Not Much Money Down

I haven't had a good night's sleep in four months. Do you know what that does to a person? You get cranky, for one thing. Little stuff wears on you. You start nodding off when you shouldn't, like sitting on a bench in the middle of broad daylight. It's not very much fun. But I can't say the rest of my life is any better. Fat Larry. That's what they call me. Right to my face, most of the time. Sometimes behind my back, but usually why bother? You can tell by looking at me that I'm pretty large. And who really cares if the fat dude's feelings get hurt?

Especially when everybody in town knows you, knows you're thirty-six years old, homeless, and living in a car with your Mom like a big loser. I hate this damn town. Whoever named this town Dover knew what they were doing, 'cuz it's worse than any ordinary dive. I've seen plenty of places pretty bad, but where the people seem to like it. Dover, Delaware? Nobody lives here by choice, they're only unlucky enough to be born here. I wish I could get my Mom to drive us both far away from this place. Someday we will. Someday we'll win the lottery, and we'll look at each other, then start laughing. Mom will step on the gas, and we'll be outta here.

But not in this old jalopy. This car stinks. I can't stand how it smells so bad. First we'll pick up our big check, probably take it all in one lump sum, screw that installment plan crap, and then wheel right up to the Chevy dealership over on Mifflin Road, the same place we've been forking over $288 payments to every month for the privilege of driving around in this stinking garbage machine, and plunk down all the dough they need to let us cruise away in style, the biggest SUV they got. I hope they got a SUV limo in stock, 'cuz that's the kinda high rollin' we're gonna do, once our ship comes in.

Actually, I don't even like SUV's. I'm just sick to death of this Malibu. It's totally screwed up that we have to make car payments at all. I told Mom to buy us a used car, so we wouldn't have to keep paying for it.

"We need a warranty," she said. She's like that.

"No we don't, Mom."

"In case things break down. Something could happen."

"That's bull. We could get a good deal at Jacky's Junk."

She coughed. She stared out the window. It was raining that day, the day I was telling her all this. The rain didn't help. She looked at me and said, "This car is all we got."

Then, three months ago, the friggin' radiator cracked and we lost all our fluids. It happened when we were driving back from Newark one night. I don't even know why we went up there, except to visit this friend of my Mom's. She told the Newark Knights of Columbus about us, they passed around the hat, and came up with eight hundred bucks for us to make a deposit and first month's rent on an apartment. Those knuckleheads. If there was affordable housing around here, it's be one thing. But there's not. We bought lottery tickets all the way back down Highway 13, until the car crapped out right outside of Smyrna.

Eight hundred lottery tickets. I thought for sure that was gonna be the day. We woke up early because I had to walk to the next exit and call a tow truck, and while I was there I bought a Wilmington News Journal. We always play lucky 11's, and 3's, and 6's, and 9's, and 31's. Plus our backup numbers, 2's and 7's, 'cuz there's two of us, and everybody knows seven is a good number. There's seven days of the week, and seven continents, and there were even seven dwarves. So on the one day we managed to finagle eight hundred possible combinations of all the above, what happens? The numbers all came up screwed. It was 8 - 13 - 17 - 4 - 1. Or some equally unlucky crap like that, with not one of our numbers showing. I couldn't believe it.

We took the Malibu back to the dealership, and they said the radiator wasn't covered. There were three of them standing behind the desk in the side office, making a big show like they were looking through the papers.

"No," said the general manager, his name was Mr. Slocum.

Mom was really upset. "Show me," she said.

The salesman who'd made the deal with us to begin with shook his head. "I told you, Mrs. Williams."

"Show me where it's not covered."

They all exchanged glances, and the general manager repeated himself, like we were idiots. "No. It's not a covered item."

Those liars. I looked in my side view mirror as we were pulling out, and saw them laughing at us. Stuff like that gets me so mad. They think we're a couple of pathetic chumps they can push around. We'll see who laughs last when we win the lottery. And you know what? Even if we don't win the lottery, I'll fix them. I'm gonna wait till Mom's asleep one night. We switch places when we sleep, so she doesn't have to feel that goddamn steering wheel pressing into her. So if I wanted to, I could drive the car a little ways. I know how to drive, I let her do it mostly because she likes to drive. I'll take it out for a midnight spin one night, drive by there, and throw a big rock right through their showroom window. I guess I'll probably have to put earplugs in Mom's ears so she won't wake up when the glass shatters.

Or maybe I could get my friend Tim to help me. Tim lives in a house where we park in front of sometimes. He makes tattoos, he's got lots of tattoos himself, all over his arms and some on his neck. He also rides a motorcycle, and plays the guitar. I see him outside sometimes, working on his bike, and he'll come down to talk with me.

"People bothering you, Larry?"

I shake my head when Tim asks me that, because usually I like to handle my problems on my own. He shows me his tattoos, I like the ones of the Fantastic Four on his arms. They're the most colorful tattoos I've ever seen.

"If anybody messes with you, let me know," he says. So I figure I could probably count on him, if I needed to.

We're both on disability, Mom and me, that's essentially why we ended up homeless. I've got what they call blacklung, and Mom's got really bad asthma. And I have a condition that makes my eyes sensitive to light. I've got to wear super heavy duty dark glasses during the daytime. They have ten times the normal UV protection, it makes it hard to see properly, so I can't do much using my hands, unless it's in a darkened room. I've also got adult ADD, and my attention span's real short. Back when I was in school, they never gave me Ritalin or nothing, simply stuck me in special ed with the retards. The blacklung makes it hard for me to exercise, so I've always been heavy. All the other kids in school loved to make fun of me, because I was a fat, spaced out retard who always wore giant black sunglasses.

After I'd been out of high school a few years, my grandmother died. We'd been living in her house since my father walked out on my mother, right after I was born. I've never even met him. I guess I should probably be mad at him, for not being around to raise me and leaving my Mom. But all the stories Mom's ever told me makes him sound like a really nice guy. Things just didn't work out, mostly because he wasn't ready for me to come along. So he split. Mom talks about him sometimes, and she always cries, because she really loved him. I can tell she's still hoping maybe one day he'll show up again. He had lots of health problems, too. For all we know, he might already be dead.

When grandma died, Mom inherited the house. But there were all these back taxes to be paid, and Mom fell behind almost immediately. The legal troubles started, and they didn't let up. A year ago, the bank foreclosed on the house and the bastards evicted us. Wouldn't even let us take the time to pack up all our stuff. Four Dover police officers on hand to make sure we didn't try to sneak back in to finish the job, telling us we were trespassed from the property. I couldn't believe some crap like that could happen in America.

Mom was yelling at them. "My father built this house! This is our house!"

The one in charge was all business. "Don't make a scene, lady."

"He came here in 1941," she said.

"We can refer you to a temporary shelter."

I tried to hold her back. She had a coughing fit. Then she almost got arrested. She stared at him, standing right there on the front porch, and said, "You're going to rot in hell for helping the bank do this to us."

I even recognized one of them, Jimmy St. Angelo. He used to be two grades ahead of me, and he was the kind of bully who went out of his way to pick on the weakest, most defenseless kids in school. He used to call me Fatty Four Eyes, and Larry Retard, nothing too brilliant. Him and another one of the cops were snickering the whole time they were there.

We stayed with friends for a few weeks, then moved into a half-assed apartment on the other side of town. With Mom's and mine checks added together, we clear $1256 a month, which only goes so far after you make your car payment, plus money for gas, groceries, water, phone, and power. At least we didn't have a cable bill. I read books, I don't watch TV. Television's for dummies. Mom likes TV, though, and we had a good one, this big 30" Sony Trinitron we bought from the people who used to live next door to our old house after they got a new one. Our first apartment wasn't so bad, but after that one, they went downhill fast. We got kicked out of there after six months because the landlord's brother divorced his wife and needed to move into the place.

Next we moved into a spot right over the Pennsylvania border, in Kemblesville. We stayed with some more of my Mom's friends in a one bedroom place for $500 a month. There we slept on two single beds. But Mom was scared she might lose her Medicaid if they found out we were living out of state, so we came back to Delaware after only a little while. That was four months ago. Ever since, we've been living out of our Malibu, trying to save money so we can move into someplace decent again.

We're on public housing lists. One in Dover, two in Wilmington, plus ones in Smyrna, Delaware City, and Newark. We tried to get on the one in Marsboro, but they're real suspicious about outsiders in that town, so you've gotta be from there if you want their help. Every day we check the classifieds, and drive around looking for places to stay, which costs money for gas. We have lunch either at a soup kitchen or somewhere real cheap. If we're in Wilmington, it's sometimes at the Olympic Steak Shop, on Shipley Street. I love that place, because the owner's a double amputee with no legs, and everybody there treats you nice, no matter how you look. He's the chef, too, he cooks sitting on a really tall stool. Makes the best grilled food in Wilmington.

Mom's written a couple of letters to public officials, telling them about our situation. So far we haven't heard anything back. But they probably get lots of letters like that from people. Especially right now, because times are tough out there. I see more and more people hanging around the places we go for help every day. St. Mary's has a soup kitchen in downtown Wilmington, and it's almost to the point where you have to get there early if you want to get enough to eat. Since when did it get so hard just to get by? Our health problems are nothing new, so we always had to struggle to make ends meet, but before grandma died, we managed alright. It's like, one thing goes bad, and before you know it, you're neck deep in the water, fighting to keep from going under.

I shouldn't say all our money comes from our checks. I figure it's up to me to get us out of our situation, 'cuz otherwise we might be stuck in this car for another four months, and it'll be getting cold around here by then. So I cut corners a little. Shoplifting, mostly. Nobody ever suspects me, because they're too busy acting like they wish I didn't even exist. Or laughing at me behind my back, but ignoring me all the same, so they can pretend like they're not laughing. That's fine, I'm thinking, as I'm stuffing some stuff down my pants, laugh at me and ignore me all you want. Makes it a lot easier for me to get what I came for. I only steal from big stores, though, never little ones. That wouldn't be right.

When we first got evicted, I was mad at everything. So I started running small change schemes. The way it worked was like this. I'd go into a big store where they handle a lot of small bills, like a Wal-Mart, or a Dolorama. I'd bring two fives and eleven singles. I'd pick whichever cashier looked the dumbest, and get in line at their cash register. When it was my turn, I'd buy the smallest thing I could, usually a pack of gum. If they had lottery tickets, I bought one of those. Nothing that cost more than a dollar. I'd pay for it with one of the singles. Then I'd ask if I could get some change, a ten dollar bill for ten singles, and start pulling out my dollar bills.

I'd only give the cashier nine single dollar bills, and made sure they gave me the ten before they'd finished counting the money, so I could pocket it quick. They work the cashiers in these stores so heavy, if you do the slightest thing out of the ordinary, the line backs up. Then there's people waiting behind you, and pressure starts building for the cashier to get you the hell out the door. So time was on my side.

That's when the cashier always thought they'd caught me. Usually they made a face, and said, "Hey wait, there's only nine bucks here!"

So I looked all puzzled, pulled out the rest of my dough, and told them, "Well look, here's eleven more, can I just have a twenty?"

That's all there was to it! They had twenty bucks in front of them, handed over a twenty to me, forgetting all about the ten I'd already got, and I was out the door and on my way, ten bucks richer. If anything went wrong along the way, I acted confused, and they assumed I was retarded. Serves 'em right for thinking that about me to begin with.

But I stopped doing that after a while, because I realized maybe some of those cashiers would get in trouble when their registers came up short. You never know, I might end up doing it again.

During the night, we drive around looking for a place to park so we can get a few hours sleep. Two to five. That's the only stretch we can be pretty sure nobody's going to mess with us. Some people really don't like having strangers park in front of their houses! You'd think we were criminals, all the times we've had the cops called on us. But they can't do nothing to us, we're parked on the public streets in the car that we own, fair and square, and nobody can take it away from us. It's not our fault we don't have anyplace else to go.

Mornings we clean up in public bathrooms around Dover, or wherever we happened to spend the night before. Too many people know us in Dover, so I'm a lot happier when we drive someplace else for the day and look at places to stay. On Saturdays we go to the flea market at St. Mary's in Wilmington, then we usually drive out to Brandywine Park and get out of the car for awhile, maybe take a nap under the trees.

Maybe we should start spending all our nights in Wilmington. They've got a free dental clinic there at Wilmington Tech, I saw a flyer for it up at a Big Jawns in the Adams Four shopping plaza. So Mom and me went and had our teeth cleaned, for free, and they even made an appointment for me to come back and have an old filling re-done, because it was coming apart. But we've got all our furniture and stuff that we were able to get out of the house in a couple of self-storage units in Dover. I'm a little worried about that, because we're already two months behind in the rent, now it's up to $198 past due. The last time we parked in front of his house, I told Tim about it. He said he'd take up a collection for us himself before he'd let them auction our stuff off.

Like I said, my life's not a lotta fun, and there's not really a moral to my story. I don't feel guilty about any of the little things I do to help me and my Mom get by, 'cuz I feel like the world's already done the both of us pretty wrong. I lied about spending the whole eight hundred we got from the Newark Knights of Columbus on lottery tickets, by the way. We only bought fifteen tickets, we needed the rest of the money for car payments and everything else. And we would have used it for another apartment, definitely, if we could have found one right then. I just hope that somehow, someday, things will get a little easier for us. Hopefully before it gets cold, or I go crazy from not getting enough sleep. Maybe we're all marking time down here, dealing with the consequences of stuff we've done in our past lives. I've read everything I could about the concept of karma, about how whatever we do comes back to us. I don't believe much in religion, but I think I believe in karma.

Only thing is, it's hard to sort out all the theories people have about exactly how karma works. Some people think if things aren't going good for us, it means we screwed up in a previous life. Others say it's only by suffering in this life that we can move on to the next higher level. The way I see things, no way. If you really did some bad stuff in one of your past lives, I think you're coming back as a cockroach. If you're walking around as a human being, more than likely you've got some role to play in the cosmic order. That's the best I can figure it out. It's why Mom and me keep buying lottery tickets. You never know, happiness might be just around the bend. And you don't need to put much money down to buy a little hope.