A few weeks ago the Chicano crackheads mysteriously disappeared.
And then, today:
“Can’t you at least drop me off at a motel?”
These are the first words I hear from The Alley. They are spoken by a man named Robert, a black man, maybe pushing 30.
The response is swift. “No! Fuck it! The cops are coming!”
These are spoken by a Navajo woman maybe twice Robert’s age. Let’s call her Paula Beebonnet. She has inherited the roach-infested tumbledown shack on the other side of my sturdy back fence, and an ancient car in even worse shape which she parks smack in the middle of the alley instead of in her drive, probably because her drive gate is falling off. She lives back there alone except for a pack of malnourished mutts with whipped expressions, and occasionally a boarder, like Robert.
The parading boarders probably account for at least half her income, the other half coming via handouts from the government and solemn white men in her church, who splash down the alley in their pickup trucks once in a while to gravely pass Paula envelopes of cash and then get out as fast as they politely can.
The boarding situations never last more than a few weeks, and they inevitably end in yet another visit to The Alley from the local Barney Fifes.
In fact, after an extended conversation between the alley and the shack’s locked front door, both Paula and Robert call the cops this time. Paula because Robert isn’t leaving. Robert because his stuff is locked up inside Paula’s car.
While we all wait for John Law (my own surveillance post is ten feet away from the action, hidden behind my shed), Robert phones a friend. The friend offers to take him to the mission, but Robert says he heard yesterday that the Asians who now own the yellow motel are letting people stay there if they agree to become unreported laborers on the ancient decaying property, a place which literally still advertises “Color TV!”.
Finally the cop shows up. He’s white and maybe 22 at best. His first words to Robert are:
“I thought I already told you to get out of this town.”
As Robert repeatedly tries to justify his continuing presence, the cop chants, Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit, to everything he says.
Maybe it even is bullshit. For what little that’s worth.
***
If I were a lesser artist, I wouldn’t be writing this down, because I’ve already posted today.
If I were a greater artist, I would turn this scene into a world-changing novel.
But just like Paula and Robert and Barney and the motel asians and the dearly departed drug dealers, I only am what I am.
So you tell me.
Is this a true story about diversity?
Capitalism? Modern love? Is it an invasion, or a liberation, or