Bled Dry

We're wearing white T-shirts in a snow storm, digging Dave's Caddy out of the snow bank he's managed to bury it in. We look like heroine addicts; wiry and thin with needle tracks in our arms.

We're thin because we work all day, though, and we work out when we're not working. Work means chopping wood to burn because we can't afford gas heating, and whatever odd jobs we can find, because we have no steady jobs to fill our days. Why can't we find jobs? We're looking, we work hard, do good work.

I've got a college degree; I'm overqualified. I spent last year designing a chemical synthesis for an anticancer compound. Now I can't get a job stacking boxes. I work out my frustration on the house pull-up bar; pull-ups, chin-ups, skin-the-cat, crunches, a hundred on a lazy day. I am tall, and young, and strong, far too proud to ask my family for money, and so I eat rice, shovel snow, and chop firewood.


Right now I'm up to my hips in snow and broken ice the blow pushed off the road, holding a pickaxe, wondering how someone can imbed the front end of a two wheel drive car seven feet into a snowbank of similar height while backing out of the driveway. Ian's just laughing like an idiot.

Ian's going into the Navy, he got kicked out when he was a teenager, found himself homeless, but got back on his feet and put himself through two years of college, then someone who didn't like him got him fired from his RA job and he had to drop out. Found himself homeless again, but got a job in construction, and in nine months he was managing projects, back on his feet and doing fine. Then the recession hit, and they had to scale back, so he ended up living with us. I guess he got tired of getting by, because he joined the Navy. He doesn't head to boot until April, though, so in the mean time he's scraping by.

  He's on his back in the slush breaking ice off the tow bar of Chase's SUV so he can tie a rope to it.

Dave's got some money saved up, but he moved out here thinking he'd be able to get a job in two months or less. We don't hold it against him that he's having trouble; we all are, and he's out each day looking, even if it's snowing. He was trying to get to an interview when he got his car stuck. I figure he's got a shot if we get him out in time: He dresses nice, acts like he's sane when around potential employers, and speaks well. He also makes comments about the injustice of slavery every time we tell him to get out and help us push his car. So we abandon him to go help our seventy-year-old neighbor shovel her driveway. We have it shoveled in about five minutes.

Dave gets out and starts to dig his car out on his own, then shouts, "This sucks! It's cold."
We answer by lobbing snow across the road at him with our shovels.
"Hey, I should be getting encouragement. I'm trying to work here. How am I suppose to work without encouragement?"
I say, "You're black, you should be used to it."
I don't know if our neighbor approved, but we all laughed. If there's a sacred topic in our house, I haven't found it yet.

This time it's me that gets buried in snow. Still chuckling, I scrape the thrown snow off the driveway and Ian and I get back to digging Dave's car out. We dig under to the frame, and Ian crawls under and secures the other end of the rope. Chase hops in and waits for the signal to pull.

Chase is the rich kid, his dad's a big-time contractor, but times are hard for them, too, so he's cooking in the school cafeteria.This time last year he was cooking in a gourmet kitchen because he liked it. Still, he's got connections, so he has a job. I don't hold it against him. He's been covering us, thinks he's being secretive about it, but the two of us are in charge of finances, and I have access to the joint account. He acts like a jack ass who lives without a care, but the account statement shows the only reason we still have a roof over our heads is that he's bleeding his savings dry to make up the difference. He deposited his first paycheck straight into our rent and utility account.

We're bled dry, too. Our education, experience, and work-ethic don't have any value right now, but our blood is still worth twenty a pint. It does not quite pay rent, but it covers utilities. Our neighbor comes over to thank us and gives us six dollars and thirty-eight cents, then tells us, "Thanks for you help, that would have taken me an hour. This is what I have. Oh, and a Fig Newton for each of you."

Guess it's hard times for everybody.Hard times change things; I have always hated Fig Newtons, yet I can barely explain how delicious that one was. I'll be cliche and call it a taste orgasm. Dave turns his tires towards the road, I step back, Ian gives Chase the signal to pull. Chase presses the gas slowly at first, and keeps going until he starts burning rubber, no luck. Dave's car is high centered, and Chase doesn't have the horsepower to drag the whole car off. He tries reversing and tugging the rope a couple times. Dave's doesn't budge.

Jared's just showed up, and he's leaning against a tree, watching. It annoys me a bit. He's a nice guy, which is why when he couldn't make rent we let him stay on the couch for whatever he could spare, but he's lazy. Hell of it is, I could tell him to help, but frankly he'd get in the way. He's a Texan football player going to massage school. Katie summed him up perfectly as, "Sweet guy. Big, dumb, and pretty."

He's got some luck, too. He just got a job as an usher, part-time. We figure it means he'll stop stealing our food. We also think he might be lying sbout the job. I figure to give him the benefit of the doubt. It'll be obvious pretty quick if he's lying about it. He stutters uncontrollably when he lies. 

I just turned a job down. I would have made money, and plenty of it. Problem is, I know it's a scam, and I can't justify taking a cut for getting people to buy into something they'll see no return from. It was not the easiest choice I've made. How hungry do I have to be before my ethics follow my distaste for Fig Newtons into a more discerning memory?

It's a question I hope will remain hypothetical. So I just throw myself into the work of breaking up the ice with the pick axe. I keep at it until I notice blood dripping from my hand. Drops fall to form two bright red circles in the snow, about the size of a penny. Which is about what they are worth, I suppose. I debate calling it quits, but the hand's too numb to hurt and if there's a band-aid in my house, I'll eat it, so I keep right on working. Blood spots disappear like the pennies in my checking account under the blows of the pickaxe. Finally, Ian says he thinks we have a shot.

The rope goes taught, and the car moves a fraction of an inch. Jared moves forward to look, Ian yells at him to get back, I just pull him back and tell him it'll hurt if the rope breaks. Chase reverses, throws it into drive, and guns it. I figure something has to give, and duck, betting on the rope. Ian does the same. Instead, Daves car jerks sidways out of the snow bank, onto the road. Dave cheers, then looks at his cell phone and cusses, "Hell, I'll be half an hour when I get there, I'm gonna call them."

He does, and when he hangs up he looks angry, "The guy said not to worry 'cause they aren't even hiring right now. Who the hell schedules interviews when they aren't hiring?"

We all tell him that it sucks, and at least we got the car out. He seems to shake it off, which is a relief since an angry guy with four black belts is not something I feel like dealing with.

Later on, though, when I'm sitting in his car warming up, he tells me, "I can't believe he got a job. Lazy-ass, dumb as a rock, Jared got a job, and I can't!"
"Yeah, I see where you're coming from." I tell him, "At least he won't steal any more of Ian's EasyMac."
"Yeah, great. But what do I do?"
"You headed to campus?"
"Yeah, the girls are gonna feed me."
"Nice. Then you should take me with you."
"Gonna see your girlfriends?"
"Just the one, hopefully."
"Get laid yet?"
That's a jab, not a question, but I treat it as the latter.
"Nope, and not going to for awhile yet, either."
"That's gotta hurt." Dave can make words smirk, I swear.
"I'll get by."
"Yup. Tell Katie I say hi."
"Yeah, I try to get her to come over tonight."
"Think she'll come?"
"Nope."
He laughs, "You mean that more than one way, huh?"
I aim a punch. It lands, but it hurts my bleeding hand as much as his shoulder, I'm sure.

Truth is, I care about this girl more than I have anyone for awhile, and I care less about sex than I want my roommates to know. It's not that I don't want it, just that some part of me feels that patience is a small cost for what's returned. There's a feeling I don't feel like labling just yet, but there's no doubt that she's the brightest star in a murky night right now.

Dave's still hung up on his own question.

"So yeah, what am I gonna do?"
"Plasma center is open until four."
"We're screwed, you know. I look a junkie already. Freaking vampires." He says it with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.
"We'll get by. Tomorrow we'll fill out applications everywhere. Sooner or later someone will need somebody."

The truth is simpler than that, though. The truth is we're going to keep digging until we're out, and even if we pay our costs in blood, we'll keep paying until they bleed us dry.