Rough Draft from New Book
from my new book, "Evil Land"
PART ONE:
1.
In an empty dirt field of Southern California,
left vacant in drought,
the odor of the earth impatient yet gleeful,
in summer,
a young man lies on his back
and stares at the sky.
The long purple dusk
is like a frightful but still wing,
of some immense, sated bird.
His name is Manuel Bienez,
he is fourteen,
too old to be a child,
too young to be anything else.
In a landscape of sauntering thought –
Manuel too is satisfied for the moment,
freshy fed,
arteries full of food and oxygen,
and he lies without a care
with his hands beneath his head
not giving a damn about the insects
in the dust.
This is home,
his atmosphere,
California.
Manuel is the child of an immigrant,
but he is an American,
born and bred upon the land of the free.
He sighs,
content,
but knows he must now return
to the trailer he shares as a home with his mother
on this same property,
owned by white men,
but leased to his mom.
She is not an American,
she is without any country at this point,
though she has a driver’s license
and pays her taxes.
Manuel knows that
while most people owe their situation to luck,
he owes everything to his mother,
who clawed her way into the U.S. fourteen years ago,
all to have Manuel born on American soil
so he would be an American citizen.
Manuel gets to his feet
as he senses the last bit of purple light
seep out of the sky,
and night sinks down upon him,
the scars of his limits never so
tangible as at this moment of the day.
Always so fleeting!
He takes one last look at the fading color and thinks:
If the future is inside of us
why doesn’t it come out?
2.
“Did you do your homework?’
his mother, Anna, asks when he returns.
“Of course, mom,”
he mutters.
“Did you brush your teeth?”
“Yep.”
“Are you ready for bed?”
“Yeah…”
“Ok, just let me finish cleaning up.”
Manuel grabs the air mattress from the closet,
and smacks it onto the floor.
He plugs it in, and it rapidly fills with air
while issuing a harsh, machine noise.
Stupid air mattress, he thinks.
His mother finishes wiping the counter,
washes her hands,
and then turns out the lights,
telling him good night,
and disappearing to the back of the trailer,
where she draws the curtain shut.
Manuel settles onto the air mattress,
and it gasps in rubbery noise.
It wasn’t so bad, really.
He turns to his side and moves his arm beneath his pillow
to support his head.
Manuel closes his eyes,
a heap of black color falls upon him,
and movies start to play in his head:
of the happenings from the day,
and of other days,
and wishful figments,
and stories he’s made up
about alter egos he likes to disappear into
when he dreams.
He supposes to himself that it wasn’t man
who invented movies,
but God,
and by making movies themselves,
people were getting close to doing
what the divine could do.
Still, nothing compared to his imagination,
despite the big budget films he gets hyped about
and pays to see.
In his mind, he imagines amazing spacecraft,
that fit into your hand,
heroes so smart they never have any regrets,
and heroines both beguiling and kind.
He can feel the weight of sleep slushing into him,
and he is glad,
tomorrow is a new day,
and perhaps the future
will finally come out.
3.
At school the next day,
he stares out the window
as Mr. Gaspool explains chemistry to him.
Manuel doesn’t care for science or math,
preferring literature and history,
and this one of his most dreaded classes,
because he understands almost nothing about it.
School is a maze of shit,
he professes to himself.
Later, he sits in his favorite class,
Mr. Rodriguez’s history course,
where the old Latino complains about the President
and all sorts of other things,
every day,
all while flaying his students
with the cruelties and injustices
of American history, and world history in general.
Manuel gets the impression
that Mr. Rodriguez would complain
no matter who was in charge,
and for this reason,
Manuel likes him a lot.
Mr. Rodriguez has black hair
he wears in a combover,
sticky upon his skull,
and he always comes in half-shaven,
as though he gets distracted or fed-up
in the middle of the process.
He often talks about his son,
a military veteran,
but never about his wife,
who apparently died years ago.
The bell rings and class is over,
and Mr. Rodriguez announces what pages to read that night,
adding,
as he always does in some way,
“The Republic is nice while it lasts, children!”
4.
The other thing Manuel loves is music,
and once it’s lunchtime,
he sticks an earbud in one ear,
and hits play on his ancient iPod.
He prefers classic rock like Led Zeppelin, Cream, Black Sabbath,
and other hard rock bands.
He generally sits with his three or four friends,
Latino like himself,
who crack jokes about teachers
and join him in coveting
the pretty girls of the school,
whom they talk about in hushed expletives.
In the afternoons, Manual has his English class,
where they don’t teach the language so much at this point,
but rather literature.
His teacher, Miss Stanwyck,
is quite pretty herself for a teacher,
unmarried,
wise,
and often complains
school is about teaching kids what to think –
not how to think,
and how to make judgments for themselves.
“This is what literature is for,” she announces,
day in and day out.
They study John Steinbeck
Dreiser,
and Fitzgerald.
“America can be known
through its literature,
in a way casual examination
cannot bring,”
Miss Stanwyck explains.
5.
After school,
Manuel rides the school bus home,
and is dropped off about a half-mile from his trailer,
where he walks the rest of the way,
through the eager sun,
and golden, desiccated fields.
Today is different,
more so than it is always different,
and he knows this when he sees the police car
and black SUV parked in front of his mom’s trailer.
Manuel knows they have come for her, at last.
“No!”
he curses to himself
as he runs to the front door.
Just as he arrives,
they are pulling her out of the trailer,
with her hands cuffed in front of her,
still in her work clothes,
beaten.
“Mom!” he cries.
“Baby!” she replies.
“What are you doing?”
he asks the cops.
“Where are you taking her?”
They don’t reply.
Instead,
a heavy set blond white woman
hands him her card
and explains she is with Social Services.
“I’m afraid you have to come with me,”
she says.
“I’m not going anywhere!”
argues Manuel.
“Don’t fight them, Manuel!”
pleads his mother,
who is being placed inside the SUV.
“Call your uncle! Tell him what has happened!”
“I love you mom!”
“I love you!”
The SUV drives off,
leaving only a cloud of dust.
“I’m Donna,” says the social worker again.
“I’m sorry about your mother, Manuel,
but it’s the law. Do you have any other guardians?”
“My – my uncle!” he says. “He is a citizen!”
“Okay, good,” says Donna.
“But right now, you must come with me…
until your uncle can claim you.”
Manuel remembers his mother’s words:
Don’t fight!
He sighs,
his shoulders sink,
and he says
“Okay.”
