It was just after the holidays and there were lots of bottles. I felt pretty good about it, actually, seeing as I hadn’t gotten anyone anything for Christmas.
This would be my gift to Salvador. I got started in the morning crushing all the cans to save him the trouble. I even sorted all the brown and green bottles in separate bags, whereas I usually only put the clear glass aside. I suppose there wasn’t often enough dark glass to justify the effort on my part, but I was feeling altruistic about it nonetheless. I don’t usually feel good about much of anything, so I didn’t want to think about it too much and ruin the moment.
I made two trips to the dumpster right around dusk, when Salvador usually comes by, but I held off on the third trip, all the cans, deciding instead to wait on the porch for the sound of his bike ambling through the lot. He was pretty late, but the way he was guiding the bike so tentatively down the lot, I knew it was a good day for him.
Walking down the stairs I caught Salvador as he swung his leg over the seat. I lifted the two bags, he peeked inside the dumpster enclosure, then glanced back at my two bags. He pushed his cap back on his head, scratching his receding hairline.
“Uh oh, amigo.”
I could tell what the problem was before I’d crossed the lot. He was overloaded.
“Okay, tell you what. You trust me, right?” I waited for him to nod slightly. “Okay, I’ll hold on to this stuff and you just ring my bell tomorrow morning around nine and I’ll drive you over. Sound good?”
He pushed his hat back again, rubbed his hairline.
“I go to church tomorrow with my mother.”
“Oh, okay. Well maybe after.”
What a guy, I thought. I’d never seen him with anyone, so all this time I’d assumed he was alone, out for himself. I don’t know if I would have been more generous in the past, knowing he was taking care of his mother as well, but I figure going forward I can keep it in mind.
“Maybe after,” he said, “I ring your bell.”
I trucked all the cans and bottles back upstairs, lining them up along the balcony so they wouldn’t smell up the apartment. I hadn’t been quite as good about rinsing things out the last few weeks. And when people come over to drink case after case of beer long into the night, the bottles tend to end up all over the floor and from there, the next morning or so, they’d go straight into a bag. I’d put them straight out onto the balcony, in the sun, so a few of those bags were a little ripe already.
Anyway, one more day couldn’t hurt.
In the morning I got to writing just as the sun chopped through the vertical blinds at first light. It didn’t bother me. I was feeling pretty damn good about helping Salvador and his mother and I wasn’t hung over. I’d gone to bed after only two beers.
I was writing about the beach and the sun on the sand and young love and how, even in the dead of winter, southern California is terribly nice. I did have to pause a few times and think up different adjectives to give the poem the right mix of melancholy, being the lull after the holidays, and affirmation, since things were looking good. For the big chorus, I really amped up the optimism and took a broad stroke at prose itself.
…streaming words they flow
searching for a place
in perfect high, in perfect low
this life without a grace
the thoughts and sound and sanity
whatever has been told
give me quiet, give me peace,
just something to behold…
Reading the whole thing again, that last part was the only part that doesn’t make me sound like a fourteen year old copping his first feel. I decided for the moment, that’s what I would keep.
I was out on the porch smoking when a very nice convertible pulled into the lot and stopped outside my apartment. I don’t usually talk about people’s cars, but it was Salvador who got out that really took me by surprise. As it pulled off I read the insignia; BMW 635 something, but I missed the last couple letters. I had to collect myself as the bell rang from inside the apartment.
Salvador’s mother drives a stunningly beautiful sports car. Salvador rides around collecting cans in a beaten up ten speed that doesn’t really have ten speeds anymore.
We carried the cans and bottles to my car, a pretty tired looking sixty-seven Plymouth, and made our way to the recycling place. When I made a right Salvador shook his head, pointing the other way, saying, “No, no, around. Turn around.”
“Should I make a u-turn?”
“Si. I know that place, down airport road. They rip you off. This place is good. Behind Albertson’s.”
“You got it.”
And that was most of what we talked about on the way down. That and I asked how church had been. He said it was okay. I just couldn’t find a way to break the ice.
After the recycling place I’d had time to think, and we’d pulled in forty-six dollars, so he was a little more talkative. We were both in a good mood and then it hit me.
“So, you see your mother often?”
“She likes when I go to church with her.”
I waited. I didn’t want to push.
“Usually around Thanksgiving I visit, then I stay the night. I go to church on the weekend, and we stay like this until a few weeks.”
“Only a few weeks?”
“I don’t believe, but I try. For her.”
“You try…”
“Every year, amigo. Hot meals, a warm bed. I make it last seven weeks sometimes.”
“And then…”
He wiggled his thumb and said, “Ring, ring,” like his bicycle bell. Back at my place by then, I hadn’t even thought to ask where his bicycle was at.
“Oh, Salvador, how are you-”
“It’s okay. I walk. It’s a good day.” He smiled again, one of those unbeatable smiles that the universe hadn’t earned, but he gave it anyway.
I thought about offering him a meal, but he’d always refused in the past, and I suppose he had a couple more weeks at his mother’s place anyway. Hot meals and a warm bed. I let him revel in the little extra kindness he’d found and waved as he closed the door. And in a way I felt honored. He’d never really told me anything personal until that day.
Salvador strode off toward the main road as I sat in the Plymouth, completely perplexed at the absurdity of it all, smoking another cigarette. What could I do but the only thing he would accept from me? I had to go out for more beer and hope it would a difference.
* * *
© Anthony David Jacques MMX
