Chapter Four

Sacramento is one of those towns where culture has sowed its seeds, germinated, sent down deep roots into the sandy loam – and failed miserably. Drive through this valley in summer, and the air is brown and hazy; the streets shimmer ominously in the 110-degree heat. Drive through in autumn, and the air is full of black smoke: the rice fields in the Delta are burning.

Folks in Sacramento are overfed and air conditioned government employees, for the most part. They prefer not to have to walk more than a block or two from the parking garage to the sandwich shop. They go out of a Friday night in brightly colored, tasteless clothing, get embarrassingly drunk, and dance to horrible jam bands (or just watch the game on TV). They like to listen to light rock and classic rock, maybe some country. Their kids are generally into top-40 hip-hop, the kind that mostly consists of the words “shake that” and “girl”. Kids around here think it could be fun to try being in a gang. Their parents just don’t know what to do with them, so they send ‘em to the mall.

Sacramento is a land of endless mediocrity, a bastion of inadequacy in the middle of the Golden State.

DamNear can’t believe she left the grandeur of the desert for a place like this.

She is sitting in a bar that is vaguely redolent of stale vomit, probably because the floor is carpeted. The bars are funny in this town: most of them are crammed into strip malls, set up all jackjob with particleboard and glue in some generic commercial spot. Cover the windows with posters, turn the lights down low, start up a jukebox, and put a pretty girl behind the bar: you got yourself a watering hole.

This particular bar sits between a chinese food restaurant and a Big-O, and purports to be a sports bar. Since there is nobody else inside but DamNear and the bartender, the TV is off. They are rolling dice on the bar while DamNear spends the $18 she hustled today.

The bartender’s name is Leticia and she has black lipliner all around her lips. Her hair is jet-black and heat straightened, and her eyeliner is heavy. She looks like a Dallas Cowgirl with ten years and twenty pounds added on. That is to say, she’s very beautiful.

DamNear is trying hard not to lose herself in Leticia’s eyes – or in her cleavage – but the whiskey and the beer are starting to have their way with her, and she keeps catching herself staring like an idiot. It doesn’t help that Leticia is asking all kinds of questions about DamNear’s past, present and future. It feels like she actually cares about DamNear, and that makes her want to just jump across the bar, bury her head in those pillows, and cry for hours.

In fact, Leticia is starting to care about this little girl with the big attitude and the turtle backpack (which is currently nestled, all soiled, beside the broken pinball machine). She’s the kind of girl who – body odor aside – you just want to take care of. Leticia wants to take her home and give her a bath and put her to bed right next to her two-year-old son. And okay, maybe DamNear is about twenty-five years too old for that, but there is so much sadness in her eyes, in her situation…

“Where does your mother live?” she asks.

DamNear shrugs her shoulders vaguely and continues to stare fixedly at Leticia’s breasts.

Leticia sighs a little and turns to pour another two shots of whiskey.

“You know,” she continues with her back turned, “I could prolly find you a place to stay here, get you some work. My husband works construction, you know? Tough girl like you, I bet you like that kinda stuff.”

She turns back and sets the shot glasses on the bar.

DamNear giggles. “I like this kinda stuff.”

“To whiskey,” Leticia smiles, raising her glass.

The door opens, and instantly the door chime sounds: one of those horrible electronic bell noises, it announces every person that passes through the doorway. Leticia hates that awful noise, never wants to hear it again. She glances at the person in the doorway, but the light is behind him and she doesn’t know who it is. With a shrug, she tosses back her shot, shakes her head quickly, sets her shoulders back, and bangs the shot glass onto the counter.

“Cute,” says the incomer. “Hey, gimme one of those.”

He’s a scruffy-looking fellow, skinny as hell, in a big gray knit sweater and tight black jeans. His hair is ear-length and tousled, and conceals most of his face excepting a small, strangely ladylike mouth and an oversized proboscis.

He points at the backpack. “Turtle. I like it.”

DamNear ignores him. DamNear is currently ignoring everything except the bowl of honey-roasted peanuts in front of her. She picks at them idly. Her lips appear to be moving.

Leticia slaps the bar in front of DamNear, who looks up distractedly. “Hey girlie, your new friend here, he said something to you.” She picks up the empty shot glasses and starts to pour a fresh round.

DamNear is standing before she even knows it, legs planted, fists up. “What the fuck did he say?” she asks slowly, looking directly at the incomer.

Leticia hands a shot to the guy. He looks at DamNear, shakes his head. He speaks from the corner of his mouth: “I said I like the turtle.” And then he takes a slow sip from his shot glass.

DamNear’s fists are still up. Her head is cocked, the nuts and bolts tied to her dreds all hanging down the left side of her skull. She is swaying a little. Her shoulders barely clear the top of the bar.

Leticia smiles and removes one of the shot glasses from the bar with a deft hand motion. She slides the other one to her right and leans over the counter. The new guy, whose name is Benjamin Royce Parker the Second but who is known far and wide as HasBen, can’t help admiring her cleavage.

“Honey,” she says to DamNear with a slight smile, “he don’t mean nothing. He just likes turtles, okay?”

DamNear snorts, but her fists come down. She leers at the skinny dude on the barstool. He is slouched and dirty-looking. His eyes are a clear hazel-ish color, with long lashes. One of his wrists sports a leather arm band with metal studs. Looks like some kind of gutter punk. DamNear likes gutter punks, so she climbs back onto her barstool.

“Yeah,” she says, “it’s my backpack.”




Chapter Five

HasBen turns out to be a clown.

He and DamNear have a good laugh about the similarity between their nicknames, and then he tells her his real name. “What’s yours?” he asks. She avoids the question.

Eventually Leticia starts serving DamNear whiskey again, and by the time the electronic doorbell starts announcing her happy-hour regulars, they are all happily sloshed. Ben starts doing clown tricks and mime acts, and DamNear shows off her machete. Ben is dancing with the machete in his teeth when the bar’s owner walks in.

Leticia is too beautiful to get fired from this job, but DamNear and HasBen are not so lucky. They end up in the parking lot of the strip mall with no cash and a big turtle backpack, and no phone to call a cab. Ben doesn’t have a car.

“How did you get here?” DamNear slurs.

“Followed you,” he answers simply.

She stops and cocks her head at him. “Huh?”

“I was downtown today and I saw you on the street and I thought you might need a place to stay, so I followed you here. But then I didn’t have any cash to buy drinks, so I went and sold my bike.” He shakes the hair out of his eyes and beams at her.

DamNear shakes her nuts and bolts slowly, giggling. “You fucking idiot.”

“Yeah, I know. Whatever, I can –“

“Let’s go steal some bikes.”

But they never do steal the bikes, because Ben doesn’t believe in stealing. Instead, they climb on the roof of the bar and smoke some of DamNear’s speed, and try to spit on every person that walks in or out of the door.

After a while, this grows tiresome and they head off on foot. Picture them if you will, as their silhouettes stretch beneath the sodium light: skinny shuffler and shortround, turtle and licorice whip, nothing more than a clown and a punk, two cartoon characters off on a grand adventure. Night folds itself around them, a Sacramento night full of fiberglass and carbon monoxide gathers them into its embrace as they march one-two one-two down the glittering streets of broken glass

and turning right is when we finally lose them, when they leave the pools of orange radiation and hop a low fence and disappear into the freedom and safety of the darkness; when their feet pad over cool green grass and the moon shines on sprinkler heads, and the world spins softly and everything is quiet.

DamNear and HasBen spend the night in a playground, lying on their backs in the wood chips and counting the stars.

They rarely get more than seventy before they get confused and have to start over. They never give up, not until the black sky gives way to midnight blue, then periwinkle. Idealists on speed: they count the stars all the way back to zero.

In the morning light, they sit up and make a plan. Watching the first jogger streak across the dewy grass, eyeing the mothers with strollers and Starbucks, they decide to walk back to the Clown House – which is, of course, where Ben lives – and wash DamNear’s backpack, and then go hustle enough money to buy a real turtle. Ben tells DamNear she can stay at the Clown House as long as she wants (“assuming, of course, you can handle living with a bunch of fuckin’ punks and not fighting ‘em.”) DamNear laughs at that, and tells Ben she guarantees nothing. He stands then, brushing wood chips from his sweater, and helps her up.

“Let’s go.” And they do.




nonowrimo day seven slash eight, unedited