Just Living

Johann Georg Meyer Von Bremen

The neighborhood is made up of houses built in many styles on small lots that line up block after block.  The lots were divided by a developer who sold them off one by one.  He put in basic water and sewage but runoff was handled by open ditches that lined the street in front of the houses.  People came because the lots were cheap, but they were near the a waterway that ran to the Gulf.  "Bunny huts" is what a fellow I worked with when I was a kid selling magazine subscriptions.

People park in the street and in the yards.  There are lots of pickup trucks, but there are big motor homes and trailers and even the occasional semi parked next to the houses which look small by comparison.

"There are fourteen convicted sex offenders in this neighborhood," Player told me.

"Those are the convicted ones," I said.  "What about the rest?"

"No way to track those," he said.  "There are drug dealers all over here.  Guys walk up and down the street all night long.  This guy over here deals in speed, this guy in pot. . . ."  The list was long.  "You see all these guys not wearing shirts?"  Nobody seemed to own a shirt in this neighborhood.  "You see a guy not wearing a shirt, you know he's doing Roxies.  It make you hot."  Everyone was doing Roxie.

How's a kid going to grow up living here?  Nobody cares about school.  My cousin's husband tells me, "There's lots of people who didn't finish high school who are smarter than college graduates."  I can't argue with that.  I know it is true.  Take a smart kid and put him in this environment, and he's going to figure out how to beat you.  Player's plenty smart and likable.  What are you going to do?  I ask him things about the future, tell him about opportunities.  He just kind of goes blank.  He's doing O.K.  He doesn't work much, has a big new truck, gambles all night and sleeps all day with his very pretty girlfriend.  Things happen.  There is much excitement.  He knows people who will kill you if he asks them to.  Some go to prison, some don't.  It's all too familiar.

I've watched the families generation after generation, all the smart, beautiful kids.  They do well for awhile, but there is no money, and they have to get a job when they turn sixteen.  Morals are loose and the girls are put on birth control early on.  Eventually, they begin to know where they are in the social hierarchy at school and turn away.  If they are lucky, mom or dad puts them in some polytechnic high school to learn a trade, kids who are far too bright for that.  An early pregnancy, food stamps, some government checks, help from the family.  Another generation.

Player's happy for now, happier than I am, perhaps.  He doesn't worry about the things I do.  His world is immediate.  You'll never hear him say anything like "global awareness."  I'm not sure he can find most countries on a map.  But he put an LCD screen on his dash so he can watch movies while he makes the long drive to gamble at the Indian reservation.  He has a cool phone and plenty of cash.  He lives at home and pays no rent and feels no need to get his own place.

Driving home with my mother, I'm sleepy.  I'm always sleepy now.  My body aches with fatigue.  Why can't I sleep?  Dozing off in the car, I think of what I need to do when I we get back.  So much to be taken care of.  I don't want to do it.  I want a big new truck with a t.v. screen and a cool phone.  I want to be clever and young, filled with social wit.  But there are new books to read.  That will be good.  And I'm going to change my diet around a bit.  Maybe I'll go back to yoga.  Perhaps I'll sleep better.  But first I must get all this other stuff taken care of.  There's so much to do.

I wake with a sudden jerk and look out the passenger window.  We are driving over a big river that barely flows through palms and grasses.  The sky is cloudy.

"Why don't you put your seat back," my mother says.

"No, I'm O.K., " I tell her.  I keep looking.  There is no one on that river.  Maybe I'm coming down with something, I think.  In a minute, the river is gone.