American Outlaw - Jesse James [47]
One book I got in Seattle was The Old Man and the Sea. For some reason, I really got into the image of that old man out there on his skiff, fighting for his giant catch. I found myself going over his fate again and again as I was welding. Everyone said it was a sad book, but I thought it ended pretty happily. After all, he’d knocked off three or four sharks with his own hands, hadn’t he? That old man was a badass. At night, I read that book in my bed, falling asleep with the lights on, exhausted from work.
Thinking back, it was an odd period of my life. I was totally alone and, surprisingly, I had no desire to be with anyone else. Something was happening to me, with all the isolation and hard work I was doing. It truly solidified my sense of being and what I was capable of. It was as if my body was absorbing the solitude like sunlight, synthesizing something powerful from it. I don’t recall making a single friend during the ten months or so that I spent in the Pacific Northwest. But I don’t recall ever being lonely, either.
——
Eventually my stint in Seattle came to an end. I had to get out. The weather was making me stir-crazy and nuts. When April came and it was still dreary and gray, I simply couldn’t handle it. And although I continued to gain competence in my job, I didn’t quite see where it was going. Welding paid great, and I could feel good about being a craftsman, but where was the future in it? I didn’t consider shift leader the highest goal I wanted to strive for.
The other guys at work didn’t dig me all that well, either. I was the youngest kid, by far, and I never paid much attention to them when I came in, just put my head down and got straight to work. It made it that much worse that I’d received several promotions since joining the shipyard.
One day one of the guys asked me, point-blank, “Who do you know?”
“I don’t know anyone,” I said.
“Come on, don’t be a wise guy,” he said. “You related to the boss?”
“Yeah, he’s my mother.” I glared hard at him. “Anything else you need to ask me?”
He shrugged. “Nah.” As I walked away, I heard him mumble, “Wiseass.”
I called my mom from a pay phone at the Lion that night, and told her I was coming back to California.
“Oh, sweetie, that’s great,” she said.
I cleared my throat. “Can I stay with you for a little while until I get my own place?”
Long Beach had not changed much in my absence. In fact, it was precisely the same as I’d left it. In a way, I felt oddly insulted, like, how could this place function without me? I was Long Beach! On the morning of my arrival, I walked down the street to get a gallon of milk, passing at least ten people on the street on my way. Total poker faces. Nobody acknowledged my existence, much less said “hi.” I sighed, relieved. I was home, all right.
I had some cash, so I wasn’t too concerned about how I’d survive. More than that, I had a trade now. I figured that if things got tight, I would be happy doing some welding work in the surrounding area. There were plenty of jobs in Southern Cal for a blue-collar guy who kept his eyes fixed to the metal.
I was also kinda psyched to put together another motorcycle. Up in Seattle, when I’d started to accumulate money, I’d gone by a Harley dealership to see how much a brand-new chopper would cost.
“Oh, not too much. Twelve thousand should get you most of the way there.”
I was taken aback. I was making good money, but twelve grand? Just for some bike that every other corny dude with a fringe vest and leather chaps was riding? I said thanks, but no thanks—it was too damn rainy to ride a bike every day there, anyway—and I resigned myself to the rented Chevy for a while longer.
But now that I was home and had access to my mom’s garage, I started to dream again about putting together my own model. In high school, I’d made Rhonda’s Volkswagen for almost nothing by being creative, doing the paint and body