Bled Dry

Connor Rickett

Pushing doesn't work because there's nothing solid to brace against, so we move on to plan B.

We're wearing white T-shirts in a snow storm, digging Dave's Caddy out of the snow bank he's managed to bury it in. We look like heroine addicts; wiry and thin with needle tracks in our arms.

We're only thin because we work all day, and we work out when we're not working. Work means chopping wood to burn because we can't afford gas heating, and whatever odd jobs we can find, because we have no steady jobs to fill our days. Why can't we find jobs? We're looking, we work hard, do good work.

I've got a college degree; I'm overqualified. I spent last year designing a chemical synthesis for an anticancer compound. Now I can't get a job stacking boxes. I work out my frustration on the house pull-up bar; pull-ups, chin-ups, skin-the-cat, crunches, one hundred on a lazy day. I am tall, and young, and strong, far too proud to ask my family for money, and so I eat rice when the hunger starts to gnaw, shovel snow, and chop firewood.


Right now I'm up to my hips in snow and broken ice the plow pushed off the road, holding a pickax, wondering how someone can embed the front end of a two wheel drive car seven feet into a snowbank while backing out of a driveway. Ian's just laughing like an idiot.

Ian's going into the Navy, he got kicked out when he was a teenager, found himself homeless, but got back on his feet and put himself through two years of college, then someone who didn't like him got him fired from his RA job and he had to drop out. When he found himself homeless again, he had a rough time, but got a job in construction, and in nine months he was managing projects, back on his feet and doing fine. Then the recession hit, and the company had to scale back, so he ended up living with us. I guess he got tired of getting back on his feet, because he joined the Navy. He doesn't head to boot until April, though, so in the meantime he's scraping by with us.

Right now he's on his back in the slush breaking ice off the tow bar of Chase's SUV so he can tie a rope to it.

Dave's got some money saved up, but he moved out here thinking he'd be able to get a job in two months or less. We don't hold it against him that he's having trouble; we all are, and he's out each day looking, even if it's snowing. He was trying to get to an interview when he got his car stuck. I figure he's got a shot if we get him out in time: He dresses nice, acts like he's sane when around potential employers, and speaks well. He also makes comments about the injustice of slavery every time we tell him to get out and help us push his car. So we abandon him to go help our seventy-year-old neighbor shovel her driveway. We have it shoveled in about five minutes.

Dave gets out and starts to dig his car out on his own, then shouts, "This sucks! It's cold."
We answer by lobbing snow across the road at him with our shovels.
"Hey, I should be getting encouragement. I'm trying to work here. How am I suppose to work without encouragement?"
I say, "You're black, you should be used to it."
Anyone else said anything like that to him, people'd have to pull us off 'em. I don't know if our neighbor approved, but we all laughed. If there's a sacred topic in our house, I haven't found it yet.

Chase is the rich kid, his dad's a big-time contractor, but times are hard for them, too, so he's cooking in the school cafeteria. This time last year he was cooking in a gourmet kitchen because he liked it. Still, he's got connections, so he has a job. I don't hold it against him. He's been covering us, thinks he's being secretive about it, but the two of us are in charge of finances; I have access to the joint account. He acts like a jack ass who lives without a care, but the account statement shows the only reason we still have a roof over our heads is that he's bleeding his savings dry to make up the difference. He deposited his first paycheck straight into our rent and utility account.

We're bled dry, too. Our education, experience, and work-ethic don't have any value right now, but our blood is still worth twenty a pint. It does not quite pay rent, but it covers utilities. Our neighbor comes over to thank us and gives us six dollars and thirty-eight cents, then tells us, "Thanks for you help, that would have taken me an hour. This is what I have. Oh, and a Fig Newton for each of you."

Guess it's hard times for everybody. Hard times change things; I have always hated Fig Newtons, yet I can barely explain how delicious that one was. I'll be cliche and call it a taste orgasm.

We're ready to try to pull the car out. Dave turns his tires towards the road, I step back, Ian gives Chase the signal to pull. Chase presses the gas slowly at first, and keeps going until he starts burning rubber, no luck. Dave's car is high centered, and Chase doesn't have the horsepower to drag the whole car off. He tries reversing and tugging the rope a couple times. Dave's doesn't budge.

Jared's just showed up, and he's leaning against a tree, watching. It annoys me a bit. He's a nice guy, which is why when he couldn't make rent we let him stay on the couch for whatever he could spare, but he's lazy. Hell of it is, I could tell him to help, but frankly he'd get in the way. He's a Texan football player going to massage school. Katie summed him up perfectly as, "Sweet guy. Big, dumb, and pretty."

He's got some luck, too. He just got a job as an usher, part-time. We figure it means he'll stop stealing our food. We also think he might be lying about the job. I figure to give him the benefit of the doubt. It'll be obvious pretty quick if he's lying about it. He stutters uncontrollably when he lies.