Folsom

The afternoon sun bakes more than the yellow weeds and red clay on the Oak hills in Sacramento County. The falling sun boils asphalt on the dead-end streets of Folsom. Past the square buildings of the white-heat town, the prison smolders; where in the only shade, hunkered men sizzle and sweat, smoke and spit, doze and snore. No one asks for the sun, it just comes, wandering over the Sierras following an ancient road. Returning each day to roast the livers, dehydrate the kidneys, boil the brains of men who cannot fly away to Cancun or Stockholm. Of course, they are not aware their brains are being bubbled; what little gray matter puberty left behind was long ago shoved blind-folded to the wall by booze, smoke and sterile needles filled with promises of Syphilitic sex.

The sun crosses over the lifeless kingdom of body-builders; the realm of pasty white, brown and black Courtiers. It dawdles, moving westward, hanging over the stone walls and curling wire, over the octagonal glass towers with the squinty guards and black guns, over the little creek, rocky and withered where a horny toad stares at a black beetle lounging in the shade of dry rocks.

The sun comes at last to the hillside of red crosses. A meadow of outcaste crosses, shutting out in death what was once shut up in life. And the sun darkens slightly as it passes above the oak trees at the foot of the hill. The sun sees that this is a place no heat will bother, there will be no welcome, no curse; its light will not be noticed, this is the stairway to the Abyss.

There are names to match the crosses. I have not come for the names, I have come to see the crosses. Standing in the afternoon sun, soaked with sweat from the climb up it's hard to remember. Joe? He had a history. I was there when he smoked his last cigarette for the fourth time.

You would have liked Joe. Most people did. I remember him as someone who was always well dressed, well cared for, he kept up a good appearance. His white hair was always combed straight back, "I pick it up in d'service, he said in the Barber Shop, "Sorta keep it outa d'way. Kinda like it diz way, girls don't say nuttin', my age who cares wut d'girls say, huh?

He lived in a one bedroom apartment at the end of a hall next to the elevator on the third floor of a building owned by a Bay Area Lawyer. He lived there, he said, "cause I afford it, I don't need nuttin' else.

He didn't own a car, walking everywhere he wanted to go, or riding the bus. Once in a while, he'd get a neighbor to drive him to the doctor or dentist when he needed to go. There's a bar on the corner and a liquor store two blocks away. There's a Safeway down the street over the creek and as he said, "I need a car? Got thin's I want right here.

He spent about ninety per cent of his time watching TV. Always full volume, always sports or news or the afternoon talk shows. He never watched movies, "don't care for sex an' blood, he said.

Joe, was five foot plus a few inches, handsome, blue eyed with big shoulders, big hands. For many years he was the town's only Dry Cleaner working in the back end of a dying building on a major intersection; cleaning dirty clothes for busy families. He held that one job on the corner for 19 years. Never had much contact with customers and didn't talk much with other employees. "Minded his own business, stayed out of trouble, his boss said. "Never missed a day of work, always on time, opened up for me at 5:30 every morning closed at 6:00 every night.

Kathy, one of the counter clerks who worked at the Dry Cleaners, told me a few years ago, while I stood in the alley picking apples off her trees, that he wasn't exactly tight with his money but he never wasted any. "He helps out some people who work there, once in a while, she said. "Then, he always wants his money back with interest, right on time. He isn't a fool when it comes to giving money to people. Except his daughter, that is.

Kathy and her husband lived two blocks up the alley from the Dry Cleaners. A little blue house with white window frames on the corner of the alley and Lincoln street. She was a shriveled up old woman who dyed her hair black and smoked two packs of cigarettes on work days.

Most people liked Kathy. She had a personality that was hard to find fault with even though everyone knew she had a wicked temper and was quick to argue, especially about money. Kathy and her husband came from Kansas City. They settled in our town about fifteen years before Kathy died of lung cancer, the same year Joe's granddaughter died. Kathy worked at the Dry Cleaners most of that time.

She couldn't add 2 plus 2 without a calculator and then she'd probably get it wrong. Every night when the money was counted up in the Dry Cleaner's the owner would throw a fit because someone was cheating him, someone was stealing and he was going broke. Then Dora his wife would go through the invoices and point out all the errors Kathy had made. That was the biggest incentive he could find for installing the bank's credit card machine, but even with it Kathy managed to confuse the books.

It was hard to stay mad at Kathy for very long even though she had a terrible temper. When Mr. Sistris the owner of the Dry Cleaner's began nagging her she would always act injured and threaten to quit. Mr. Sistris should have taken her up on it, but he could never make up his mind to do it. He found some sort of personal satisfaction in the knowing smiles of his customers when he was called up front to straighten out one of Kathy's mistakes. Most people thought he was soft hearted, and of course, he was, unless it was his own wife Dora he was working with and then he could be mean as a snake.

Kathy's husband Gary often reminds me of a revolving door at the hotel, the one that's always getting ahead of itself and jammed up. Gary works at some job for a little while, making good money, for a little while, and then ends up on a random Friday without work for one reason or another. He always loses his jobs right after he's spent his last dime, and while Kathy was alive the two would struggle along in those times on Kathy's salary until he found another temporary job. In the fifteen years Kathy worked at the Dry Cleaners her husband Gary had eighteen different jobs. Kathy once said it was "like a roller coaster, but then the sex was good.

Kathy was so skinny everyone knew she was going to die soon, they just couldn't quite decide how soon. She was sick a lot, which always showed in her painful face. Perry, the Methodist minister, said once in the hotel's coffee shop that Kathy had learned and mastered the profession of pity beyond any person he'd ever met,. Mr. Sistris said that Kathy got more sympathy tips than anyone in the state. Joe told me he thought some of the money came from the till and Kathy "weren't as dumb as dey tink.

Kathy's house on the alley had huge apple trees in the back yard, which entertained the neighbor kids and those who weren't too sophisticated to "shag an apple every now and then. Even Mrs. Collins got caught several times with a basket and stick. Kathy used to rail on her something fierce, she had a terrible temper, and chubby little Mrs. Collins, in her pink housecoat, would walk off shame faced and humiliated. The neighbors of course always took Kathy's side until she walked around the corner and then privately they would all laugh and say, "She ought to share with her neighbors anyway. What's the harm of a few apples? At least Mrs. Collins can cook.

Kathy's son Orin went to school in Redding to become a Mortician. In fact, he and another fellow opened up a Mortuary in our town which became a huge success. I suppose you hate to see a Mortician make a go of it, but speaking from a business point of view he was successful.

Orin and his wife Sharon bought a house up the river, past the lake, "plan to do some Panning, he once told me. It's true that at that spot on the river, just above his house, a few tourists came up with an ounce of gold some years back. Some say it's because the "Tailings get washed down once in a while. That accounts for the little bit of gold people find from time to time. I don't understand any of it, never been interested, and never intend to be, I just go by what others say, Orin being one of the others, but then Orin is quite a liar.

I hate to call a man a liar, but Orin just can't seem to get the same story straight two days in a row. Every time he tells you something you get a different version. Connie over at the drug store says it's why he got married, "He needed someone to help keep his stories organized.

I personally think Orin should have married Connie, since they dated all through Junior College, but then her teeth are bad and she does have quite a reputation. I like her, because she has huge¦, well anyway. I suppose a Mortician has some sort of standing in the community to maintain. But, then, if that's so you would think he would worry more about telling the truth than about his wife's past indiscretions.

Neal at the hardware story told me that Orin's wife has had quite a history of her own. I wouldn't know from personal experience, though I had heard that same thing from one of the truck drivers in the hotel coffee shop. It's hard for somebody to come into town when they have a nice figure and sweet smile and not carry something of a reputation with them, either one they've earned by hard work, or one made up spitefully by the local ladies who safeguard the purity of our town with a rigid Methodist zeal.

Orin's wife Sharon and Ellen a secretary at the Alpine bank are best friends. Ellen is the most attractive woman in town. She has very short, raven black hair, blue eyes, with just the right sized Roman nose and a d'Vinci mouth. She's about five feet two, with a figure that causes the Presbyterian minister to blush when she jogs past on her morning runs.

On top of everything else Ellen's a nice person. Warm and friendly, quiet and polite, a subtle smile that lights up a room. I met her at the local hotel's coffee shop, which is next to the bank where she works. After visiting with her for five minutes, I decided this was a person of quality, and I was in love.

Ellen was Joe's daughter. She married Mike who owns the Feed Store, south of town, and the two had a beautiful little daughter, Dawn, who would have been ten, this month. Ellen and Mike are two people in our town that are always at the center of every group, even the ones dominated by the people from down south who've recently moved like migrating sea lions into our neighborhoods.

Ellen and her daughter were visiting Joe a few years ago. Ellen left Dawn on the sidewalk while she rang the doorbell to the apartment complex. In the twinkling of an eye, as kids often do, Dawn found an opportunity to run into the street.

It's hard to put the story together as it actually happened. Everyone who tells it has a different version, especially Orin. It came out in Court that a teenager, whose parents had just moved into town from some where over the border, came barreling down the street doing 50. They say he was drunk, some say he was sober, some say he was drugged up, some say there were kids in the car and he was showing off. I don't know. He was driving a beat up old "Beaner pickup and smashed into Dawn with such force that it sucked the life from her instantly and propelled her across a parked car.

The case went to trial. Somehow it stalled in technicalities. After endless weeks of legal mumbling the boy was convicted and sentenced. He was given a few months and probation.

The Prosecutor said Joe waited. When the boy was released from custody, they said Joe took Ellen's gun from the glove box of her car and blew the boy's brains out all over the seat of his father's brand new Jeep Cherokee with the vinyl dash. No one saw him do it. There were no witnesses. But Joe gave himself up to the police and confessed.

During the course of the criminal proceedings we learned that Joe had a criminal record. There was a long list of petty crimes on the East Coast. He had done 15 years at Thomas Center on Riker's for Assault. Because of his past record and the seriousness of his crime he was sent to Folsom. In prison he got into a fight with another inmate and was stabbed. He never recovered and died in the prison infirmary. His red cross is outside the walls of Folsom.

At the time they say Joe shot the kid, he and I were watching television in his apartment. So I climb the hill once in a while to remind myself of Joe, and I think about his daughter and how pretty she is.