Odell
John wants me to go to church with his family this weekend. He tells me that my life is empty, but it isn’t quite because I bought some pot today.
October 5, 1978
Odell
Halfway through my first shift at the packing plant, I realized I had never imagined anything could be so boring. I remove leaves from pears and discard them into a wet, ever-growing pile. All of us in rubber gloves, our eyes dead. In the break room, the women talk about canning their backyard fruit.
October 12, 1978
Odell
I am now a Teamster, Local 607. I had no choice. I asked the women on the belt what it means exactly, but no one really understands it. Membership is $25; dues are $12.50 a month. There’s free medical and dental but only after three years, by which point you’d be insane.
October 16, 1978
Odell
After I paid my membership and first month’s dues, Duckwall–Pooley cut its night-packing crew. Workers with seniority were given the sixteen jobs in presize, so until at least the middle of November, I’m laid off and will have to live on John’s $2 an hour.
On the way home after getting the news, I came across a very drunk Mexican guy whose car was in a ditch. It was Jesus’s brother, and because I didn’t know what else to do, I brought him back to my trailer. We were up until four, me talking my high school Spanish. Now it’s seven. I’m at Scotty’s Café and he’s asleep in my bed.
With the layoff, I’m worried about money. Two people at the plant told me about a possible job picking mushrooms underground with a miner’s hat on. I’m not so sure about John. On Sunday he took me to his church. There was a lot of swaying back and forth, a lot of crying and praising His name. Then I went to lunch at his house. They don’t allow their kids to trick-or-treat. On the way home he told me how he lost his legs. Then he removed one and showed me the stump, which made me think of a denuded chicken wing.
October 17, 1978
Odell
Today my shoes are twice as heavy. They’re also green. Everything is green from the chrome oxide I used to polish John’s jade. The insides of my ears are green. So is my snot.
John has a fifteen-foot-long, five-foot-tall block of jade that was originally bought by General Perón in Argentina, who wanted a statue of his wife Eva carved from it. John says it cost $100,000. Minus, I guess, the $14 he paid me today to polish a few thin slices of it.
October 30, 1978
Odell
Sylvia from the employment office invited me to have dinner with her family. Everyone ate something different: her husband, meat loaf; her grandson, a pork chop; me, a hamburger; and her, cottage cheese. She played Fiddler on the Roof and danced around her kitchen. What a delight she is.
John’s legs were aching at work, so he took them off and rolled around in a wheelchair. He was in the merchant marines. Meanwhile, I hear the plant is laying people back on.
October 31, 1978
Odell
I gave a guy at the plant my address, and last night he came by. Tom has a rose tattooed on his shoulder and two hearts on his forearm. We went to the trailer where he lives with his mother, and maybe one day I’ll get into what happened there. Right now I want to take a bus to Kent. I want to be with my friends, not going to church with John or staring down a dildo collection at Tom’s. It’s up to me. In a week I could be in Ohio, or I could still be here.
November 9, 1978
Odell
Tom came by, mad. He said, “I thought we were friends.” Then he said that friends have sex, and it doesn’t matter whether I want to or not. I should just do it because he wants to. Before he left he told me that I’ll never find anyone to love.
To hell with him. I’m saving myself for marriage.
I seem to grow more confused every day. Sometimes I think I was better off in Chapel Hill or Kent, just getting high and hanging out.
Also it’s so cold here, too cold to do anything but sit in front of the space heater. Right now I’m wearing long underwear, a flannel shirt, a pajama shirt, a sweater, a jacket, a coat, and a hat. Inside.
Later:
I plugged in a second space heater. It worked for two minutes before the circuit blew. Then it was back to the cold, only with no lights. I tried to cry, but nothing came out, so I coughed instead.
This morning Norm fixed the circuit and I began to winterize my trailer with a new sense of urgency.
November 30, 1978
Odell
John hung a sign in the workshop that reads JESUS IS LORD HERE. The good news is that I start back at Duckwall–Pooley on Monday. Two weeks later I’ll be on a bus headed home.
December 5, 1978
Odell
I don’t pull leaves off apples and pears anymore. Now I’m in bin repair. My hands are bloody ribbons. I lug, staple, and nail the 150-pound crates the fruit arrives in. When there’s nothing to do, I don’t have to pretend there’s something to do. It’s humiliating to have to look busy.
Mexicans have been great for rides lately, especially young ones. It’s so hard to put things into focus right now. Maybe in a few years I can make sense of this fall in Oregon. These are just notes. By then, though, this time will be touched by sentiment.
December 16, 1978
Odell
I’ve returned all my library books and given the orchard cat a big Christmas can of dog food. My last ride home from work was with a Bridge of the Gods toll collector. He looked like a Punch-and-Judy puppet and said that in the summertime, the job pays off because young women wear “scanties” and you’re never too old to take a peek. John wanted me to carry a package to Cheyenne but changed his mind. So that’s it. My next bed will be in Raleigh.
1979
January 1, 1979
Raleigh
On New Year’s Eve, Ronnie’s friend Avi and I wrote on the street with Valium. Later we went to his friend Julia’s. She has a cardinal in her freezer. I saw it.
January 18, 1979
Raleigh
I have been working at the Empire (my new name for Mom and Dad’s rental properties). Today Mom helped, and she and I talked about prayer in school. She is an agnostic. The Phil Donahue Show has gotten her thinking. Today she said, “The Bible’s view of women stinks.”
January 19, 1979
Raleigh
Amy babysits and scours the houses for dirty magazines, which she then brings home. She really is divine for her age (seventeen). Today while I shoveled the driveway, she asked what I thought the filthiest word was. I said cunt. In her opinion, it’s fuckwad. She said it sends chills down her spine. The other day we went to see Midnight Express. She was really loud during the torture scenes and kept squirming in her seat, saying, “Shit, oh, shit.”
January 20, 1979
Raleigh
I met and went home with Eduardo, a twenty-eight-year-old Costa Rican now living in Raleigh. It’s fun to see where people live. Eduardo has quite a few black-light posters. I never thought I’d do this—go home with strangers—but it’s OK with the right stranger.
January 24, 1979