Jori went quiet and began to cry. Arleen had spent down her check and didn’t know where she would take her boys if Crystal tossed them out. She looked at Jafaris, who during the fight had distracted himself by drawing in a notebook: two monsters in hats and shoes; one big, the other small.
“You know what,” Crystal finally said. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she was not yelling but purring in a new voice, hushed and soothing. “Let me say something. Eww, God, I wish you’d have never gave me the spirit of love….My feelings are hurt from both of y’all. But, I can’t, I can’t put y’all out….’Cause, like I told you, I am filled with the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost telling me not to make y’all leave.”
“Filled with the Holy Ghost but does more cussing than a little bit,” Arleen mumbled under her breath. To Arleen, it wasn’t the Holy Ghost but the meat cuts and potato chips and love seat that had delivered the message. In the heat of the fight, she had made sure to tell Crystal, “I’m not leaving without taking my stuff out of here.”
Jori sat on his mattress in the bedroom. He felt dejected, and Arleen knew it. Later on, after things were resolved, Arleen sat down next to Jori and tried to explain herself. “What kind of parent am I to just listen to her and not listen to you?” she said, softly. “But this is what comes when you lose your house. This is what comes.”
13.
E-24
When Beaker found out that Larraine had moved into his trailer, he cussed from his hospital bed. Angry but helpless, he fingered the scar from his triple bypass, a nine-inch pink worm that puffed up from the middle of his chest. Larraine was breathing heavily when he got her on the phone. “Beaker,” she said, “we’re starting out fresh! I’m throwing everything out.” She had spent the morning cleaning the kitchen, tossing the left-out black applesauce and fly-covered ribs before deciding that everything had to go, even the cans of food because bugs were crawling on them. Beaker suggested Larraine take the back bedroom, but she refused because it was filthy. She took out her steamer and worked it over the couch. She would sleep on its cushions, next to the mound of things she had rescued from her trailer.
When Beaker came home from the hospital, he planted himself at the kitchen table and dashed his cigarettes into a disposable plastic bowl, the kind you fill with olives at the deli. Beaker’s real name was Robert, but everyone called him by his childhood nickname. A brooding and taciturn man, with slicked-back black-and-gray hair, Beaker had retired from driving a city bus a few years back, when his health began to deteriorate.
Beaker asked Larraine to split the rent, but Larraine said she couldn’t because she had to make steady payments to Eagle Moving. They fought, and Beaker settled for Larraine covering the cable and phone bills. Then they fought over what to watch on television. Beaker preferred shows like Ice Road Truckers; Larraine demanded So You Think You Can Dance. Then they fought over Beaker’s refusal to share his dinners from Meals on Wheels because he was still miffed that Larraine threw out his canned food. Larraine’s food stamps had been cut off—in the turmoil of her eviction she had forgotten about a meeting at the welfare office—so she began asking neighbors for spare plates and visiting church pantries.
During her first visit to Eagle, Larraine gave her name to a black man behind the counter who was wearing a backwards cap and gold crucifix.
“And when I pay, can I go look at my stuff?” Larraine asked.
“No. This is a bonded storage, ma’am. I can’t let you back there.” Riffling through your things and pulling out, say, winter clothing was not allowed.
“All right.”
“You got the in fee, the out fee, and the first month’s storage,” the man said. “That adds up to three seventy-five. Then each month after that, it goes up another hundred and twenty-five.” The man suggested Larraine try to get her things out soon so she wouldn’t have to pay on another month. But having just given him what amounted to over half her SSI check, Larraine knew this was impossible. It would take her several months to save for a new apartment while still paying Beaker and Eagle.
—
In the trailer park, Larraine tried to lie low and avoid Lenny and Office Susie. She knew that if they found out where she was staying, they would tell Tobin, who might throw her out, and Beaker along with her.
Lenny and Office Susie were crucial to Tobin—and to his tenants. They could get you evicted just as easily as they could get your toilet working again. Susie pushed for Pam and Scott to be kicked out, but she would also run down the Cadillac and yell at Tobin if she thought he was overcharging someone or moving too slow fixing a porch railing. Most important, Lenny and Susie were cultural brokers, bridging the gap between Tobin and his tenants and smoothing things over when he crossed the line: like the time he approached a tenant’s kids, telling them their father owed rent. On numerous occasions, Lenny literally placed himself between Tobin and an enraged tenant. This was a common practice—outsider landlords hiring people from the community, usually their tenants, to manage property.1
The kids Tobin had approached about the rent belonged to Donny, a portly and unshaven man in his mid-thirties who was liked by almost everyone in the trailer park. Donny was already refusing to pay Tobin, not because he didn’t have the money, but because he felt disrespected. He put his rent in escrow, citing his leaking roof and the black mold under the sink. Said Donny to his neighbor, Robbie, “You know what he tells me? ‘You rented it as-is.’ Tobin is just too ignorant to know that there are people in here that don’t live off Social Security.”
“Damn right!” Robbie spat. “He asked me if I had a job. I said, ‘Motherfucker, I work for the union!’?” Robbie was a deep-tunnel miner and a member of Local 113. “You gonna treat me like shit, I sure as hell ain’t going to pay you. I don’t care who you are. You’re not gonna sit there and discriminate me. You know what I mean?”
“?’Cause I’m a redneck.”
“?’Cause you live in a trailer court, period. You’re still a fuckin’ human.”
Lenny was a redneck too, and understood where the men were coming from. He agreed that the old man was “losing it.” But he also pushed back. “A lot of people say, ‘Tobin, he’s an asshole.’ But why is he the asshole? You’re the one who owes him.” What Donny, Robbie, and the rest of the trailer park didn’t know was that Lenny had a financial stake in them paying. Each month, he received a $100 bonus if he collected $50,000. He’d receive an additional $100 for every $2,000 collected after that.
—
Some days would find Lenny walking alongside Roger from the Department of Neighborhood Services, finishing his sentences. Roger the Inspector glanced down at his clipboard, reviewing notes from his last visit. “Let’s see, W-45 was—”
“The shed,” Lenny cut in. “We got it out of here.”
“Ah.”
“Hey, Roger,” a tenant called out from his porch. “See anything?”
“Do I see anything?”
Most park residents knew Roger, had his business card tucked away in a kitchen drawer. When they got fed up with some housing problem, they would not threaten to call DNS but Roger, specifically. A balding white man with a well-trimmed beard, Roger wore a white DNS polo shirt and 33/30 Levi’s.
“Any violations?” the tenant clarified, trying to be helpful.
“Well, it’s not country living, but if it’s habitable inside, it looks good to me.”