Canned People

The bus was screaming down the desert road, and I still couldn’t nod off. Two fucking hours and somehow this greyhound seems to have made no progress toward any discernible civilization. A few shacks and shanty gas stations sprung up here and there, sure, but I’d hardly venture to call them signs of life. Just as I was about to put in for another crick-necked nap a wall of little buildings flashed past the window.

Finally. Some scenery.” I thought

A blurry mirage of washed-out yellows and earth tones made up the majority of this dilapidated stretch of town. Boarded-up Knick-knack shops dispersed between dinky Chinese restaurants and starkly furnished real estate offices. A pizza parlor, flanked by two used car lots, zoomed past, its patrons piling out of it and back into a camper van. Who the hell eats pizza in 100 degree weather? We stopped at an intersection, and I sat up. I analyzed the charming wasteland further. 

To begin, it looked haunted. Not like in the usual paranormal sense I mean, but haunted, instead, by the town's previous administration. A mural of a smiling old local official peaked out from behind a nearby graffitied wall. Across the street, a campaign billboard, partly weather-beaten and peeling, watched over a humble Mexican taco shop. At the corner store, a foldout sign displaying the handsome mug of a lawyer, which had been ‘artistically’ embellished by a marker, sat on a burning sidewalk. I wondered if the newly mustached counselor got many clients from this desert Mecca. As the bus crawled to 15 mph, it rounded a corner and proceeded its slow roll down another part of town. 

Greyhound was the last company to convert its fleet of vehicles to the hydro-electro standards imposed federally in 2039. Though cleaner in emissions, the bus interiors are just as germ-filled as always, and they still turn like fat boats.

 On the nearby street, a bearded bald man strolled out of an army surplus store, carrying an armful of camo-textured treasures back to his truck bed. On the other side, some more dive bars and taco shops dotted the length, but what really grabbed my attention were the foreclosed buildings.

 First, I recognized that several appeared to have been tattoo parlors at one time. My final count came out to about 8 of the sort. 8 failed tattoo shops. Were the people of Twentynine Palms undergoing a spiritual reform? I don’t know what was more unusual, that so many nearby tattoo shops had closed down, or the fact that there had been such a preponderance of them in one town in the first place.The question wouldn’t be allowed much time to linger. A moment later, I realized they weren’t alone. Massage parlors, dry cleaners, liquor stores, tailors, and the crowning majority, barely overtaking the tattoo joints in quantity, were the barbershops. All in excess, all closed down, and all in a questionable proximity from one another. I was stumped, stupefied even. What was this town, and more importantly, who were its late occupants? My best guess: suit-wearing alcoholics who held an affinity for tattoos, haircuts, and being massaged? Perhaps the Yakuza used to take up residence here. 

Slouching back in my seat, I rallied my aimless thoughts to higher purposes. I still had 5 more hours until Arizona. 

The greyhound was, in a way, my editor's parting gift to me. A reminder that I was still just a lowly junior columnist. They very well could have paid for a flight, but that’s what I got for going out on a limb for my first real story. The paper I worked for is based out of San Bernardino County, and it wasn’t even the 4th most popular newspaper in its area. 

Since the internet outages and satellite drownings began, paper news sales have seen an improvement, but not ours. I think I once saw an older man pick up his dog’s turds with our highly neglected sports section, it was the most use I’ve ever seen anyone get out of it. 

For the last 3 months, I had been eating away my nights and sick days, scurrying around town, contriving what would hopefully be my debut entry onto the stage of investigative journalism. I was on my way to Arizona to interview a few key people involved in a scandal I was covering. A San Bernardino apartment conglomerate which was heinously upping rent for tenants had been doing so under the fine-print excuse of a “pool restoration project”. The only problem, none of the apartment buildings featured a pool. Yep, Just your typical criminal landlord behavior. The owners of the properties were located in a cushy 12th floor real estate office in Phoenix, so that’s where I was headed.

 You see, up until then, I was handed down local bullshit pieces; an old dog turns 17 today, the DOCDSC (Department of Computer Driven Street Cleaners) is having a cook off against the SBAGCC ( San Bernardino Automated Garbage Collection Commission), a city statue of a dead philanthropist has been defamed by some drunk hooligans- that sort of weightless fluff. So when I finally got the tip of something important happening, I hunkered down and prepared the investigation. I locked it away as my precious side project, until I felt ready to beg my editor for the chance to come out and get the interviews. 

A bump nearly knocked me out of my thoughts and seat. The driver shook his head and pulled off to the side of a brick building, the suspension bouncing in protest to the unpaved dirt. 

“Hiss!” 

The parking lever was jammed into gear, and the doors swung open. The driver stood.

 “I’ll just be a moment folks, I think we’ve got a problem in the undercarriage. Please remain inside, it should be nothing.”

 He smooshed a baseball cap over his wrinkled head and waddled down the steps with a limp and groan. He disappeared into the blinding sun which caked the fine sand. Our valiant captain would brave the heat. Helmsman of hydro-electro greyhound buses, enemy to knee pain, It was by his skillful touch we’d surely be back on the road soon. In the meantime, I entertained myself with a few snipped out articles in my notebook. 

Please, don't think I'm a good journalist or some hard-truth seeking, for-the-people romantic, it's more that I just like seeing my name on something, even if that something is used as cat litter. Trapped in puny print, the outer fringes of boring newspaper articles serve as perfect display cases to my assorted menagerie of mediocre storylines. I exclusively house them in the 3rd page side columns no one bothers reading anyways. This neglected portion of the news was graciously provided to me by my editor when I started, but at least I do as I please with it. My own hallowed ground to build. I cutout strips of these excerpts for my cubicle and notebook. They motivate my frustrations. I haven’t found the story that puts me on the front, but I hoped Arizona would be different.

 I was reading one of my disappointing pieces on the bus, when a voice from behind broke my reverence. 

“You got a dart son?”

 I reared my head around to look, and found a sun burnt, scruffy face leaning over my seat. Its eyes held a spark of intelligence within them, but the stupid grin on its mouth would have me suggest otherwise.

 “I’m sorry, a what?”

“You know, a dart! A fag, a ciggarrete?” 

“Ahh sorry, I smoked my last at the other stop.” 

A lie, my beloved pack of poison was stashed safely inside my bookbag. A sterner look fell over the initially friendly face.

 “Smoked your lucky last? No wonder this electric junk broke down.” 

With that, he returned gloomily back to his seat, looking out his window. Then he mumbled 

“hmmf. No one remembers anyways.” 

I adjusted my head to catch what he’d say next, but he fell silent.

 After a minute, I knelt on my seat to face him. He wasn’t watching, but instead, was looking dreamily out the window, a hand touching it while the other spun something metallic in his lap vacantly. His eyes spoke more than he had. They glazed over while his brows lowered firmly above them. In their settled form, I saw a deep longing nostalgia.

I looked him over. A dusty, hooded sweatshirt sporting a few expertly sewn patches was draped over his shoulders. His jeans were in a similar appearance though they looked a size too big for the sinewy legs. On his feet, a pair of workmans boots with some frayed edges, they had a well maintained lace. A four digit maroon tattoo was visible under the cuff of his sleeve, it ended in an eleven. His hands, rough and worn, were splattered with dried blue paint. I saw the whole picture, admittedly, later than I should have. 

He was probably a homeless man, and likely a veteran. By the look of it, the uncaring desert had shown about as much mercy on him as it did the town. I retreated to my seat with a quiet respect. Sure, I enjoyed questioning strangers, it was part of the job, but I never interacted with an intimidating man like him before, so I was reluctant to start again.

 The driver, evidently unhappy, tottered past the window like a beetle, a phone glued to his ear. I could tell by his leisurely pace the problem with the suspension wasn’t going to be repaired soon.

 I croaked out a question suddenly. 

“Remember what? If you wouldn’t mind me asking?” 

I only heard how timid my voice sounded when it echoed off the seat and spat back into my stupid face. He stirred, tensing up towards my window before stabbing a boney finger at the glass. 

“Them.”

 Outside, above the driver's head, I studied our source of shade for the first time since the stop. A brick wall, halfway drowned in sand, stretched a meter or two above the bus, provided shelter from the sun. It bore a sun-bleached mural, consisting of a faded red white and blue banner which covered from edge to edge along the side of the building. In the mural, there were people and some soldiers, clad in coyote tan flack jackets. With sleek rifles, they took up tactical positions in front of a colorful crowd of locals, guarding an entrance where a wounded woman and child lay. Packed into a tight concrete ditch and bordered by razor wire, the stoic guardians held against further attack. Where was their unseen enemy? Painted in another far away mural perhaps. Their bulky sunglasses and goggles seemed to heighten them to an oddly inhuman appearance. 

The painting’s style reminded me of the antiquated methods once employed by catholic artists, the faces of the troops resembling the benevolent angels which litter the high ceilings of extravagant churches, bearing something unworldly in their soft expressions. The art had eroded away with the sand, but a date and title situated on its top center was still partially visible. “08/26/2021, “Remember the strong”. Though legible, the banner was obstructed partially by vandalism, the medium being a runny blue spray paint . The additional tag read: “we’ve already forgotten.”

As I read, the groggy voice from behind me had also read aloud, his tone harnessing an eerily identical feeling of repugnance to the jagged graffiti. 

“What's this mural?” 

“It’s a tribute, commissioned by the families of the war.” he snorted, turning from the window.

 “We fought a mindless struggle in that desert, long before the missiles, before China and the jungles.” 

I slouched back into my seat.

 “The war on terror?”

 He nodded languidly and spit into a bottle. Whatever it was it reeked of mint. 

“This town used to be crawling with us, the base was perfect to prepare men for the climate and terrain they’d face over there. When the US turned its cautious eye to the green littorals of Asia, this place didn’t seem to carry much relevance anymore, so the Marine Corps packed up and left town.” 

With that he pulled a threadbare hoodie over his head and made fast work of arranging a seat-bed for himself, but not before lastly adding in a matter-of-fact tone “No desert Marines, no desert town.” 

The old creature settled in so impressively fast, and really did look threateningly close to drifting away forever into sleep. Tactics were quickly adjusted as I took a newer, more delicate approach. Tossing a pack of cigarettes on his lap, the man sprang up and withdrew a slim one from it, flipping it gracefully between his fingers and into cracked lips.

 “Smart man, not keeping your pogie-bait visible to everyone. Better to be a hoarder than a moocher.”

 He reanimated so fast it almost scared me. More importantly, he had spoken some more unknown military jargon.

 He seemed to speak an antiquated, brevity-filled version of English, frequenting unusual idioms and crass nicknames I couldn’t decipher. I got the feeling that the man and wall had come from the same place in time, and both were equally as neglected.

 I adopted a genuine tone with him. 

“I don’t know what happened here, or anything about men like that-“ I gestured to the wall “and I’m sure a quick internet search on my phone would tell me half the story, but something tells me it would be more worthwhile just asking you.” 

The silence killed me, I hastened a resolve by nervously ripping my notebook out and holding it over the seat. 

“I’m also a journalist… well, sort of.”

 A glimmer of amusement passed over him. 

He pressed a touchscreen button, opened his air vent, and lit the cigarette with a snap. The hand that operated his lighter slithered from its hoodie sleeve, and as it did so I could make out a wrist wrapped in several metallic bands catching the light, each with a serialized name on it. The smoking took precedence for a moment, but when his head returned from the vent port, his countenance had twisted into an odd smirk, a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth’s corner. 

“Was anybody in your family ever in the Mar-” 

He broke off and jerked away from his introduction, starting again. “Have you ever been to a circus Mr…” 

“Call me Anthony, and yes I think once, when I was little. Not too many around now though.”

He laughed, and extended a hand which I shook formally, though more tightly than usual. I didn’t want him to know he was dealing with a soft man. To heighten the anticipation further however, he smoked on, looking as if he were collecting the next piece, his gaze searching the painted wall outside for the right words. When he finally spoke again, his voice had gained a subtle hint of enthusiasm in it. 

“Well, the place I used to work at was sorta like a circus.” 

He exhaled smoke past a smile and into the vent cover, satisfied with the analogy, then continued. 

“Some of the most fantastical sights I’ll ever see were had during my time there. Things you’d only see in an expensive movie. Huge fireworks put on display across a clear dark sky, turning night into day. I put on my clown suit every day and walked the wires between tents. I rubbed elbows with funny, peculiar creatures in those days. Young men of every caliber, green behind the ears, had flocked to see the show, just as I had. Weak men who could craft extravagant excuses and complaints for the most menial of tasks, strong ones who could perform incredible feats of will, and even strange ones, who seemed to have been designed in test tubes exclusively for our entertainment. They were incubated and collected from tiny obscure towns across the corners of the country, sent to the circus with nothing but the clothes on their back and a last name to their face. I loved the clowns in every way, but the circus, oh it was a nasty, unpredictable beast in itself. Some days it was funny, spectacular in its triumphs of efficiency. Other times, it was cold, uncompromising. On its worst days though, it was an unforgiving tax on a man’s soul, to put it as a buddy would. More than anything however, the show was an old one, and If there was any flaw to be found in its existence, maybe that was it. It held onto its bloody traditions like a beggar clutching his last coins, unwilling to budge with the change of time. A rock that refuses to see that the river around it has changed course. Sometimes it seemed like it would never end, but I guess every show has to come to a close.” 

He faded into a lost expression with this concluding part. 

Who would have guessed the ragged passenger would be so beautifully articulate! If I was interested before, it was safe to say I was now captivated. I took advantage of the pause to coolly slip out a few cigarettes, and squeak open my automated vent. 

“Tell me about your buddies.” 

We spoke for hours, and the bus was eventually revived to its full strength. By the time we reached Arizona and said our goodbyes on an unlit warm morning, we were more than well acquainted. He thanked me before he went, and I asked him why. He told me I was the first in a while to really listen, to care. 

I’ve already bought my ticket home now (I’ll bill my editor later). At a diner across from the station, I’m compiling the notes for my next story while I wait. My first real story. Tucked into the edge of the 3rd page, I’m going to help them remember our mistakes, remember the desert, remember the strong.