Brokenhearted in Bakersfield

 

22 - A CAREER CHOICE

I’ve come to realize that sometimes the separation of trailer wreckage from trailer trash is a subtle business best left to professionals.

Once out of St. Ides and semi-recovered from having had Edna’s plastic table leg removed from a place that dare not speak its name, I was painfully aware the doctors forgot to provide me with pain-blocking medications.  Even more shocking, in the land of morphine and Demerol, I forgot to help myself to some pain-blocking medications.  Evidently, as everyone tells me, I just haven’t been myself.

Anyhow, after limping real ginger several miles back home to Broken Heart Park, I had but one thought on my mind, to find a frosty cold one.  I knew enough to walk right past my own place since the door was still bolted shut and there wasn’t no beer there anyhow, at least none I could remember.

Before any tears could well up for my predicament I figured I’d stop on over at Owen Purty’s to see how he was fixed for brewskis.  Owen’s camper was often hard to locate due to his innate shiftiness.  I guess you can’t fault a man for enjoying a change of scenery, but it makes it tough for regular visitors and mail deliveries.

This time it wasn’t so hard to find Owen at all.  He was set up right behind where Edna’s trailer had once stood.  I could see he’d strung a big orange extension cord to the fuse box on Edna’s power pole.  Hoses ran from her water pipe to Owen’s camper, and from Owen’s camper another hose ran down to the drainpipe.  Owen’s place didn’t rightfully have a door so much as a flap of canvas, so I threw back the canvas flap and I was greeted with a blast of stench that buckled my knees.  Through a cloud of flies I saw Owen slicing away on what I prayed was not a Hungry Hombre frozen burrito.  With my hand over my nose and mouth I gagged, “Don’t eat that!”

“Huh?”

“Come on outta there,” I implored, “so we can breathe God’s fresh air.”  I backed away and let the canvas flap drop back into place.

Owen came out and untied the red bandana covering his face.  As he mopped his forehead with it he said, “I guess I could use a breather.”

“You got any beer?”

Owen headed straight for his cooler on the picnic table.  “Where you been, amigo?  Seems I ain’t seen you sleeping under your trailer in a coon’s age.”

“Been down at the infirmary” I replied.  “The medics all tell me I had some unfortunate run-in with a table leg.”

“What can a table leg do?” Owen commented without expressing much sympathy for my plight.

“Plenty you don’t wanna know about,” I felt hurt and offended in equal parts.  I lifted my nose and sniffed at the air, “What’s that awful aroma?”

My neighbor reached into his cooler and handed me a cold beer.  “Well, don’t worry, it wasn’t nothing I was fixing to eat.  I’ve been working real hard and applying myself to my veterinary studies, but since I ran out of kittens to dissect I been working on this same one for the past two weeks.”

“What do you mean you ran out of kittens?  Why don’t you get yourself some more?”

Owen responded real testy, “The animal shelter won’t let me have no more kittens.  I think they got suspicious of my motives.  After I adopted the sixth one they asked me what I was doing with so many kittens.  So I come right out and told them I was using them for scientific experimentations.”

“So what happened?”

“They 86’d me,” Owen consoled himself with a slug of beer.

“That ain’t what I’d call very collegial of them,” I slugged right back in solidarity.

“You’re telling me, amigo.  All I know is,” he stopped and scratched at his chin leaving behind a little smear of kitten innards, “I’m doing the best I can with what I got.”

“That’s all anyone can humanely ask.  But, there’s kittens everywhere just for the picking up.  Why don’t you haul yourself on over to that public housing complex?  The folks there are giving ‘em away for free all the time.  You can get yourself a bunch of new science projects real quick.”

“As an aspiring professional,” his eyes swiveled, “I am too preoccupied with my medical research and important studies.  I operate on a very tight schedule.  I can’t be expected to study, and party, and pick up kittens at the same time.”  He concluded his professorial lecture by crushing the beer can in his disabled hand and letting it fall among the other redemption-value recyclables laying at his feet.

Then I had a sudden inspiration.  “Would you be in a position to pay, let’s say, a certain someone who shall remain nameless, a fair price for equipping you with, oh, let’s say, certain laboratory supplies?”

Owen’s eyes brightened.  “What do you say to $2.50 per?”

“I’d say then, my good doctor, go hose down your laboratory.”