Got a Dream to Take Them There

There is ice on the road and the weatherman has predicted rain. Yet we are driving, driving, driving. We don’t have enough. There is never enough.

Photo by Charles Postiaux on Unsplash

Man is soft and thirsty like grass...

– George Seferis

I wake up at 2:30 in the morning, not every day but probably most days. I wake up. I pee. I dress in the same khaki pants and the same company shirt, which is a black polo fixed with the embossed golden emblem of the company store. I make coffee and pour a deep cup. I add lots of cream. After this, I read. There are thirty minutes remaining before I must drive to the grocery store. I am reading George Seferis: Collected Poems. I have wanted to read Seferis for years now, and yet for reasons unclear to me it has not happened. His work puts me in mind of certain islands and the long ago scent of almonds on a warm day when I walked through an olive grove to the top of a stony hill where a ruin waited. I stopped among the olive trees because I needed shade. And with Seferis’ poetry, I make notations and underline passages in the book. The book is a library copy. I use a pencil.

When we go down
to the harbours on Sunday to breathe freely
we see, lit in the sunset,
the broken planks from voyages that never ended
bodies that no longer know how to love.

It is 3:30 and quiet on the road, but not as quiet as it should be. I turn on the radio and listen a few minutes to the BBC Art Hour. Artists talk about their sculptures, their books, their performances. It is 3:30 in the morning. Houses on both sides of the road stand alone in the dark. When I see a lamp-lit window, which is rare, I have a fantasy that someone is awake because of an idea or a discovery, but this thinking begins to feel delusional. There is a convenience store open. I pass it every morning, and I glance inside. I see one worker. There are no customers. I know what the worker is thinking too. He is thinking about when he can go home. I recall the earlier lines from Seferis, the broken planks and the voyages that never ended. Maybe I will write today.

What perplexes me, what sometimes angers me, is that there are other cars on the road. Is this not a kind of collective madness that at 3:30 in the morning, along a rural stretch of highway, there are people rushing to a job. I see company cars. There are people, like me, in uniforms. Some of them are already late. Some of them are going through lists. Some of them are adding figures. There is ice on the road, as well, and the weatherman has predicted rain. Yet we are driving, driving, driving. Someone will want fresh cut fruit at six. Someone will want breath mints. Or someone will get fired. There are bills to pay. We are frightened to go to a doctor because we are frightened by another expense. We don’t have enough. There is never enough.

I arrive at the store and sit in my car until the last possible minute, which is 3:53. At 3:53, I start walking. I reach the store and press my right index finger against the scanner that allows me to open the door. It is now 3:54. When the clock changes to 3:55, I type in my employee code, and the machine flashes green and tells me “ACCEPTED.” The shelf stockers are here, men and women. Most of them are around my age and older. The stockers are always here. They have different faces, though none of us look at each other. The floor cleaners are here. Over the past of couple of weeks, I have learned that they come from Guatemala. They live together in a single house. They work seven days a week. I see Herman, one of the cleaners. We wave and then greet each other in Spanish. We speak of work.

“¿No fin de semana?” I ask Herman. Herman has six jobs. He is a man. He is confident.

“No,” he says. “Nunca.”

“Siempre trabajando.”

“Si. Siempre, siempre.”

“¿Esta cansado?”

“Un poco.” He smiles.

“¿Tienes hijos?”

“Si.”

“¿Cuantos?”

Herman holds up three fingers, “Tres,” he says. “¿Tu?”

“Two boys,” I say, “Somo como hermanos!” and flex my arms.

He laughs. “¡Hermanos!”

“¿Donde estan tus hijos?”

“Guatemala.”

There is a pause, and I become aware that everything around us smells like plastic.

“¡Pero estamos siempre trabajando!” He pinches the fingers of his right hand together and rubs them against his thumb, like rubbing sticks together to make a fire. “¿Dinero, si?”

“Si.” I grin and feel stupid for this.

“Gracias por la conversación.”

“Está bien,” I say.

But I notice Herman doesn’t turn away. He stares at me…no…he is not staring. Staring is the wrong word. I am about to tie my apron when he says, “Es importante para el corazón.”

“Yes.” I nod. “The heart.”

We step together and bump fists. Perhaps in another country we would have embraced.

For the next little while we will see each other in passing, as with the other workers, the other floor cleaners, the bakers, the butchers, the warehouse men and women. I finish tying the apron around my waist, and I search for words. I search for the beginnings of a story or a poem. Some place to start, some place to hold as long as I can. Hours, I think, I need hours.

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Damon Falke is the author of, among other works, The Scent of a Thousand Rains, Now at the Uncertain Hour, By Way of Passing, and Koppmoll (film).

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