeah onto our homes!"

  Grumbles and moans over shared disaster.

  "And we're gonna have to come up with NON-monetary solution, apparently."

  "It's called work," someone hollered.  Somebody else threw down purses being held outside the port-o-potties and raised fists.

  The pastor grabbed a clipboard of survey and started ushering people inside.

  "YOU LIED."

  "HOW SO?"

  The two women were not inclined to raise voices but did so to hear each other over the buzz in the filling-up room.  "Are you going to accuse me of saying there'd be no gay people?"

  "Are there 'gay' people?"

  "I've heard there are."

  "None of mine are."

  "Family or group?"

  "Might as well be a group home at this point."

  "Did you try game night as the Pastor recommended?"

  "No.  Did you?"

  "Well, he's my husband so I had to."

  "Was it fun?"

  "It wasn't un-fun, but it started out a little awkward."

  People were mostly clustering together not by race or religious/or not, but by motivation to come to a community meeting.  The rumors that had gone around about missing deadlines for AID and qualifying factors for receiving which kind of help/support were spanning a truth-meter a mile wide.  This meeting was mostly to whittle down some vagueness like lost everything to so-and-so's a bitch because she made my boyfriend cheat on me.  

  "How'd I lie?"

  A young man who'd been quietly listening leaned in closer and explained, this is why we ask forgiveness for sins committed knowingly and UNknowingly.  The pastor's wife leaned in closer yet and sniped about judgment of sin being performed by God, Father.  And besides to her knowledge she hadn't yet committed any sin OR fraud concerning FEMA.

  "So, thinly disguising a bid to manage an operation as a feel better community meeting is not 'lying,'" the other woman raised her drawn on eyebrows.

  "Not lying at all," the Pastor had come up behind the women in the row of folding chairs behind.  "We're trying to help non-locals understand our community better before they write checks and dash off to the next disaster." He crossed his arms in front of his chest as if to prop up his listening ears.

  "Then this is what we'll do over near the French Broad."

  A man in rugged boots, dress pants, and a rain jacket looked like he was saluting as he scanned the room for someone or something.  He addressed the crowd as everyone and outlaid the basics about phases of recovery and process.

  I guess somebody felt comfortable enough with the speaker's tone that he passed a note to the woman sitting next to him: Take the duct tape off my mouth.

  Others raised hands and started asking questions.

  Back at work...

  "Any info to relay?"

  I summarized.

  "I knew that."

  "Anything happening here?"

  The group in a pyramid of management stayed quiet until MSM (most senior manager in the space/situation) outlaid fires to put out, exceptions to routine, and a necessary phone conference with team in-store having some issues.

  The phone conference came around quickly as the store visit proved things really going smoothly.  "To you." Someone sniped.  "What's that supposed to mean?" Someone else asked in front of everyone.  Before an answer could be had somebody else directed that person by the elbow over to near the bathrooms.  "Excuse us."

  WHOA! Was heard as the bathroom door was opened and a wall of smell...like oil or fuel or gas and poop or septic...escaped into the store front.  It didn't stop a dress down.

  "We're all sick of your passive aggressive bullshit."

  "He's a control freak."

  "Both of y'all's OCD is what I'm getting."

  "Overcompensating Causes Disaster?"

  "Exactly."

  The late into the night Reality Chats between adults of differing skills and talents were helping create a professional page people could stick to.  Certainly helping us all understand our own personalities better.  But not magic bullet to a shift or day's worth of "work".

  "Let's not stage a coup today."

  "But I want

  "We'll get there.  I see your own franchise in the future."

  "But this isn't even a franchise." 

  "Well, it's a way to get the lay of the land." He pushed open the door and held it open for everyone.

  "They're not gay," a woman resetting a shelf announced.  "That's the office at the moment."

  "But that's the head," said a woman called The Unicorn.  Main contender in the "rent party" "throwdown" "shindig" that was going to somehow solve some kind of territorial dispute.  "Mud wrestling?  And a wet tee shirt contest?  I'm in," a young guy was saying loudly so one of the women who came out the men's room fired even louder, "She'll only win because she has the biggest boobs!"

  A manager rolled his eyes, covered the phone, and waved people over.  "This is the conference call." 

  "Put it on speaker phone."

  "There is none."

  "How many children are there?"

  "Quite a few since they canned the program."

  "Headcount."

  "I think it was Headstart."

  "No, yeah, but headcount the children." The DM (district manager) held the phone out so people could hear.  Then two employees got into it.  "I think the gay people should clean the bathrooms."

  A throaty ha.  "Well, I think the black people should."

  "Boys!" The DM shouted into the phone.

  "The black people ALWAYS clean the bathroom and my mama said

  "Your mama?

  "BOYS!!"

  

"These have been living in the wild"

  Back in the 1990s rednecks were already listening to songs like Welcome to the Jungle and developing their own senses about "public" and encroachment.

  "In Denver we call it Urban Sprawl," a tight-jeaned and high-top sneaker 'dude' caught part of the conversation running room to room.  He was collecting up the loaned painting supplies.  Some of the sober-for-the-dayworkers reached for laid down five-in-ones and adjusted rags on pant loops.

  "And the Valesters try and keep it within the city limits?"

  "No honey.  Turned out to be a bunch of hipster environmentalists who were more interested in microbrews and having foreigners run their dope errands."

  "They were cool?"

  "Cold as snakes."

  "Not good people."

  "So, doing the dirty work?"

  "A whole class of stagnated workers."

  "Easier to rope in beaten mules."

  "White people."

  "Not just white people Tan Man."

  "I'm not tan.  I AM LATINO."

  "I'm Native American but I don't go around announcing it like it's one of those uptighter's labelmaker's things to box."

  Conversations with more than five people in a room were rare at the time between "clean" and "dirty" in the social scene; workers investing in the companies they were working for and so avoiding "insider trading" accusations; and the sometimes volatility that doing therapy and working can bring into group dynamics.  And once a bunch of people start chit-chatting it can turn into a train wreck for crew.  It just gets going and can be like an organ adding more and more sounds to what was rally and workmode.

  Usually it takes one or two people to suggest or example....keep working, keep working....and a wiseass to ask or imply, Or?  Some crew chiefs are quick to let it be known: Or....

  Or we don't make as much?  Someone may ask.

  Then the "boss" has to employ a style if it hasn't been predetermined or if there were some other variables involved.  The best have the numbers worked out in their heads (and as "estimates") before taking the job and over/underhiring.  All professionals have "scripts" about certain things.  Actually talking business with co-workers helps people stay on message and navigate consumption flow and image.

  A cologned business-shirted and pressed slacks man came hurriedly into the main room.  He picked up a bag of jerky sliced in half and a can of mandarin oranges, unopened.  Another well-dressed man came downstairs.  "Why did you call for me?"

  "They'll be here soon."

  "Oh?" He popped open the oranges and slurped the juice.  "And who praytell are these they?"

  "They've been all over the country and bring news of

  "BECAUSE YOU'RE A HOT FUCKING MESS," A door that had been slammed, opened, saying.

  Another door closed firmly but wasn't slammed.

  "His mother's in from Atlanta."

  "And who's coming?"

  "The retail sluts."

  Nobody laughed.  A person raised bushy eyebrows.  "Are they also going to tell us how to do our jobs?" 

  "Like the designers?"

  "Maybe some input."

  "It's supposed to be just social."

  "Social?"

  "Professional."

  A youngish looking older man came down the stairs in boxers, dress socks, and starchy smelling dress shirt.  Plucked up the other half of the beef jerky, snagged a can of pineapple, and didn't seem to notice the nine others in the room.  Walked towards a window, checked time on watch, looked out window.  Watch this, a worker in a yellow tank top mouthed.  A dog resting between an armoir and a side table lifted its head as the worker went into the kitchen.  Worker came back with a baby carrot.  Bit it in half, gave the bite in his mouth to the dog who took it gently and laid it in front of where it rested its head back on paws.  The worker placed the other half carrot on the steps going upstairs.  Then rejoined the quietly prepping.

  After about three more minutes as the half-dressed man went to go back upstairs we heard an appalled intake of breath and sound.  "Did you creatures eat the whole Veggie Platter?" 

  Dios mio, someone said and backed off a ladder.

  "Am I talking to the walls here?"

  "Good going sparkie.  Loose us another one why don't you?"

  Oh shit.  Did somebody?

  The man in the boxers reappeared in the main room holding the piece of carrot between thumb and forefinger like it was a shell casing.  "Anybody know what this is?"

  "A care-rote," a worker said and then smoothed the edge of painted door trim.

  A painter woman snapped her gum, twirled a dripping brush over a can of primer, and asked in a New York accent, "Are you gonna hold us over this?  Or can I go smoke?"

  "Depends."

  "On what?" She carefully dripped the paint down the side of the can but not on the tarp.

  "The Veggie Platter is or was for the Reps." The man sighed.

  "What about the starving store people?" Asked the man who'd put the carrot on the steps.  "WHO HAVEN'T HAD PROTEIN IN who knows how long?"

  "OH, you care?"

  "Guess we know who's sleeping with who now."

  Bull fight?

  The painter woman wiped the rest of the drips on the tarp.  "Do we now?"

  "Pah-lease,"

  "I guess I'll call and get another Platter for Retail." The man put the piece of carrot on the coffee table and held out a hand, palm up.  Four well-dressed men pulled large cell phones from various pockets.  The painter woman rolled her eyes, shook her head, quipped must be nice, and went out a sideyard door.  

  Tsk, tsk, shame on you, the mother said of the boxers style when the man went back upstairs.  And, "I'm going to meet your father and, and some sports buddies of his for dinner.  Which dress should I wear?"

  "Like it matters mother."  The man felt his forehead for fever.  He came back down when the doorbell rang.  "That'll be the Veggie Platter."

  "Do weggies even have protein?" A worker asked looking at the sleeping dog who hadn't touched the carrot.

  The now fully dressed man opened the door.  "Pizza!" A delivery person said.  "But I didn't

  "I did." A worker flexed his arm muscles as he passed the money out the door.

  "Did you get the wings too?" Another worker called from behind hanging plastic.  His dark hair crowned with sheetrock dust when he got no answer and poked his head into the main room.

  People wet ragged paintbrushes and followed the aroma of hot meal into the kitchen.  In the kitchen were already like eight girls working on two footlong subs.  Some with mouths full of food kept talking.  People hadn't seen each other in a while.  A few were in a debate about what food and drink might fuck up their singing voices.  "Cha, if I eat that I'd have to just play guitar in the first set."

  "Who are you?"  Someone asked while opening a bucket of wings.

  "Just playing guitar if I eat that." She didn't let go of the pick as she waved her hand at all of it.

  "Poor ting.  So skinny." A larger woman said.  "More for me." 

  One woman had put a hand over another's mouth when asked, who are you?  And another adding a piece of pizza crust to a quick-forming pile in one of the box tops, swallowed hard, and announced to no one in particular, "She's Josie and we're the Retail Sluts."

  "Really?"

  "How many jobs do y'all have?"

  "Between us?  Like fifteen." A woman sat on a stool and spokespersoned.

  

A lot of people settled on 'good people'''

   In the 1990s it was tense enough dealing with and doing with and it was a long flip of the economy.  People pushed out breaths ('learned it at yoga") and literally bit parts of the insides of their mouths for not having anything nice to say.

  We debated "necessary repairs" and "if we can hold off, or on, for a while longer".  There was also a lot of other debates but not arguing, I hate arguments.  Part of rebuilding the trust relationship with customers and clients had to do with creating a solid professionalism that was a middle ground money-wise and that could uphold a decent and lawful social and commercial common America.  

  There'd been no end of tragedy per partying and no easy way to jump into a moving economy as it was being agitated by a re-joining of workforce people and inside-America competion.  And whatever was going on inside the nation was ringed by a margin of people affected by wars, disasters, displacement, and no quick resolution to ongoing corruption and crime.

  The heroics were found in people exhibiting patience but not being push overs.  We had to examine the roots of resilience.  And not be afraid to communicate:  what I mean is....

So there we were wrestling....

  Wet tee shirts and mud.  Utter emotional chaos.  In the working world there was resistance to change, resistance to youths and ex-cons getting work, and resistance to becoming slaves to the machinery instead of each other.

  Middle agers were a mix of shock and doubt.  The challenge from the young workers who'd survived various "trainings" (bumped up pay by roughly 1/8 of a load of laundry and served as part of promotion for many) had come without mention of whether or not there would be alcohol involved.  The survey on preferred beverages was as revealing as the assessment question how far would you go to help a team member? And this helped us too busy to put it on paper people to pass torch and glean what wisdoms we could in a workforce suddenly really on the move.

  Some local parents were mortified that a generic management team was going around surveying "knockers and ass".  Scouts for "server jobs" were mostly young, white, and male.  They were at odds with male and female "in house" management that had developed a practice of people looking each other in the eyes when speaking to each other and being like soccer players not touching "the ball" with hands.  Actually looking at each other to communicate, well, it changed the tone of megaphone and pedestal management.  Looking at your boss/propietor and admitting the nature of error, well, it gave space for people to work our attitudes into more work day; less backstabbing, talking behind backs, and slamming things around instead of reasonable confrontation.  

  "Is this over the top?" An intermediary asked.  "The extension cord?  Or, the amount of fantasy in 'dream job'?" The painting crew wrapped up a mix of disposable and re-usable tools in a sheet of plastic.  The floppy painter's hat was spattered and autographed and had big black marker music notes all over it.  "Are they making you guys, uh, girls wear the outfits they picked?" She asked.

  "No ONE IS MAKING ME DO ANYTHING.  I'M JUST having a work day until it all becomes too ridiculus.  Then I'll..."

  "QUIT?!  I've done it 18 times already this morning."

  "Up your butt micromanaging control freaks and then the disappearing vacuum style?"

  "I guess."

  "I heard about them," a visiting site-manager raised bushy eyebrows and made spooky sounds."

  For trying to keep conversations professional some of us young people kept calling everything style.  It went with glimpsing aspects of full-grown peoples' "lifestyles".  And there were "good people" among the crowds.  These were grounding rods in sometimes stormy days where all manner of people were equal as consumers.  Some of the best managers refused to get wrapped up with anyone emotionally, but managed to filter the rough and tumble into calm and steady work environment.

  At one job we spent about three weeks taking turns being manager.  "That's a style alright," a beloved traveling manager rolled his eyes at the asleep on a stool for working three jobs M O D (manager on duty).  "Better than being whistled at and ordered around through a megaphone," someone commented on another's turn taken.  "Hey," the other person said, "I told you guys I was also a PE teacher." Chuckles.

  "Or was before...."

  "The avalanche

  "Landslide

  "Armaggeddon"

  People were coming up with similar description for the mixture of debt and job change and wage stagnation.  Disasterous economic state.  "And that will never change in a place like this," a good person spoke truth.

  Meanwhile any time outside work for people with energy and ambition (despite a lack of funding) was spent in a landmined landscape with it's own mostly unchanging tones of dysfunction.  The language for all that varied.  The super-religious colored it all witches and demons, no gray areas, don't care what you call it.  And, almost as a response to terrible troubles made fortress of church and family.  This as political party shuffled "the peoples'" point of view like playing cards to develop a presentable popular show.

  People who'd spent lifetimes on cause were bordering on feeling suicidal, but nobody could talk about that out loud without being slapped with labels like "crazy" and being told (like you'd say to an overtly romantic couple) to "get a room"....only there weren't any more sanitoriums or group homes.  Especially for working people it was a one foot in front of the other march into the battles of survival, no safety nets.  And for people who couldn't get work and/or couldn't get on "the grind" it became work to drum up survival too.  People teamed and re-launched as their economic recoveries happened.

  And people grew thicker skins about getting attached and not holding back....say what you need to say.

  If you go down that road, you might not make it back.

  Who says I want to come back.

  I don't want to get stuck.

  The stuff of my dreams or bust.

  For some people all disasters-- natural, economic, emotional were all the same.  In analysing "abuse" we were also getting better understanding of "balance" and good enough and drive!  In looking at the "divisions of labor" and the American Dream we were also gaining insight into how much time and energy anything takes.  Youthful passions didn't often match up, exactly, to "vision plans" and not losing "edge" creatively, as a caring person.  We wondered if we'd traded our souls for purely "making money".  People marveled at how just working people could get.  And in music and the arts, some "outsiders" said, told you, told you.

  Just be you!!!!!!!   People were yelling at people in a daze of picked apart, never quite the ideal (given in media, magazines, and theoretical worker modeling), crumbling under an ethereal pressure that sounded like a chant: USA, USA, USA.

  No matter political persuasion and/or religion, we prayed for STRENGTH.

  

Building relationship IS part of recovery

  It was a major discovery in the 1990s to realize that "relationship" had to do with "recovery".  It was why we organized networking dinners without alcohol.  Many "small businesses" were just ideas and seeds at first.  And even people in the midst of divorce and devastation could understand, more objectively, that seeds need water and soil and sunlight.  There's a relationship there.  Or not.

  "Work-life-balance" hadn't been a thing, certainly not for the working poor.  And we had to overcome being raised up as servants and taken advantage of and even abused in/within ourselves as we were adjusting to the equalities of being professional.

  Of course there was no way around giant issues which people had been boxing and slapping labels on--GENDER, RACE, SEXUALITY, RELIGION....all the diversity had been labeled and people had been mastering CAUTION, CAUTION about personality.  And bringing things up.

  All this stuffing stuff down, ignoring, and denial lent itself to a stiff structure between management and "worker", and/or wrestling over job duties for team.  Kind of like the infighting in D.C.

  Is we is or is we ain't a team?  Some Knoxvillians reinvigorating jazz culture and working in retail and restaurant kept asking.  And that asking each other was checking in on relationship.  It was also more "give" than just showing up.  And, it was: Let's take the high road here.

  We can do it together.

  But it's a professional relationship.

  Silence.  Assuming something else?

  My MAN....

  Suddenly, everyone had a man!  Even manly men.  Stumbled through awkward for me parts of the over-talkative exuberance about getting on with life, around gaffes, with "saves" like, "Yeah, I gotta guy for that."

  Fighting crime and drugs just sort of happened most days as we all made a safety-net of professionalism.

  

  For a while in the 1990s we were full brakes and full speed ahead.  People were getting the economy back on track and we all discovered: you can't do that without being in your life.  Even the people in denial and fighting that basic factor were worked over by group dynamics which required presence.

  This was before 4000 choices of energy drink and a non-profit craze.  The world seemed split like an atom....came up, uh, what word do we say now?  Us young people had had good educations and had  already started down the roads to, all fresh and excited about "the American dream" and the promises of a prosperous nation.  Our middle agers were towing "the mainstream" and losing the Greatest Generation.  Our mentors and leaders were not in Washington.  Not except for visits and carrying the batons to the face we need to put on.

  "You're fucking kidding me?"  A manager was sucking a cigarette in two drags and letting the body fluids and drinks ooze out of a trash bag before carting it to a dumpster.  He'd whittled his entire vocabulary down to those four words though he'd studied philosophy and psychology.  It didn't matter if "the news" was good or bad.  "Yah," an out-of-work Ukrainian mechanic said back.  "Is he?" The manager asked a co-worker.  The co-worker shrugged and walking away loudly mumbled, "How the fuck would I know if he's fucking kidding you?"

  "What this mean 'kidding'?"  The Ukrainian asked me.

  "Means faking or pretending," I told the mechanic's girlfriend.  She translated and the man's face fell out of the trying to uphold smile--new day.  He pointed his finger at the manager and said something in Ukrainian.  The girlfriend translated: "Don't point at me." The finger then pointed at the sky and he asked the girlfriend to explain, he shouldn't be accused of breaking the pipes, that's bullshit, and he'd explained he was a mechanic and not a plumber.  "Did he tell me that in English?"

  A squid of an electric sound zapped and hissed.  Cooler lights flckered then kah-put'd.  Workers sighed and frowned.  The boombox kept playing.  And stockers who'd worked up to letting their personalities "shine" but only at work pulled dance moves with inventory and mentally wrote if this was a movie.  "You're fucking kidding me?" The manager asked the ceiling.

  In the parking lot a makeshift team of kind of like human resources rotating assistant managers tried to sort which stores were at what exit.  Highway traffic had been picking back up and, too young to sell alcohol; if that one's there until the other one's kids come home from school; just left, the MOD or the manager of the store?  A mounting list of snafus and issues per new policy demands.  A pot of coffee.  Highlighters rainbowing schedules and reports.  "Are you really Human Resources?" A guy in a shirt and tie under his tee shirt asked.  "No, but we're people who care."

  "Good because I've been sent to four different stores this week.  This is only Wednesday.  And I'm out of gas."

  Between the pay and the debts and the mis-spending of budget and the unforseen costs of damaged property, just go to work and work was becoming nearly impossible for most everyone.  As was getting through a day without confrontation between people not working and workers.  One visiting manager had off-the-record taught us by example that the store couldn't also be "social services". She'd recite not my problem, not my problem before having to approach on the nod in front of the pumps, or, piling up groups of people waiting for an EBT holder.  Then she'd diplomat.  Maybe one out of six people needed to PARK IT OVER THERE OR IT WILL BE TOWED.  Some people got out of steaming vehicles with hands up, waving, NOT ON ANYTHING.

  Some of the days in a final phase of the last free stuff UNLESS....find a program....for your friend then....were a crush of rambling inactivity even while previously "laid back" workers were drilled on not succumbing to apathy.

  "Wassthat?"

  "Not caring."

  "And if you don't care about yourself, just so you know, most of us are FILLED UP."

  A woman with big hair piled under a floppy painter's hat shook her head, no, not me either.  

  I have my own to care for was implied.

  An abundance of people showed up in the mornings at stores on the highways and all over in the mountains.  Political frozen-over was in a thaw.  There were, of course, people who kept on being political.  And there were those feeling ousted, so fine ah-ga-me-su.  An older woman gasped then pressed her lips together.  Then walked over to a man painting and whapped him on the back of the head.  "How dare you teach younger people to curse in Greek." He smirked.  A manager called out, "That's a cuss?!"

  "Why?"

  "Told me it was a friendly greeting." The manager put a hand over his mouth.  Shook his head.  "And on a Sunday, so you know who I cussed."

  The painting man smirked harder and winked.  "Perfect world, not so perfect eh?!" He dripped paint on the shoulder of the older woman. 

  "Because your recovery is yours, get it?" Other workers had worked through a short list of blames and excuses and into a daily sort of okay and not okay on the agenda.  Apparently a couple, someone mouthed.

  "Okay, so this hand-held device makes your labels," a visiting manager started to explain.  Someone asked, "Who drowned ours in IPA?"

  "Come on I'll show you how on this one."