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Show RIVER "What do you mean?" "You used to have such.. .imagination. You knew what you wanted to do and you did it. Now you seem lost, indifferent." "I am lost," I said. "Well why don't you do something about it? You've got to get a handle on yourself, find a way to make some money, find something to do with your life. If you were a real man..." "If I were a real man, I'd what?" "You'd find a way to make some money." "I can't believe you're saying this." "Well, believe it. Look, I've found what I want to do and it doesn't depend on you. I wish I could help you, but you've got to work this out for yourself." I felt like I was drowning. I knew I was abandoned. How low can you go? Hitching back to California with Thor (we made it in seventy-two hours) I asked myself that question a lot. It was starting to look like I might find out. I wound up in southern California working as a laborer for a pack of wild Mexican plumbers. We were building subdivisions, after a fashion. Plumbers are all crazy, but these plumbers were a breed apart. They got a charge out of having a white boy as a laborer and they set about rounding out my education. One long hot afternoon I was lining out a trench with a shovel. My foreman, Foster Zappodaca, came up and said, "Give me that," pointing at my shovel. I handed it up to him. "You know what this is?" he asked. "Sure," I said. -134- |