August. Fresno, California. It’s broiling. In the high hundreds. The dry, furnace air wavers in place. Here we tread heat. It seems to me there could well be a branch of clairvoyance dedicated to deciphering its quivering messages. A heat reader.
Wednesday at four pm: A man is quietly arrested in front of a Target store. He stands, handcuffed, his head bowed. The policeman speaks to him softly, calmly, almost in a whisper. The sun is beating down on the parking lot where there are, in true Fresno fashion, no trees, but the two men are standing in the rectangular shadow of the Target store, shaded and intimate. I catch a glimpse of the face of the man in handcuffs and perhaps because of the play of shadows, or the position of his bowed head, he resembles Christ as we have been seeing him all summer in France nailed to the crosses that mark the entry or exit of villages. It is not impossible, moreover, that his name is Jesús. Jesús of Target.
An emphatic billboard above a cheap eatery: Pork-n-Whisky Rule !
Thursday at the hairdressers’. Her name is Jessica, we are new to each other. Jessica is twenty-six, has reddish purple hair, black blotches on her arms that I presume are tattoos, and a voice like Minny Mouse. She seems tired, or is it bored?
“Sit over here, hon.” I take a seat at her little throne and she fans her plastic bib around me.
“Are you from here?” She senses I’m not, maybe because I came in wearing a summer bonnet. Women from these parts don’t wear hats. Just their hair –big.
“I grew up here,” I explain, “but now I live in France. I’m just visiting family.”
“In France? Oh, I have a friend who moved to England. Her husband is in the Air Force.”
“Where in England?”
“Mmm, I’m not sure. What’s that place where they’re having the Olympics?”
“London.”
“Yeah, London. Well, I’m not sure if she’s in London or England. One of the two.”
Snip, snip, snip.
“So you live in France… is your husband French?”
“Yes, he’s French.”
“What language do they speak in France?”
“French.”
“And does your husband speak it?”
“Yes, he’s French.”
Jessica, I begin to realize, has simply not been watered. She’s been in the sun too long without hydration or a map to the source. Her mother lives in Las Vegas and that’s as far as she has been. Once she went camping at Bass Lake and couldn’t sleep. A bear was spotted at campsite number 20. She trembled in her tent at campsite 22.
– Better a bear than a serial killer.
-Did you hear about that guy in Denver…
Friday at 9:30 am: two Buddhist monks enter Trader Joe’s on Blackstone Avenue. Bananas are on promotion. They buy some and get back inside a Dodge pickup, gathering their robes.
Friday 10:45 at the Fig Garden Swim and Racquet Club: a mom-of-three says to a mom-of-four: “Let’s lay.”
Friday 11:00 am, a mother-of-two arrives says to the mother-of-three and the mother-of-four, both sprawled on chaise lounges:
– How are you?
– We’re good.
Since I’ve been away, they’ve changed the grammar.
Thursday night: fish tacos from Don Pépés and a salted Mexican beer with a lime slice and a peppered shrimp stuffed into the bottle. My son says, “Mom, I love Don Poopoos.”
Friday: farewell. We head to the Sierras. God’s Country.