32. Indifference

C.W. and I were sitting on our balcony watching the sun sink over western Little Rock. Its rays combined with the ozone layer to produce a marvelous sight—physics and nature in a whirlwind of jagged colors. He whacked the railing with his “thumping stick” and regarded the sights our planet can produce.

He was in the form of a service station worker, complete with an insignia of a long-forgotten oil company. I would guess his assumed age at about 18.

“Where have you been?” I said. I guessed that he had been “enphasing” as he calls it—going back in time to revisit life in the past.

“Working in a service station in your hometown back in 1960,” he said. “Just a temporary job parking cars during the holiday season.”

“Seeing anything interesting?”

“Not much. Just observing how much calmer things were back then.” He paused and whacked the balcony again. “Oh we did fire somebody yesterday … that is the two bosses fired this colored man.”

“Don’t call people that,” I said. “Why did they fire him?”

“He didn’t call one of them sir, or something. They said he was a smart aleck.”

“Is that all?”

“Well he was a couple of minutes late coming back from dinner.”

“You mean lunch?”

“We call it dinner. Anyway, they said they wasn’t going to pay some smart assed ni…”

“That’s enough!”

“They wasn’t going to pay somebody like him 50 cents an hour and have to put up with his disrespect.”

“So they just fired him?”

“Well, he had to walk home every day for dinner since there wasn’t a place downtown for him to eat. He evidently lived way over on the east side and sometimes he was a few minutes late getting back.” He whacked the balcony again.

“So they fired him,” I said. “For being two minutes late?”

“Yep. Kinda sad seeing him turn around and head back home. Guess his wife was pretty disappointed when she found out.”

“Did you try to help?” I asked.

“Wasn’t none of my business,” he said.

“Hmmm.”

He whacked once more and turned to me. “Did you ever help one of them back then?”

“No, I lacked the courage.” I paused and offered, though I know it was weak. “I never knowingly mistreated anybody of any color, though.”

“I see,” he said. “You know, your species has made an art form out of indifference.” He whacked the balcony.

“Careful,” I said. “You’ll chip the paint.”

The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Elie Wiesel

“I just keep thinking about that man walking back to his family.” He stared at the city. “Well, got to go.”

“Where?”

“Got to select a shape for the peace march Saturday.”

“It’s been cancelled,” I said. “Not enough interest.”

“Crap,” he said, whacking my balcony rail again.

13. Labor Day

Ah, nice weather, prospects for a long weekend. I’m gathering things to take to join my wife for a weekend at the farm. As I am waiting for some laundry to finish, a knock comes at the door. I open it to find what? Of all things, I find an oriental figure in a Chinese Coolie outfit, bent slightly with arms clasped under his chin and head bowed.

“Ni houma, hau boohau,” he said, or something like that. Then: “Prease to arrow in?”

It had to be. “C. W.?” I said.

“Thought I fool honorable friend,” it said, gliding past me. I couldn’t help noticing a long pigtail falling down his back.

“What’s going on?” I said. “I was just getting ready to leave.”

“Ah, not to disturb. Want to wish Happy Rabor Day.”

C. W., would you cut the shit?” I said.

He looked up at me with a hurt expression. “Why so angry? No rike rong weekend?”

I resumed packing.

“Why does your species work so hard?” he finally asked in a normal voice.

“It is our curse, I suppose.”

“Curse or choice?”

A person has to eat and have a roof over his head.”

He sat and arranged his flowing gown. “Not take much time work to provide that.” He was back in his faked accent.

“Forty hours a week or more.”

Another change of voice: “Wrong, I calculate much less. Maybe half, Why not spend the rest of the time helping the distadvantaged and needy and then imagining and thinking how to make world a better place?”

“We call that Communism.”

“Ah, my mistake, I thought you call Christianity.”

I just looked at him as if to say, “How stupid.”

“You know about first Rair-road across country?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Who build?”

I was getting tired of this, so I mimicked a redneck conservative. “Muricans, by God.”

“Ah, not so. Mostly Chinese immigrants. Do all dangerous work. Brast and chip through mountains hanging from baskets. Make one foot progress per day through sorrid granite. More than one thousand roose rives.”

“Okay, and we are all grateful.” He was badly getting on my last nerve.

“Just a couple more questions, Jocko.” Here was the old C.W.

“Yes?”

“How many times in your country’s great economic history have you produced great things without the use of free, slave, or below-living wage labor?”

I didn’t feel like playing his game. “Look,” I said. “My parents were sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Don’t blame me for slave labor.”

“Not brame,” he said, shifting back to his impression of coolie talk. “Make try to understand.”

“Understand this,” I said, extending a middle finger.

C.W. asks: "What's missing from this picture?

“Okay,” he said. “Another question.”

“One more, and that’s it.”

“Your country cerebrate working people this weekend. True?”

“Yes.”

“Working people take day off from rabors, right.”

“Right.”

“Everyone honor honest rabor.”

“Right.”

“Then why bankers off too?”

Well, hell. How was I supposed to know?