01.13.08
The Portal
His prospects didn’t look good, and they felt a little worse. As a rule, getting a job wouldn’t be a picnic without a car, and that rule was fully enforced on the Cartesian grid generally called Fresno. After a couple days, he got a job soliciting Madera neighborhoods for donations toward air quality improvement. He might as well have been peddling snake oil. After a demoralizing and exhausting day of knocking on doors and experiencing flashbacks from his missionary childhood, Armen failed to return for further canvassing drives. Fresno—that town among cities—soon felt as big, impersonal, and impenetrable as San Francisco had seemed.
“Grandma,” he started over the sandwich she had prepared him for lunch.
“Yeasss?”
“Do you still have m—do you still have those baseball cards?”
“In the garage. Over the car.”
After lunch he looked through his old Topps cards, some in sleeves and some in stacks. Coming upon his 1976 Brooks Robinson, seeing the glossy green of the turf and the contrasting orange, black, and white of Robinson’s uniform, he stopped and stared, as his vision turned inward and into the past. He rubbed his eyes, as if it might change what they saw as they looked back and turned back to the present. A pragmatic frown flashed over his face, and he got up and looked for the yellow pages.
He found a couple dealers, and set off by bus and foot that afternoon to see what he might get for his most valuable cards. He stopped at the mall to check a bookstore for a pricing guide, and scribbled some prices onto a loose sheet of paper. He resolved that he wouldn’t complete any sales that day. It would just look too desperate.
He considered looking at the surrounding region. He called the local parks and concessionaires, and found that Yosemite National Park had an opening at one of their wastewater treatment plants. He got on the phone and called the park to see if the job was still available. Later that day, he got a call from someone at the park who wanted to make sure that he understood the ramifications of working at a sewer plant, and Armen felt too desperate to entertain a doubt. He had never had a real job before, and he couldn’t be certain that he’d ever get another chance. He began to feel the burden of destiny lift from the back of his neck. He soon received an application form in the mail, filled it out, and returned it post haste. He was formally hired within several days. He packed up his things, bought supplies, and caught a bus to the park.
Armen got off the bus at Wawona, and backpacked up the falls trail. Night fell as he ascended past the falls. He unrolled his bag against a stone trail cut, and fought against the steady wind and rocky ground to get some sleep. The next day, he backpacked north to the rim of Yosemite Valley, where he spent his second night in the mountains above the Valley lights. He unrolled his bag and basked beneath the cool spring stars. He did not light a fire. It had been a long time since he’d lit a fire in the Igneous Range.
The next morning, he descended into the Valley. He rode the shuttle buses, and ambled along the river, visited the falls, and watched the women. In the evening, he caught a bus down to an employee housing complex just outside the park in El Portal, where he found his cabin.
His found his lab job at the sewer plant rewarding. It felt liberating to have a 9-to-5 job with no family, religious, or professional entanglements. It felt invigorating to walk out on the steel deck in the morning and take a sample from the aeration tank. “Independence at last,” he’d think to himself as the atomized sewage dampened his face.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
