Gerardo’s employer once gave an exhaustive address about garbage. Preaching values through allegory, nothing to do with the value of their labor, only the landfill bound widgets they’d be assembling for mass consumption every hour of each day.
The wealthy man, in a dressed down working-man costume, asked his employees about breakfast, whether they preferred to be the pig or the chicken, borrowing a breakfast parable he’d heard from another corporate dictator. Gerardo snapped out of a daydream. You see, says the plant owner, the chicken provides eggs for breakfast, but the pig sacrifices himself for the meal; bacon, ham, sausage.
Gerardo raised his hand
“Yes, you in the back. Pedro is it?”
He was Pedro to the wealthy man. Sure, whatever. Gerardo stepped up to the mic.
“I'd be the chicken. I’d produce far more food and participate in more breakfasts than the pig.” A few coworkers applauded. The fancy lad thanked Gerardo for his remarks.
A month later he discovered the plant was closing down, moving to El Salvador by years end. The company counts on El Salvador to be the pig in their corporate breakfast. Their standard of living is lower claimed a coworker. “It makes sense,” he said. Another claimed he’d do the same if he were the owner.
“So, Why don't you move down there?”
“Brother, I wouldn’t move down there. It’s just a job. Besides, that’s fantasy. Terry and I just bought the house last year.”
“Where you gonna go?” Gerardo asked his coworker, ignoring the anxiety of his own fate. “Back to Discount Tire? Weren’t you a manager there?”
Gerardo looked every bit the part of a worn out middle aged man, tummy, grey stubble, and deep crows feet at the corners of his eyes. His stint as a high school teacher wore out. His children were grown. Their mother had long moved on and built a new family. He had a golden retriever with a white face and arthritic joints and like his neighbors, his house was in desperate need of repair. The “We buy houses” leaflets on his doorstep and planted on muddy corners of intersections became more appealing each day.
There had to be a better way to make money, he thought. One without being a martyr, the pig for breakfast. Making meth amphetamine was not a viable option. Selling his belongings wouldn’t fetch much coin but could help lighten the load in case he had to move once his last paycheck cleared.
He complained to his friends and wrote his case in the comment feed of his favorite politics shows on YouTube. No one replied or commented. He wrote a few more comments on subsequent shows until he noticed casper0678 began liking his notes, a thumbs up each time. “You’re a true Marxist @ Gerrytheone” Casper wrote in response to a long diatribe Gerardo posted. He considered sending a direct message, but turned his focus to the tennis shoes he bid on eBay earlier that evening. He loved a particular style of sneaker design with an 1980’s nostalgic patina. He owned 6 pairs in various colors.
Days after his last paycheck cleared from the factory, Gerardo fell on a small sum of money from a property sale his elderly parents orchestrated from their Santa Fe bungalow with the help of his greasy brother-in law, Lorenzo, an ambulance chasing attorney with a marijuana dispensary side hustle and a knack for leveraging his way into family finances. Gerardo’s sister met him in college. He thought about calling her after opening the letter from his parents, blue ink scribble on notebook lined paper, a few words from his dad followed by a paragraph of poorly punctuated good wishes and advice from mom. The check was folded into thirds for privacy, it was equivalent to a year’s wages. A list of outstanding debts in Times New Roman appeared on his lawn, floating just feet above the dandelions and weeds. Across the street, a fat white woman in a tank top walked a small dog, a boy on an old bike raced by, and an enormous rotting pecan tree leaned over most of the street, it’s ratio of dead branches to green was even. It was ugly in the classic sense of the word.
Gerardo stepped outside into the Texas’ summer sauna and sucked in a cup of hot air. He could taste the smell of fresh dog shit. His neighbor’s pit-bull’s were huffing at him from their side of the front yard chain-link fence. They paced, snarled, and huffed. Gerardo walked toward them. One stood on his hind legs, placing his front paws on the top bar of the fence. Gerardo stroked its fat head while the other whined. “I’m gonna get you guys a fucking steak. How’s that sound? One for each of ya’.” They shook their stub tails and huffed.
Nothing to do all week, no work, no dog to walk, no ambition for chores, woodwork, painting, nor drawing hack political cartoons, he picked up a routine of walking around his neighborhood, a four block subdivision of rundown single story ranch style homes built in the 1960’s for military personnel from the air force base down the highway, and eventually making his way to the hip coffee shop frequented by attractive women much younger than him. Originally surrounded by woods and agricultural fields the primitive subdivision was walled off by apartment complexes, a high school, a third rate shopping center with a dollar store, and city recreation facility owned and operated by a Christian organization from Chicago, a public private partnership that excluded the public for an individual $120 monthly fee or a $180 family membership.
On Wednesday he walked the entire neighborhood, counted 8 broken down vehicles parked by curbs, including the pick-up his sister left after her divorce, and one clunker on a front lawn. He counted 11 homes with multiple vehicles of various ages and 3 homes with dust covered motorcycles under rusted carports. On his way back from the coffee shop he continued his research, counting homes with overgrown and unkept front lawns, front lawns of dirt an dust, and lawns with more weeds than grass. It was easier to count the homes with manicured lawns and healthy trees, 12.
He’d lived in this neighborhood for 2 years, he knew it was an affordable eyesore. His current home was in his price range after selling his previous home, a white brick beauty with picture windows and grown healthy pecan and oak trees in a better part of town. The house fetched enough equity to pay for his daughter’s first year at UC Berkeley. He was happy where lived. The neighbor to his left, Ruth, a German immigrant who occupied her home for over 30 years, owned a sweet 13 year old Australian Sheppard she took to work everyday. To his right was Rudy and Silvia Rodriguez, they owned three large